The return of Eugenics? What is it for?

[Stavros]

One of the by-products of the bogus 'science of race' that influenced so many otherwise intelligent people in the 19th century, was the emergence at that century's end and into the 20th century, of something called 'Eugenics' which attempted to use the new science of Genetics to take race a stage further. For a key question to ask those people who still today link Genetics to claims about human performance from basic intelligence to 'higher intelligence', the ability to run fast, or survive at high altitude is: what do want to do with this information?

An article in The Guardian reveals how Eugenics is still a matter of scholarly research and publication even in journals where the editors don't believe in it. It may be in a tangential manner be related to other threads on genetics in this section of HA.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/22/eugenics-racism-mainstream-science

The first reaction one might have is that Eugenics was discredited by the Nazi's, that nobody again would use bogus science to dismiss an entire 'race' as in some way unfit to live. Yet, as another article in the New Statesman last November points out, the Nazi's at the time were merely one group of people advocating mass murder as a solution to the 'problem' of 'useless people'. Here, for example, is George Bernard Shaw advocating murder (he called it 'involuntary euthanasia') to deal with persistent criminals and other social misfits:
“A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time looking after them.”

HG Wells produced a similar argument in 1901, as noted in the article (a review of a book on the future)
When in his non-fiction study Anticipations, first published in 1901, he considered the future of the “swarms of black and yellow and brown people who do not come into the needs of efficiency” in a scientifically ordered World State, Wells concluded that these and other “inefficient” human groups would have to disappear: “The world is not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go”.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/11/history-future-how-writers-envisioned-tomorrow-s-world

For this to me is the point of Eugenics: a three-phased solution to a problem defined by the bogus use of science to determine which humans are of value, and which are not. The three phases are:
1) Identify , 2) Isolate, 3) Destroy.

This is not science, it is mass murder. And one always notices that those who believe there are too many people in the world never count themselves as part of them, just as the advocates of the murder of the 'unfit to live' do not consider themselves unfit, even though their ideas are derived from worthless 'science'.

Chilling to think that this bogus thought is at the root of immigration policy in the UK and it seems, the USA too. Maybe we do not always progress over time, but I am dismayed at the speed with which society appears to be marching backwards.

[trish]

There are businesses that, for a fee, will ‘test’ a sample of your DNA and attempt to tell you something about your ancestry; i.e. you’re 81% Scandinavian and 12% North African, etc. One problem that has recently come to light is that identical twins have sometimes received non-identical results from the same testing company.

When we were first learning how to sample and compare DNA (in the 80’s and 90’s) is was proposed one could compare the DNA of a suspect with the DNA left behind at the crime scene by the perpetrator. However, the methodology of the time was too unreliable and gave too many false positives. Back then we would break up the DNA into short strands and compare the broken strands with each other. Today we have the technology to compare entire strands, but I understand that it is very costly. Others should correct me here, but I believe to this day in the U.S. DNA evidence can be used to eliminate a suspect but not prosecute.

DNA analysis holds a lot of promise. It can show how proteins are coded and produced in the body. It can lead to therapies that might cure certain specific metabolic deficiencies. But it has its limitations. It is no easier to divide genotypes into distinct and separate races than it is to divide phenotypes into distinct and separate races. In fact its impossible. Moreover, it’s a whole lot easier to assign social traits, intellectual abilities or physical skills to actual people (but not before you actually meet and observe them), than it is to assign those sorts of traits to long strings of A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s. (Pinker and sociobiology to the contrary.)

One problem here is the link between genotype and phenotype is not deterministic. A common misconception is that an individual’s DNA codes the individual: it’s not true. Were it true we could all live forever: just get cloned before you die. Clearly individuals are formed by their experiences after conception as much as by the recombination of genes that occurred at conception. But this is not the only source of ambiguity in the link between genotype and phenotype. There is epigenetics, morphology and host of other influences that effect gene expression. There is no direct link between DNA and how it is expressed. There is no unique way a given set of 23 pairs of chromosomes can be expressed. DNA does not code for a unique human being, let alone a unique individual. If you gave an alien scientist a complete compliment of 23 pairs of human chromosomes, I doubt that he could reconstruct a human being. He would have the code, but no insight into the machine that decodes it and turns into a human being and a functioning individual. Even on Earth, that machine wouldn’t always produce the same human being nor the same individual each time.

Eugenics is racism posing as science. Sociobiology is the pseudoscience that sometimes enables these quacks.

[broncofan]

. Others should correct me here, but I believe to this day in the U.S. DNA evidence can be used to eliminate a suspect but not prosecute.

In the state I'm in it can be used to convict. I've read a couple of cases on appeal about the quality of dna evidence and whether the convictions based on it violate due process. I'll have to find some articles about the state of the science and in what states it's admitted (and for what purpose) since it's very relevant for this thread. Scientific evidence that is presented to a jury in a way that overstates its reliability is a great menace to the justice system, and impacts other types of evidence as well. There was a whole category of cases that had to be overturned because they were based on a test that claimed it could match bullets to the batch they came out of.

In order to present the evidence, it has to pass something called a Daubert test or in some states a Frye test. The purpose of this test is to determine whether the evidence meets scientific standards of rigor to be worth presenting to a jury. The reason this is a concern is because people can tend to rely on the expertise of a witness without questioning whether their techniques have been subjected to proper scrutiny.

[broncofan]

I suppose the connection with this thread is the overestimation of scientific understanding. This can occur when we claim that genetic traits determine intelligence but cannot define intelligence or measure it and don't even understand all of the many ways in which gene expression depend on early life exposures and impact what we call intelligence. It can also involve an unreasonable belief in the use of new techniques to identify suspects and confirm their guilt, from the use of polygraph testing to ballistics tests to dna tests. Sorry, this was my attempt to broaden the subject a little bit to include this article.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-surprisingly-imperfect-science-of-dna-testing-2/

This article discusses the use of dna evidence. It's similar to how I've seen it presented where the witnesses discuss how many loci out of thirteen are a match. The real question is whether the evidence should be presented at all when it passes a threshold where the results do not statistically rule out the rest of humanity and courts cannot decide what statistics are appropriate to summarize the findings. Instead of being able to objectively analyze the physical evidence, you have juries deciding whether to believe an expert who argues the dna provides a 1:2.5 chance of a match v. a 1:741,000 chance. At this point, the science has not provided juries something they can use to understand the issues and determine for themselves whether someone is guilty. The use of a statistic can also be misleading if at any point the prosecutor misstates what that stat means, or with what certainty they've calculated that stat. I believe the state I'm in doesn't even allow the discussion of the evidence if it doesn't match a minimum number of loci.

[broncofan]

I apologize for the second post as I realize it's a bit off the main subject. I think the entire cult of iq is useless because it provides very little accurate information and in the sense it attributes abilities to purely genetic causes, it doesn't provide usable information even if it were to become accurate.

I watched on Oprah a bunch of years back a 10 year old who had tested off the charts on an iq test and was entering college. Frequently these prodigies end up being burnouts whose test results gave them false expectations about what success in life would require. Some people who perform poorly on iq tests end up being enormously successful, despite the discouraging effect that information would have. Previous tests of intelligence measured discrete structures in the brain that there was no good reason to believe would be useful proxies for intelligence.

The study of epigenetics is at least interesting because the information can be used in ways to understand how our dna interacts with environment to produce phenotype. This understanding can at least lead to intervention of some kind to offset learning disabilities or to treat other conditions. But the attribution to genes of characteristics we do not even fully understand and which are used to value human beings has only the most morbid possible applications.

[Stavros]

I watched on Oprah a bunch of years back a 10 year old who had tested off the charts on an iq test and was entering college. Frequently these prodigies end up being burnouts whose test results gave them false expectations about what success in life would require. Some people who perform poorly on iq tests end up being enormously successful, despite the discouraging effect that information would have. Previous tests of intelligence measured discrete structures in the brain that there was no good reason to believe would be useful proxies for intelligence. .

I think the point here is that young people have a tremendous capacity for learning, though I don't believe DNA can explain why one child prodigy is good at maths when another is good at playing the piano or the violin. Memory is the key to both, but both must also have phenomenal abilities to analyse, although it is often the case that young musicians can play all the notes, but do not interpret the music with any depth. But if this is a major gap in genetics then how can it be possible to classify entire social groups on the basis of some trait as if it were scientific fact? The answer is it cannot be done with science, but evidently people seem to need to believe that they are superior or even inferior to others and if you tell them that it has negative social and economic outcomes then you are dismissed as a 'liberal'. There is no science in this, but when these days science is vulnerable to claims it is fake when it is climate change, but real when it is space exploration, you realise people are just cherry picking their way through arguments, and are thus keen to support politically those who echo their views. Another negative outcome.

[sukumvit boy]

Recent controversy regarding a 'secret' eugenics conference at University College London has caused some concern in the academic community . Covered well in The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus

[SarahG]

I think the point here is that young people have a tremendous capacity for learning, though I don't believe DNA can explain why one child prodigy is good at maths when another is good at playing the piano or the violin.

DNA would never have been the full story, as even aside from the experiences that shape people it is also possible for genes to be triggered by environmental variables. Think about all those stress hormones that a fetus is subjected to when its mother is dealing with the problems that come with poverty for example.

NPR had a show on the other day about this talking about the ACE test. The science says if a child experiences severe enough stress during critical parts of its development it will carry a health penalty. Less academic performance, more auto immune disorders, shorter lifespan. My ACE score is 8 and I can't go a month without ending up in a doctor's office for something or another.

[Stavros]

DNA would never have been the full story, as even aside from the experiences that shape people it is also possible for genes to be triggered by environmental variables. Think about all those stress hormones that a fetus is subjected to when its mother is dealing with the problems that come with poverty for example.
NPR had a show on the other day about this talking about the ACE test. The science says if a child experiences severe enough stress during critical parts of its development it will carry a health penalty. Less academic performance, more auto immune disorders, shorter lifespan. My ACE score is 8 and I can't go a month without ending up in a doctor's office for something or another.

I had never heard of this test before so I had to use a search engine to find out.
There are various portals but I used this one and it gave me a score of 2, although I was not happy with the result because I was not entirely happy with the questions-
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean

The problem it seems to me is that it does not distinguish between isolated incidents in which, for example, a parent may slap a child where that is a rare, one-off event; and a child who is repeatedly slapped, or worse, by one or other parent. It could be that the psychological trauma of that one event, precisely because it is unusual, has a greater impact than regular beatings or slaps, but I don't know how that can be measured. It is also possible to generate emotional trauma through fear even if neither parent or someone in the home actually lays hands on someone or is in some way intimidating. I once read an argument on the internet in which a feminist claimed that most or all male to female transexuals have been sexually abused in childhood.

And it could be that the test is using moments in childhood that some people would say are 'normal' or 'inevitable', to diagnose contemporary issues that may have other causes.

I am not dismissing the test or its implications, but it seems to me at this stage to beg too many questions which cannot be answered. There are surveys of the impact on childhood of war and civil war, and it is clear that there are long-term issues for children who have seen terrible things caused by bombs or insurgent violence, who may have lost part or the whole of their families, and have been deprived of both emotional nourishment and a wide range of physical needs due to the absence of fresh food, drinking water and so on. There are two short surveys of the impact of the war in Syria on children in the links below -
https://conflictandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13031-015-0061-6
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-12-57

I am persuaded that childhood trauma, be it in the home or in war, has long term implications for health. Not sure it can be reduced to a test score, or that problems encountered in adult life are solely the consequence of childhood trauma. And I cannot see a direct link to an individual's DNA. And would not some, perhaps many psychologists suggest to someone still stressed (obsessed?) over an event that happened at the age of 11 that there are ways of dealing with it so that it no longer interferes with life causing enough stress to warrant medical treatment?

[broncofan]

I am persuaded that childhood trauma, be it in the home or in war, has long term implications for health. Not sure it can be reduced to a test score, or that problems encountered in adult life are solely the consequence of childhood trauma. And I cannot see a direct link to an individual's DNA. And would not some, perhaps many psychologists suggest to someone still stressed (obsessed?) over an event that happened at the age of 11 that there are ways of dealing with it so that it no longer interferes with life causing enough stress to warrant medical treatment?
Childhood trauma would very likely result in long-term changes in gene expression. I did a quick google search for childhood trauma and epigenetic changes and though I didn't read these specific articles there is an enormous body of developing literature on it. I am not sure whether all of these changes suffered by those experiencing this are the result of changes in gene expression or whether some are mediated directly by neuroplastic effects. For instance, if someone in a war zone develops a startle response that's based in some ways on classical conditioning, if it's related to increased activity in the amygdala, to what extent is that neuroplasticity the result of changes in gene expression? I don't know, but either way, the brain is much more plastic in early life when someone would deal with the exposure than when they try to mitigate its effects.

There is also a great deal of evidence that people with ptsd have reduced hippocampal volumes and long-term increased negative feedback inhibition of the hpa axis that persists decades after exposure. The hippocampus is crucial when it comes to assimilating new information.

It's not that there aren't any ways of dealing with it, it's just that at this point the treatments do not yet mitigate all of the effects. So, the question is, if someone can experience events that make them jump or react with a startle when they hear a car horn twenty years after the exposure, then why could they not experience an effect that would make it difficult to perform well on a single exam like an iq test?

[broncofan]

There is epigenetics, morphology and host of other influences that effect gene expression. There is no direct link between DNA and how it is expressed. There is no unique way a given set of 23 pairs of chromosomes can be expressed. DNA does not code for a unique human being, let alone a unique individual. If you gave an alien scientist a complete compliment of 23 pairs of human chromosomes, I doubt that he could reconstruct a human being.
I read a book a few years ago by a woman named Nessa Carey called the Epigenetics Revolution. I probably didn't understand everything I read but she took readers on a tour of how epigenetics translates genotype into phenotype.

She takes the reader through early experiments with cloning, to help explain how scientists figured out how to induce pluripotency in a somatic cell. She discussed stem cells, which are already pluripotent and how it requires an understanding of how to induce changes in gene expression that direct what type of somatic cell they become. Finally, she discussed some relevant issues in epigenetics that were illuminating and challenged ideas about genetic determinism. I really enjoyed it because it seemed to me to provide an opportunity to both understand causes but also to provide clues to potential therapeutic interventions.

Edit: I just wanted to say this is the basis for my understanding of epigenetic changes in trauma victims in my previous post. If any of what I wrote is incorrect or based on a misunderstanding, I am interested to hear. But my understanding is that there is a burgeoning science about how epigenetic changes mediate many pathological physical and psychiatric conditions (including many aspects of who we are that are not pathological) and that many therapies for these conditions often result in identifiable epigenetic changes.

[trish]

Thanks for the recommendation. Having read the Carey book you likely know more about epigenetics than me. My first encounter with these ideas was a (recorded) lecture given by Richard Lewontin who spoke to a general audience about morphogensis and against genetic determinism. He’s written several books related to the topic: Not in Our Genes, The Triple Helix and It Ain’t Necessarily So. It was already somewhat dated when I read it a decade ago. It was more like a collection of essays than the development of a single idea, and very non-technical. I don’t really recall a discussion of eugenics, but the fault may be in my memory. It did have a essay on the genetic modification of food.

[Stavros]

Childhood trauma would very likely result in long-term changes in gene expression.

I was given Adam Rutherhord's book A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived. The Stories in Our Genes (2016) and in Part Two Chapter 6 he discusses epigenetics but is cautious about its application. He does however draw attention to two examples from history (one in Netherlands, the other in Sweden) that do suggest the children of people who have been through a trauma exhibit genetic expressions they might not otherwise have developed. One is the Nazi 'experiment' known as the Hongerwinter of 1944-45 when the Nazi's deliberately withheld food from the Dutch under occupation. Subsequent studies showed that children born to those women who had starved in that winter were more prone than others of their cohort to obesity, diabetes, schizophrenia (a dubious diagnosis at the best of times), cardio-vascular disease, and in women, breast cancer.

If this is not proof enough, there are two links below that appear to suggest genes do change as a result of some trauma in mothers, but I am not sure if it can be proven that it is derived from traumas suffered by mum and dad or just one of the two that is effective, and again, I am not sure we can be sure that present-day problems are 'inherited' or due to something within the life-time of the person. Isn't there a problem of determinism in this? And does it not mean that someone with problems can be relieved of responsibility by claiming 'it is in my genes' when it might not be but, crucially, the remedy may be within the ability to that individuals to achieve because the 'genetic' reality can be changed -?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/11/29/childhood-trauma-can-inherited-future-generations-new-study/

https://childhoodtraumarecovery.com/2013/03/17/the-effect-of-childhood-trauma-on-genes-and-susceptibility-to-depression/

[broncofan]

I was given Adam Rutherhord's book A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived. The Stories in Our Genes (2016) and in Part Two Chapter 6 he discusses epigenetics but is cautious about its application. He does however draw attention to two examples from history (one in Netherlands, the other in Sweden) that do suggest the children of people who have been through a trauma exhibit genetic expressions they might not otherwise have developed. One is the Nazi 'experiment' known as the Hongerwinter of 1944-45 when the Nazi's deliberately withheld food from the Dutch under occupation. Subsequent studies showed that children born to those women who had starved in that winter were more prone than others of their cohort to obesity, diabetes, schizophrenia (a dubious diagnosis at the best of times), cardio-vascular disease, and in women, breast cancer.

If this is not proof enough, there are two links below that appear to suggest genes do change as a result of some trauma in mothers, but I am not sure if it can be proven that it is derived from traumas suffered by mum and dad or just one of the two that is effective, and again, I am not sure we can be sure that present-day problems are 'inherited' or due to something within the life-time of the person. Isn't there a problem of determinism in this? And does it not mean that someone with problems can be relieved of responsibility by claiming 'it is in my genes' when it might not be but, crucially, the remedy may be within the ability to that individuals to achieve because the 'genetic' reality can be changed -?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/11/29/childhood-trauma-can-inherited-future-generations-new-study/

https://childhoodtraumarecovery.com/2013/03/17/the-effect-of-childhood-trauma-on-genes-and-susceptibility-to-depression/
From what I read of a similar book, there is reason to be cautious of the application of epigenetics when it deals with transmitted tendencies for gene expression. To what extent are changes in gene expression from the parents wiped clean once the gametes form a zygote? One link you included and the example you gave indicate not completely though it's probably a very complicated picture. But I think there is less controversy about those changes in gene expression that occur within a person's life.

I think the relationship of epigenetics to the eugenics discussion is that a eugenicist would believe intelligence is determined materialistically at the level of the brain and that the stuctural correlates of intelligence are determined by genetics. But if childhood circumstances can cause severe differences in temperament and affect and anxiety state, which also are expressed at the level of the brain, then what room do they have to say people succeed because their parents passed on genes conferring intelligence?

But yes, I think there is a problem in determinism whether one is dealing with genetics or epigenetics. We do not choose our circumstances or our diets or thousands of influences on us. What is left of choice and will and concepts like resilience? There is also the issue of your last question that this book I read addresses. Inducing these changes might be more difficult at different times, but there is the opportunity for both self-directed and medically-directed treatments.

I like the interesting links you provided.

[Stavros]

I think the relationship of epigenetics to the eugenics discussion is that a eugenicist would believe intelligence is determined materialistically at the level of the brain and that the stuctural correlates of intelligence are determined by genetics. But if childhood circumstances can cause severe differences in temperament and affect and anxiety state, which also are expressed at the level of the brain, then what room do they have to say people succeed because their parents passed on genes conferring intelligence?


Eugenics is derived from the bogus science of race, that is evident. Contemporary attempts to use science to validate racial difference were made in this century by people like HJ Eysenck as if the 19th century project had been set aside when the key point has always been to confirm that 'northern' 'white' people are more intelligent than 'southern' 'black' people. But whereas the British Empire was once described as an 'improvement' project, Eugenics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries didn't even seem to think there was any purpose to improving the lives of 'inferior' people and opted for mass extermination instead, the cruel irony being that the 'Spanish flu' pandemic that erupted after the First World War killed many more millions and did not discriminate on the basis of 'intelligence'. Indeed, mass exterminations in history, such as various forms of plague, did not advance human civilization but may have forced changes that might not otherwise have taken place. The secular nature of government in the Roman Empire, for example, at its end, when plague had become a devastating force, may have allied with emerging Christian ideas to create a more superstitious reliance on 'God' than the Romans had. The 'dark ages' of pagan ritual and belief may thus have sat alongside Christianity and have been just another form of religious rule for people terrified of the dark side of nature.

None of this emerges in the phoney triumphalism of late 18th and 19th century ideas of 'race' by which time Europeans had encountered the 'others' in the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Australian/Pacific regions and used race to convince themselves they were superior beings even though centuries before Europeans had been mired in bleak superstition and incapable of say, great architecture which at the time flourished in supposedly backward places like Benin in West Africa, or the empires of the Inca, Maya and Aztec in the Americas.

As for modern ideas, the horror of the Holocaust, which was based on a dismal theory of race, should have forced a major rethink of Eugenics, yet still ideas persist that attempt to explain why Black men can run faster than White men, as if it as all in the shape of their ankles. Eugenics has thus deleted the 'moral' offence of using words like 'inferior' or 'sub-human' while retaining the right to classify humans in qualitative terms that appear to be different but in reality are not. It doesn't explain why West Africans are better at football than East Africans, or why East Africans can run marathons but never win sprints. Maybe their ankles are different?

The other danger is that epigenetics may be used in litigation. If it is the case that the child of a parent or parents who have been through a major trauma, have problems with obesity, or mental health problems, could that person sue a government or corporation for being responsible for their illness? If the child of parents whose lives have been ruined by opioid addiction develops health problems of their own, could they sue the doctor and the pharmaceutical company on the basis that they were born with genetic 'expressions' that they would not otherwise have had, that can be 'blamed' on the diagnosis and treatment that caused their quality of life to be so poor?

A clear problem similar to this was presented by the Thalidomide scandal. The drug was developed in Germany in the mid 1950s by Chemie Grünenthal as a tranquilizer, but it was discovered to ease the problem of morning sickness in pregnant women and thus became a popular over-the-counter drug. In 1961 it was shown that women suffering miscarriages or giving birth to children with physical deformities -the drug had not been tested on pregnant mice-had been taking Thalidomide, and the drug was withdrawn from sale, although it has remained in use as successful treatment for leprosy. Chemie Grünenthal eventually paid compensation in exchange for immunity from prosecution but the sinister element in this is the claim made in this provocative article in Newsweek:

it is increasingly clear that, in the immediate postwar years, a rogues’ gallery of wanted and convicted Nazis, mass murderers who had practiced their science in notorious death camps, ended up working at Grünenthal, some of them directly involved in the development of thalidomide. What they had to offer was knowledge and skills developed in experiments that no civilized society would ever condone. It was in this company of men, indifferent to suffering and believers in a wretched philosophy that life is cheap, that thalidomide was developed and produced.
http://www.newsweek.com/nazis-and-thalidomide-worst-drug-scandal-all-time-64655

The lesson may be that one should not play games with genes, that even with best intentions a drug developed to solve one problem, may create another.

More links on Thalidomide here-
http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/controversies/thalidomide
https://helix.northwestern.edu/article/thalidomide-tragedy-lessons-drug-safety-and-regulation

[trish]

In one sense humankind have been playing games with genes since they first learned, back in the fertile crescent, to select and plant grains that produced the largest seeds. As I see it, there are two differences between the old and new ways: (1) today we directly manipulate the genes themselves, and (2) today we’re attempting to apply that technology to humans.

(1) Selecting and crossing lineages is something nature always did. But when humans did it, it was with design: to produce bigger fruit, larger grains, fatter pigs etc. The results were largely beneficial, but -I would think- they also had an enormous and perhaps unforeseen effect on human civilization too: encouraging an agrarian/polis style of living as opposed to a hunter/gatherer or a nomadic life.

Today we can genetically modify our food with greater design and with quicker results. The real difference today is that we patent those designed foods. To protect the patent, crops are designed so that the seeds they produce, although edible, can never germinate. The idea is to use market pressures and the vast resources of the corporate world to produce monocultures. Farmers that once saved seeds and planted them next season, now have to buy those seeds every year.

Today we also produce insecticides and weed killers that also kill crops that don’t carry the designer gene the gives immunity to these products. So farmers who plant these crops and use these insecticides inadvertently are killing their neighbor’s crops (inadvertent on the part of the farmer - not on the part of the corporation that manufactures these products).

Every time we change our practices or invent something to make life better for ourselves, we too change.

(2) Selecting and crossing lineages of human beings is something too that nature has always done. The gene that produces sickle cell anemia was Nature’s attempt at a genetic solution for malaria. Some humans too have made half-hearted, if atrocious and sometimes cruel and violent attempts to breed with design.
Thanks to our modern understanding of genetics we are verging on the capacity to make designer babies. We may be able to eradicate genetic diseases, but -like nature’s stab at malaria- we won’t always be able to predict all the consequences of our experimentation. The least we can do is try not to use our knowledge frivolously: there’s no need to produce blue-eyed blonds, or musical geniuses or mathematical whiz-kids.

[broncofan]

The other danger is that epigenetics may be used in litigation. If it is the case that the child of a parent or parents who have been through a major trauma, have problems with obesity, or mental health problems, could that person sue a government or corporation for being responsible for their illness? If the child of parents whose lives have been ruined by opioid addiction develops health problems of their own, could they sue the doctor and the pharmaceutical company on the basis that they were born with genetic 'expressions' that they would not otherwise have had, that can be 'blamed' on the diagnosis and treatment that caused their quality of life to be so poor?
I'm not sure epigenetics adds to the danger that already existed before the underpinnings of these conditions began to be elucidated. The manifestations of those changes in gene expression were observable even without attributing the cause.

It was once thought that both obesity and major depressive disorders were fully within the control of the afflicted. Then people started to notice that once a person had these conditions the symptoms were often self-reinforcing, as though something happened biochemically that made it appear there was a new set point or equilibrium. Epigenetics could help doctors understand what occurs, when it occurs, and how to ameliorate it.

It is up to the legal field not to misuse the science to support attenuated theories of liability based on a questionable view of causality. There should be constraints on the legal field that don't necessarily run parallel to those in medical research. The problem with eugenics is that it does nothing to improve the human condition and is straightforwardly dehumanizing because it focuses on traits believed to make some people more valuable than others.

The legal field can avoid the determinism problem by assuming some changes may lead to constrained choices rather than no choice at all. A condition such as ptsd might give one a greater propensity for violence but that doesn't necessarily leave the afflicted no choice in the matter. No matter how good the medical community's mechanical understanding of what factors impact human behavior, we cannot do away with the assumption in our legal system that people have choices and make them (not necessarily the same thing as free will imo but that's a whole can of worms:)).

Edit: obviously when I discuss some of the shortcomings of eugenics there's a difference between trying to get rid of genetic diseases and breeding children with a certain eye color or trait viewed as qualitatively optimal.

[broncofan]

Stavros, I wonder whether the breadth of your concern (beyond the objectively horrible and racist applications) about these fields is that you don't like theories that reduce human behavior to material or biological causes because you think it removes moral agency? But there are some biological understandings of behavior that don't rule out the possibility of morality or choice. I wonder if there just might be two different levels of abstraction on which to view this.

Do you think if there were a scientist who could understand every determinant of human behavior from the micro to the macro that he wouldn't still think the person who cut him off in traffic was an asshole?:)

[Stavros]

Every time we change our practices or invent something to make life better for ourselves, we too change.
(2) Selecting and crossing lineages of human beings is something too that nature has always done. The gene that produces sickle cell anemia was Nature’s attempt at a genetic solution for malaria. Some humans too have made half-hearted, if atrocious and sometimes cruel and violent attempts to breed with design.
Thanks to our modern understanding of genetics we are verging on the capacity to make designer babies. We may be able to eradicate genetic diseases, but -like nature’s stab at malaria- we won’t always be able to predict all the consequences of our experimentation. The least we can do is try not to use our knowledge frivolously: there’s no need to produce blue-eyed blonds, or musical geniuses or mathematical whiz-kids.

You refer to both the potential for change to humans, and the use of genetics for commercial gain. I am sort of relaxed about genetically modified crops where they enable farmers to produce three crops a year, not so relaxed about the -often ruthless- commercial drivers taking place with some crops; potentially worried that GM crops could have a long term impact on humans though we can't know if this will be negative. As for the potential changes to humans, I think that is why some geneticists are concerned with the concept of 'designer babies' because on the one hand the opportunity to deal with serious deformity or disease before birth should help to make life better for parent and child, but in reality I doubt it will ever be perfected as there may be an infinite number of 'genetic mistakes' that take place in the womb. I also believe geneticists may be concerned precisely because of the implication that they are being asked to provide the means to produce 'perfect' humans, which links it to the Frankenstein/Nazi model that began with the imperfect human as undesirable and led, via the pursuit of perfection, to fatal mistakes. On the other hand, I have lived through a tremendous period in human history that has seen the eradication of smallpox, and the reduction of once common diseases to being if not rare then manageable and not as devastating as once they were, such as Polio, TB, Typhus Cholera, Measles and this must be a good thing.

I am led to the conclusion that one must trust scientists to be have values that are shared by people in most societies that are rooted in a basic respect for life and the person, and to have learned from the mistakes of the past. I don't think many scientists now subscribe to the ideas of race, yet clearly some do; I am not sure how may scientists are 'in it for the money' but I am sure many are. The problem with Genes may be that once it was trial and error. 'Tribes' that mated with each other died out; Rutherford argues that an entire species of human died out having mated with a variant of neanderthal types close to them -these 'errors' eliminated all but the human species capable of reproducing itself for generations, but it took thousands of years for that 'experiment' to prove what works and what does not.

The 'Frankenstein' era in which we live gives tremendous power to science to modify who we are; it does not give it licence to eliminate who we are. This is a scientific and moral dilemma that has no simple solution, yet as the massacres in Rakhine province show, some humans still think the solution to their problem is the elimination of other people, and, as the massacres in Arakan/Rakhine show, expulsion and slaughter follow, whether there is 'science' in the claims or just prejudice and hate.

[Stavros]

Stavros, I wonder whether the breadth of your concern (beyond the objectively horrible and racist applications) about these fields is that you don't like theories that reduce human behavior to material or biological causes because you think it removes moral agency? But there are some biological understandings of behavior that don't rule out the possibility of morality or choice. I wonder if there just might be two different levels of abstraction on which to view this.

Do you think if there were a scientist who could understand every determinant of human behavior from the micro to the macro that he wouldn't still think the person who cut him off in traffic was an asshole?:)

Do you think if there were a scientist who could understand every determinant of human behavior from the micro to the macro that he wouldn't still think the person who cut him off in traffic was an asshole?
-As long as he does not dismiss the driver cutting him off in terms such as 'typical woman driver!'. 'Damn, but he must be Mexican...' or 'Now you know why I think men under 25 should be banned from driving' and so on.

I think the question of moral agency cuts to the centre of the argument. The way theories of race developed in the 19th century and emerged in the Eugenics and Nazi policies of the 1930s-40s traduced the idea that science is always progressive and of benefit to mankind, but one could also point to the splitting of the atom and the creation of the Atom Bomb which, when it became a reality in 1945 left the nuclear scientists -most of them- appalled at what science had led them to create. It may seem odd to claim Oppenheimer had no moral agency until after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think the point is that he and the other scientists were so enthused by the science that they did not think their work would be deployed as a weapon to kill people -this, I guess is the 'Frankenstein' thesis, except that scientists were not mad, or driven mad by the unexpected outcome of their experiment.

If that is a general example, I think also that Genetics may not be the only tool to use when taking human behaviour apart. If, for example, there is a genetic explanation for an habitual criminal, does it apply to all forms of criminality? For example, does the 20 year old who has been stealing cars since he was 13 share a set of genetic markers with a burglar who specialises in robbing wealthy property, a serial rapist, and a 56 year old accountant who embezzles the funds of his employer? How can one explain this in science? Is there a set of genes that determines a person will always break rules when others are obedient?

It becomes more complicated if there are genetic differences between, say, a Norwegian and a Japanese Male. If both are serial rapists, is it because of genetic similarities, or is it because they both share similar views of themselves and their victims? If it is difficult to isolate genes as causes in criminal behaviour, can one extend the experiment to other aspects of human behaviour and why is there a bias toward the negative in almost all discussions? Genes and obesity, drug addiction, schizophrenia, depression, heart disease. Is there a set of genes that explains happiness, that explains happy families?

Even when there is an attempt to explain child prodigies in maths or musical virtuosity, it seems to me to separate 'the ordinary' from the 'extraordinary' but this is merely another version of the 'science' that once explained why Jews are a biological as well as a political and cultural threat to mankind; why 'Negroes' are inferior, why Aborigines are not actually human at all (as an Australian woman once told me with a disturbing degree of conviction).

While I am not going to isolate myself by saying moral agency is the key, I will say that genetics is only one part of a complex mix into which the environmental and social aspects of life must be considered. Someone born into a bourgeois family in England will have different influences from a Black American born on the same day but raised in Brooklyn, it might be the difference between Beethoven and Bird, or a difference marked by private school and state school, a stable family or a dysfunctional family, but it doesn't mean the privileged Englishman and the poor but ambitious American cannot both be lawyers by the time they are 30.

And so on, this is an interesting discussion, but I do wonder why Genetics so often bothers itself with 'things that go wrong' as it is this obsession with the negative that continues to drive Eugenics that in the past produced murderous solutions to problems that in reality I don't think genetics can achieve. Because one person's problem may be another person's opportunity.

[trish]

So many very good points in this discussion. I’ll just take a stab at the last question which Stavros brings to our attention, “...why Genetics so often bothers itself with ‘things that go wrong’...?

I’m not at all sure the science of genetics is as obsessed with ‘things that go wrong’ as are the press and science popularizers when they discuss genetics. The science is concerned with function (and of course as a corollary malfunction). The function of this gene, that enzyme, that protein? How do they serve the cells? How do the cells in this tissue serve this organ? What is the function of this organ in the overall physiology of the plant or animal? What role does this animal play in the flock? Why is it singing? Or chirping an alarm? Tracing the flow of ‘cause and effect’ from a microscopic complex of genes to the singing of a bird is tenuous at best. One may be able to establish statistical correlations between genes and behaviors but following the path of causation (in my opinion) will almost always be impossible because (again in my opinion) there isn’t a deterministic dynamic to follow. This, I think, is because genetics and biology only ever give us half the information we need to understand the behavior of an individual as he/she/it interacts with a chaotic world. Yet species do have behavioral characteristics. You can generally distinguish avian species by their songs. Still the songs have to be learned. But I’ve gotten off track.

Back to ‘things that go wrong.’ Of course medical science and medical practitioners are totally obsessed with things that malfunction and genetics does seem to offer promising avenues toward treatments and cures. It’s not surprising the press would pick up on these.

Sociobiology concerns itself with the evolution of inheritable animal behaviors. The premise is that some populations exhibit behavioral traits that are genetically coded and naturally selected for in the process of evolution. Barring a direct understanding of the flow of cause and effect from gene to behavior many of the arguments are ‘just so stories’ that sound reasonable but are impossible to test. The central nervous system of a simple flat worm might have less than a hundred neurons and it may be possible to completely understand its complete set of displayed behaviors in terms of its genetic makeup. But even here I’m pessimistic. The instinctual behaviors of insects may also be subject to this kind of analysis. Birds? Reptiles? Mammals? As the complexity and range of behaviors grows the ability to say with any conviction that the source of any particular behavior is genetic is doubtful.

If you’re a sociobiologist you’re always looking for evolutionary explanation of various behaviors. Men are more likely to cheat on their wives than women are to cheat on their husbands because men invest less in reproduction than women do; i.e. a sperm is just a packet packet of DNA whereas an egg is a cell with organelles and machinery for sustaining its own metabolism and reproduction once its supplies with the complimentary strands of DNA it’s waiting for. This paraphrases the actual explanation of cheating given by Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene!

I seen (wish I could remember the reference) an attempt explain the freeloader’s paradox with genetics. An analysis of the freeloaders paradox is that there is a mathematical limit to the how many freeloaders a population can sustain. Either there are mechanisms in place to keep the number of freeloaders below the limit or the population will collapse or at least its cooperative institutions will collapse. Some conjecture that freeloading is a genetic trait, freeloaders are genetically connected subpopulation and that natural selection maintains the optimal balance. Since the hypothesis that freeloading is genetic solves the freeloader’s paradox it must be correct - not withstanding the fact that you or I could offer a dozen other hypothesis that solve the freeloader’s paradox (like the transmission of social consciousness through education, or mechanisms that enforce cooperation or make it less profitable to freeload).

Guess I’ve gone astray again (demonstrating 'things do go wrong'), so I’ll stop now. Thanks again for all the great discussion on these matters.

[Stavros]

Either there are mechanisms in place to keep the number of freeloaders below the limit or the population will collapse or at least its cooperative institutions will collapse. Some conjecture that freeloading is a genetic trait, freeloaders are genetically connected subpopulation and that natural selection maintains the optimal balance. Since the hypothesis that freeloading is genetic solves the freeloader’s paradox it must be correct - not withstanding the fact that you or I could offer a dozen other hypothesis that solve the freeloader’s paradox (like the transmission of social consciousness through education, or mechanisms that enforce cooperation or make it less profitable to freeload).

I don't know about socio-biology (it has a dark past), but demographers plotting population growth perceive that one of the factors that will initiate -has already initiated in some parts of the world- a mean decline in population growth is infertility, particularly in Vietnam, while there may be cultural factors at work in the decline of the core populations of Germany and Italy. Whether or not in a mystical or practical sense, Gaia can only support x humans (more than 10 billion seems an upper limit) it is intriguing that after a peak around 2025, demographers believe that the global population will decline thereafter. Hans Rosling is very keen on the way in which globalization, by increasing basic income creates its own dynamic of which smaller families are the result, while medical science removes the need for multiple babies as the eradication or control of disease reduces infant mortality.

It is when the analytical process that you say intends to describe our genes and how they work is taken a stage further that morals enter the frame. On the one hand, stem-cell research that aims to either clone genes or 'manipulate' them in the foetal stage has medical benefits for mother and child, but when the arguments are pitched at the level of human intelligence, with or without IQ tests, the radical question must be: what do you propose to do with this information?

In the past, armed with the 'evidence' that society has 'useless' or 'dangerous' humans the proposal as I referred to in the OP was to round up these people and exterminate them. For the Nazis the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and Communist were all deemed surplus to requirements, while the belief that a new regime of hygiene would produce an even stronger and robust Aryan race was not so far removed from the idea that developed in the USSR that they too would be breeding a 'new Soviet man'.

There is no doubt in my mind that when people produce scary stats that suggest the US in a generation will have Spanish as its mother tongue, or that Black Americans are doomed to live in urban hells of crime and poverty because they are Black, or that in more general terms 'we' the White People of Europe and America are 'threatened' by the mass migration of the global south, there may not even be an attempt to prove that such people are so genetically different as to be a threat to an established way of life, though some do construct elaborate theories as to why Muslims should stay in the Middle East, Latinos anywhere south of the Mexican border, and so on. And, its most extreme, there are those for whom this is not enough, and who want the mass expulsion of 'them' from the Homeland, with the sinister proposition that at some point force will be used.

Thus science takes a back road to the place where violence is the solution, a threat embedded in the so-called debate on immigration that most people it seems are reluctant to engage in. There isn't much science in the government of either the UK or the USA although, unlike the USA the UK still has a Chief Scientist -the US these days can't find anyone to do the job or doesn't think it means anything. Maybe we have always lived in perilous times, but I have noticed with the spread of the internet that fundamental truths that informed the way we live, such as the chilling reality of the Holocaust and the ideas behind it, are revived by those who regret its passing, and feed on a wave of distrust in government to promote precisely those ideas about genetics that we thought had been discredited.

It must be dispiriting for those engaged in the science of the future to have to waste time debunking the rubbish science of the past, but we may never get over the fact that there are people who simply do not want to believe the depths of depravity humans are capable of, or worse, think these are 'necessary' strategies of survival. They were led for the most part by cranks like David Icke, Lyndon Larouche and David Irving, yet we now see internet cretins like Alex Jones taken seriously by some, while in politics Erdogan, Putin and Trump are determined to smash to pieces generations of effort to improve human rights, freedom and equality for a fantasy future in which they know only economic, financial and political success. That might not have anything to do with Eugenics as science, but it is not far from a 'Eugenics' of political change we can all do without.

[trish]

Just came across this headline today: The Famine Ended 70 Years Ago but Dutch Genes Still Bear the Scars. https://nyti.ms/2GyrzLg

[trish]

Ran across a nice half-hour lecture on the role (or lack thereof) epigenetics in evolution. The 1944 starvation of the Dutch population by a nazi blockade which I linked to above is discussed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbDLAZoUxsE

[broncofan]

I just watched it and found it very interesting. Nessa Carey was similarly cautious about the transmission of epigenetic changes but I liked the way Myers explained it. I recall Carey talking about the resetting of changes in gene expression but did not recall why it takes place. The diagram showing the multitude of cell lines each with their own modifications makes it clear that an expressed change in a muscle cell is unlikely to continue to be expressed in a germ cell, the zygote, and every muscle cell in the next generation. But I didn't hear him discuss why occasionally some extreme events can cause trans-generational changes (for instance in the mice), however unlikely, though maybe I missed it or got distracted.

Even though he dismisses a lot of wild claims, and he does talk about the norm of reaction and its importance, I wonder if he considers that some targeted interventions can have subtle but beneficial effects on phenotype. For instance, there are people who have meditated for thousands of hours who have stress responses and structural changes in their brains that make them profoundly different from those of non-meditators. If deprivation can change gene expression, it may be possible for targeted approaches to have subtle but ameliorative effects but not across generations in "Lamarckian" fashion. Just speculating! Thanks for the video!

[broncofan]

Even though he dismisses a lot of wild claims, and he does talk about the norm of reaction and its importance, I wonder if he considers that some targeted interventions can have subtle but beneficial effects on phenotype.
Actually, probably just outside the scope of what he was discussing which is its lack of relevance to evolution and how it has become a bit of a mania with people discussing it without evidence of where and how it exerts its effects.

[broncofan]

When one thinks of Eugenics the Nazis of course come to mind, but one also thinks of phrenology and craniometry, and more recently the use of intelligence testing to try to demonstrate intellectual differences between races. It is difficult to not look at intelligence testing through the prism of the previous abominations that tried to palm themselves off as science, but Andrew Sullivan and Charles Murray have tried to mainstream this discussion more recently. Sam Harris had Charles Murray on his podcast, in what he claimed was an attempt to de-stigmatize "forbidden discussions" but he could not seem to make up his mind about whether he wanted to defend Charles Murray's beliefs on the merits or remove stigma from the discussion only.

I am skeptical of intelligence testing first based on the previous attempts to reduce human mental abilities to something quantifiable and all of the obvious biases and ignorance of human anatomy that were involved in the enterprise. I also just think the entire idea of reducing human ingenuity is dehumanizing and have difficulty imagining that someone could innocently have a lifelong interest in what they believe are differences in human intelligence across races. From the little I've seen of it, the more likely cause of any difference is statistical noise, biased sampling, or failings of the tests themselves (meaning they don't test something immutable).

Another consequence of this enterprise is that even when the science is poorly done and worse, the ideas permeate our culture and express themselves through the worldview of prejudiced people: enter Donald J. Trump. He has a history of calling black people who are accomplished and critical of him "low iq" and other epithets that are not justified by anything he has objectively observed but informed by what he thinks about black people. He even insinuated that Obama got terrible grades at Harvard Law which is not true.
While I don't think there's any perfect measure of intelligence, I do think it's a real thing and there are some things that are imperfect indicators of it. Compare Obama and Trump. Obama graduated from Harvard Law Magna Cum Laude and was Editor in Chief of Harvard Law Review. Before his supporters claim he got preferential treatment, I can remind you that law school grading is blind, and that so is writing on to law review. He was in every way an exceptional student. Trump, on the other hand, transferred into University of Pennsylvania using family clout, graduated without any distinction in an undergraduate program, and was described by one of his professors as "the dumbest student I ever had" (descriptions of Obama are the opposite). Just thought I'd clear that up...

[Stavros]

No matter how many times the science is discredited, if it is even science, these issues in eugenics don't go away, rather like those stupid people who think we need to populate Mars, or make the case for saving some idea of 'White Civilization' being resurrected on another planet, the obsession with the purity of the person is leading to both the revival of Eugenics, and on the political side, the ideas that were the foundations of Nazism and Fascism.

Thus, 1)
"A US startup company is offering to help wealthy couples screen their embryos for IQ using controversial technology that raises questions about the ethics of genetic enhancement.The company, Heliospect Genomics, has worked with more than a dozen couples undergoing IVF, according to undercover video footage. The recordings show the company marketing its services at up to $50,000 (£38,000) for clients seeking to test 100 embryos, and claiming to have helped some parents select future children based on genetic predictions of intelligence (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/what-is-genomic-prediction-and-can-embryos-really-be-screened-for-iq). Managers boasted their methods could produce a gain of more than six IQ points."
US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’ | Genetics | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/us-startup-charging-couples-to-screen-embryos-for-iq)

And 2)
"A documentary that lifts the lid on a “race science” network of far-right activists in Britain and its links to a rich American funder of eugenics research has been pulled from the London (https://www.theguardian.com/uk/london) Film Festival (LFF) at the last minute due to safety concerns."
Undercover film exposing UK far-right activists pulled from London festival | Far right | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/oct/19/undercover-film-exposing-uk-far-right-activists-pulled-from-london-film-festival)


we know what we are but not what we may be