The Eugenics Angle
by MikeGeneHere is SciAm on the recent Watson controversy:
But there are other reasons, for the sake of the laboratory he did so much for as an administrator, that the man should keep his mouth shut about the social implications of genetics. What is today known as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was once at the center of the American eugenics movement, when it was home to the Eugenics Record Office from 1910 to 1939, at first under the tutelage of the infamous eugenicists Charles Benedict Davenport and Harry Laughlin.
October 20th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Perhaps Watson would have come up with different statistics if he had polled the people who were in the audience of that French television show, the one where the majority of the people didn't know that the moon orbited the earth (or was it that they didn't know that the earth orbited the sun? … either way it was a collosal display of ignorance!). So the French should get an asterisk, at least, in the hiearchy of stupidity!
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — October 20, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
October 20th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Anaxagoras:
The average intelligence of the American public is no better, if you correct for Prozac. Nearly half of American high school graduates can't find California on a map, and think humans came along about 10,000 years ago even if they also claim to believe in the evolution they passed a test on in school.
What you see reflected in general ignorance of specific scientific theories/hypotheses is apathy, not ignorance. People are selective of knowledge they think important enough to keep in permanent long-term ready-access memory. Things unimportant to their work, their home life and their sociopolitical and religious affiliations tend to be forgotten, or just put in the "unimportant factoid" file that takes more effort to access than it's worth.
IOW, the 'knowledge' that Evangelical Atheists (and New Eugenicists) believe *must* be held uppermost in the minds of all humanity - because they use it to undergird their metaphysical beliefs - is mostly useless to regular people. Unimportant factoids.
Now, we could launch a whole other busy, busy website to do nothing but talk about what's wrong with education in this country and what's to be done about it. But the point here is that science education isn't any better or worse than any of the rest of it, and the kids mostly don't care. They'll take what they need to know and can use to get where they're going, and forget or suppress the rest in order to make room for more important knowledge gained by actual empirical experience in living life. As opposed to sitting in school wishing they were anyplace else. Even the ones who take good tests and get good grades will end up retaining half or less of what they've learned when it's all said and done.
Bemoaning this reality doesn't change it. Blaming it on ID supporters is pure projection. Blaming it on religion is admitting defeat for the whole rationalist educational program. You know, the one they talked so much about during the Age of Enlightenment, when universal education was going to cure human ignorance and the scourges of superstition and faith. Once and for all. It didn't work very well. So they began embracing more authoritarian means to that end. So far the experiments have turned out badly but they're not too discouraged.
The original eugenics movement in this country (and copied most notoriously by Britain, Scandanavia and Austria/Germany and their Balkan states) managed to get a lot of support from the public and their churches. Where good breeding - and the kindness of preventing defectives from breeding - were taken to be "Doing God's Work" in perfecting the species. The archives of both Cold Spring Harbor and the British Eugenics Society reveal a deliberate wedge strategy, and it worked surprisingly well. Don't fall for the lie that the infamous DI Wedge Document invented anything that hadn't been tried before. With some success.
In my state there were forced sterilization laws on the books through the 1980s, and miscegenation laws until just a handful of years ago. America led the world in negative eugenics legislation. And Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was its scientific face and scientific support.
Comment by Joy — October 20, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
October 20th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Eugenics is just the theory that an intelligent designer can control genetics (evolution) to obtain his objectives.
Sound familiar?
Comment by Rock — October 20, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
October 20th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Some interesting news articles outlining the thrust of the 'New Eugenics' movement. Which tends to overlap the 'New Atheists' movement per its promoters and propagandists.
Liberal eugenics or new eugenics
Science: Is a New Eugenics Afoot?
ZMagazine: The New Eugenics
The American Spectator: The New Eugenics
Now, this is not to say that in this age of small families, I or someone I know and love wouldn't want to know if a fetus were afflicted with a dread, ultimately fatal, heartbreaking and very expensive disease. Or that with that knowledge the choice of abortion wouldn't loom large on the table. In this overcrowded world limiting the size of one's family is a responsible choice. And that makes the health and prospects of the children one does choose to have a real consideration.
Designer children will not take over the world any time in the foreseeable future, though. For the middle classes with junk insurance and the working poor with no insurance, such expensive reproductive choices will never be available. So most people will continue to be born the old fashioned way. Besides, the genetic tinkering necessary for Barbie&Ken World may well leave them susceptible to future problems their designers didn't figure on.
So I'm not afraid of Barbie and Ken. There will never be enough of them to matter more than all those indistinguishable Valley Girls and Surfer Boys on MTV do now. It's the slippery slope towards negative eugenics that sits right on the other side of that door that concerns me.
The truth is that genetic research has established a number of differences between races in general, though the ranges within races are more pronounced. A lot of energy and words are devoted to an attempt to paper over those demonstrated differences, because 'science' can't make up its collective mind about whether it's all genetics or whether it's mostly socio-cultural exposure and opportunities.
They're leaning heavily genetic at this point in time, possibly because correcting cultural exposure and opportunities is so expensive in a world where oil wars and the most basic of health care needs are eating the nation's wealth at a quickly increasing rate. Or possibly because their metaphysics encourages the conclusion that elitists can legitimately govern the evolution of humanity. By any means necessary.
Comment by Joy — October 20, 2007 @ 7:14 pm
October 20th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Joy, thanks for those pointers. I had not heard the term "liberal eugenics" before, but I have argued elsewhere that that kind of eugenics is quite different from the authoritarian eugenics of the late-19th/early-20th century, and while not completely unproblematic does not deserve any of the opprobrium associated with the term eugencis in general. The key difference of course is whether people are making reproductive choices for themselves, or having them dictated by others.
Comment by mtraven — October 20, 2007 @ 9:29 pm
October 20th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Raevmo:
I agree, though what you're talking about is basic birth control, not eugenics. Eugenics is a selective breeding program (in its positive sense). Evolution by design, ensuring that some stock breeds and other stock doesn't. Since rich people are such notoriously stingy breeders, and poor people are such notoriously prolific breeders, a purely positive program will never accomplish what the term "eugenics" means by definition.
That's why I said it's not the door that most concerns me. It's the slippery slope on the other side of it. Not enough generations have gone by for us to have forgotten about eugenics or what it became in Europe just a generation ago (from me). Never again.
Comment by Joy — October 20, 2007 @ 11:06 pm
October 21st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Eugenics [yoojeniks], noun
The science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.
[Oxford American Dictionaries]
________
Notice some key words in this definition. "Science" places prominently in the subjective clause of the explanatory sentence. This is because eugenics was inspired by Galton's cousin Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by selection, and the entire sociopolitical and legislative program of eugenics cloaked itself from its very beginnings in the mantle of 'science'.
Another key word is "desirable" per what heritable traits are being artificially selected for by this breeding program. Since in practice tens of thousands of human beings were sterilized for "traits" like being an orphan, being poor, or being uneducated. Tens of thousands more were targeted for "traits" like homosexuality, physical disability or old age feebleness. Eventually millions of people were murdered for "traits" like having the wrong ancestors.
All of this in the name of almighty Science. Just as the 'New Eugenics' cloaks itself in the mantle of 'science' and its scientific proponents proudly appropriate the title of "Eugenics" to describe what, exactly, they're talking about. A controlled (selective) breeding program with the goal of improving human populations.
Designer children are dream toys for the fabulously rich - they will never be available to the less-than fabulously rich. And if being fabulously rich were a "desirable hereditary trait" (and it is, given inheritance laws in this country), what will these New Eugenicists do to convince the fabulously rich to have more than one or two children? They can't take over the population if they don't outbreed everybody else. And outbreeding everybody else does tend to dilute the fabulous wealth (divide it 12 or 15 ways, see how fabulous it is then).
Birth control options for the masses is not eugenics. When individual men and women determine for themselves how many children they will have, or even when they avail themselves of genetic testing to prevent the birth of terminally afflicted children to their own families, these are just choices people can make for themselves that have nothing whatsoever to do with improving the population or selecting for socially desirable traits. It is only when such decisions are made FOR individuals by someone else that it qualifies as "eugenics."
The word "eugenics" is quite specific by definition, and it is not the freedom to choose who will or will not come into the world via your own personal life-door. The definition is very specific to intelligent design and management, just like a stock breeding program. To make it work someone has to exercise power over the breeding practices of "undesirables." Pretending not so is foolish, designed to distract from a resurgence of this grotesque evil in the modern world, once again cloaking itself in the mantle of science.
Comment by Joy — October 21, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
October 25th, 2007 at 2:49 am
Here's an interesting quote about Charles Darwin's grandson, Sir Charles Galton Darwin, who became Director of Britain's National Physical Laboratory in 1938. The NPL was where Britain's early attempts, fostered by Alan Turing, to build a digital computer took place:
Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, Simon and Schuster, 1983, pp. 364-365.
Comment by stunney — October 25, 2007 @ 2:49 am