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Modern Eugenics

Although Eugenics has been a dirty word for some time - and understandably as a lot of the beliefs in regards to race, class etc are considerably outdated, there have been some positive steps to come out of the past.

The emphasis on genetically inherited diseases and finding ways to prevent diseases carried on, especially in communities where people tend to marry and have children with other people within the same community, who are more likely to carry such diseases, have proved very successful. Through reading the Wikipedia articile on Eugenics, I followed a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim which describes steps taken in Israel to eliminate illnesses such as Tay-Sachs disease.

I hasten to add I'm not in favour of Eugenics at all and I was considerably shocked when I read about the forced sterilisation of mental patients within canada and America - more so when my mum revealed a great aunt of mine worked as a nurse in such a place and probably took part in such operations. However coming from a family where we have a genetically inherited disease, I can only applaud the good things that have come out of something not so good....
 
Indeed, there are aspects of Eugenics which are good. Unfortunately you get hysteria whenever the word is mentioned. There is nothing wrong with using Eugenics to get rid of disease provided compulsion is not used.
 
Having read Dennis Sewell's excellent The Political Gene, I naturally became wary of any society involved in eugenics, such as the Galton Institute, Wellcome Trust and the Eugenics Society - but I've noticed they appear to be thriving and well respected these days (apart from the Eugenics Society, which became the Galton Institute).

Does anyone have any experience of these socieites, and whether they are still considered suspect?
 
I once held a 5-year research grant with the Wellcome Trust and they are one of the main 3 for medical research in the UK. I'm absolutely certain that they'd distance themselves from eugenics or anything like that-the trust of today is clearly radically different now. Interesting association though.

They also have an exhibition building on Euston Road in London, a sort of gallery of medical art things. Well worth a visit.
 
Time to resurrect this thread with a furore over a controversial new book.

Genetically incorrect? Nearly 140 experts say Wade's views on race lack scientific support..

Geneticists decry book on race and evolution

A best-seller by former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade about recent human evolution and its potential effects on human cultures has drawn critical reviews since its spring publication. Now, nearly 140 senior human population geneticists around the world, many of whose work was cited in the book, have signed a letter to The New York Times Book Review stating that Wade has misinterpreted their work. The letter criticizes “Wade’s misappropriation of research from our field to support arguments about differences among human societies,” and is slated to appear in the 10 August issue of the Book Review. It’s available online today.

The book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, contends that human races are a biological reality and that recent human evolution has led to racial differences in economic and social behavior. In the book, Wade suggests that such genetic differences may help explain why some people live in tribal societies and some in advanced civilizations, why African-Americans are allegedly more violent than whites, and why the Chinese may be good at business.

The book has received some blistering reviews from both scientists and science writers, including one by David Dobbs in The New York Times Book Review, and some scientists weighed in with blogs as well. Now, geneticists have crafted a joint response, concluding that “there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade’s conjectures.” The list of signatories reads like a who’s who of researchers in the field and includes such well-known geneticists as Evan Eichler of the University of Washington, Seattle; David Goldstein of Duke University; and Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona.

The letter was spearheaded by five population geneticists who had informally discussed the book at conferences, says co-organizer Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley. “There was a feeling that our research had been hijacked by Wade to promote his ideological agenda,” Nielsen says. “The outrage … was palpable.” Molly Przeworski of Columbia University, another organizer, says the group “tried to contact population geneticists whose work had been cited by Wade.” They had no trouble getting signatures, racking up 100 within the first week, she says.

The letter organizers and the editors of the Book Review kept the letter under embargo until its publication today and declined to make it available to Wade for an immediate response. But in previous ripostes to the book’s critics, most notably in a 19 June Huffington Post article titled “Five Critics Say You Shouldn’t Read This ‘Dangerous’ Book,” Wade charged that his critics were “indoctrinated in the social-science creed that prohibits any role for evolution in human affairs” and contended that the book’s central argument “has not been challenged by any serious scientist.”

Letter organizers say they hope to demonstrate that the opposite is true. For example, Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania says she signed the letter because “[m]y own research was used as scientific proof of concepts such as there being between three and five races.” Tishkoff says that her work on the genetics of diverse African populations does not support this claim. Adds David Reich of Harvard University: “Our findings do not even provide a hint of support in favor of Wade’s guesswork.”

*Update, 9 August, 6:05 a.m.: Nicholas Wade has issued a statement in response to the letter. He writes:

This letter is driven by politics, not science. I am confident that most of the signatories have not read my book and are responding to a slanted summary devised by the organizers.

As no reader of the letter could possibly guess, “A Troublesome Inheritance” argues that opposition to racism should be based on principle, not on the anti-evolutionary myth that there is no biological basis to race. ...

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014 ... -evolution
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I blame the US Declaration of Independence!

Early on, it states "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...".

But any one with one eye can see that they're not 'equal' - some are short, some are tall, some are clever, some are stupid, they have hair of different colours, not to mention (shock, horror!) different coloured skin, etc, etc.

But some people take the above statement as literally true. (They probably think it's a quotation from the Bible.) As a result it's become very un-PC to notice or remark on the differences between people - you're not allowed to be handicapped, you have to be 'differently abled', FFS!

Such a system of Nu-speak is a ball-and-chain around the leg of serious research into the human species.

But I'm not endorsing Wade or his book (I'd never heard of him before, and I haven't read the book), and it could well be that he's a racist of some description (there more than a few in the good ol' US of A).

But while it's good if errors of fact are pointed out, when a witch-hunt gets up, the baying mob are just as likely to throw out the baby (if baby there be) with the bath water.

Religious or political doctrines often obscure the truth. But while Darwin's theory of evolution eventually triumphed over church opposition, there are still many people in the afore-mentioned good ol' US of A who refuse to accept it!

Sometimes I despair of the human race... :(
 
rynner2 said:
I blame the US Declaration of Independence!

Early on, it states "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...".
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Yes, the writers did not say "equal in the eyes their Creator," but that meaning is implied in the rest of the sentence which you did not quote:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Jefferson and the lads were perfectly aware that people are not physically equal.
 
SHAYBARSABE said:
rynner2 said:
I blame the US Declaration of Independence!

Early on, it states "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...".
Click to expand...

Yes, the writers did not say "equal in the eyes their Creator," but that meaning is implied in the rest of the sentence which you did not quote:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Jefferson and the lads were perfectly aware that people are not physically equal.
Click to expand...

In particular note that you are not guaranteed happiness: only the pursuit of happiness.
 
ramonmercado said:
In particular note that you are not guaranteed happiness: only the pursuit of happiness.
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Dammit, I want Happiness now! I've been chasing it for long enough - my three score years and ten are almost up...
 
In essence, for a woman to have good uterine morals, she must take responsibility for her future children and pick a good-looking, intelligent, strong, financially sound man with no family history of genetic disorders. To advocates, this is common sense: a form of genetic selection intended to ensure that future generations evolve into healthy, beautiful, and intelligent beings. Some frame it as protecting the so-called rights of the unborn child. “Only women with a sense of ‘uterine morality’ truly love their children,” wrote one Weibo blogger. “They reject ugly, poor, sick, and abusive men, and they would never hurt their own descendants just to satisfy their sexual perversions.”

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007117/the-curious-case-of-chinas-feminist-eugenicists#
 
uair01 said:
In essence, for a woman to have good uterine morals, she must take responsibility for her future children and pick a good-looking, intelligent, strong, financially sound man with no family history of genetic disorders. To advocates, this is common sense: a form of genetic selection intended to ensure that future generations evolve into healthy, beautiful, and intelligent beings. Some frame it as protecting the so-called rights of the unborn child. “Only women with a sense of ‘uterine morality’ truly love their children,” wrote one Weibo blogger. “They reject ugly, poor, sick, and abusive men, and they would never hurt their own descendants just to satisfy their sexual perversions.”

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007117/the-curious-case-of-chinas-feminist-eugenicists#
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Women are unconsciously operating by a eugenics agenda. It's why they tend to go for men who are tall and muscular.
Plenty of men operate this way too, by selecting women who look like they would be good, healthy child-bearers.
 
uair01 said:
In essence, for a woman to have good uterine morals, she must take responsibility for her future children and pick a good-looking, intelligent, strong, financially sound man with no family history of genetic disorders. To advocates, this is common sense: a form of genetic selection intended to ensure that future generations evolve into healthy, beautiful, and intelligent beings. Some frame it as protecting the so-called rights of the unborn child. “Only women with a sense of ‘uterine morality’ truly love their children,” wrote one Weibo blogger. “They reject ugly, poor, sick, and abusive men, and they would never hurt their own descendants just to satisfy their sexual perversions.”

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007117/the-curious-case-of-chinas-feminist-eugenicists#
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Or known family history of genetic disorders or syndromes - so much research is currently taking place since whole genomic sequencing became feasible in mainstream healthcare.

A relative of mine married a healthy, nice-looking, tall and kind man. It turns out he is a carrier for a rare and as yet title-less genetic syndrome, a microdeletion on chromosome 15. This only came to light when all of their 3 children started to show similar traits - luckily it is not a full deletion which would result in Prader-Willi or Angelman's syndrome.

Eugenics sucks.

What qualities should be valued as 'fit'? Simple physical and/or mental healthiness? The world would get very boring, uncreative, lacking the beauty of unexpected talents and saving grace of compassion without the variety of humankind we have now. No Van Gogh, or Stephen Hawking, or Frank Bruno, or my late uncle, or me, or any of us now here maybe....

Ramesh Prasai was born with no eyes. He is 'defective' yet one of the most famous singers in his home country, specialising in traditional folk music. He brings enjoyment to millions and enjoys his life. He also participates in public speaking tournaments and debates. I think the world is probably better with him in it:
 
This is a topic which people have deep opinions about. Genetic diseases run the gamut from almost unnoticeable to catastrophic. Eugenicists run the gamut of well-intentioned towards others to malevolent murderers. The (apparently) overwhelming reaction of people against the term, and the focus on the morally reprehensible eugenicists, inhibits discussion of the topic.

Genetic diseases suck. Some doctors and researchers work to identify and treat them help give the inheritors a better life: more ability, more movement, less pain, etc. Also more information so the carriers can make informed choices about their children. These doctors are eugenicists (whatever their actual medical specialty) and I admire their work. I personally know no parent who would knowingly choose to have his or her child inherit a life of pain, limited mobility, mental handicap, etc. I assume they are out there; only I don’t know any.

The individuals who are born with limited lifespans, movement, senses, and thought are a part of the variety of humanity. I think they would choose otherwise if they could.

That marvelous singer is marvelous because of his trained talent, not because he is blind.

I think a world of physical, mental, and emotional health would be a paradise with more goodness and a different kind of variety than now exists. I do not want a world of variety based on pain and limitations. Of course private and public ethical decisions will have to be made, as in so many other areas of life. In public discourse, the longstanding focus on the malevolent eugenicists is an impediment to both individual good decisions and compassionate public policy.

I am a eugenicist.
 
Phrenology of the penis.

Eugenics and the Criminal Penis​

A baffling 1981 news story treated as a joke at the time reveals the long survival of Victorian eugenics ideas.​


Every once in a while, my research turns up historical information so baffling that it simply defies explanation. Today’s story comes to us from 1981, the year I was born, a time when apparently it was possible to convince people that phrenology might be true if only we could apply it to the penis. The story must be read to be believed.

Authorities at the Juvenile Detention Center in Dallas reportedly have stopped their practice of measuring the dimensions of the sexual organs of all boys admitted to the Center.

The controversial practice came to public attention earlier this year when a Dallas district judge, Pat McClung, wrote a letter to the county health director complaining about the procedure.

The county confirmed that two medical doctors had been measuring the boys’ organs as part of a long-term study on juvenile delinquency. The doctors allegedly were trying to discover a correlation between organ size and development, and a propensity toward crime.

The county admitted that although the measurement practice had been going on for four years, no effort has ever been made to analyze the information collected.

—Twin Cities Reader, June 25 1981

While I have not been able to find other news stories about this—apparently the Dallas papers aren’t indexed in most major databases—this seems to be a real story, since the details match known people, places, and events. ...

https://jasoncolavito.substack.com/p/eugenics-and-the-criminal-penis
 
Criminal penises: 1. WTF!?! 2. Huh? 3. Hmmmn. I know nothing about how hormones affect penis size, but: if pubescent penis size is affected by any one hormone amount or ratio with other hormones, AND if that hormone or that ratio is also correlated with crime, then yes it makes sense. I am not saying it did make sense, but only science will tell in the long run. It seems unlikely to me.

Violent crime is correlated with sex; men more than women are convicted of violent crime (maybe women don’t get caught as much), and I suspect this difference does not mainly have to do with cultural habits. I personally think men are estrogen-deficient. What would be an interesting study would be hormone levels and types of crime, compared to the hormone levels of non-criminals, high-achievers, etc. Again, I doubt any useful finding would emerge, and the confounding variables would be difficult to control.

Where is our on-the-streets-criminal-expert Maximus Otter?
 
Colavito is mistaken and misleading in treating the interpretation of individuals' physical measurements or features as an exercise in "eugenics" per se.

There have been a number of speculative or pseudoscientific models ('systems'; frameworks; theories; etc.) associating particular physical traits or relative values with predilections or behaviors. Such models have been used as supporting evidence claimed for (e.g.) beliefs in eugenics and scientific racism, but they're not the same thing. The former aren't intrinsically connected to the latter, and vice versa.

In and of itself, gathering data on penis size is basic anthropometry. Making claims about how this data correlates with (e.g.) behavioral or other tendencies in the individual subject is most often pseudoscientific hand-waving. Leveraging such hand-waving in promoting ways to allegedly improve the collective / aggregate population is the province of eugenics.

For example ... Gathering and compiling data on head shape, features and measurements is basic anthropometry. Claiming this or similar data for an individual has a bearing on that individual's personality (etc.) is pseudoscientific phrenology. Advocating or pursuing selective breeding to weed out "negatively-associated bumps on the skull" in the overall population would be eugenics.

The reported penis-measuring and its alleged objective in relation to juvenile delinquency is more appropriately characterized in terms of the once-popular but generally discredited topic of "criminal anthropology" / "anthropological criminology":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropological_criminology
 
EnolaGaia said:
Colavito is mistaken and misleading in treating the interpretation of individuals' physical measurements or features as an exercise in "eugenics" per se.

There have been a number of speculative or pseudoscientific models ('systems'; frameworks; theories; etc.) associating particular physical traits or relative values with predilections or behaviors. Such models have been used as supporting evidence claimed for (e.g.) beliefs in eugenics and scientific racism, but they're not the same thing. The former aren't intrinsically connected to the latter, and vice versa.

In and of itself, gathering data on penis size is basic anthropometry. Making claims about how this data correlates with (e.g.) behavioral or other tendencies in the individual subject is most often pseudoscientific hand-waving. Leveraging such hand-waving in promoting ways to allegedly improve the collective / aggregate population is the province of eugenics.

For example ... Gathering and compiling data on head shape, features and measurements is basic anthropometry. Claiming this or similar data for an individual has a bearing on that individual's personality (etc.) is pseudoscientific phrenology. Advocating or pursuing selective breeding to weed out "negatively-associated bumps on the skull" in the overall population would be eugenics.

The reported penis-measuring and its alleged objective in relation to juvenile delinquency is more appropriately characterized in terms of the once-popular but generally discredited topic of "criminal anthropology" / "anthropological criminology":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropological_criminology
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Doesn't the existence of a "domestication syndrome," for example explored with the selective breeding of domesticated silver foxes, suggest the possibility that behavioral traits can indeed correlate with physical characteristics, at least in some cases?

Regardless, eugenics as a discipline suffers from several interlocking problems.

1) Human behavior is almost certainly governed by many different genes interacting with the individual's environment. There probably isn't a straightforward mapping of, for example, "this gene increases cooperative behavior by 5%." Even if there were, how could society control for environment, short of growing entire generations in identical group creches?

2) What human traits are actually beneficial to society as a whole? Some say that being tall and strong are good traits to possess, but don't such people use more food? Is a propensity to build personal wealth good if the person does so by exploiting others and degrading the shared environment?

Even something as seemingly innocuous as a "tendency to cooperate" has its dark sides, for example groupthink, or a clannish intolerance of individualists.

3) Ultimately, who decides, and how are the decisions enforced? Selective breeding implies a certain degree of coercion, and eugenics is definitely an exercise in selective breeding...

The promise of a golden future free of disability and disease sure sounds good, but the road there appears to run through a minefield.
 
Somehow (I really don't know how) I stumbled on this article. There's an interesting analysis of snake handling in the middle:
https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/are-the-woke-machiavellian

And in the comments someone points to this book. The thesis smells of eugenics:
https://www.amazon.com/Spiteful-Mutants-Evolution-Sexuality-Religion/dp/159368083X

I think it's extreme enough to count as Fortean. There is one redeeming feature, that he seems to attack all political sides equally:

In Spiteful Mutants, evolutionary psychologist Edward Dutton argues that we are experiencing a "zombie apocalypse" of our own. The critical threat to civilization is not so much enemies abroad as it is nihilistic and self-destructive tendencies within our own populations. Dutton examines such salient social phenomena through a Darwinian lens: from BLM to QAnon; from those seeking sexual transformation to the Incels who don't have sex at all; from atheists to those with a religious zeal for "social justice." All these phenomena can best be understood as genetic results of the Industrial Revolution.

Human evolution is an ongoing process. The question of who we, as a species, will become is a matter of who is being selected for in a particular ecology. Before industrialization, child mortality was the crucible of evolution: those who were physically and mentally sick -- that is, who possessed high levels of genetic mutation -- rarely survived into adulthood. The Industrial Revolution, and resultant medical advances, brought about the collapse of child mortality, allowing the explosive growth of people who are highly mutated in body and mind, and who would not have otherwise survived. These mutants, walking among us, are "spiteful" in the sense that they actively affect the functioning of the group. They generate polarization and chaos, depravity and dysphoria, and even the gradual collapse of fertility. A new specter is haunting the industrialized world, the specter of Spiteful Mutants, a menace of our own making.
But the author does not feel like a freak:
Edward Dutton is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Asbiro University. Born in London in 1980, Dutton read Theology at Durham University, before completing a PhD in Religious Studies at Aberdeen University in 2006. He is based in Oulu in northern Finland. His books include Making Sense of Race (2020), Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West (2021), Islam: An Evolutionary Perspective (2021), among many others.
But as the comment says, he still might be a freak:
Here are some of the expressions of genetic mutational defectiveness, according to Edward Dutton.
If you are left handed.
If your face is not symmetrical.
If you don't believe in God.
If you don't have or want children.
If you believe in conspiracy theories. (I guess, in his mind, then, for instance, Kennedy's assassination and 9/11, happened just the way the U.S. Government said they happened.)
Also, according to him, if you are very intelligent, then you are likely autistic.
 
uair01 said:
Here are some of the expressions of genetic mutational defectiveness, according to Edward Dutton.
If you are left handed.
If your face is not symmetrical.
If you don't believe in God.
If you don't have or want children.
If you believe in conspiracy theories. (I guess, in his mind, then, for instance, Kennedy's assassination and 9/11, happened just the way the U.S. Government said they happened.)
Also, according to him, if you are very intelligent, then you are likely autistic.
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So 4 out of 5? Hmmmmm. I'm a spiteful mutant :rofl:

The thing about eugenics is that the people who define what is undesirable do not classify themselves as such.

I also have to admit that this:

Endlessly Amazed said:
The individuals who are born with limited lifespans, movement, senses, and thought are a part of the variety of humanity. I think they would choose otherwise if they could.
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is very hurtful and insulting to all people. It is very hubristic.

When I was in my twenties, I worked in a group home in which there lived a person who was deaf, blind and altogether unpleasant. His mother had had rubella when she was pregnant. At that time, I believed he would have been better off not born.

However, my husband was born, and died with cystic fibrosis (a genetic disease). I would have never met him if he wasn't born. And as it is not my place to ever ask someone if they would choose their supposed "defective" life differently, I don't think he would have.

I now know many people with numerous different difficulties in their lives. I cannot say that they are not happy.

Also, how would these deficiencies be dealt with when they develop, either through accident or aging, at a later stage of life?

Trying to find a way of curing a disease is one thing - as with in vitro screening or bloodwork to see if a genetic disease is present to help people decide if they want to possibly have a child with an illness - but to say that all people should be graded as acceptable or defective is entirely another.

Down's Syndrome is one that can be detected in vitro, but people still have a choice. And many decide to have a person with the syndrome. Life expectancy and quality of life for these people, specifically, has been improved over years of research, advances in understanding of people with the syndrome and access to better healthcare.
 
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