from Mankind Quarterly Sept. 1, 1995
Vol. 36, pp. 73

The Concept of Heredity in Western Thought: Part One
Vol. 35, Mankind Quarterly, 04-01-1995, pp 229.
posted at http://www.mugu.com

The Concept of Heredity in Western Thought: Part Two
Vol. 35, Mankind Quarterly, 06-01-1995, pp 343
Social Engineering and the Social Sciences

The Concept of Heredity in Western Thought: Part Three
Vol. 36, Mankind Quarterly, 09-01-1995, pp 73.

As noted in the two preceding articles in this brief series,1 European and American thought had historically recognized the role of heredity in shaping both human physiology and human personality. The early beliefs of the Classical and Medieval worlds were reinforced by an improved understanding of plant and animal breeding, which made especially rapid progress in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Subsequently, the discoveries of Darwin and Mendel led to an even clearer recognition of the significance of the role of heredity in human affairs, and this reinforced interest in the possibility of applying to human beings the breeding techniques used so successfully with plants and animals.

Most early eugenicists were motivated by a philosophy close to the workings of nature. They perceived evolution as being competition not only between individuals carrying disparate genes but also between divergent populations and subspecies, each seeking control over the available resources, and in consequence they primarily contemplated the improvement of their own national stock. Nations were perceived as micro-races in the making. While not directly opposing the extension of eugenic goals to rival human populations, they regarded this as an objective which was not only beyond their power but beyond their responsibility and - under the laws of evolution - extraneous to the proper function of altruism. Altruism is a biological necessity where it assists genetic copies contained within the same breeding population or phylogenetic continuum to survive. In the course of hominid evolution, altruistic behavior emerged because it enhanced the survival chances of the breeding population to which the altruistic individual belonged: it enhanced the competitive effectiveness of the altruist’s own phylogenetic continuum2 This was in keeping with the evolutionary conditions that shaped the survival chances of all complex life forms in the material universe, and the purpose of scientific investigation was perceived to be the development of sound principles on which to base rational patterns of intelligent behavior.

In Britain and America, however, early twentieth century eugenics was also motivated by the perception of dysgenic trends within the national population. The defeats suffered by units of the British regular army at the hands of a Boer civilian army further reinforced the growing idea that Britain had lost too many of its more adventurous, dynamic and creative stock in the course of three centuries of empire- building and overseas colonizing activities. This awareness of the need to maintain the competitive quality of the British gene pool promoted a demand for eugenic policies that might increase the birthrate among those who were deemed to be its more dynamic and creative citizens. As it happened, this goal was never attained - attempts at progress in that direction were totally frustrated in World War I by the gigantic and heavily selective loss of the cream of the nation’s youth on the battlefields of Flanders, in the air above the battlefields, and along the ocean supply routes on which Britain depended.

America’s losses were not as heavy as those of the European nations that participated in this fratricidal conflict, but many Americans, such as David Starr Jordan, Chancellor of Stanford University,3 recognized the severity of the genetic impact.

The Egalitarian Onslaught

World War I benefited only one European group, the Marxists - who in general had been careful to avoid involvement in this bloody and totally mad internecine carnage. Russian losses were so heavy amongst those who would normally have contained Marxist revolutionary violence that the Bolsheviks were able to seize control of the entire Russian empire. There, and during a similar reign of terror after a similar seizure of power in Hungary, they eliminated untold numbers of the elite, not only at the level of the ruling elite but also among the more successful of the peasantry. A genetically depleted Hungary was wrested from Marxist control, but the process of dysgenic selection continued in Soviet Russia until the eventual death of Stalin. Unfortunately, even those European countries which remained free of open Marxist rule also suffered from a vast expansion of Marxist-Lysenkovian ideology, as the ranks of the old elite who would have counterbalanced Marxist doctrines had been heavily thinned.4 Furthermore, the economic depression that followed the ravages of World War II turned most peoples’ attention to the problem of sheer economic survival, and made interest in the genetic well being of future generations a luxury to which few felt inclined to devote their attention.

Unlike the altruistically-minded members of society who had readily given their lives to defend what they had so wrongly regarded as their nation’s interests, most Marxists survived World War I by avoiding front line duties. With the massive winnowing of those who would normally have opposed them, they were therefore in a strong position to take advantage of the leadership vacuum that existed even in the Western countries which did not fall into their hands through violent revolution. This new generation of Marxists preached opposition to the natural law of biological competition, and blindness toward the facts of biology was acclaimed as though ignorance of such facts was a social virtue. Both Marxists and non-Marxist egalitarian activists began to attack all and any scholars who persisted in stressing the link between genetics and human ability. In America, the Nobel Prize-winning University of Texas geneticist Hermann J. Muller, who saw eugenic improvement as a means of reducing inequality by raising the level of the weaker members of society closer to that of the more gifted, resigned his membership of the U.S. Communist Party after being obliged to hastily terminate a visit to the USSP, in order to avoid arrest for criticizing Lysenkovian theory which became the only “politically correct” and legally permissible genetic doctrine under Stalinist rule. In Britain, J. B. S. Haldane also eventually resigned from the Communist Party in protest against the new biological egalitarianism which now became Marxist orthodoxy. Other legitimate scholars similarly cut their ties to the new Marxism, but this did not stop the belief in biological egalitarianism from becoming a basic tenet of those remaining Marxists who accepted Neo-Lysenkovianism and sought to use the university lecture rooms and academic media to advance their egalitarian ideology.

Political pressure can retard the progress of knowledge, but in a relatively free country it cannot suppress the search for truth altogether. In Britain and America, a few scholars retained the courage to continue their research into behavioral genetics and their findings drew passionate condemnation from the extreme egalitarians who were determined to advance the now-cherished and comfortable. myth of biological equality - not being content with the concept of equality before the law. Even when Lysenko’s theories were demolished by further advances in scholarship, biological egalitarians strove to suppress public recognition of the importance of heredity in order to prevent such knowledge from influencing social and political policies.

As has been revealed by Snyderman and Rothman in The IQ Controversy: The Media and Public Policy (1988), these stubborn and pedantic ideologues found willing collaborators in the media. The intimidation of “hereditarian” scientists, as the radicals liked to call behavioral scientists, became a major plank in the politics of what has more recently come to be dubbed “political correctness.”

During the 1960s and ’70s, this intimidation often took the form of violent Marxist-organized campus riots. The story is documented in Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe (Pearson 1991), and in more specific detail concerning the harassment of Nobel Prize-winning William Shockley in Shockley on Eugenics and Race (Pearson 1992). Marxist student organizations and their sympathizers, encouraged by similar- minded faculty members, rioted on campuses, disrupted lectures, threatened faculty members, and attacked the right of scholars interested in human behavioral genetics to report their research findings or to express their opinions either on and off the campus. During the 1980s, a degree of order returned to academe, but by now many of those who had been student activists in the 1960s and ’70s followed the course advocated by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1977, 1978): that of abandoning attempts to seize control of society by violent revolution, in favor of tactics aimed at revolutionizing it from within - by the peaceful infilltration of existing institutions. Many of the far Left student activists of the 1960s and ’70s consequently abandoned their schemes for open revolution and without abandoning their political ideologies became the faculty members, the university administrators, and the government bureaucrats of the late 1980s and ’90s. Whereas universities such as the University of California, Berkeley, had hitherto defended the right of faculty members to express their opinions, many universities now began to yield to the pressure of the political activists now ensconced within the system, bending to the will of those who sought to restrict freedom of speech and research by faculty members interested in human behavioral genetics. “Political correctness” became a requirement at universities such as Delaware and City University of New York, which actively sought to silence scholars who uttered opinions that challenged the shibboleths of biological egalitarianism.

As the Stalinist-Lysenkoist myth of biological egalitarianism gained ground, it began to inhibit not only individual scholars but also grant-making foundations. Even foundations which had been originally established by eugenic-oriented benefactors, such as the Carnegie Institute and the Kellogg Foundation, began to eschew support for research that might favor genetic rather than exclusively environmental solutions to human problems. For a while, only a very few foundations, such as the March of Dimes, remained interested in funding scientific research into the relationship between heredity and environment in a detached and unbiased manner, free from deliberate attempts to deny the importance of heredity in determining the behavioral proclivities of the individual. Consequently, research into human genetics was largely limited to medical genetics, a subject to which we shall shortly return. Few grant-making foundations groups other than the small, New York based Pioneer Fund were willing to contribute to non-medical behavioral genetic research in such valuable areas as twin studies. During the dark post World War II period, the Pioneer Fund massively assisted Thomas Bouchard’s ground-breaking Minnesota twin and adoption studies program, Tony Vernon’s Ontario twin studies program, much of the work of Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen, as well as research into such topics as Linda Gottfredson’s studies of the impact of heredity in the workplace.

The Revival of Interest in Genetics

Despite the post-Boasian malaise which continued to spread throughout the social sciences as a result of the post-World War II victory of Marxian anti-hereditarian concepts, a few outstanding scientists nevertheless continued to do key research into the critical role of heredity in shaping human personality and abilities, and even into the relationship between intelligence and the level of civilization. Typical of these was the world-renowned botanist and geneticist, C. D. Darlington, author of numerous books including The Genetics of Man (1964) and The Evolution of Man and Society (1969), who warned that selection changed the character of the world’s population in every generation, and that “[t]he nation which takes most serious thought for its own genetic future is, therefore, most likely to have a future”.5 In 1968 F. Osborn argued for the increasing need for eugenics to replace the reduced role of nature in eliminating harmful genes from the human gene pool in a well-worked book entitled The Future of Human Heredity: An Introduction to Eugenics in Modem Society. Similarly John R. Baker, emeritus reader in cytology at Oxford University, compiled a landmark study entitled Race (1974). This catalogued human subspecies and populations around the world and throughout recorded history, and linked these to the different levels of civilization attained by humankind.

C. H. Waddington also published two significant books at this time, The Evolution of an Evolutionist (1975) and The Man-Made Future (1978), but it was E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1978) that truly created shock waves amongst the ensconced egalitarians. This was shortly followed by Berkeley psychologist Arthur R. Jensen, who more than almost any other contemporary psychologist was responsible for bringing the role of heredity to the attention of social scientists by his paper entitled “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” which took up virtually an entire issue of the Harvard Educational Review in 1969.6 His subsequent books, notably Genetics and Education (1972), explained the importance of genetics in determining human intelligence in even greater detail. Another notable scholar who pressed for serious research in this area, but was howled down by the media and organized Marxist groups on campuses wherever he sought to lecture, was the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and co-inventor of the transistor, William B. Shockley, many of whose writings on the subject have been reproduced in the book Shockley on Eugenics and Race (Pearson, 1992). 7

Major public attention was also drawn to the subject of human heredity by Richard J. Herrnstein of Harvard University, with his now-famous Atlantic Monthly article (1971) and his book IQ in the Meritocracy (1973), on the heritability of intelligence and its increasingly critical role in today’s complex civilization. He explained that, as intelligence is largely hereditary, an inborn lack of ability would bar certain individuals from career success, and that, as technology advanced, “biological stratification” would become increasingly obvious. More recently Herrnstein co-authored with Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994), which was completed shortly before his death from cancer in September 1994. This has had an even greater impact on the public and scholastic world alike - despite an organized and devastatingly adverse media reaction by committed egalitarians who saw their moral base crumbling beneath them. The two authors warned that today’s massive social problems cannot be solved without recognizing the role of heredity in determining the limits of human behavior, including its impact on social issues such as crime, illegitimacy, welfare dependence, productivity, and social stratification. Differential birthrates, they pointed out, impact on national intelligence, and the failure of school integration and other experiments intended to raise group educational performance despite massive governmental expenditures can only be understood in light of the essentially hereditary basis of human abilities. Although American academe has lost a powerful voice with the passing of Herrnstein, other writers and scholars, particularly those associated with medical research, are now turning more and more to genetic research to explain behavioral problems that refuse to yield to environmental solutions.8 Some of this work has been summarized in Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective by the noted Guggenheim scholar, J. Philippe Rushton.9

These and other scientists have since produced a wealth of evidence demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt the gross absurdity of biological egalitarianism, and shown how many environmentally-based social programs could have seriously dysgenic implications. The even more dramatic possibility is that with the present demographic international trends the percentage of the intellectually well-endowed members of the total world population is likely to undergo a dramatic decline relative to those who are less-well endowed in this respect.

Twin Studies Reveal the Role of Heredity in Shaping Human Personality

In the field of psychology, twin studies in particular have produced a collation of data which demolishes the fanciful theories of the proponents of biological egalitarianism, providing objective and quantitatively measurable evidence substantiating the importance of heredity in determining human behavioral potential. The Minnesota Twin Studies project has shown that the evidence supporting the existence of genetic influences upon human cognitive abilities, as well as on general aspects of personality, is overwhelming. As one of the researchers, Nancy Segal, has reported, the degree of similarity between twins reared apart in different environments is much greater than between fraternal twins raised in the same family. The results of personality tests also reveal striking similarities in cases such as that of the personality profiles of a set of identical twins, one of whom had been raised in Trinidad by a Jewish father and the other in Germany by a Catholic mother. Medical life histories also provide extremely powerful evidence of the importance of genetic influences on behavior. Brain patterns show a higher degree of similarity between identical twins reared apart than between fraternal twins reared apart, and medical and even dental case histories show a close parallel even where identical twins have been reared under quite separate circumstances.10

Thus, identical twins separated by adoption after birth and reared in disparate environments reveal strong similarities which environmentalists cannot explain away. In fact, the similarity in personality and intellectual ability of identical twins reared apart is little different from the similarity shown by identical twins reared together.11 These traits include not only shared psychological and vocational interests, but even psychological proclivities such as conservatism, sociability, self-control, flexibility and religiosity as measured by academically accepted standards of assessment. This suggests that the members of distinct breeding populations (i.e. gene pools) must be expected to inherit diverse proclivities for different kinds of cultural behavior, and that patterns of life style and even the character of developed civilizations might well be shaped by inherited personality biases in addition to the obvious limitations imposed by disparate levels of intelligence.12 As a result, committed egalitarians such as Leon Kamin strive to denigrate the findings of twin research such as that conducted at the University of Minnesota by suggesting that twins reared apart might “have particularly strong motives to downplay previous contacts and to exaggerate similarities.”13 One suspects that these critics are pushing their arguments beyond the limits of their own logic, and that they know in their own minds that such twins could hardly fabricate similar brain waves, blood pressure, heart rate, cardiovascular functioning, pulmonary functioning, electrodefinal response amplitude, occurrence of dental cavities, and reaction time to various novel tasks - and that such physiological similarities as these could not be modified by occasional or even frequent meetings, had these in fact taken place.

Blood Groups and DNA

The days when pro-egalitarian propagandists, totally disregarding what was known even in their time, could persuasively argue that individual and group differences were “only skin deep” are gone forever. The days when it was claimed that the technique of blood transfusions, first widely practiced in World War I, demonstrated the egalitarian unity of all members of the human race are also gone, for it is now known that while some of the major blood groups are shared by all races, they are also shared with primates and various other mammals. During World War II great emphasis was laid by egalitarian propagandists upon the fact that the A, B, AB and O blood groups (so essential for successful blood transfusion) could be found among all human races, without realizing that these basic blood group categories were shared by virtually all human populations, but were also shared with other primate and mammalian species. Indeed, the vast majority of human nucleotide bases, out of an estimated total of some three billion, are shared with other non-human life forms: it has been estimated that of these three billion only between two to ten million differ from person to person. According to one estimation of genetic relationship, human DNA differs from Chimpanzee DNA by no more than 1.6 per cent overall. It is time that we stopped promoting the specious concept of the uniformity of humankind, and on the one hand recognized the unity of humankind with the primates and all other living organisms, while on the other hand appreciating the immense significance of what have hitherto been regarded as relatively small differences between human individuals and human breeding populations.

As John H. Beckstrom commented in 1993:

All humans alive today share, in common, the vast majority of their genes. But over and above those genes that prevail in the entire species, additional gene commonality exists between close relatives because they received their genes from close ancestors whom they have in common . . . ‘familial’ genes.” (Beckstrom 1993, p.15)

Thus, with respect to blood groups it is now common knowledge that not only does the frequency of distribution of blood groups vary from one population to another, but that many populations, especially genetically isolated populations such as certain South American Indian and Central African tribes, Lapps and Inuit, reveal rare blood group polymorphisms which are unique to their own populations, distinguished as these populations are by different evolutionary histories. Such distinctive genotypes are to be expected among groups separated by long periods of genetic evolution.

Numerous human microraces or breeding populations possess blood groups which are unique to their members. That it was possible to classify races by blood groups was early revealed by William C. Boyd in his Blood Group and the Races of Man: An Introduction to Modem Physical Anthropology (Boston, Little Brown. 1950), by A. E. Mourant in his The Distribution of Human Blood Groups (Oxford, Blackwells, 1954), and confirmed by a host of later researchers. Mourant’s work showed that contrary to popular biological propaganda, some blood groups were unique to particular populations. Since then the courts of law have come to accept genetic evidence when faced with legal disputes regarding paternity; and it is now widely recognized that marked variations in the frequency of specific blood groups distinguish genetically separate human populations from each other. Furthermore, these patterns carry within them a coded guide to the racial history of each breeding population.

DNA Profiling

In particular, the ability to analyze and classify human DNA has advanced rapidly in recent years, and DNA testing is supplementing if not supplanting blood group analysis for forensic purposes. An individual’s DNA is as unique as his fingerprints, but also indicates with which other people he has close genetic kinship or racial links. A single hair, a sliver of skin, even a dandruff flake can often reveal an individual’ s genetic identity. Some artists are reportedly incorporating a sample of their DNA into the signatures on their paintings to authenticate these and to facilitate the detection of forgeries. In this age of unprecedented population growth,14 and the resultant invasion of national breeding grounds by the surplus population from alien stocks, illegal immigration could be more readily controlled through the issue of identity cards impregnated with small portions of the carrier’ s own unique DNA. This would establish a forgery proof method of identification, as well as provide a key to the phylogenetic of the individual.

DNA profiling has already begun to be used to assist historians in determining the racial history of populations by revealing their genetic components. Going well beyond the early studies of A. E. Mourant,15 several scholars have worked to throw further light on the demographic history of the Jewish diaspora, utilizing blood group patterns, genetic polymorphisms and DNA profiles to determine the extent to which the different Jewish communities have interbred with the diverse local populations amongst which they had resided at different times over the centuries.

Even more recently, L. L. Cavalli-Sforza (1988, 1993), with coauthors Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazzi, has embarked in The History and Geography of Human Genes (1994) on a pioneer odyssey into the historical and genetic relationships that demarcate living populations of humankind throughout the world. Although based on a mere 120 alleles drawn from only 42 living populations, this study points the way to further research which in time could untangle the complex web of historic migration and genetic admixture with a degree of precision which would have been impossible with the more primitive techniques known to physical anthropologists just fifty years ago. Summarizing the worldwide data in a singular 42 by 41 matrix illustrating genetic distance, Cavalli- Sforza and his co-authors find that the English differ from the Danes, Germans and French by a mere 21-25 measures of genetic distance, whereas they differ from North American Indians by 947 points, from the African Bantu by 2288 and from Mbuti Pygmies by 2373. An erstwhile dedicated environmentalist, Cavelli-Sforza, genuflects in a few mandatory paragraphs to the crusade against “racism,” but concludes that the collected data show that “North Eurasians,” - a term he uses to group Europeans, Mongols, Japanese, Koreans, and Northern Chinese - are more closely related to each other than to Africans and Australoids. 16 In short, their findings as to the degree of similarity and difference between surviving populations of Homo sapiens are essentially parallel to those of the older-school physical anthropologists represented by Carleton Coon.17

Interestingly, this latest Cavelli-Sforza study supports the findings of mitochondrial DNA research, which implies that at one time the ancestors of all living hominids originated in Africa, and that the major racial differences arose as a result of an early migration of certain hominid groups out of Africa. These were subjected to subsequent rapid evolution in colder more northerly zones, while those that remained in Africa were not affected by the selective forces associated with the harsher new environment. This is illustrated by the evidence of DNA which reveals a primary divide between the contemporary sub-Saharan populations, whose ancestors remained in Africa, and those that evolved their present genetic characteristics in Eurasia, under different and presumably more challenging environments.

The Human Genome Project

The growing appreciation of the role of genetic forces in determining human qualities has consequently led in recent years to the establishment of numerous human genome research projects.18 Despite the hangover of anti-biological environmentalism still found in the social sciences, this project is focusing the attention of the more perceptive scientists on the reality of human biology. Breakthroughs in molecular biology have made possible the construction of a human genome map, consisting of a schematic representation of each chromosome, showing the bands and the approximate location of each of thousands of genes. Work is advancing continuously in several different countries on the construction of genetic linkage maps, with special attention to those responsible for human defects, tracing the loci assignable to specific human chromosomes. Already, a database comprising over 6,000 loci, including anonymous DNA segments, has been constructed by those engaged on the U.S. project, with work also progressing in Britain and other countries. This has been vastly facilitated by computers, for the development of which science owes an eternal debt to that much-maligned genius, William Shockley, who headed the small three-man team which made a breakthrough in developing the transistor and who, ironically, was castigated for urging the need to research the genetic basis of human personality in order to enable humankind to guard against dysgenic decay.

While the human genome project already points to new strategies to diagnose, treat and prevent human diseases, and may be expected to become the basis of extensive medical benefits for posterity, its utility in revealing human ancestry should not be overlooked.

The genome project has two major implications: firstly the potential for promoting eugenic remedies by pointing to the genetic predisposition to disease as distinct from the actual occurrence of disease; and secondly, the light that it promises to throw on the nature and extent of human racial diversity. As Marc A. Lappe has said,

The products of the genome project may throw into stark relief the paradox of a society based on the premise of equal standing at creation and one that is found to be composed of a genetically heterogeneous group of subpopulations with quantitatively different frequencies of heritable traits. As a society, we will have to ask if we can in fact collect information that reveals these individual differences and still continue to treat all individuals the same. . . .

What is clear is that even a partial picture of the genetic landscape that defines the molecular differences among human individuals will reveal more its nonuniformity than its hoped for universality.19

Human racial history is being clarified: as new gene sequences are revealed by the genome project it is possible to cross-relate them with detailed maps of other genetic loci in the genome. This increasingly facilitates a more complete picture of gene action and the analysis of polygenic traits, which are so important to any true picture of the character of distinctive human breeding populations. As the history of genes is traced, the genetic profile of different breeding populations is becoming much sharper.20

The human genome project helps to remind us that we are, after all, biological organisms just like other animals, and even plants. It should make us realize that we need to bring ethics into line with biological reality, into line with the reality of evolution and the universe. It is essential that human culture and human ethics should be in line with the realities of the universe, and those realities include our own human biological nature. It should also serve to remind us that racial or genetic differences are real and important, and that the culture on which we rely for survival itself depends on biology and hence on our genetic heritage. The uniqueness of each individual’ s genetic makeup is thus today well-established. DNA fingerprinting is so distinctive that the likelihood that an individual member of even that widely heterogeneous group contained within what we call the Caucasoid race may have the same DNA imprint as another is something in the region of one in a hundred million, and between individuals of different races this possibility becomes virtually zero. However, to date less publicity has been given to the significance of the fact of group differences in the frequency of major genetic loci.

Contrary to previous egalitarian supposition and propagandizing, significant genetic differences distinguish historically isolated populations or gene pools. A prime question for the future is the extent to which historically separate populations, some of which have evolved further in certain directions than others, will be able to preserve their distinct genetic characteristics in an increasingly overcrowded and mobile world. Evolution was able to proceed amongst hominids, as amongst other life forms, as a result of genetic isolation, which was initially facilitated by geographic isolation. Only after geographic isolation had created a wide variety of subspecies and quasi-subspecies possessing markedly different genotypes did subspecific or “race” prejudice - - what C. G. Simpson (1971, 1980) describes as a psychological restraint on cross-breeding - come into being as an evolutionary mechanism serving to preserve subspecific identity amongst increasingly mobile species.21 The co-habitation of individuals of diverse genetic origin in the same geographical location, and the probable further decline of “race prejudice,” may reverse the prehistoric evolutionary trend toward subspeciation and initiate a reversal of nature’s evolutionary tactics. William Shockley, whom we mentioned earlier, was deeply concerned with the possibility that indiscriminate mating could result in dysgenic trends which would effectively usher in a period of human “devolution. ”

Opposition to the Human Genome Project

Biological egalitarians are fearful that the knowledge acquired as a result of the human genome project will destroy the plausibility of their universalist ideology. They are particularly concerned about the revival of scientific interest in group differences which will unavoidably result from the construction of ‘demic maps’ tracing the genetics of regional populations of different evolutionary ancestry since these will reveal the true extent of group differences in genetic potential. Such maps will trace the varied genetic heritage of human demes (breeding populations or micro-races) with scientific precision; and by throwing a sharp and revealing light on what had hitherto been a debatable area of human knowledge will explode the anti-evolutionary myth of universal biological uniformity.

Such people apparently regard equality before the law as an inadequate basis for societal justice, and are prepared to condemn limitless numbers of future generations to the evils of ignorance and genetic disease in order to protect the egos of those who are alive today. Egalitarian activists such as Barbara Faye Waxman have complained that the human genome project will foster a revival of negative eugenics. They appear to be unconcerned about the fate of future generations and - either consciously or unconsciously - willing to doom untold billions to genetically-dictated misery to satisfy their own biologically unreal concept of morality.

It was therefore not surprising that, when in 1988 the European Commission proposed the establishment of a human genome project to aid predictive medicine, an anti-eugenic coalition immediately sprang into existence and succeeded in inducing the European Parliament to establish a committee to report on the proposal.

The rapporteur appointed for the committee was a certain Benedikt Harlin - a member of the Green Party, which has strongly opposed genetic research and the genome project. The Harlin report consequently recommended that tight restrictions be imposed on scientific research into human genetics, seemingly preferring to live in an age of darkness. The Green Party, for all its laudable claims to protect the non-human environment, turns a blind eye upon the ongoing destruction of the human genetic heritage, arguing that the prime responsibility of the European Parliament is to block any eugenic trends that might result from human genome research. The ultimate result was that the project was severely emasculated, narrowing the opportunities of securing information helpful to predictive medicine, prohibiting both human germ line research and eugenic intervention - with a portion of the approved money being diverted to fund “ethical issues arising from genome research.” Cynics might well see this latter as a carrot offered to scientific Luddites.

Genetics and Modern Medical Practice

Progress in genetic science is also transforming medical science by facilitating new opportunities for the remedial treatment of genetic defects, and by offering the possibility of reducing human suffering by identifying fetuses suffering from severe incurable defects at the prenatal stage. Medical geneticists have identified the genetic roots of numerous illnesses, and family medical history records are now increasingly important in assisting the medical fraternity to determine appropriate courses of treatment. Such records have usually been poorly kept, however, and the knowledge that can be gained therefrom is far from definitive as an indicator of genetic defects or weaknesses in individual offspring. Eugenic decisions are far more precise when the phenotype of the infant can be examined by means of techniques such as ultrasound sonar examination. By this process an ultrasound transducer is placed on the mother’s abdomen and sound waves travelling through the amniotic sac will reveal the size and shape of the fetus within the womb. In addition, laparoscopy has been developed, which involves the use of a flexible fiberscoptic rod, inserted through the abdomen, which in addition to permitting an examination of the abdominal cavity and fallopian tubes, makes it possible to obtain blood samples from the fetus which can then be analyzed for evidence of genetically determined diseases.

Another technique utilized today in promoting practical eugenic treatment is amniocentesis. This involves the extraction of a small quantity of amniotic fluid, which carries in it cells shed by the fetus, and these reveal the genetic make-up of the fetus. Already, some genetic defects can be cured, while others may be deemed sufficiently serious to indicate the desirability of terminating the pregnancy.22

However, for those concerned with the transmission of a healthy gene pool to future generations, we must not forget that there are two sides to advances in medicine: improved medical skills that help the individual to overcome genetic handicaps are commended by all, but at the same time they often heighten the chances that the genetic problems responsible for the condition will be passed on to future generations. Medical science does not benefit mankind when it has dysgenic impact -when it defeats nature’s normal tendency to reduce the likelihood of harmful genes being transmitted in perpetuity to future generations or when it assists organisms which are genetic “basket cases” to evade nature’s sifting mechanism and to pass on their collation of inferior or deleterious genes as a curse laid on future generations.

However, many who inherit the finest collection of genes are also cursed by a genotype that includes one or more dysfunctional genes. Clearly, modern medicine increases the likelihood that harmful genes will be transmitted to future generations; and the permeation of our society with such genes is now so advanced that it is imperative that geneticists should be encouraged - not discouraged - to search for techniques which will make it possible to substitute healthy genes for faulty genes. There is no reason why it should not soon be possible to substitute healthy genes for many dysfunctional genes.

The Enhanced Potential for Positive Eugenics

Both eugenic approaches, “negative” (the reduction of harmful genes in the gene pool) and “positive” (an increase in the percentage of “healthy” genes in the gene pool), are currently being greatly facilitated by modern science, and an increasing number of medical personnel are already making eugenic choices in the conduct of their duties. When eugenics first became popular, genetic knowledge was too limited to facilitate negative eugenics in any but the most crude manner, and much was done that was tragic, and sometimes repulsive. Without getting into the history of legally enforced sterilization, there were also many instances where individuals of superior genetic quality were persuaded not to have offspring where there was reason to believe that a solitary defective gene had revealed itself in the phenotype of a family member. Today there is an increasing ability to detect genetic defects in foetuses, and the future holds the possibility of “genetic surgery” to replace deleterious genes with healthy genes, thus making it possible to free future generations from certain specific weaknesses in a discriminating fashion. Thus competent individuals whose genotype is cursed by only simple genetic problems may in future be able to contribute their superior genes to posterity without fear of transmitting genetic defects which are identifiable and subject to manipulation by such techniques. We can now look forward to the days when the breeding of reliably more healthy and competent stock can be promoted by ethically sound medical intervention.

As another example of what can be done, in vitro fertilization has already become common practice in Western countries when married couples who wish to have children are prevented from doing so by the infertility of one of the prospective parents. Such situations offer a perfectly moral opportunity to influence the course of human evolution in a rational and eugenic manner, by ensuring that the couple should have available to them a choice of germinal donors of healthy and genetically sound stock. It was Hermann J. Muller who first widely publicized the idea of establishing repositories for germinal plasma as a means of maintaining eugenic quality; and it was Dr. Robert K. Graham (an ophthalmologist who aided mankind by developing the scratch-resistant plastic lens) who converted Muller’s idea into a reality. Aided by an advisory panel of medical specialists and geneticists, Graham established the Repository of Germinal Choice in Escondido, California, in 1980. Here, would-be parents can obtain germinal plasma of high quality and be advised of the physical and mental qualities of a donor’s family background (without, of course, being informed of the donor’s name). Up to the time of writing, the Repository has already been responsible for the birth of several hundred bright, lively, and healthy infants. 23

Critique of the Neo-Lysenkovian Opposition to Eugenics

The morality of this technique does not prevent those whom Bernard Davis dubbed “scientific Luddites” - because they sought to restrict research into behavioral genetics - from continuing to condemn even the mildest of voluntary eugenic programs such as this, seeking to ridicule such programs at every opportunity.24 Such opponents of eugenics prefer to overlook the words of the young woman who was tested and found to be free of the gene for Huntington’s disease, who stated that:

After 28 years of not knowing, it’s like being released from prison. To have a hope for the future . . . to be able to see my grandchildren. (Jerry E. Bishop and Michael Waldholz, 1990, p. 274).

Unfortunately, while knowledge can help us to perceive the human condition more clearly and to evaluate the results of our behavior, human beings unfortunately do not always act rationally. As J. Murphy observes (1982, p. 100), the ends that individuals accept as ultimate goals “are given by the passions and, at this level, reason is the slave of the passions.” Only a passion that takes into consideration the welfare of those yet to be born is justifiable in moral terms. It is the welfare of the entire phylogenetic continuum, not the of the individual alone, that should shape our passions and our morality.

Apart from the obvious outward physical differences which distinguish the diverse human breeding populations, behavioral tendencies which have major importance for determining the viability of civilization and for the better scientific understanding of the universe also seem to have a predominantly genetic basis. We do not here refer solely to intelligence, of enormous significance as all must surely concede that quality to be. The ability to direct one’s actions toward achieving long-term goals, rather than to yield to the siren call of instant gratification, is another of the many qualities that are of supreme importance to modern man. General physical health and the propensity for properly directed altruistic behavior are other desirable qualities which also have strong genetic roots. On the other hand, specific diseases, sociopathic behavior and many forms of mental illness similarly have a genetic basis, and call for the attention of eugenicists. The genetic basis of such behavioral traits is likely to be complex or polygenic, but the study of animal models as well as of human twins has shown that all biological characteristics have a genetic basis, and that the environment can only work on the material provided by heredity, occasionally modified by mutation.

The argument against eugenics is based on the clearly erroneous assumption that genes are spread evenly throughout human populations, or in more extremes cases, on the idea that no one gene is more desirable than another. Such views would imply a degree of genetic panmixia which could not have existed in evolutionary time; otherwise evolution could not have occurred. It has been said that when a species is reduced to a single subspecies (e.g. panmixia), it is nearing extinction. Long-term evolutionary survival is by way of speciation and this necessarily involves subspeciation. Evolution cannot occur unless “favorable” genes are segregated out from amongst “unfavorable” genetic formulae. The entire history of evolution from biological simplicity to biological complexity and from biological uniformity to biological diversity involves genetic segregation just as it involves genetic selection. Furthermore, human behavior is shaped by environmental forces operating on the genetically determined potential, and we should remember that even the capacity to learn from accumulated culture is genetically influenced.25

Examples of legislation that has been successfully introduced to suppress the utilization of genetic science can be found in many states. In some states, such as Wisconsin and Iowa, genetic screening as a basis of employment is illegal [Iowa Code Ann. 729-6 (West 1992), Wisconsin Statutes 111.372 (1991-1992)]; while a Louisiana Statute (La. Rev. Stat. #9: 122) rules that “a viable in vitro fertilized human ovum is a juridical person which shall not be intentionally destroyed?

It is entirely true that the opportunity to interfere with nature - in the wilful selection by parents, for example, of the sex of their offspring - could lead to serious social problems if foolishly applied; but on the whole, knowledge must be deemed always to be desirable, and the search for knowledge about human heredity should not be suppressed or discouraged at the whim of the scientific Luddites. How humankind chooses to use this knowledge is a sociological and philosophical problem, not an argument for suppressing knowledge. We are on the verge of a new phase in the history of genetics, one which has major implications for the possible future of mankind provided political forces do not prevent the utilization of this knowledge and that contemporary dysgenic processes do not deprive future generations of an adequate proportion of those very genes which make that possibility a reality.

Concluding Remarks

The genome project is clearly exposing the fallacious assumptions on which the egalitarian cult is based. The idea that the individuals that comprise any society - particularly a multi-racial society, which by definition will be genetically more heterogeneous than one comprising individuals who share a common ancestral heritage - could be of uniform biological potential is exposed as a fabrication, a logical absurdity. Equality before the law remains a realistic social goal, but equality of ability can never be a biological reality, except between identical twins. Some individuals - especially in a more heterogeneous society -will possess genetically determined mental and physical qualities which will enable them to be more creative, more productive, or physically more healthy than others, even when the cultural or environmental playing field is level. If that were not the case, there could have been no possibility of evolution. The belief that humankind could benefit from being levelled into a single subspecies also flouts the laws of evolution, since evolution is rooted in differentiation.

The need for eugenic intervention is today increasingly urgent due to the fact that human culture and human technology have blunted nature’ s biological pruning knife. At all times a degree of genetic selection is necessary if any breeding population, subspecies or even species is to survive, since mutations (mostly harmful) occur continuously. Medical intervention is unquestioningly humane when it assists those born with genetic handicaps to cope with them, or those who suffer from accidental handicaps to survive; but eugenic goals make it highly desirable that research aimed at advanced techniques of “genetic surgery” be developed to enable the substitution of healthy genes for deleterious genes. Too many individuals in contemporary society, of high genetic potential, now carry one or two undesirable genes to permit us to argue, as the early eugenicists did, that anyone with a known genetic defect should simply not reproduce. Yet research aimed at techniques for replacing faulty genes with healthy ones is the one area of study which anti-eugenicists most stringently oppose.

To foretell the future of eugenics, the question we must ask is: how will human societies react once the full truth about individual and group genetic ability becomes known? It is arguable that whatever happens will be the result of causal forces, not of “free will,” since there is no reason even to hypothecate the existence of non-causal forces in human decision-making, and competing “ethical” concepts are probably as causally determined as any other aspect of the real world. Unfortunately, nowhere is it written that a society’s ethical views or any other aspect of its cultural baggage should have eugenic value. Only in the long term can we say that dysfunctional ethico- cultural systems are doomed to extinction, simply because if they persist they will doom the biological communities which are guided by them. There is only one law in the universe: that which does not survive ceases to exist. Consequently, an ethic which has dysgenic implications will eventually eliminate the society which adheres to it. While altruism evolved as an evolutionary device that promoted the survival of the distinctive gene pool which gave rise to it, any population that adopts a perverted or dysgenic form of altruism - one which encourages a breeding community to breed disproportionately those of its members who are genetically handicapped rather than from those who are genetically favored, or which aids rival breeding populations to expand while restricting its own birth rate - is unlikely to survive into the indefinite future.

Once science can determine which individuals and populations have disproportionately high gene frequencies for advantageous traits, and which are handicapped by deleterious genetic qualities, societies which are prompted by a higher altruism dedicated to the wellbeing of future generations, rather to the sole gratification of the selfish needs of those who are currently living, will be able to effectively select eugenic over dysgenic reproduction. If true altruism prevails, the result will be eugenic decisions, made voluntarily and without coercion. By contrast, if the ethical level is low (a categorization in which I would include dysfunctional ethical systems, however ardently such devout but unrealistic value systems are held by the individual), or the altruistic drive is distorted into unnatural directions, then the choices made are likely to be dysgenic.

Timothy H. Goldsmith, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Biology at Yale University, has stated that “[T]he concept of morality’s producing the greatest good for the greatest number is consistent only when the interests of the individuals are very similar. This has probably frequently been the case with small homogeneous groups in competition with other groups; it is less obviously so when groups are large and heterogeneous.”27 He correctly surmises that evolution normally involves inter-species competition. However, even in the unnatural, highly heterogeneous human communities that are emerging today, the principle of “the greatest good for the greatest number” is still valid if we raise our horizons from the selfish horizons of our own generation to consider the wellbeing of that much vaster number of future generations of humanity yet to be born. It is their wellbeing that should concern us, not just the wellbeing of those with whom we share this crowded planet at the present time.

Forced, state-imposed eugenic systems are wisely feared by many well- intentioned people for good reason: human governmental bureaucracies seldom achieve the virtue anticipated by high-minded philosophers such as Plato, and tend too often to foster corruption and to permit unworthy individuals to seize positions of power and influence. Indeed, the leadership of most if not all nations, intellectual as well as political, appears to have currently fallen into the hands of individuals and pressure groups which promote dysgenic policies that match, in their impact upon humanity, the overall destruction of the ecosphere which is currently taking place around the world, and which few governments or interest groups seem capable of preventing. Possibly the best that we can hope for is that an intelligent and informed populace, freed from the distorted myth of biological egalitarianism and any belief in the near-divinity of humankind as either the “apple of God’s eye” or the supreme lord of the universe who can do no wrong, may exert a realistic and humane influence on public policy as to the critical problems today facing humanity.

J. Stan Rowe, in a final chapter to Planet Under Stress: The Challenge of Global Change (Editors, Constance Mungall and Digby J. McLaren, p.332) writes that if people are regarded as being the central reality of the universe

then the sole focus of ethical concerns will be their rights and values . . . but if things other than humans are of surpassing importance, as today’s events lead many of us to suspect, then a new purpose - Salvation of this Planet - is revealed . . . [science] has inadvertently opened a new chapter in the book of knowledge whose dazzling insights can change fundamental ideas about the planet/people relationship, about values, and about the way we know the world.

While the present writer shares the same concerns as Rowe, logic should make it perfectly clear to even the most anthropocentric of philosophers that the fate of mankind as a species requires that we recognize the evolutionary realities that govern the workings of the universe - a reality in which mankind plays only a very subordinate and minor role, and in which the laws governing survival reign supreme. Every generation is a genetic bottleneck, holding in its care the genetic and environmental heritage bequeathed to it by past generations. Nothing would seem more tragic to the present writer than the fact that much of the irretrievable harm that this generation is wreaking on both the biological and the non-biological character of the planet on which all life depends for its survival could be avoided if those who are altruistically motivated would only concentrate their attention on how their actions will impact on future generations. Those who are genuinely motivated by altruistic impulses need to extend their horizons to take into consideration not just the immediate welfare of our present generation but the greater good of that far greater number of individuals hopefully yet to come. Any species that adopts patterns of behavior that run counter to the forces that govern the universe is doomed to suffer a painful, harshly enforced and totally involuntary eugenic process of evolutionary reselection and readaptation - or an even more ’severe penalty, extinction.

FOOTNOTES

1 See The Mankind Quarterly, Volume XXXV Number 3 (Spring 1995) and Volume XXXV Number 4 (Summer 1995.

2 For an explanation of the extent o which misguided altruism -altruism that is directed beyond the limits of the individual’s own genetic breeding pool - can threaten the evolutionary process, and with it the very survival of humanity, see Garrett Hardin, The Limits of Altruism: An Ecologist’s View of Survival 1977, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, and subsequent books by the same author.

3 See Jordan’s War and the Breed, published in 1915, during the second year of European participation in World War I. This clearly reveals the vastly dysgenic effect of modern warfare.

4 Ibid. Jordan details the impact of World War I on the British intelligentsia. The British universities were emptied of their younger faculty members, who died in large numbers in the mud of Flanders. Typical of the impact was the story of the elite Rugby School, which normally had a body of some 600-700 pupils at any one time. In World War I over 600 were slain, mostly youths or young men, straight from school, unmarried and childless. In short, a number equivalent to the entire school body was eliminated in just four years of one of the most bloody wars history had ever recorded.

5 From the conclusion of his article “The Control of Evolution in Man,” published in The Eugenics Review, Vol. 50, No. 3, October 1958.

6 HER Vol 39 (1): pp. 1-123.

7 Roger Pearson, Shockley on Eugenics and Race, 1993, Scott-Townsend Publishers, Box 34070, NW Washington DC 20043. Introduction by Arthur R. Jensen.

8 Lay writers also are beginning to explore these subjects and make them understandable to the general public. Daniel Seligman, senior editor of Fortune, has published a highly readable book called A Question of Intelligence (1992) covering what scientists know and do not know about intelligence and why intelligence is so important to human beings. Although Seligman is not a scientist, the book received very positive reviews by scientists Ernest van den Haag, James Q. Wilson (1993), and Richard J. Herrnstein (1992). Writer Peter Brimelow (1993, 86) of Forbes magazine said that Seligman “defies one of the most powerful contemporary taboos” by reporting the importance of intelligence and its heritability. Scholar Charles Murray (1992, 63) stated that the Seligman book reveals “labyrinthine ramifications for our culture and our polity.”

9 New Brunswick: Transactions, 1995.

10 See Nancy Segal, “The Nature vs. Nurture Laboratory” in Research, July/August 1984.

11 See amongst other literature “Personality Similarity in Twins Reared Apart and Together,” By A. Tellegin, D.T. Lykken, T.J. Bouchard, K. J. Wilcox, N.L Segal and S. Rich, in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 54, No 6 (1988).

12 There is a mountain of literature dealing with twin studies, but a synopsis of the racial implications may be found in “Comment on the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study” by Michael Levin, published in Intelligence, Vol 19, 13-20 (1994).

13 An objection that the similarities between twins might be due to contact between twins prior to testing was raised by the dedicated biological egalitarianist T. J. Rose, in respect of a sample of Finnish twins, but this possibility has been fully considered by T. J. Bouchard and Matthew McGue (1990). One leading scholar engaged in twin research has observed that the determined effort of Lewontin, Rose and Kamin to demonstrate that individual human differences are not significantly influenced by genetic factors leads one to believe that their writing reflects their ideology and that findings in support of significant genetic influences would be threatening to their world view.

14 World population is currently increasing at the rate of some 97 million annually, and even assuming that the rate of increase will decline, it is estimated to reach 10 billion by the year 2050. The population of China, where strict attempts are being made to limit population growth, is currently 1.25 billion, but even assuming that government efforts to restrict population growth continue, the World watch Institute projects a Chinese population of 1.66 billion by the year 2045. Women in Africa have for some decades been averaging six live births per female, whereas in areas like northern Italy and east Germany the birthrate is far below replacement level. Whereas the population of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) was around 40 million when the area was first separated from India only 48 years ago, it is today more than 125 million. Needless to say, Bangladesh supports this population increase only as a result of massive aid from the countries of the Western world, whose share of the world’s population is annually declining. The population of India increases every five or six days by the total population of Europe’s oldest democracy, Iceland. The changing character of the human population is also reflected in disparities in the birthrate between the more successful members of industrialized countries and the less successful, who worldwide tend to produce more offspring. The population of native Europeans is actually declining, and it is anticipated that Europeans will eventually be largely replaced by increasingly massive immigration from Africa, Asia and the Far East.

15 See his publication, The Blood Groups of Jews, 1959

16 In their determination to ignore the traditional anthropometric terms which classify living populations along racial lines, Cavelli- Sforza and his co-authors have chosen to use purely geographical or national terminology, which actually has little to do with genetic realities in many parts of the modern world. Yet even though they are working with nonracial genetic markers which were chosen because they had no known evolutionary implications, the racial patterns that are revealed coincide very closely to the conclusion of traditional anthropologists. The argument about whether or not “races” exist has become purely a matter of semantics - of what exactly the debaters understand by the term “race.” Distinct gene pools and breeding populations have existed since soon after sexual reproduction first evolved; otherwise, there could have been no speciation and no evolution. If we accept the term “race” in its original sense, as referring to any group of people of essentially common ancestry, who as a result of mutation, genetic drift or evolutionary selection have come to share, to a recognizable extent, certain distinctive genetic patterns, the term presents no scientific difficulties whatsoever.

17 Where contemporary DNA and mitochondrial DNA theorists primarily differ from Coon and more traditional physical anthropologists is in assessing the antiquity of the race differences which distinguish the living populations of Homo sapiens. Coon and many paleontologists believe that surviving skeletal evidence indicates that some of the present-day racial characteristics, such as the Mongolian shovel-shaped incisor, were already present in pre-sapiens populations in that area and indicate either separate regional evolution of contemporary populations from pre-sapiens ancestors or at least significant interbreeding of expanding Homo sapiens populations with local pre-sapiens populations. Mitochondrial DNA enthusiasts in particular insist that early Homo sapiens populations maintained total racial separation, and did not crossbreed with females belonging to other subspecies of Homo when expropriating the territories of the latter. This raises the old dispute about evolutionary history of the Neanderthals (today regarded as sapiens because their disting
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The Concept of Heredity in Western Thought: Part One.
Pearson, Roger
Vol. 35, Mankind Quarterly, 04-01-1995, pp 229.
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The Concept of Heredity in Western Thought: Part Two.
by Roger Pearson
Vol. 35, Mankind Quarterly, 06-01-1995, pp 343
Social Engineering and the Social Sciences
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The concept of heredity in Western thought: Part three
Roger Pearson, Institute for the Study of Man
Vol. 36, Mankind Quarterly, 09-01-1995, pp 73.
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