Episode Transcript
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at shopify.com/work. shopify.com/work. Hi,
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I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and
0:46
CNN, HLN guy and current cable news
0:48
conscientious objector, I'm a former libertarian who
0:50
now sits comfortably on the left. Hi,
0:53
I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and
0:55
recovering lobbyist. But today I'm an
0:57
unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats
1:00
to democracy. And I'm producing. about
1:04
some of the really bad ideas that
1:06
have taken a hold of people who are
1:08
not necessarily bad. Today
1:11
I'm talking to the geneticist and
1:13
science writer and science communicator Adam
1:15
Rutherford about eugenics. A
1:19
bad idea but one that
1:21
has had and in some ways continues to
1:23
have a remarkable influence
1:26
on a lot of different people. Adam,
1:36
maybe we should start by just trying to define
1:39
what eugenics is but also what makes it
1:41
different because I think a lot
1:43
of people will be aware in many human
1:46
societies across the ages, in various
1:49
brutal and appalling ways, that there
1:51
has been a practice going
1:53
back to the ancient world to try and weed
1:56
out weakness, to select people for
1:58
certain kinds of strength. particularly military
2:01
strength, ancient Sparta, disabled children,
2:03
babies born and thought not
2:05
to be fit for civic
2:07
life, were left out to
2:09
die, healthy young people were encouraged to
2:12
get together and have kids. But
2:14
eugenics is something else. Is
2:17
the thing that makes it different, the
2:20
so-called scientific underpinning of it?
2:22
This is a essentially late
2:24
19th century idea. Is
2:26
that what makes it different from
2:29
a more widespread and unpleasant human
2:31
practice, which is thinking that you
2:33
should encourage the stronger to breed
2:35
together? Well, I'm not sure it is a difference
2:38
from what had preceded it as
2:40
an idea, as you described, the
2:43
attempts to control reproduction in order
2:45
to nurture a
2:47
healthier society or better
2:50
quality people as it was often
2:52
framed. I think that what happens in the
2:54
late 19th century is in the
2:57
years after the origin of
2:59
species and evolution by natural selection
3:01
being formalized by Darwin, you get
3:03
what I call the
3:06
scientifically of an old idea.
3:11
That turning point, I think, has been
3:13
crucial to all my work, which is that how new
3:17
scientific ideas become co-opted or
3:19
marshalled into pre-existing ideologies. It
3:22
gets a new name in
3:25
1883, but I think that eugenics
3:28
inherently is a way of thinking more than
3:30
anything else. It predates the
3:32
word and it predates the 19th century. As far
3:35
as we can tell, throughout
3:37
cultures around the world, in pretty
3:40
much all cultures, there have been versions
3:42
of what we now call eugenics through,
3:45
as you say, selective breeding.
3:49
Plato describes that it never
3:51
comes to pass, but the utopian idea of
3:53
having particular categories of
3:55
men and women should be mated,
3:57
should be encouraged to procreate. at
4:00
marriage festivals, annual marriage festivals. He
4:03
talks about that in Republic. That
4:05
never comes to pass. There's Plutarch talks
4:08
about the Spartans doing exactly the same
4:10
thing. We don't really know whether that
4:12
happened or not, because there's very few
4:14
sources on it, but this sort of
4:16
militaristic selection process to purge the weak
4:19
from society becomes a sort
4:21
of mainstay of that type
4:23
of eugenic style thinking. We think
4:25
that it happened in Rome. Seneca
4:27
describes the purging of the
4:29
weak and the drowning of
4:32
babies who are deformed. So
4:34
there are dozens of examples
4:36
of infanticide and deliberate
4:40
designed marriage partnerships in order to
4:42
nurture a better quality, quality, I'm
4:44
using air quotes for that, of
4:47
society. So there's
4:50
another thing which we need to sort of
4:52
talk about upfront, which is that there's a
4:54
semantic argument about eugenics which continues to this
4:56
day. And I think a lot of they're
4:58
quite dull arguments because ultimately they're
5:00
about whether the word eugenics means
5:02
something specific or not. And to
5:04
a certain degree, I slightly don't
5:06
care. You get a lot of
5:08
people who are controversialists or sort
5:10
of philosophical posers who come in
5:12
and say, well, we don't mate
5:14
randomly, right? We choose who we
5:17
have children with. We choose people who
5:19
tend to be in the same socioeconomic
5:21
demographic, who have similar levels of cognitive
5:23
abilities, social class, and blah, blah, blah.
5:25
We want our children to be free
5:27
of suffering. Are these eugenics
5:29
practices? Well, if your definition of
5:33
eugenics is so broad that it includes
5:36
actually choosing to get married and
5:38
choosing partners to have sex with,
5:40
then sure, whatever. I don't care. I
5:43
think that the formalization of eugenics in
5:45
the 19th century and the definition I
5:47
sort of try to latch onto is
5:50
that this is a top-down
5:52
state imposed sanctioning
5:54
of reproductive rights, which
5:57
as we've been talking about has existed as a way
5:59
of. a mode of thinking throughout
6:01
human culture and continues to exist to
6:03
this day, but it becomes formalized in
6:06
the 19th century. And then
6:08
it is that it is the development of those ideas
6:10
in various countries around the world, which is the sort
6:12
of eugenics that I focus on. One of the things
6:14
we're interested in in this series is why
6:17
certain bad ideas take hold at particular
6:19
times and get adopted by people who
6:21
aren't obviously bad. Some of the people
6:23
who adopted eugenics were very
6:25
bad, and we might come on to some of those,
6:27
but what's extraordinary about it at
6:30
the end of the 19th century and the
6:32
beginning of the 20th century is the relative
6:34
ubiquity of the idea that eugenics
6:37
projects, eugenics societies, people were
6:39
encouraged to join talking
6:42
groups, which was to talk about ways
6:44
in which this could be put
6:46
into practice. And presumably two
6:48
things were going on here, one of which
6:51
is what you call a scientific application of
6:53
something that's already existed, both genetic understanding such
6:55
as it was back then and also the
6:57
impact of Darwinism. And then
6:59
the other thing is what were
7:02
people afraid of? That's one of the questions you always
7:04
have to ask. What is the thing that this was
7:06
tapping into? What was it channeling? If
7:08
we just do the science application first, the
7:10
late 19th century, what was it that the
7:13
people who were pushing this found in
7:15
Darwin and also in their understanding of
7:17
how heredity worked? So
7:19
my understanding is that Galton, for instance,
7:21
he read Darwin, Origin of Species, and
7:23
he was particularly taken by the chapter
7:25
on animal breeding. So he thought there's
7:27
something about what, again, is a very,
7:30
very common practice, didn't require modern science
7:32
for people to understand some of the
7:34
basics of animal breeding. But something
7:36
about Darwin's account persuaded him that this
7:38
could be applied in a scientific or
7:41
pseudo scientific way to human beings. So
7:43
what was it that someone like
7:45
Galton saw in Darwin that
7:47
made him think, ha, we
7:49
can do this now in a way that has scientific
7:52
underpinning? Yeah, that's
7:54
exactly right. We mustn't forget that Galton was Darwin's
7:57
Half cousin. So they shared one grant. Father
8:00
and and he was deeply an armored with
8:02
Darwin on the and the notion that there
8:04
was genius in their family of caught you
8:07
know the don't Charles Darwin was not the
8:09
first great Darwin and Nicholson's were very successful
8:11
branch of that families as well and he
8:13
married into the Wedge Woods and the cases
8:16
and yet they're gives us a little the
8:18
world by but that still leaves was an
8:20
inside can cause. Tools married his
8:23
first cousin but whoop whoop ass
8:25
pass for another conversation. So gotten
8:27
is interested in the in the
8:29
selection of of particular qualities within
8:31
families and and that that becomes
8:33
of his first book Currency Genius
8:36
or In in which he deals
8:38
with. Mostly intellectual pursuits and
8:40
the and the the heredity of
8:42
specific intellectual characteristics in in families.
8:44
So animal breeding. It is used
8:47
as an analogy throughout the pre
8:49
Darwinian era through but you know,
8:51
preach enix as a model we
8:53
can change and we deliberately select
8:55
animals for particular characteristics. And then
8:57
you As you as you quite
8:59
rightly pointed out the first chapter,
9:01
the Origin Species know about natural
9:04
selection at all. It's about artificial
9:06
selection through breeding. The law about
9:08
yet pigeons and. And what? Darwin is
9:10
doing Enough first shots or is demonstrating the
9:12
mutability. Of. Organisms in particular
9:15
method for breeding which sets
9:17
up the idea of. Percent.
9:19
Apartments hospital Selection when she said this
9:21
happens in nature as well, such. So.
9:24
That the connection with farming
9:27
and breeding predates godson. But.
9:29
Then is used as the as as
9:31
one set of overarching analogy with what
9:34
we should be doing with humans if
9:36
humans are animals and can change over
9:38
generational time through selection as we have
9:41
done with cheap and cows and plants
9:43
to the last ten thousand years. and
9:45
why shouldn't we be doing the same
9:47
with with humans in order to create
9:50
a better stock? Recently somewhere that Darwin
9:52
use a better stock of the British
9:54
people, there are many reasons why it
9:56
said it's a fallacious argument. Impasse will
9:59
get into. Later.
10:01
He could because they tend to
10:03
be that they quite scientifically and
10:05
agriculturally interesting within. The second part
10:07
of the question was about what
10:09
people do people see? It will
10:11
ai again. This kind of relates
10:13
to why. Who. Is sort
10:15
of, almost again, a semantic argument
10:18
about what Eugenics. Actually
10:20
is what you see is that
10:23
the latching on this new or
10:25
sort of very authoritarian view of
10:27
of of how society should be
10:30
crafted. I describe it in in
10:32
one of my books as being
10:34
it's it's radical. A
10:37
In order to maintain the status quo says
10:39
be simultaneously radical and and conservative I which
10:41
is which I think is an interesting phenomenon
10:43
in In A Sounds. Pretty.
10:46
Equally mile I, I don't It was
10:48
the Victorian era more tumultuous than others
10:50
I ate it to the I think
10:52
all eras tend to be quite tumultuous.
10:54
Maybe a hundred years. Will look back
10:56
and in the first two decades and
10:59
twenty first century. and thank God that
11:01
was a crazy time. But you've got
11:03
the Industrial Revolution. Ongoing. You
11:05
got. British. Empire reaching it's it's
11:07
peak at the beginning of the Edwardian
11:10
periods at you've got mass immigration, urbanization,
11:12
a much more visible poor, you've got
11:14
the the repeal of the to the
11:16
Pool or said as the state is
11:18
taking a much more active role in
11:21
the in the protection of most deprived
11:23
members of society so there's a lot
11:25
of change hopping in Victorian Britain it
11:27
to as the in the Eighty Nine
11:29
she's got the ball war where where
11:32
the the purses get their asses handed
11:34
to them by what a deemed. An
11:36
inferior race a Scientific racism
11:38
is is pretty much universally
11:40
held. That's white people are
11:42
superior to other categories of
11:45
of people from around the
11:47
world. So days lots of
11:49
public fretting, About why
11:51
barry societal ills including
11:53
difficulties an empire. Ah
11:56
are occurring. And
11:58
I think. The. The Austin
12:00
Societies often turn to the
12:03
authorities of science. For. The
12:05
perceived authority of science. At
12:07
times like this. To. Say he
12:09
will you enough and six fix this.
12:11
You can fix that. You've come up
12:14
with a new theory I on a
12:16
story appealing because it says that's. There's.
12:18
A Biological. There's a much more significant
12:21
biological components to social ills, and therefore
12:23
we have a sort of tenable that
12:25
a thing that we can latch onto.
12:28
It's biology rather than society that is
12:30
causing these problems. Or at least we're
12:32
looking to biology would listen to science
12:35
as a potential solution to it. But.
12:37
I think that's one of the reasons
12:39
why eugenics takes off and becomes, as
12:41
you say, not universally, but very very
12:43
popular across across social and political spectrum.
12:45
What one of the things I think
12:47
is interesting is he gets. The.
12:49
Overarching idea is very similar all around
12:52
the world where eugenics is either explores
12:54
or enacted the it regional differences and
12:56
I expect we'll come on to eye
12:59
on my my work focuses on on
13:01
on the west so. Did
13:03
emergence of the idea and I'm in
13:06
the Uk. It's transfer to America and
13:08
the transfer from America to Nazi Germany
13:10
is what were my focuses. But I'm
13:13
what you see is similar but different.
13:15
Implementation. In. The
13:17
Uk very much about class
13:20
in America, very much about
13:22
immigration. And in Germany it's
13:24
very much of it's very medicalized
13:26
on been broadly generalizing. Butts.
13:28
You see these regional distinctions which
13:30
are born of what? those. Societies.
13:33
Nice coaches are most concerned with at
13:35
those times. I'm. One of things I
13:38
think is true even in the early twentieth
13:40
century is the people have started to notice
13:42
something that they continue to notice to this
13:44
day which is with certain. Social.
13:46
Trends for instance, the education
13:49
of women with certain groups
13:51
being given. Social.
13:53
Other advantages and privileges. They.
13:56
Have an understandable tendency when they
13:58
can to have fewer children. And
14:00
so the fear that underpins it and
14:02
wouldn't things are unquestionably attic drove eugenics
14:05
at the beginning of the twentieth century.
14:07
Was. The belief that
14:10
absent eugenics, A forces
14:12
at work in the world that would. Be.
14:14
Disastrous for intellectual plus cold cultural
14:17
elites because well, they're doing their
14:19
stuff, they're not having kids and
14:21
either the pool or non whites
14:23
who immigrants who whoever it is
14:25
again to out breed them and
14:28
that almost global picture which I
14:30
think does make it a bit
14:32
different from Spartan. Eugenics.
14:34
Whatever days. Which is that sense? that there are
14:36
these social trends at work in the world which
14:39
we can now see. It
14:41
self defeating for certain kinds of progress
14:43
to be allowed to happen without this
14:45
to back it up because what you
14:47
will get his people progressing out of
14:50
reproduction, leaving reproduction to the people that
14:52
we don't want to reproduce. And
14:54
I think that does cut across the different
14:56
places or what. What is the fear? is
14:58
it about race In some places it is
15:00
about class in other places. Is it about
15:02
physically adequacy? But it's a fair is being
15:04
out. Bread is Matt. Yes, I and I
15:06
think it's it is all of those things
15:08
and as regional differences. But I think it's
15:11
always about power. To Eugenics isn't the ultimate
15:13
expression of hedge Munich pie. it is. And
15:15
and that's why that's the both. We have
15:17
to do something radical in order to maintain
15:19
the status quo it is developed by. And
15:21
I don't mean to be crude about this,
15:23
but it's developed by wealthy. White at
15:25
Western European elites and those are the
15:27
people that latch onto this because they
15:29
see these threats. Now there is. It
15:32
is a specific channel in this which
15:34
I think is interesting, which is that
15:36
within the eugenics movement, sit at particularly
15:38
in the Uk, also in Germany, less
15:41
so in America, but there is a
15:43
particular set of citation of Ancient Greece
15:45
and Rome and to a lesser extent
15:47
Ancient Egypt and I. I speculated in
15:50
the past as to why this might
15:52
be. Emily These these are
15:54
my speculations and and and they're there for discussion
15:56
and and writing papers about we have on which
15:58
I may well be wrong. But I
16:00
think a big part of it
16:03
in the Uk is the intellectual
16:05
and political elites. Who will
16:07
go to? Phoenix. For schools
16:09
and two universities to universal war on of
16:12
with one of us have our you just
16:14
heartsick. In fact that was when the months
16:16
at a right now because could capers as
16:18
she gets of quite lightly with eugenics belts?
16:20
it doesn't And of course I'm at U
16:23
C L A which is the heartland of
16:25
this idea of a whoop whoop will come
16:27
back to our. Butts. There's
16:29
a great veneration of the classics,
16:31
or almost all of the key
16:33
players. Go. To. Eaten
16:36
Hero when sister one one one of
16:38
the public schools and then go off
16:40
to walk spurs were they read mass
16:42
and classics or history and classics. I
16:44
think that many of the the specific
16:46
people that I fi I focused on
16:49
in my work. Who tend
16:51
to be more scientific, them political
16:53
because I'm i'm sorry, I'm working
16:55
scientist. They have a very unsophisticated
16:57
understanding, or they appear to display
16:59
a very on Ciskei son standing
17:01
of the classics whilst being very
17:04
much a intellectually reverend towards them.
17:06
I think they read the title
17:08
page of Decline and Fall of
17:10
Roman Empire guess given and didn't
17:12
go much further than that say
17:14
that the notion that Rome fell
17:17
as a result of exactly the
17:19
things he said. In your
17:21
question. The. Decadence, upper classes
17:23
stopping having to, they stop having
17:25
kids and the enemies it gates
17:27
and Rome topples because because a
17:29
load of immigrants are having tons
17:31
of kids and we forgot to
17:33
reproduce while we were being so
17:35
clever and to bought and that
17:37
seems to be a permanent. Phantom.
17:40
Menace that all the way for and enigmas
17:42
as to the states or formalized as great
17:44
replacement theory in the Nineteen twenties and
17:47
that is part of the public discourse today.
17:49
that is very much. I argue that that's
17:51
this is the way of thinking of eugenics
17:53
and is that isn't once you just become
17:56
toxic. I did. The idea, did not go
17:58
away, just the word became. Click
18:00
say that threat continues.
18:02
Western civilization, whatever at
18:04
his seems to be.
18:07
A. Have under constant threat since
18:09
about the fourth century as
18:12
a result of exactly this
18:14
phenomenon that we in power
18:16
and not having enough children
18:18
and other people who are
18:20
not part of our intellectual
18:23
and cultural. Heritage or
18:25
having forty many, it doesn't feel
18:27
like a robust argument to me
18:29
because. White. Western cultural civilization
18:31
has been the dominant one in the
18:33
White West for the last. I
18:36
don't know. Couple of thousand years it seems to be
18:38
doing fine as far as I can tell. Did.
18:40
The scientific underpinning of the end of
18:42
the nineteenth century allow them therefore to
18:45
make this argument in terms with didn't
18:47
look like they were self interested or
18:49
about power or propping up existing structures
18:51
of power. You could dress it up
18:54
in the language of darwinism or something
18:56
else as a universal ferry. This is
18:58
just a track. thrive. This is the
19:00
way of the world. But what did
19:03
they didn't get wrong. So so sad.
19:05
Suffocation The reasons behind it In the
19:07
sense that these people were scientists and
19:09
they had some understanding. But they
19:11
seem to have fundamentally misunderstood at
19:13
least some of the ways in
19:15
which you could extrapolate. For instance,
19:18
what Darwin might say about animal
19:20
breeding to human societies. What
19:22
is the thing? You think they fundamentally
19:24
got wrong and to date with it?
19:26
willful misunderstanding? Or was it they just
19:28
missed it? I think are different
19:31
elements to the bits of the science
19:33
which don't add up and I think
19:35
it's really interesting example of how in
19:37
this process in the nineteenth century where
19:39
someone's becomes much more formalized and we
19:41
develop many of the models of how
19:43
scientific information is disseminated. Journals
19:45
and. Kind of
19:48
consensus and comes formalize from the
19:50
some gentlemen scientists have a idling
19:52
away collecting Beatles and nineteenth century
19:54
and and before and becomes a
19:57
formal or intellectual pursuits one of
19:59
the. Thing. Like I
20:01
believe when I think is a lie
20:03
you said it is. Science is a
20:06
methodology which is a above the grumpy
20:08
world's of politics and up and opinions
20:10
and philosophers and and and the humanities.
20:12
Because week's work to a higher standards
20:14
were all methodology has evolved and has
20:17
been designed. To. Remove the
20:19
intellectual. And. Cultural baggage
20:21
is that we all have rights. It's
20:23
It's a complete section, of course, and
20:25
I often get into arguments with but
20:28
eighty Physicists and engineers who really, really
20:30
truly believe this. Box. Sign
20:32
occurs when society and you a
20:34
carries with it's a cultural baggage
20:36
is of the people performing at
20:38
Save You got a bunch of
20:41
people who are political and cultural
20:43
elites deciding that this is a
20:45
branch of science which is new
20:47
and stuff for interesting, but it's
20:49
also above the threshold of of
20:51
intellectual or personal. Psychological
20:53
biases. What? They do
20:56
is they just reinforce them completely.
20:58
The perfect example is that the
21:00
birth of Eugenics with goals and
21:02
himself. who's attempts in his first
21:04
it's before you Jennings But. Why
21:08
Jennings But in his book currents
21:10
Genius he attempts to see to
21:12
apply statistical norms and calculations to
21:14
the process by which the real
21:17
observation which is that people within
21:19
the same families tend to succeed.
21:21
I lead levels at the same
21:23
professions so he looks. A classical
21:26
composers and conductors and politicians and
21:28
lawyers And and see that this
21:30
these these patterns of great men
21:32
he's very is really not interested
21:34
in women at all. but these
21:36
patterns of great men run through
21:38
these families and he tries to
21:41
apply new statistical techniques, many of
21:43
which he has developed himself in
21:45
order to show that these things
21:47
are immutable, a charitable characteristics which
21:49
are therefore biology and not society.
21:52
The. And the kind of. The funny thing about them
21:54
is that he just cannot see his own. Inherent.
21:56
Bias is his own cultural biases within
21:58
months. How he does. men are
22:01
geniuses is based on his opinion,
22:03
the opinions of others and obituaries.
22:07
So his data is literally
22:09
opinion and he seems so stunningly
22:14
blinded by these cultural norms
22:17
that I find it quite
22:19
amusing. It's much less amusing when you see
22:21
the emergence of the same sort of willing
22:25
blindness in the 20th century which
22:27
you continue to see as the
22:30
ideas develop. And also today I
22:32
do a series of lectures at UCL which in which
22:35
I say that all science is
22:37
political and all data is biased. And
22:39
they're slight provocations but they're provocations because
22:41
I want to show, I want scientists
22:44
to stop thinking that what they do
22:46
is somehow just this
22:49
pure empirical data is neutral.
22:51
It's what you dirty philosophers
22:54
and politicians and humanities people do with the
22:56
data that we generate which is where things
22:58
go wrong. It's not like that. All science
23:01
is political always has been and always will
23:03
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And that Mint mobile.com. This
24:20
was a severe a web people were applying go in
24:22
and lots of different ways and different. Contacts.
24:25
And. He. The willfully or
24:27
inadvertently misrepresenting what are we didn't
24:29
evolution meant and what it stood
24:32
Folks and particularly sir are raising
24:34
the randomness from trying to over
24:36
to terminate Spencer in The Survival
24:38
of the Fittest or. Genuine.
24:42
Misunderstandings, Like Lamarckian versions of privacy,
24:44
the idea that inherited characteristics can come from
24:46
what you do new our lifetimes, your hard
24:48
work, and you in a you can pass
24:50
on that to your kids and so on
24:52
to how much of this is informed by
24:55
that. There are lots of different ways in
24:57
which people. Take the Darwinian
24:59
account of evolution which doesn't really in
25:01
itself I think provide much fuel for
25:03
this because it's over such a long
25:06
period. These out random mutations to this
25:08
is not something that is engineered, it's
25:10
the randomness. It is the fact that
25:12
the genetic as we now know the
25:15
genetic mutations are what drive this and
25:17
at that period people want to impose
25:19
on that something much more structured. Something.
25:22
Much less random, more controllable.
25:25
But. In so doing got it wrong and the
25:27
said misunderstood I mean they they tried to make.
25:30
For. Scientific story of evolution
25:33
into something more seemingly malleable.
25:35
And it's just not. I
25:37
mean the time frames around for start on my. Well.
25:40
that's stephanie true and i think that
25:42
if one of the fundamental problems with
25:44
in these republicans standing in that the
25:46
transfer of evolutionary theory to non evolutionary
25:48
biologists that's a slightly different issue i
25:50
think time scales and science always problematic
25:52
because people operate at different times death
25:54
yet physicists as the the think and
25:56
nanoseconds or billions of years and people
25:58
like me thinking tens of thousands
26:00
of years, whereas normal people think in
26:03
one to two generations. I
26:05
think that's a slight side issue. There's a
26:08
chunk of the history of science which is
26:10
semi-important here, which is that evolution by natural
26:12
selection is first outlined in 1858, in
26:16
fact, a year before the
26:18
origin of species. I do
26:20
think it has a revolutionary
26:22
moment. In general, I'm opposed
26:24
to the concept of post-talk
26:26
intellectual revolutions, but things were
26:28
different before and
26:30
after. But it's a
26:32
long time before that idea becomes either
26:35
understood well or
26:37
formalised with a mechanism. And
26:39
for the next 30 years,
26:41
really up until the beginning of the 20th
26:43
century, the mechanism by
26:45
which natural selection actually occurs
26:48
is not understood. And Darwin was
26:50
very Lamarckian until he died. It
26:53
really comes in the 1890s. Francis Galton is part
26:56
of this work, as is
26:58
August Weisman, German evolutionary biologist. And
27:00
it should be said, Galton
27:03
was not Lamarckian. Yes, that is right.
27:05
But they really didn't know what was
27:07
being transferred from generation to generation. And
27:09
so Darwin had already proposed there was
27:11
a specific mechanism, gemules in plants by
27:13
which they could acquire the characteristics and
27:16
they would be passed on. That
27:18
isn't what happens. It is
27:20
the formulation that this concept of
27:22
what genes doesn't become described, the
27:25
concept of units of inheritance, which become
27:28
known as genes doesn't, that doesn't happen
27:30
until 1900, 1901. But it
27:32
is the recognition, primarily by Galton and
27:34
Weisman, that evolution occurs
27:37
in individuals in populations.
27:40
So it is the transfer, it
27:42
is the frequency of particular versions
27:44
of units of inheritance, we now
27:47
call genes, that allows
27:49
evolution to happen. And
27:51
this leads on to what I think
27:53
is the most important bit in the
27:56
politicization of the science of evolutionary thought
27:58
and genetics, because it is... Mendel
28:00
and the rediscovery of Mendel's work
28:02
where he effectively has identified the
28:05
concept of the gene. You
28:07
know, we all learn this at high school when he's measuring his bee
28:09
plants in the 1860s, but that work
28:11
is written in German and isn't very cited until
28:13
it gets translated into English in 1900. And all
28:16
of a sudden, you've got
28:18
the actual mechanism by which
28:20
natural selection can occur. So that's
28:22
the great fusion of these two
28:24
ideas. Genetics is born, evolution by
28:26
natural selection as 40 years old.
28:28
And over the next decade or
28:30
so, mostly at UCL and Cambridge,
28:32
and some in the States, those
28:34
two ideas are fused together. And
28:36
that's where contemporary evolutionary biology
28:38
comes from. But the problem is
28:41
that Mendel's work was immediately latched
28:44
onto by the eugenicists who have
28:46
this very hereditary view, which
28:48
is that nature, i.e.
28:51
genetics, is more important than
28:53
nurture. And by the
28:55
way, it's Goldson who comes up with
28:57
the phrase nature versus nurture. But particularly
29:00
the American eugenicists grab
29:03
hold of Mendel and go, well, now we've
29:05
got units of selection, we've now got genes,
29:07
we now know the biological
29:10
unit, the molecules that
29:12
are being passed from parent to
29:15
child in families. And therefore, we
29:18
can attribute behavioral characteristics as
29:20
well as physical characteristics onto
29:23
these units of selection genes.
29:25
And therefore, we have
29:27
a pivot on which eugenics policies can
29:30
be enacted. Now that didn't really happen
29:32
in the UK, partly for nerdy reasons
29:34
that the scientists involved people like Cole
29:36
Pearson, Ronald Fisher, thought that the stats
29:39
being generated by the Americans, mostly at
29:41
Cold Spring Harbor, led by Charles Davenport,
29:43
they just didn't see that they
29:46
thought their experiments were crap. And
29:48
they were. But it was
29:50
that bit of the science-ification that occurred in
29:52
the States, where we go, We've
29:55
got genes. we've got genes for eye colour. we've got
29:57
genes for hair colour, all that sort of stuff that
29:59
we learned. At. The School.
30:02
Which. Incidentally mostly come from the
30:04
eugenic slabs of in the states
30:06
and incidentally are not very true.
30:09
But. They just go. We got physical
30:11
characteristics which have genes which therefore
30:13
can be are subject to selection
30:16
but also baby ones such as.
30:18
Seafaring. Thus, or anxiety
30:20
or depression or sexual proclivities,
30:23
All any characteristic which falls
30:25
into the category of stuff
30:27
that is either desirable are
30:29
undesirable. There's a gene for
30:31
it, and therefore, We.
30:33
Have this this pivot on
30:35
which potential selection against or
30:38
for those characteristics. Can.
30:40
Be enacted, And. It's
30:42
just not that that's not how biology works.
30:44
and they do. They just were unwilling to
30:46
see that it was. It's kind of obvious
30:48
to us now, but I think it might
30:50
have be more obvious. I think it could
30:53
have been obvious to them then, but a
30:55
their political and cultural biases. With such that
30:57
they were, I'm willing to acknowledge it. Is.
31:00
The basic failure on Sunday on their
31:02
part here that they simply. True.
31:04
To straight line from the.
31:07
Genetic. Basis to the behavior that
31:09
they wanted to select for the sea
31:12
this has a gene or is the
31:14
the fundamental failure hit The failure to
31:16
recognize that what produces change over time
31:18
is mutations are what they want to
31:21
do is select for the thing that
31:23
they want and then sort of perpetuate
31:25
this going forward was actually it is
31:27
a much more mutable story by definition
31:30
and so what you're trying to do
31:32
strip out the thing that drives it.
31:35
Will. i think i think you earlier
31:37
have identified one of the problems wait
31:39
what with that failing to observe the
31:41
mutability of genes which is that time
31:43
scale right and say see a tough
31:45
time scale just doesn't allow for us
31:47
to see evolution happening either you're single
31:49
or a few generations so in terms
31:52
of changing structure of society me we
31:54
could that mean you could set up
31:56
a plan where we'd definitely change the
31:58
structure of society and We will record
32:00
this podcast in a thousand years time
32:02
and we will have seen that complete
32:04
structural change. Great. We see
32:07
shorter time span changes occurring. We
32:09
see selection for disease resistance
32:12
over shorter time spans. We see the classic example
32:14
that we always, people like me always give is
32:18
the very rapid adoption
32:21
of lactase persistence. So
32:23
the ability to digest
32:25
milk after weaning, which
32:27
we see emerge sort
32:29
of six or 7,000 years ago in Europe
32:31
in dairy farming. And it
32:33
spreads very quickly and enables us to
32:36
process milk after we've been
32:38
breastfed. But when people
32:40
like me say very rapidly, I'm
32:43
talking about a minimum
32:45
of a few centuries, but more
32:47
like several thousand years. And
32:49
so that timescale that you identified is
32:51
really a big issue at this time.
32:53
But I think that the more
32:56
significant concern, and
32:58
this is again is particularly for the American
33:00
eugenicists who really latched onto this
33:03
idea. Seafaringness does run
33:05
in families. Of
33:07
course it does. People, less so in
33:09
the modern era, but people
33:12
who sail ships, their children often sail
33:14
ships as well. People at the
33:16
bottom end of society, so who
33:18
are prone to afflictions that
33:20
are associated with poverty, name
33:23
many of them, alcoholism, specific diseases.
33:25
Almost all diseases affects the poor
33:27
much more than they do the
33:29
wealthy. Yet they run
33:32
in families because the single most heritable
33:34
characteristic that we can identify in human
33:36
beings is money,
33:39
wealth. So
33:41
if wealth correlates significantly with
33:45
particular characteristics which are either desirable
33:47
or undesirable, then you
33:50
will see these things running in families.
33:53
But that idea is
33:56
taught to us as geneticists. Steve Jones said
33:58
that, he was my old... to
34:00
still teachers at UCLA, I was an undergraduate
34:02
with him. That's week one of introduction to
34:05
evolutionary genetics. And it seems so obvious that
34:07
I can say it to you now, but
34:10
I think a lot of people don't recognize that.
34:13
So as a geneticist in the modern era, I
34:15
don't discount the importance of genetics at all.
34:18
I'm not a blank Slater. Genetics are super
34:20
important, but they're important in
34:22
the environmental context in which you're
34:24
raised. And I think the
34:26
hereditarians and the eugenicists then and
34:28
to this day think
34:31
that the nature side, the
34:33
genetics, the inherent unchangeable aspect
34:36
of human characteristics, behavior, and
34:38
society is more important and
34:40
dominant over the cultural. And
34:42
I think that what's emerged in the 20th century
34:44
is that that's, well, A, one of
34:46
the most difficult bits of biology to one, human
34:49
biology to one pig, but B,
34:51
it's also just not very true.
34:54
There's a little, I want to just say
34:56
this very briefly, because when I get into
34:58
these types of arguments with more hereditarian or
35:00
more racist thinkers, they often
35:02
throw out the stat of heritability. But
35:05
it's a heritability is a terrible word,
35:07
which doesn't describe what it sounds like,
35:09
because it sounds like inheritance. It sounds
35:11
like heritable. But that is, it's a
35:14
specific and scientific term. Biologists,
35:16
I often say, very bad at naming
35:18
things. They either give complex things, simple
35:20
names, or relatively straightforward
35:23
things, ridiculously complicated names. Whereas physicists will
35:25
say, there's a mathematical conjecture out there,
35:27
which we've measured and modeled, and we'll
35:29
call it a black hole. And
35:32
everyone goes, black holes are
35:34
cool, right? Or big bang. That's
35:36
a good name. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It wasn't
35:38
big. And it wasn't a bang. It's a
35:40
good name. But we go. It
35:43
turns out that genes don't get inherited uniquely.
35:46
It depends on how closely related, physically close
35:48
they are on chromosomes to other genes. So
35:50
we will call this linkage
35:53
disequilibrium. You know, that doesn't help
35:55
anyone whatsoever. Or they say that
35:58
in a The
36:00
difference between the maximum and the minimum
36:02
variance in a particular characteristic can be
36:04
we can observe and measure how much
36:06
of that is genetic and how much
36:08
of that is environmental and we'll call
36:11
it heritability. And
36:14
so in my experience, 90% of people
36:16
who say, who use heritability as an
36:18
argument for why things are more
36:20
biologically determined than culturally, they don't actually
36:22
know what heritable means. I actually want
36:24
to bypass the Nazis here because as
36:26
I said at the beginning, one of
36:29
these were interested in is these
36:31
ideas take hold not just among bad people,
36:34
but particularly in the first couple
36:37
of decades of the 20th century among very
36:39
respectable people. As you said, Galton is the
36:41
villain of this story and he's also the
36:43
hero in some aspects of
36:45
this story. But I'm particularly interested in then the
36:47
versions of it now that you touched on at
36:49
the beginning. You said that eugenics,
36:51
as you want to use the term,
36:54
is this top-down sort of society-wide project
36:56
in which elites try to construct a
36:58
version of a society that suits their
37:00
interest that's simultaneously radical and conservative. You
37:03
can see a bit of that in the world that we live in now,
37:05
but I think not on the scale that you saw it 100 years ago.
37:08
What you do see a lot of in the world
37:11
that we live now is something more bottom-up. So you
37:13
might not want to call it eugenics, but
37:16
it's capable of having society-wide implications.
37:19
I think the obvious instance of
37:21
this is selective
37:23
abortion for sex in
37:26
many parts of the world. Once
37:28
ultrasound made it possible, and particularly in China
37:30
under the one-child policy, but by no means
37:32
just in China, where there is
37:34
a strong social preference for a boy rather than
37:36
a girl, and when you can
37:38
identify that early enough, you can
37:40
get highly selective abortion
37:43
that produces an enormous surplus
37:46
of boys. Now, I don't think any elite
37:49
would want to design a society like that
37:51
unless they were thinking of engaging in a
37:54
war where you need tens of millions of
37:56
boys, men, young men to serve as soldiers.
37:58
It produces huge imbalances. problem in
38:00
China. It's a real problem in India. There
38:02
are too many young men and not enough
38:05
young women. Is it wrong to
38:07
sort of fold that into the broader category
38:10
of what we've just been talking about, to
38:12
call it a form of eugenics? I'm
38:15
not sure what the answer to that is. I'm
38:17
genuinely curious. Do you want to put that to
38:20
one side? Or do you
38:22
want to see this as part of a single story
38:24
of how human beings can use knowledge
38:26
and understanding to create these undesirable,
38:29
to put it mildly, social consequences?
38:32
I think it's a very valid question
38:34
to ask. I think it's important to
38:36
ask this question. Referring
38:38
back to the early, I think the first answer, I
38:41
don't much care for it being a semantic
38:44
argument about whether this is or isn't eugenics
38:46
because I don't think it helps us to
38:48
try and understand or
38:51
pass the significance of the ideas being
38:53
actually debated. There's two different things there
38:56
that you mentioned. The first is reproductive
38:58
technologies, which were mostly invented by human
39:00
genetics labs in the second half of
39:03
the 20th century, including my own, many
39:05
of which were eugenics laboratories until
39:08
they slowly, after 1945, decided that
39:11
eugenics was maybe not the right word.
39:14
There was a lot of rebranding. The Annals of
39:16
Eugenics, which came out of, effectively
39:19
out of UCI, out of the lab
39:21
that I'm in, just renamed itself the
39:23
Annals of Human Genetics in 1954, with
39:25
no announcement, no, no, there's no editorial
39:27
which says we're doing this. It's just
39:30
the name changed. I have the two,
39:32
the two bound volumes on my shelf
39:34
in my office next to each other.
39:37
And the transition between the two of
39:39
them is seamless apart from being quite
39:41
jarring. And that happened all around the
39:44
world. Eugenics labs became genetics labs. There
39:46
was a fundamental difference slowly that emerged,
39:48
which was that the technologies developed often
39:51
with the more scientific end of eugenics
39:53
as their foundations were
39:56
very much for the alleviation of
39:59
suffering in a individuals, children
40:01
and their parents by extension,
40:04
and to give choice
40:06
about the
40:08
suffering of their children or reducing
40:11
the suffering of their potential children. Things
40:14
like IVF or genetic counseling, and
40:16
then into the 80s we have
40:18
things like pre-implantation diagnosis associated with
40:21
the IVF process where you can choose
40:24
the embryos that get reimplanted and you can
40:26
choose for them to be free of specific
40:28
diseases. Now are
40:30
they eugenics? I
40:32
don't think they are. I think they would have
40:34
been of great interest to the eugenicists of the
40:36
1920s and 30s, but I
40:39
don't think it's useful to label them as
40:42
such as often happens in the popular discourse.
40:45
But then what emerges from our increased,
40:47
the amazing advances in technology is
40:50
that you do get to situations like
40:53
selective abortions where it
40:55
begins to look much more like the eugenics of the
40:58
1920s and 30s. One
41:00
of the most difficult and I think
41:02
unique cases is with Down syndrome
41:05
because it has a particular genetic
41:07
characteristic which is having a whole
41:11
extra chromosome and
41:13
because it's diagnosable at a very early
41:15
stage of pregnancy, in
41:17
countries in the last few
41:19
years where access to abortions
41:21
is widespread or universal, what
41:24
we have seen, Denmark and Iceland
41:27
being the prime examples, is
41:30
the selective abortion of embryos
41:33
with Downs reaching effectively
41:35
100%. In the
41:37
UK, I can't remember exactly what it
41:39
is, but I think it's above 90% of women whose
41:43
pregnancy is determined to be, tries to be 21, choose to
41:45
abort. One
41:47
country where the opposite is happening, interestingly, is
41:49
America. But that's not, that's less to do
41:51
with choice, it's more to do with the
41:54
reduction of choice because abortions are becoming much
41:56
more difficult to get hold of
41:58
and after Roe v. Wade. Now,
42:01
is that eugenics? So
42:03
we've offered the people the
42:05
chance to select against
42:08
a type of human being that
42:10
otherwise does exist in the world.
42:13
And it seems that in many countries where that choice
42:15
is given, that the
42:18
decision made by individuals that this
42:20
type of person will not continue
42:22
to exist in the future has
42:24
been taken. I
42:26
find this one of the most difficult bioethical
42:28
issues that we face. There
42:31
are many campaigners for people with Downes
42:34
who say this is eugenics
42:36
and reject campaign
42:40
against that ability. I
42:43
think that often, this is
42:45
a complexity which requires great nuance
42:48
and great care in
42:50
discussing. Downes
42:52
is a characteristic which has
42:54
huge variance. So there
42:57
are some people with Downes who are
42:59
very high functioning and live semi-independent
43:02
lives. And there are
43:04
some people born with
43:06
Downes who live extremely troubled lives.
43:10
And in a sense,
43:12
the etiology, the genetic etiology is the same in
43:14
both. But we don't really
43:16
understand why there is such variance in the
43:18
penetrance and the severity of having Downes. But
43:21
again, I ask my students to consider
43:23
these ideas very carefully because by
43:26
extension, we as a society need
43:28
to really, really carefully think about
43:31
how the technology that we are developing, that
43:33
we have developed in order to alleviate suffering
43:35
individuals, can manifest in doing exactly the same
43:38
things that we did 100 years ago. So
43:41
for example, a non-trivial example,
43:43
but achondroplasia, so
43:46
classical dwarfism caused by a specific mutation
43:49
in a specific gene 100 years ago
43:51
in Nazi Germany, you would be killed,
43:55
not 100 years ago in Nazi Germany. That would
43:57
be Weimar Germany. But in that era, it's not a real thing.
44:00
era, you would be subject
44:02
to extermination. A
44:04
hundred years later, we regard
44:06
achondroplasia as characteristic
44:08
of human beings that are part of
44:11
society and part of the rich fabric
44:13
of society. Other diseases
44:15
that were categorized as subject
44:18
to eugenic selection, negative eugenic
44:20
selection, particularly in Germany, such
44:23
as Huntington's disease or
44:25
schizophrenia. Again, now we
44:28
are much less judgmental about these
44:31
people continuing to exist in
44:33
the future. And then by
44:35
extension, one of the big
44:37
problems with eugenics is by intending to improve
44:39
the quality of a people, again, air quotes
44:41
for quality, you have to decide who are
44:43
the people who are worth preserving. And
44:46
because it's an expression of hegemonic power, they
44:48
tend to be the people who are most
44:51
like the people that are forming
44:53
those laws. And
44:55
rapidly, every time we
44:58
see eugenics explored or enacted, it goes immigrant
45:01
classes or racialized minorities, these
45:03
are the people being negatively
45:05
selected. It becomes epileptics, alcoholics,
45:07
it becomes women with menstrual
45:09
troubles, very broad psychiatric disorders
45:11
like what used to be
45:14
called feeble mindedness, very difficult to classify
45:16
that. And people with
45:18
achondroplasia, people with Down syndrome. I
45:20
think that one of the marks
45:22
of the interesting progress
45:24
that in Western Europe,
45:27
and by extension, America, we've made in the last 100
45:29
years, is the different the differential
45:31
acceptance of categories which were previously deemed
45:34
to be undesirable.
45:37
But again, you know, this is this is why
45:39
we need to look carefully at the history because
45:41
there's all sorts of people who wouldn't exist, who
45:43
wouldn't have been allowed to exist in the past,
45:45
who do exist today, and that have just become
45:48
part of the fabrics of society. Last
45:50
question. So as you say,
45:52
part of the shift here is to the
45:54
language of the relief of suffering, the relief
45:56
of suffering of a potential unborn human who
45:59
might live. a miserable life. It's
46:01
also about the relief of suffering of the parents,
46:03
clearly. I mean, that's part of it. It's after
46:05
all the parents who are making the choice and
46:07
they're the ones that are also judging what they
46:09
can live with. In a
46:11
case like the one that I mentioned that we
46:14
touched on there, which is the one that's had
46:16
the largest scale effects, which is selection for sex,
46:19
that's not about the relief of suffering of the
46:21
child. In fact, actually, if you're going to produce
46:23
100 million surplus boys, those boys
46:25
are going to suffer more than the
46:28
girls would do because many of them
46:30
are not going to be able to have
46:32
stable family lives and so on. The unit
46:34
that's being considered there that might suffer is
46:36
the family rather than the individual. It's better
46:38
for a family in a society, particularly when
46:40
it's sanctioned, that only one child can be
46:42
born for the child to be a boy.
46:44
It's very hard that there's a
46:47
difficulty of knowing where to draw the
46:49
line in the language of suffering, but
46:51
there's also the question of what
46:53
you might call positive eugenics at the micro
46:56
level, people selecting for things that they think
46:58
will be a positive or net benefit say
47:00
for the family unit, a male child. Now
47:03
we are, after all, in the age
47:06
of the possibility of quite fine-tuned selection
47:08
for things that might make
47:11
things go better for the parents or might make
47:13
you feel the family would be better off if
47:15
the child not just was relieved of suffering but
47:17
had certain characteristics. When you look at
47:19
this going forward, there are
47:22
lots of potential dangers here, including a
47:24
throwback to an earlier era of top-down,
47:27
state-sanctioned interference. After
47:30
all, that story I just described does
47:32
partly in China come out of a
47:34
one-child policy which was itself a disastrous
47:36
misunderstanding of what the future was going
47:38
to be like. Where do you see
47:40
the real threat here? Is the greatest
47:42
danger actually the slippage from choice
47:45
for relief of suffering to something more
47:47
like convenience or at least
47:49
it's kind of there's a consumerist version of
47:51
this. There is a nightmare
47:54
version which is what you might call consumerist
47:57
eugenics. And actually,
47:59
I think... In choosing to have a boy rather
48:01
than girl is a version of that. I
48:04
mean I'm not trying to be unsympathetic to
48:06
the people who made that choice. You only
48:08
have one life and if you can only
48:10
have one child but it's it's it's on
48:12
that spectrum right? which could go right the
48:14
way through to picking. Fool me someone is
48:17
gonna do well in life and that's going
48:19
to be better for the family. Yeah well
48:21
the I mean there is a version of
48:23
that which is already occurring in certain countries
48:25
biggest my my significant one being America where
48:27
with and beer selection for various diseases which
48:30
is what we had that in the west
48:32
since nineteen eighty. During the
48:34
idea of process it fits in Europe
48:36
and mice the world, we are prevented
48:39
legally from from selecting embrace for traits
48:41
rather than diseases, But in America that
48:43
is not the case. And there are
48:46
already companies in and when we think
48:48
there were children already born who have
48:50
been said specifically selected for traits rather
48:52
than for the prevention of specific diseases
48:55
that might run in the family. More.
48:57
Kind of traits are we talking about?
49:00
well say the as. The only one
49:02
that people are really interested in is
49:04
this very fuzzy concept of intelligence, which
49:07
which is a highly heritable. At
49:09
for a tuna. However, we define it
49:12
as a very difficult thing to define.
49:14
People rely over an eye on metrics
49:16
like Ikea which are not an I
49:18
Q denialist. I think it has some
49:21
value but out you can really scrutinize
49:23
what you stand by. I Q what
49:25
is Funny Ways which is for different
49:28
discussion. However, you measure cognitive abilities which
49:30
so I keep correlates very well with
49:32
things like education attainment to how long
49:35
you stay in in further education and
49:37
so on. But however, years ss. The
49:39
good work which suggests that we and
49:41
we are beginning to understand the genetic
49:43
architecture which was as which is associated
49:46
with those those traits and a population
49:48
level. A
49:50
third year undergraduate. At U
49:52
C L O. Cambridge or Oxford might
49:54
be asked by someone like me to
49:56
write a dissertation. On. The
49:59
complexities of. two sentences I
50:01
just said, because they
50:03
are enormously complicated issues.
50:06
But the way it gets translated
50:08
into the public discourse, and as
50:10
you're talking about now, a version
50:13
of consumer genetics or consumer eugenics,
50:16
is hugely simplified
50:19
to the point of being set
50:21
aside the moral or the ethical
50:23
problems inherent in this sort of
50:25
selection process, but also scientifically idiotic,
50:30
scientifically ridiculous. So
50:32
I think with the some with several
50:34
of the companies that are offering this
50:37
kind of embryo selection for genes associated
50:39
with intelligence, I think the parents are
50:41
dropping hundreds of grand on stuff where
50:43
if you actually measure what we know
50:45
about genetics and how it relates to
50:47
intelligence, they're effectively choosing maybe an IQ
50:49
point or two, the type
50:51
of thing that you can change by
50:53
having a decent night's sleep or a
50:55
cup of coffee before taking an IQ
50:58
test. And also
51:00
the association with the increased
51:02
probability of characteristics like high
51:04
IQ with things like
51:06
eating disorders or anorexia or
51:08
depression, which also correlate with high
51:10
intelligence or various things like that.
51:13
The complexities of the genomes are
51:15
really only just beginning
51:17
to be understood. But that's
51:19
where the analogy with what we do
51:21
today, now that we're in the genomic
51:24
era, tallies with
51:26
the 1910s, with the
51:28
over-reliance on the new science of
51:30
Mendelian inheritance, what the eugenicists were
51:33
thinking of back then. I don't
51:36
know a geneticist who
51:38
would make these decisions in terms of embryo
51:40
selection. We don't know
51:43
how the genetics of eye colour
51:46
works. In 1907, Charles
51:48
Davenport, the founder of American Eugenics, published
51:50
the first pay for which described the
51:52
inheritance pattern of blue eyes. And
51:55
we've been teaching that ever since to the
51:57
extent that it's still in the GCSE curriculum.
52:00
And curricular on around the world.
52:02
Ah! It's. Basically wrong.
52:05
I. Did. Their own recessive genes in
52:07
the road, the dominant jeans and but you
52:09
don't need to have two versions of one
52:11
gene to have blue eyes, You don't need
52:14
to have to blue eyed parents to have
52:16
the to in above are basically any color
52:18
combination of parents. Ice can produce any color
52:20
combination of children's eyes, but we teach dispersion.
52:23
Which. Was. Based deterministic
52:25
and money Jannik and was
52:27
part of the eugenics petabytes
52:29
of ideology of those people
52:32
at the time. Was.
52:35
So when it outright monitoring to time
52:37
deterministic version of inheritance when I actually
52:40
am a someone has been studying this
52:42
for thirty years telling you that I
52:44
don't know how the genetics of I
52:47
Carlo works, but P H D was
52:49
on the development of the human eye
52:51
and I don't know it's it's not.
52:54
I'm not saying. I. Don't know,
52:56
but other people do. I'm saying that we
52:58
don't know. it's you say, If I don't
53:00
know, nobody knows. Well it sounds a little
53:02
bit arrogant. but basically yes yes said it
53:04
was A. My issue is if we don't
53:07
know how they how the genetics of blue
53:09
eyes actually works. And
53:11
we talking about embryo selection
53:13
for. Really? Fuzzy complex
53:15
concepts like cognitive ability compared to
53:17
you know, physical traits like I
53:19
call it in. I did the
53:22
each you're selling this. This is
53:24
a product. I. Wouldn't. You.
53:27
Know when you do a twenty three me test? I.
53:29
Usually spend a tube and it comes
53:31
back with some ancestry information as I
53:33
also think is is fundamentally sort of
53:35
at best on the bison. I've got
53:38
it says that with your version of
53:40
this particular gene, sixty six percent chance
53:42
that you have brown eyes. Now
53:45
that he's actually good, genetics
53:47
education because it means that sixty six
53:49
percent of people have the same version
53:51
of that one gene which says here
53:53
to blue for or brown eyes sixty
53:55
six and of those people have the
53:57
same boat as me have brown eyes
53:59
he dig me up in a thousand
54:01
years time and get my genome out and
54:03
look at that particular gene. You've got a
54:06
two in three chance of getting my eye
54:08
colour right. If
54:11
we do that for embryo selection, would you take
54:13
those odds? I don't know. I wouldn't. I'm not
54:15
really a betting kind of guy. But
54:18
that's eye colour. So if
54:20
you look at the genes involved in intelligence, of
54:22
which there are hundreds, thousands, maybe
54:24
half the genome has some role in
54:27
the brain and said, do you
54:29
want to flip a coin and say, you know, this
54:32
embryo might be a little bit more a
54:34
bit smarter than this one. Like, you know,
54:37
no, this is
54:39
astrology you're talking about. This isn't science.
54:41
But you're paying hundreds of grants just
54:43
to get your kid that far advanced.
54:45
We know what the correlates of intelligence
54:47
are, right? It's whether you read to
54:49
your kids or not, it's education, it's
54:51
universal access to healthcare. But those things
54:53
are socially determined, and we know how
54:55
to fix them. But it's much easier
54:57
to turn to science and go, can
55:00
you fix this because you guys look really clever. And
55:03
we do have to end here. But I would
55:05
also say that if you were really concerned about
55:07
relieving the suffering of children, the one thing you
55:09
would want to guard against is having to have
55:11
a child listen to a parent say I spent
55:13
200 grand on you work harder, your grades aren't
55:15
good enough. I mean, I'm not even
55:17
joking, actually, but that is one nightmarish version
55:19
of this. In some of those consumer genetic
55:21
tests that are available, so I a lot
55:23
of my work focused on sports, I'm writing
55:25
a book about genetics and sport right now.
55:28
And you can buy not in the UK, because it's
55:30
legislated against, but in America, you can buy tests where
55:32
you get your child to spit in the tube, send
55:34
it off. And the report that comes back says, your
55:37
son or daughter should play baseball,
55:40
and not tennis, or American football
55:42
and not hockey because of their
55:44
genetics. Now, if you're that interested,
55:47
I just I just feel bad for those kids and
55:49
those families, because you've ruined their lives before
55:51
they've even picked up a baseball
55:53
bat. I mean, you've ruined their lives anyway, when
55:55
parents want to make their kids professional athletes, but
55:57
when they also say and there's luck this thing
56:00
you should be doing better at baseball, that
56:02
is the dystopian version. Mate, I'm
56:04
not going near that. If
56:10
you'd like to find out more about this
56:12
series, do follow us on Twitter at ppfideas
56:15
and you can sign up now to
56:17
PPF Plus where you can
56:19
get ad-free listening and also the bonus
56:21
episodes that go with this and all
56:24
our series. Just go to
56:26
ppfideas.com or click on the link that
56:28
comes with the show description for this
56:31
episode. PPF Plus listeners can now get
56:33
the first of our bonus episodes with
56:35
Leia Rippey to accompany our series on
56:38
the history of freedom in
56:40
which Leia and I talk about, among many other
56:42
things, whether we are living
56:44
in a computer simulation. We
56:47
will be putting out bonus episodes to accompany
56:49
this series too, including one in which I'll
56:52
be talking about my bad idea.
56:55
Coming up next on the history of
56:57
bad ideas, I'm talking to the podcaster
57:00
and political economist Helen Thompson about
57:02
the gold standard. Is
57:05
it really a bad idea and
57:07
what is the harm that it does? Do
57:11
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57:13
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