Subject: Re: HAB: "On The Way to Liberal Eugenics?" (Fred)
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 03:49:14 


Dear List,

The following appeared on a Luhmann list I subscribe to. With the permission 
of the original poster I have reproduced it here as some may find it 
complements recent list discussion. Please note this action in NO way 
represents my endorsement of eugenics!

Matthew Piscioneri
School of Philosophy
University of Tasmania



Meme 021: In Defense of Eugenics
1.11.16

In Defense of Eugenics:
The high-stakes race for a better future.
reviewed by Thomas Jackson
American Renaissance November 2001

_In Defense of Eugenics Richard Lynn, Eugenics: A Reassessment_
(Praeger Publishers, 2001, $85.00, 384 pp.)

Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University
of Ulster in Northern Ireland, is one of those rare social
scientists who not only understand genetics but are willing to
draw conclusions about how biology affects society. This volume
builds upon his 1996 _Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern
Populations_ (reviewed in AR, April, 1997), and lays out the clear
choice science now sets before all developed nations: whether to
let the genetic quality of their populations continue to
deteriorate, or use a combination of old and new techniques to
improve it. In Prof. Lynn's view, this is a high-stakes game, in
which those who refuse to play will be certain losers. This
careful analysis unquestionably establishes the author as the
foremost eugenicist of our time.

_Eugenics_ is an exhaustive treatment that includes a history of
the movement, its objectives, its successes and failures, moral
arguments for and against it, and a bold prediction of how
eugenics will dictate the balance of world power in the 21st
century. This book will offend many people, but they will find its
relentless logic difficult to refute. The age of widespread
population engineering is upon us, and to begin with Prof. Lynn's
concluding quotation from Francis Galton, "the nation which first
subjects itself to rational eugenical disciplines is bound to
inherit the earth."

Francis Galton

Galton (1822 - 1911) was, of course, the British genius who coined
the term "eugenics." He first introduced it in his 1883 _Inquiries
Into Human Fertility_, in which he argued that human abilities are
greatly influenced by genetic inheritance, and that when the less
able out-breed the more able, the quality of a population
declines. Galton recognized that the winnowing effects of natural
selection had been artificially reversed in the West, so that "the
race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive
generation less fit for a high civilization."

Galton proposed that the British population be divided into three
categories: desirables, undesirables, and passables. Desirables
should have incentives to have more children, undesirables should
have no children, and passables should be left alone. Galton
proposed that the desirables and undesirables each include only
about five to ten percent of the population, leaving the great
majority passable and therefore untouched. He hoped a program that
affected only 20 percent of the population would win broad
support. He recognized undesirables would have to be coerced into
childlessness, but was not specific about how this should be done.

>From Galton's time until the Second World War, eugenic movements
attracted strong support. Bertrand Russell, John Maynard Keynes,
Winston Churchill, H.G. Wells, Linus Pauling, Teddy Roosevelt, and
Oliver Wendell Holmes were all ardent eugenicists. Margaret
Sanger, the early American champion of birth control, clearly saw
contraception as a means to keep the lower orders from
multiplying. As her British counterpart Mary Stopes put it: "more
children from the fit, less from the unfit--that is the chief
issue of birth control."

Prof. Lynn notes that at the height of the eugenics movement,
people knew little about the science of genetics, but they
understood the importance of breeding. In an early round of the
"nature/ nurture" debate, Edward Thorndike pointed out in 1913,
"There is no more certain and economical a way to improve man's
environment as to improve his nature."

Previous generations were not squeamish about distinguishing
between desirables and undesirables. In his 1916 multi-generation
study of the degenerate Jukes family, American scholar A. H.
Eastabrook called it "the scum of society . . . inefficient and
indolent, unwilling or unable to take advantage of any opportunity
which offers itself or is offered to them." As Prof. Lynn
explains, "The Victorians understood with a clarity that became
lost in the second half of the twentieth century that rigorous
social control was necessary to contain the growth of a subclass
of undeserving poor."

The eugenics movement gave rise to one important form of rigorous
social control: forcible sterilization. In 1907, Indiana was the
first jurisdiction to pass a law "to prevent the procreation of
confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists." The U.S.
Supreme Court upheld laws of this kind in the 1927 decision _Buck
v. Bell_, and by 1931, 30 states had eugenic sterilization laws.

Most European countries adopted similar measures, and Nazi Germany
was relatively late with its 1933 Eugenic Sterilization Law. Prof.
Lynn points out that despite claims to the contrary, the Nazis did
not target Jews for eugenic reasons, and sterilized relatively few
people. As a percentage of the population, Sweden sterilized twice
as many of its citizens as Germany. The Soviet Union, which was
going through a Lysenkoist rejection of genetics, was one of the
few developed countries that did not require eugenic
sterilization, and Japan did not repeal its sterilization law
until 1996.

After the war, eugenics was mistakenly associated with Nazism, and
lost almost all support. In 1953, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of
the structure of DNA, proposed a tax on child-bearing to deter the
shiftless, and argued for making prospective parents apply for
licenses, but eugenics as an explicit movement was essentially
dead in the West.

Eugenics joined "racism" as one of the era's blackest crimes. The
European Parliament passed a resolution saying, "cloning of human
beings . . . cannot under any circumstances be justified or
tolerated by any society . . . as it permits a eugenic and racist
selection of the human race . . . ." The French eugenicist Alexis
Carrell won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1912, but frenzied
anti-eugenicists removed his name from street signs and from the
medical school of the University of Lyon.

Opposition to eugenics drove some people to absurd positions.
Theodosius Dobzhansky of Columbia University took the view that
there is no such thing as a bad gene. J.D. Smith of the University
of South Carolina wrote that genes for mental retardation should
be kept in the population because "mental retardation is a human
condition worthy of being valued."

A few people managed to overcome their initial irrationality.
Biologist Arthur Kaplan's first reaction to the news of a sperm
bank that sought contributions only from geniuses was that it was
"morally pernicious." He later changed his mind, saying: "We mold
and shape our children according to environmental factors. We give
them piano lessons and every other type of lesson imaginable. I'm
not sure there is anything wrong with using genetics as long as it
is not hurting anyone."

It was Asians, however, who were least diverted from eugenic
thinking. China continues to strengthen laws that curtail
reproduction by criminals and defectives. In Singapore, Premiere
Lee Kuan Yew gave generous tax incentives to better-educated women
to have more children, and succeeded in increasing the percentage
of births that were to women with secondary education from 36.7
percent to 47.7 percent. The women who get the most education are
the more intelligent, and they marry smart men; Prof. Lynn
considers the Singapore program a rare and notable success for
modern eugenics.

Westerners perhaps overvalue the individual, whereas Asians think
certain individual rights must be sacrificed to broader interests,
"one of which," Prof. Lynn writes, "is the right of society to
protect itself against the social costs incurred when these [less
able] groups have children." At the same time, Western societies
have changed considerably in this respect. It used to be common,
for example, to quarantine carriers of infectious diseases, but we
now give AIDS carriers complete freedom to infect others.

Prof. Lynn points out there is great irony in frantic opposition
to eugenics, per se, when many accepted practices in the West are
plainly eugenic. In Britain, for example, parents of a retarded
woman can have her sterilized, which implicitly recognizes that
some people should not have children. Infertile women seeking
donor eggs advertise for them at elite universities, and are
prepared to pay huge premiums for them, once again recognizing
that some genes are better than others. Prof. Lynn has found
offers of eggs from fashion models at $90,000 each, and reports
there are exclusive sperm banks stocked by Harvard and MIT
students.

The most common eugenic practice today is "therapeutic abortion."
Amniocentesis is a widely-used procedure that can detect certain
chromosomal abnormalities of the fetus. According to a Canadian
study, 80 percent of women who learn their fetuses have serious
defects abort them.

>From 1970 to 1986, German judges gave sex offenders the option of
castration rather than jail. During this period only three percent
of the castrated men committed more sex crimes while 46 percent of
a matched control group became repeat offenders. As an added
eugenic bonus, the castrated group had no children.

American welfare reform in the 1990s also had a faint whiff of
eugenics. Some states stopped increasing benefits along with the
number of children, and the federal government introduced new
rules to make it much harder to stay on the dole. As Prof. Lynn
points out, taxing the competent to support procreation by the
incompetent is flagrantly dysgenic. Some state legislatures
floated bills that would have made welfare conditional on using
subcutaneous contraceptives like Norplant, but none of these bills
succeeded.

Although Prof. Lynn believes that classic, Galton-style eugenics
is out of the question in Western democracies, some eugenic
policies might be slipped into place under more acceptable colors.
He points out that to the extent there are any difficulties at all
in getting contraception or abortions, this is dysgenic. More
competent people will take the trouble to use contraceptives or
get abortions, while the incompetent will not. He therefore favors
universal free abortion, and suggests governments should subsidize
contraceptive pills and sell them over-the-counter. He would favor
offering criminals a choice between castration and prison, and
suggests it could be possible to foster a moral climate in which
the most talented people could be made to feel it was their duty
to have more children.

Anything more explicit probably has no chance. The late Nobel
Prize winner William Shockley argued we should pay people with low
IQs to be sterilized. According to his "Bonus 1000" plan, a good
incentive would be $1,000 for every IQ point under 100.
Psychologist Raymond Cattell suggested the government should seek
out intelligent children and pay their parents to have more. David
Lykken of the University of Minnesota has once again floated the
idea of licenses for parents. Sociologist Hugh LaFollette points
out that couples must meet standards if they want to adopt a
child; why not set standards for people who want to make a child?

Prof. Lynn states his own preference: "The ideal for humans would
be a contraceptive virus acting for about 10 years that could be
given to 12-year-old boys. When they were aged 22, they could
apply for licenses for parenthood. If they failed to obtain these,
they could be vasectomized." Needless to say, ideas like this are
going nowhere for now; as Prof. Lynn points out, according to the
UN Declaration on Human Rights everyone has an absolute right to
as many babies as he can make.

>From the outset, Galton recognized that immigration policy can be
eugenic or dysgenic, and argued that nations should admit only
good prospects. Today, in Europe, almost all immigration takes
place according to the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees and
Asylum Seekers. Prof. Lynn points out that at the time of the
convention, almost all refugees were Europeans; now that they are
almost all non-white the signatories have every right to
reconsider their obligations.

Even if no Western nation is likely to start eugenic programs any
time soon, Prof. Lynn explains what they could achieve. The least
controversial goal of eugenics is to reduce the frequency of
genetic diseases, and Prof. Lynn finds that about a quarter of all
hospital beds are occupied by people with these diseases. If they
were eliminated, it would save about a quarter of every developed
country's medical budget--a saving of about two percent of GNP.
Institutions for people with genetic diseases consume perhaps
another 1.5 percent of GNP, and the costs of schizophrenia,
depression, and manic-depression taken together add up to another
estimated one percent. Eliminating these disorders would be a huge
saving and would also spare family members much worry and sorrow.

Prof. Lynn warns, however, that it might be a mistake to eliminate
all genes for mental illness, because a certain level of mental
instability is associated with creative genius. He notes that
writers and artists have two to three times the rate of psychosis
and suicide attempts as the rest of us.

Psychopathic personality, on the other hand, should be eliminated
completely. About 60 percent of male prison inmates are
psychopaths, and they almost always commit the most horrifying
crimes. About six percent of men and one percent of women are
psychopaths, but in America only about 13 percent of them are in
jail, which means 87 percent are on the loose, causing all sorts
of damage. Psychopaths often have a high opinion of themselves.
One study of 125 incarcerated teen-age psychopaths found that 78
percent claimed they would be good role-models for children.
Psychopaths are well represented in the underclass, but
intelligent ones often make good politicians. There is clearly a
genetic predisposition to psychopathy, and eliminating the genes
would be a great service to society.

The most obvious trait of interest to eugenicists is intelligence.
As Prof. Lynn explains, the general level of intelligence is an
excellent indicator of quality of life, and there is no reason to
believe a country needs low-IQ citizens. In a high-IQ society,
many repetitive, unsatisfying jobs can be automated, and those
that cannot will be filled, provided the wage is right. Low
intelligence is strongly correlated with everything every society
is trying to reduce: crime, illegitimacy, and unemployment.

People of the lowest intelligence--the mentally retarded--are a
particular cost to society that could be virtually eliminated by
eugenics. About 2.2 percent of the babies of normal people are
retarded. The figure rises to 17 percent if one parent is
retarded, and to 48 percent if both are retarded. Because of the
association of low intelligence and crime, prisoners are about
four times more likely to be retarded than the rest of the
population. Many retarded men in institutions make crude sexual
advances to women, so must be cared for by male staff.

The mildly retarded are usually the naturally-occurring low end of
the intelligence bell curve, and for this reason are more likely
to be born of low-intelligence parents. People in the lowest 25
percent in income have about half the mildly retarded children.
The severely retarded usually suffer from less predictable genetic
abnormalities, and can come from all levels of society.

In America, retarded women have slightly higher fertility than
normal women. This is because they are ignorant, and because men
can easily exploit them. A study of female retardates living in
sheltered housing found that only four percent knew semen is
necessary for pregnancy. Sixty-one percent had been pregnant, but
only 48 percent said they had ever had sexual intercourse.

At the other end of bell curve, Prof. Lynn explains that eugenics
can raise the average IQ, but it cannot easily increase the
theoretical maximum. This is because the optimum combination of IQ
genes--which yields a score of about 200--has already occurred in
humans through millions of more or less random combinations.
Nevertheless, raising the average would have a dramatic effect on
the number of geniuses. An increase in the average to 115 would
mean the frequency of IQs over 158 would jump 30 fold, from one in
30,000 to one in 1,000. Such a society would have a huge advantage
over any other in terms of productivity and creativity.

Prof. Lynn predicts Western democracies will eventually adopt a
new kind of eugenics based on advances in genetic screening. The
most promising technique is embryo selection (ES). This involves
harvesting a woman's eggs and fertilizing them in vitro with her
husband's sperm. As many as 100 fertilized eggs could be screened
for genetic qualities, and the most promising one chosen for
implantation. Prof. Lynn suggests it will not be long before an
embryo check will yield accurate readings for everything from good
looks to musical ability. One hundred potential children would
have a 30-point range in IQ, split above and below the average of
the two parents, so the best choice from this many eggs would
guarantee a 15-point improvement over the parents IQs. Even a
woman in her 40s has tens of thousands of viable eggs, so
harvesting and fertilizing 100 at a time is only a matter of
developing the techniques.

Prof. Lynn recognizes that ES will probably be banned in Western
countries. The Catholic Church, which teaches that ordinary
intercourse is the only proper way to create new life, would lead
the opposition, but it would have many allies. Egalitarians would
take the confused position that genes don't count for anything,
but ES is bad because only the rich could afford it. Prof. Lynn
points out that the principle of ES is the same as therapeutic
abortion--the undesirables are destroyed--but it should be
considered more humane because it would not require a woman who
wants a baby to have an abortion.

Banning the procedure will do no good, because at least a few
countries are sure to permit it, and wealthy, far-sighted couples
will pay large sums for it. Europe and America could easily forbid
their citizens to patronize foreign ES services, but once the
embryos were implanted it would be impossible to know how they got
there. "When this procedure becomes widespread," writes Prof.
Lynn, "it will become evident that embryo-selected children are
virtually always superior to naturally conceived children with
respect to their health, intelligence, and personality." "Couples
will realize," he adds, "that it is more cost-effective to pay for
an embryo-selected child than to pay for a quality education for a
normally conceived child," and predicts that eventually 80 to 90
percent of the babies born in rich countries will be products of
ES.

Those that are not selected will be the children of the
underclass, and within just a few generations the IQ gap between
the two groups could reach 50 points. "Eventually," he writes,
"despite strong ideological opposition it would come to be
understood that the underclass of the unplanned [conceptions] was
primarily a genetic problem and would require genetic
interventions."

Prof. Lynn is convinced, however, that an Asian country--most
likely China--will soon institute a mandatory ES program for its
population, and that the resulting improvement in its gene pool
will tip the international balance of power decisively in its
favor. Attitudes in China radically differ from those in the West.
Chinese law already requires sterilization of mental retardates
and those with genetic illnesses. Prenatal testing of fetuses is
mandatory, and defectives must be aborted. No one with mental
illness, venereal disease, or hepatitis may marry.

In the mid-1990s, a poll-taker asked Chinese and Western doctors
the following question: Should there be mandatory sterilization
for a single, blind woman on public welfare who has already had
three children by three different men, all of whom are absent from
the household? Only five percent of Western doctors but 82 percent
of Chinese doctors said "yes."

Now that socialism is discredited, Prof. Lynn thinks the Chinese
will fill the ideological void with eugenics. He predicts it will
become the first, full-fledged eugenic state: all 12-year-old
girls will be fitted with contraceptives, only approved couples
will be permitted to have children, and ES will be used for all
births. Psychopathy and genetic diseases will be eliminated, and
IQ will stabilize at the theoretical maximum of about 200 in six
or seven generations. Licensing parents will seem just as
reasonable as licensing drivers.

Prof. Lynn predicts that in the short run, China's rulers will
clone themselves. In most cases this will mean talent and ability
are passed on to the next generation, and it will make it easier
for the oligarchs to pass on power to people they can trust--their
own twins.

Prof. Lynn's best guess at a timetable is that ES will be
perfected and in obligatory use in China within ten years. Twenty
years later there will be the first generation of ES adults, and
20 years after that, half the working population will have come
from selected embryos. In 50 years, therefore, China will be the
world's most formidable power.

In the meantime, Prof. Lynn predicts that the United States will
have continued to decline because of dysgenic fertility and
dysgenic immigration. He says the country may break up into
warring ethnic enclaves, but "however the details of the decline
of the United States work out, it will forfeit its position as the
leading world economic, scientific, and military power, and
eventually cease to be a major force in global politics."

He expects Europe to maintain its influence a little longer,
because is has fewer non-white immigrants, but it will be no match
for a racially homogeneous, eugenically bred China. China will
eventually dominate the globe and run it like a colonial empire.
In certain provinces, it might impose ES on the natives, but in
places like Africa, which do not have the infrastructure for ES,
it would be more likely to impose "robust classical eugenics."

What are we to make of these predictions? Geneticists appear to
agree that it is only a matter of time before ES is perfected. It
is also true that Chinese have a deep racial patriotism that
drives their desire for hegemony (see book review, Feb. 2001).
This, together with their penchant for ruthless social engineering
and appreciation of population genetics, makes Prof. Lynn's
predictions entirely believable. _Eugenics_ makes a strong case
for the view that unless the West has the will to act upon the
advice of one of its own 19th century geniuses, whites can well
look forward to serfdom under Oriental masters.



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