The science that dare not speak its name with an account of the professor who attempted to genetically modify the embryos of twin daughters, removing them from a woman's womb and then reimplanting them, begins this sharp and timely study. Though his efforts seem to have failed, the girls may not have immunity and he was jailed for three years and fined three million yuan. What are you willing to do to ensure that they are free from disease and fulfill their potential?
The question has haunted human imaginations ever since Mary Shelley wrote the novel. After Darwin and before the Third Reich, Eugenics was a science that was embraced by a lot of people.
The first part of the book is a history of these arguments, and the second part is about how this thinking is expressed in the present. The ideas ofselective breeding are the same as the ideas of philosophy. In a utopian city state, elite men and women would be matched for their qualities, and citizens would be discouraged or prevented from breeding. Darwin's half-cousin Francis Galton and his follower Karl Pearson were the first to explore and popularise such ideas.
The idea of positive eugenics carried with it the class-based fears of the decline of civilization. The birth control pioneer, Marie Stopes, and the creator of the welfare state, William Beveridge, were among his disciples.
There is a clear line from these racist theories to the atrocities of nazism. He shows that the word "eugenics" was removed from the science curriculum at Nuremberg.
The coerced sterilisation of First Nation women in Canada and the US is the subject of an ongoing class action, and there is an allegation that up. There are credible reports that 80% of Uyghur women in China have been sterilised.
The human genetics departments have evolved with the aim of understanding disease at a heritable level, so it is important to separate those attempts at population control from that. He makes the point that all of the interventions that can be used to screen for genetic diseases are tightly regulated across the world.
Since the 1970s, scientists have been manipulating and editing genes. Anyone with basic lab equipment can piece together bits and bobs from multiple species to build a new living tool with a specific purpose. Crispr was created in the last decade and can be used to correct a genetic flaw that has caused untold suffering for all history.
He argues that the idea of scientists being able to modify more complex human traits is far-fetched and politically dangerous. The studies that claim to have found the genes for C and D are almost always wrong. The variant of multiple bits of DNA, which are not restricted to single genes, can reveal a propensity to alcoholism or schizophrenia. Parents are pre-programmed to fill you with the things they didn't like, and add some extras just for you.
Extremist political groups believe that we might genetically select for IQ. More than 1,000 places in the human genome have been associated with inherited intelligence. A few scientists and pseudoscientists are repackaging Galton's positive eugenics for the 21st century.
Stephen Hsu is a former physicist and administrator at Michigan State University. The founder of a genetic profiling company has advocated for the creation of a super race of humans with higher IQs. In the summer of 2014, Dominic Cummings read a talk by Hsu and then wrote about it in a flurry. Five years later, Hsu was pictured with Cummings outside 10 Downing Street, which caused a lot of attention and outrage.
We should beware of any politician that raises the idea that we are not competent. Is it possible that you are selecting against fertility, kindness, or integrity in your selection of the hundreds of genetic variants associated with intelligence? It is likely that no one will ever know. He ends his book with a suggestion. We don't know a lot about science, but we do know that the inventions that have been shown to transform and improve human capacities beyond all imagining are education, healthcare and equality of opportunity.
Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics is a book by Adam Rutherford. You can support the Guardian and Observer by ordering your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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