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at shopify.com/work. shopify.com/work. Hi,

0:44

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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24:16

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

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56:31

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56:35

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56:38

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56:47

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56:55

Coming up next on the history of

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57:05

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57:07

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