When we think about human development, it seems like we are just letting nature take its course. We aren’t doing anything too radical like manipulating our DNA (yet) or killing people like in the movie Gattica when they are too old.
Or are we? We are doing much more to manipulate how humans evolve than we normally think. Learn a little bit about what eugenics is, and how its still going on.
All in only 90 seconds.
Eugenics: The Continuing Story of Directed Evolution (Podcast #011)
(To play the audio directly in this page, click the little blue play button. If you want to download the file, right click the text link and choose “Save Link As…”)
Visit the home page to play this podcast directly through your browser and to view the whole collection of 90 Seconds to Culture podcasts.
Sources / Further Reading:
Wikipedia: Eugenics
Wikipedia: Alberta Eugenics Board (Eugenics in Canada? Yes, all the way to the 1970s.)
Sperm Bank of America Requirements
Eugenics.net (A site that advocates for eugenics)
New Orleans City Business article (A Louisiana senator proposes paying $1000 to poor women to tie their tubes.)
(photo by A. M. Kuchling)
Subscribe via RSS
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Josh,
We were looking at this topic in class recently, specifically the claim that the theory of evolution through natural selection has caused/fuelled the theory (and practise) of eugenics.
While there was no simple conclusion, one of the major problems with this idea is that evolution tends to favour genetic diversity, while eugenics minimizes it.
These papers modelled populations with and without eugenics, and the populations with eugenics were longer lived and produced more offspring in the short-term, but went extinct if any changes in the environment were added.
I know you’re skeptical of these simulations…but you might find their conclusions interesting.
Cebrat & Pekalski 1999.
Model of population evolution with and without eugenics. European Physical Journal B 11:687-690
I don’t know if evolutionary theory has fueled the practice of eugenics. I think it would happen anyways, people just want their babies to be perfect.
And I agree with your statement that eugenics reduces genetic diversity. We should be proponents of increased genetic diversity. What if something changes?
The solution? Forced breeding. It’s hard work but someone must do it. Every couple has to be inter-racial, if that wasn’t clear.
And I’m not skeptical of simulations per se, I’m just often suspicious of the claims drawn from them. Also, a lot of what I’ll call “popular contemporary evolutionary theory” comes from people just making claims that can’t be substantiated, but that seem reasonable (read: Dawkins, sorry David). I can make up a million reasonable-sounding claims, but it doesn’t mean any of them are true.
I’m still interested in the simulations. But I have a feeling I won’t be able to get those papers because I am no longer university affiliated. But if you wanted to send me those papers digitally in some magical way however, I would not be averse to this…
BTW, talking about simulations. Here’s one where they conclude that even mild preferences for one race over another causes surprisingly large amounts of segregation:
Mind your decisions blog: Schelling Segregation Model
*edit: typo fixed, sorry
I will not click on that link because it mispells decisions. If this is your fault Joshua, shame on you!
When you are dismissing “popular contemporary evolutionary theory”, realize that many of your criticisms are the “popular contemporary creationist theories”, or the criticism that evolutionary theories are a conglomeration of ‘just-so stories’. Also, the topic of my presentation Monday…
http://darwinstories.blogspot.com/
Most of these ‘just-so stories’ are not just reasonable sounding claims but testable hypotheses - a starting point for scientists to do science! While they are just stories in the hypothesis stage, they can and should be tested. Rather than dismiss them, we should be generating more and more testable ideas. I may be a tad biased here seeing as my research could not be less practical or more bscure.
I’ll send you the papers magically (read: digitally) tomorrow. Until then, know that our qlink proxy still works, stick it to the man and abuse those priveleges!