The abuses of genetics

[hazelk]

Not been much of a traveller for years. It’s impractical with the children but even before then.

I have been to America. One of the perks of my first job was attendance at a Cold Spring Harbour summer course on fly genetics. It was pretty intensive - they let us out of the lab once to visit New York and do the whole Stevie Wonder “Living for the City” thing, that was cool. The only other touristy diversions were watching horseshoe crabs, seeing robins the size of thrushes and occasional sightings of Nobel prize winners. Barbara McClintock and James Watson were both around.

Watson would have been in his early sixties then but sun and nicotine had already done their work and his face was old as Ayesha’s returned to the flame. Surrounded by acolytes, in a white linen suit and panama hat, I remember describing him as resembling a plantation owner walking the rounds. Given recent events maybe that comparison was quite apt.

For those who haven’t been following the story Watson gave an interview two weeks ago in the Sunday Times as part of the pre-publicity for his new book and associated sell-out tour that included the following paragraph:

He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

Long a self-styled maverick used to riding the publicity attendant on not being ‘boring' this ended as a gamble lost. The tour was cancelled, Cold Spring Harbour suspended his Chancellorship and on Friday he announced his retirement.

With all the recent LJ discussions about anti-semitism and the Holocaust/Shoah its worth remembering that of the many factors that fed into the rise of Nazism and its Final Solution the then new science of genetics played its part. How misinterpretations of evolution as progress and of natural selection as a moral imperative were used to justify the sterilization and eventually elimination of the ‘unfit’ arbitrarily defined as groups the majority either feared or despised. In the brave new era of genomics the same conflation of social prejudice and actual science is a constant temptation.

Comments

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I do realise that genetics was invoked by the Nazis, but the argument is completely absurd. If say Jews are "unfit", you hardly need an organised campaign to get rid of them. To me, the Holocaust shouts loudly that the Nazis were afraid the Jews were in some sense "more fit".

Not of course that this will prevent it happening again. I hope CSL's actions is evidence that we are less likely to do it again.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I was thinking particularily of R. A. Fisher, his enthusiatic involvement in the eugenics movement and later rejection of the UNESCO statement on race based on arguments not unlike those invoked by Watson. Fisher was no supporter of Hitler and being British was generally more concerned with class than race but I could see how his support for eugenics fed into the intellectual climate of the times.

[ann1962]

Very wise words.

Every time someone that should know better doesn't, it reminds me that education (and a Nobel prize) doesn't alway erase the stupid.

One of S's former students just started a postdoc at CSH, so I will have to check with her to see the fall out from this there. Apparently things haven't changed there, as she never gets out of the lab either.

[ann1962]

I asked him and he said she said she couldn't talk about it.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Labs like that are great to be a part of for a few years. When you're young:-)

If it's like anywhere else I'm sure there was a cabal of people just waitng for an excuse to oust Watson but this time they had better than an excuse.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Good God. I've never liked the man ever since I read his autobiography, but this is just embarrassing.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I've always wanted to hate him a little on Rosalind Franklin's behalf but this. Sad.

[abrakadabrah.livejournal.com]

Has there been a lot of LJ talk recently about anti-semitism and the Shoah? Guess
I'm not on the right LJ lists.

[avidrosette.livejournal.com]

Do you watch metafandom? It's a meta post round-up comm, and the place where I've been seeing all the links to the recent fracas. Here's a link to the tagged posts in the debate (the whole thing starts about seventeen posts down with merryish's post). Fun, fun, fun.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

What avid said. The Holocuast discussions came later following someone pointing out that using a visit to the Cambodian killing fields as the exotic backdrop to a PWP may not have been in the best of taste.

[avidrosette.livejournal.com]

In the brave new era of genomics the same conflation of social prejudice and actual science is a constant temptation.

Well said. (Perhaps you might be interested in this related article in today's NY Times, Bright Scientists, Dim Notions, that talks about otherwise distinguished scientists overreaching in all sorts of wacky directions.)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

It's quite often a case of scientists bringing their genuine cred in one field to bear on a subject which is way outside of it: from Sir Almroth Wright, a research bacteriologist whose wife had left him to become a suffragette (or maybe she was already one, and then left him), going off about how the demand for the franchise was due to pathology of the female parts, an area in which he had no particular claims to specialised knowledge, to that guy - Shockley? - whose Nobel was actually for work on superconductors but nonetheless had Ideas about Breeding that led him to set up the (massively unsuccessful) Nobel Sperm Bank*.

*This was probably an even worse idea than it looks at first, given that scientists tend to get the Nobel when they're fairly well on their careers and therefore in years, and recent research has indicated that ageing has a deleterious effect on the sperm.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Good article. It's true it can be difficult for some of these guys to tell the difference between provocative thinking and bigoted craziness. And like oursin says knowing the limits of their own expertise, the boundaries of which can be subtle. I mean Watson is a geneticist but not a population geneticist (even if the issues were purely a matter of genetics).

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

its worth remembering that of the many factors that fed into the rise of Nazism and its Final Solution the then new science of genetics played its part. How misinterpretations of evolution as progress and of natural selection as a moral imperative were used to justify the sterilization and eventually elimination of the ‘unfit’ arbitrarily defined as groups the majority either feared or despised.

So true. And it's hard not to think about eugenics movements/programs in many supposedly democratic countries in the 20's(it was big in California but eugenics laws were passed in several states from the mid-20's to mid 30's))and about numerous forced sterilization that occured in Scandinavia in the early 30's. Those laws stated that sterilization was mandatory for socially undesirable persons whatever the criteria was(illness, disability,immorality etc). It was all about stopping defective genes from being passed on...

It's because of the Nazis that eugenics became unpopular after the war but they didn't think up the idea.

BTW the 1948 Convention that defines what a genocide is and what crimes falls under the matter of genocide did take into account eugenics.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm no historian but just from reading novels of the period its clear that many of those proto-Nazi ideas weren't thought of as shocking then and some were almost orthodox.

[yourlibrarian]

Surrounded by acolytes and stuck in a lab -- I guess that goes a long way to explaining how he thought those statements wouldn't provoke a firestorm. It's funny how we think of society as this large, universal thing but really it seems to be just a collection of social bubbles where everyone assumes people they don't know are just like them.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

The scary thing about Watson is that he's always prided himself as being socially adept. He was a big big fund raiser for CSH and was also very effective in lobbying against moves to make genes patentable. So his thinking that that sort of racist claptrap was only 'common sense' may reflect on the kinds of opinions held by those he interacted with way beyond the scientific community.

[yourlibrarian]

Very likely, though it seems to me it's also indicative of professional narcissism. Since he is a geneticist, naturally genetics are at the root of all personal differences whereas society, family, geography, economics and all sorts of other environmental differences are apparently of no importance.

[timeofchange.livejournal.com]

Is there something crazy-making in the water these days?

But seriously, you are absolutely right to make these points. Memories are, unfortunately, very short for this kind of thing.

With all the recent LJ discussions about anti-semitism and the Holocaust/Shoah its worth remembering that of the many factors that fed into the rise of Nazism and its Final Solution the then new science of genetics played its part. How misinterpretations of evolution as progress and of natural selection as a moral imperative were used to justify the sterilization and eventually elimination of the ‘unfit’ arbitrarily defined as groups the majority either feared or despised. In the brave new era of genomics the same conflation of social prejudice and actual science is a constant temptation.

Indeed.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

It never really goes away.