The first part of this essay detailed how our basic humanity has gradually resulted in an accumulation of genetic problems. One term that captures the general burden involved is ‘genetic load’. In this second part, I look at the humane options we have to cope with increasing genetic loads.
We all know about historical measures such as the eugenics movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We regard the Nazis as their poster child, even though socialist/communist groups were the initial drivers. For example, the Fabians, such as George Bernard Shaw, advocated it. So did prominent African American sociologist, civil rights leader, and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) W.E.B. Du Bois.
Unfortunately, these movements accepted ideas like forced sterilization. Supreme Court Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes agreed in a judgment in which he stated “three generations of imbeciles is enough.”
The Nazis then took to extremes, like euthanising people. Following WW2, a massive backlash against the entire idea of eugenics ensued. Quite understandably, I think. Eugenics had justifiably earned that distaste.
But here is the thing. Reversing a gradual trend toward dysgenics does not require a radical culling of the carriers of deleterious mutations. All it requires is that those who carry them have fewer children. Not zero children but below replacement level, meaning two or less.
Potential parents would be far more likely to respond positively to a policy or programme if their society did not forcibly bar them from reproducing at all, especially if it held out an appealing carrot as well.
For example, Ashkenazi Jews picked up a number of genetic diseases, ironically as a side effect of an accidental selection pressure toward higher IQs. Many of the diseases involve an excess of myelin around nerve cells. The Jewish community wanted to stop these problems from spreading. They achieved the goal by counselling engaged couples on the risks involved. What the couples did with that advice was entirely up to them. There was no compulsion not to have children.
I once heard about a privately funded programme to pay female drug addicts in the UK to undergo sterilisation. The aim was to prevent the birth of crack babies and the like. I even did a survey on how much money women (non-addicts in this case) would accept in exchange for sterilization. About three years’ worth of their current salary was the average answer.
Then I realised that sterilisation was unnecessary.
Pay women
One could pay women for the time they use a contraceptive device, like a coil. Coils are removable, so the women would always have the choice to have children. Furthermore, paying women sufficiently removes the incentive to have children purely to provide for their old age. Now they could have children because they wanted them for their own sake.
The programme would be voluntary and non-discriminatory, but it should be more appealing to the poor. The poor are most likely to harbour genetic variants that in part lead to poverty. It would not even have to cost the taxpayer anything. Family planning is the favourite charity of American billionaires. Funding such a programme may appeal to them. In other words, there are a number of perfectly libertarian ways, ranging from awareness of personal risks to providing real economic security, which do not deprive people of the choices they already have.
There is no downside but there are a number of positive externalities.
For example, dramatic reductions in unemployment over a generation or two because enough people at elevated risk of being unemployable are not being added to the population in the first place. A similar logic applies to serious crime. Gently nudging people in that direction seems to me the most humane way to tackle those issues. It certainly beats experiencing rampant unemployment or crime. Note that no replacement of other policies – such as pro-investment policies – is necessary. They can work together.
Shifting the distribution of intelligence and conscientiousness upward (yes, these too are heritable) would permanently drive up the country’s growth rate and technological development. A myriad of knock-on benefits would follow, the political stability that follows from greater abundance being an important one.
This is not a policy of changing the demographic balance. The benefits would accrue to every group who introduced such a policy, just as harm accrues to every group which does not, regardless of what other groups do.
Nudge selection
There are a couple of precautions I need to mention. If we decide to nudge selection in a particular direction, we need to be careful. As the Jewish example shows, selection for one trait can backfire.
The egg industry once decided to breed only their most prolific layers, but it turned out selecting for egg-laying volumes also selects for aggression. The hens ended up killing each other so much that overall egg production declined.
So instead, they divided hens into groups and selected whole groups by the total number of eggs each produced in the context of peaceful coexistence. This time they ended up with more eggs from sociable hens.
In humans that might entail selecting for a number of good traits simultaneously, for example if the productively employed, law-abiding, and well-educated who were free from genetic disabilities had more children than those who were not.
Still, there are many who find the very idea of coaxing the gene pool in a particular direction offensive or ‘yucky’. I confess I do not understand that view. Don’t people select their partners, even if unconsciously, partly so as to maximise how well their children turn out?
Why wouldn’t they apply the same sentiment to their community? Some say it is unnatural or against God’s will. Well, so is medicine. There are certainly a few people who take the same attitude toward medicine, but most of us frown on that attitude. We think you ought to prioritise your children’s welfare, in other words, be humane.
On one hand we can choose dull, poor and unemployable grandchildren riddled with deleterious mutations, and subject them to living under an overloaded welfare system. On the other hand, we can choose healthy thriving grandchildren and know they would have extra resources to deal with fewer problems.
Which do you think is the humane approach?
[Image: by evgeniya_grande]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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