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no cure for stupidityFrom this New Scientist piece: "Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer": "If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease," says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York. "The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't. So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent."Can you say "Eugenics"? Of course there must be a genetic component to "stupidity" (whatever that is--I'm sure that many people Watson would consider "stupid" live happy, productive lives). The other day I was reading on an op-ed on the Washington Post that 6 out of 10 children of age 10 in the Washington D.C. area can't read. But hey, no problem, Watson would say.... these guys are lost, but we can "fix the next batch" right? Just let me tweak this little gene here and everything will be just fine... I think that since Watson dismisses environmental factors such as poverty and education and "things like that" out of hand, he should watch Gattaca to see a plausible endgame for his ideas. But "things like that" would never happen right? After all, humans are so great at dealing with this kind of power. Or maybe there's a gene for intolerance that we can "fix" as well? Categories: sciencePosted by diego on March 2 2003 at 3:39 PM Comments (please see the comments & trackback policy).
Eugenics is nto the discovery fo genes that cause diseases such as low IQ..diseases as defined by the mdical community.. Eugencis is concerned with egnieering the human race to exclude those already within society wich is very much far different than normal scientific discovery adn research.. Watson can dimiss poverty as an influence because the statistical studies show that one is just as likely to have low IQ in povery as well as in riches.. Posted by: Fred Grott at March 2, 2003 11:09 PMHey Fred, Yes, That's precisely why I said Eugenics. Because even though Watson might disagree, the point I was trying to make was precisely that that's were his "proposal" would end. I said this, because he explicitly jumped from "fixing" stupidity to "making all girls pretty". If "making all girls pretty" is not Eugenics, I don't know what is. And besides, the medical community, and more specifically on the mental health area, classifies things as "diseases" without really much proof other than people are not "normal". But not that far back in history people were burned because of being "wizards" or "witches" when they might have had different beliefs or even been eccentric, and learned men of science acquiesced to that. The Nazis had many doctors to whom the idea of extermination of certain gene-lines was perfectly fine. We have definitely improved in that sense. But are we (or the medical community) sure that *this time* we've really gotten it right so that we may begin tinkering with genes to fix things that maybe don't really need fixing? Posted by: Diego Doval at March 3, 2003 12:07 AMI wonder if it would be so horrible - pejorative words like Eugenics notwithstanding - to screen out sperm or eggs carrying genes which predispose the eventual person to, say, murder. In fact, once Gattaca technology is available and cheap, wouldn't the real immoral act become intentionally incorporating dispositions like these into the kid you create? In any case, it's 100% inevitable (and will be mostly beneficial IMO, with some caveats) that parents will screen their sperm and eggs this way. As for the seemingly most trivial of Watson's statements - about making all the girls pretty - if being ugly has a material impact on a girl's psyche (confidence, stress level, etc), and the mind gages prettiness on an absolute rather than relative basis, why not make all the girls pretty (in the already well-documented cross-cultural sense)? Again that question is moot because it's inevitable that people will choose this on their own once given the power. Posted by: Steve Conover at March 3, 2003 3:11 AMCopyright © Diego Doval 2002-2007.
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But then the world is an imperfect place. Once you "fix" that "lower 10%" you get a new 10% at the bottom. Why not "fix" that too? And, as Watson so eloquently puts it, let's "make all girls pretty" in the process. I wonder, pretty according to what measure? Would he like a society of Barbies and Kens? (oh, sorry, no Kens. He didn't say that men should be "pretty".) Is Barbie "pretty"? Watson seems to think that "prettiness" as well as a number of other traits can be objectively defined, and then imposed on society at large. Hitler would be proud.