The flawed idea of eugenics

Racists often try to justify their prejudices by pseudoscientific arguments. They will claim that kids of a certain skin colour, or kids born into a certain caste, are smarter. This leads to the cesspit known as eugenics — the selective breeding of human beings to eliminate undesirable traits and enhance desirable ones.

Eugenics was put on a pedestal by scientists in the colonial era.  Francis Galton, the father of modern statistics (also Charles Darwin's cousin) was one of its earliest advocates. Various countries formulated laws to prevent the breeding of people with undesirable traits on the basis of these supposedly scientific principles. It was understandable if not condonable, given that scientists are men of their time, sharing common social attitudes. White men ruled the world in Galton’s time.

Various American states took things further by forcibly sterilising the “undesirables”. Nazi Germany took it to the logical and horrible extreme, through its “final solution” which involved the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, mentally challenged people and others who were identified as undesirables in the nazi population register.  Meanwhile India perpetrated its own brand of eugenics through endogamous intra-caste unions in a eugenics experiment that started millennia ago.

As nationalism and neo fascism makes a comeback, eugenics has raised its ugly head again.  This is despite huge advances in the biosciences and in the sophistication of our understanding of statistical variables. Genomic studies conclusively prove that skin colour, along with shape of skulls, and other external physical characteristics have little to do with race.

Human populations everywhere carry a mixture of genes from all over the world because migrations started in pre-history. As a result, two individuals with the same skin colour may have more variations in their genetic mix, than two individuals with different skin colours.  That’s at the genomic level. On the behavioural scale, when we control for variables such as degree and quality of education, and cultural backgrounds, there is little apparent difference in the intelligence of various populations. Again, individual variations are large, and don’t correlate to colour of skin or caste.  

Does eugenics work at all? Biologist and atheist philosopher, Richard Dawkins recently set the cat among the pigeons when he suggested it might have scientific evidence in its favour.  Dawkins said: “It's one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, moral, political grounds.  It’s another to suggest it doesn’t work in practice. It works for cows, horses, pigs and roses. Why on earth would it not work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.” He clarified in a subsequent tweet: “Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to jump higher or run faster. But heaven forbid that we should do it.”

Ignoring the irony in a famous atheist calling upon divinity, Dawkins is arguably wrong in the assumption that eugenics works even in the narrow sphere of pure biology. Yes, domesticated animals have been bred for specific traits for millennia. Yes, they may yield more milk or meat.  

But the “purebreds” frequently have problems that wild animals of the same species do not. Pedigreed dogs and thoroughbred horses and cows tend to have physical issues and health problems that mixed breeds don’t. They don’t live longer.  Nor are they noticeably more intelligent.  

Indeed, wolves have registered as more intelligent than pedigreed dogs in multiple studies, and pedigreed dogs are the descendants of wolves. Thoroughbred horses hit a dead end about 50 years ago when it comes to speed—most racecourse records were set decades ago. Wild horses tend to outrun thoroughbreds in endurance tests.  Meanwhile, humans who have not been bred for anything in particular continue to break records in every successive Olympics.  

The most desirable genetic combination would be one that conveyed health, longevity and intelligence. Millennia of selective breeding doesn’t seem to have optimised these qualities in domestic animals. We don't really know what genes to select for, and we don't know how much nurture contributes when it comes to brains, health, or longevity. Eugenics appears dubious even in the narrow sense claimed by Dawkins.