Race Research

[Armen]

VDARE.com, Virginia

May 1 2005

 

If Race Research Is Banned Now, How Will We Cope With A "Brave New

World?"

By Steve Sailer

 

Through genetic selection and modification, we will be soon be able

to transform human nature, for better . . . or worse.

 

Some find this exciting. I find it mostly alarming.

 

The good news: we still have time figure out the physical,

psychological, and social impacts of these gene-altering technologies

might be - by studying naturally-occurring human genetic diversity.

 

The bad news: we won't fund research into existing human biodiversity

- because it's politically incorrect.

 

Genetic engineering, and associated technologies such as neural

implants, is explored in two new books.

 

Microsoft programmer Ramez Naam, author of More Than Human: Embracing

the Promise of Biological Enhancement, never seems to have met an

idea for fiddling around with our genes that he didn't like. I find

his optimism likable even though I don't share it. Unfortunately, the

numerous small errors of fact in his book saps confidence in his

overall reliability.

 

In contrast, Washington Post reporter Joel Garreau - known to

VDARE.COM readers as author of the provocative The Nine Nations Of

North America - can't seem to make up his mind in his upcoming

Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our

Bodies - and What It Means to Be Human.

 

Garreau evenhandedly interviews futurist cheerleaders, like inventor

Ray Kurzweil, who takes hundreds of nutritional supplements daily as

part of his plan for living forever, and doomsayers, like Sun

Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, who fears that genetically

manipulated germs could wipe out all of humanity.

 

(The inaptly named Joy strikes me as a Gloomy Gus. But, just in case

some apocalyptic catastrophe does transpire, it would make sense to

pay a couple of dozen military families to live for two year

stretches at the bottom of a Kansas salt mine, from which, if the

worst were to happen, they could eventually re-emerge like Noah's

family to repopulate the planet.)

 

What Naam and Garreau can agree upon is that the post-human age will

be here Real Soon Now.

 

I'm not so certain. medicine progresses slowly these days. But I am

sure that that it's time to start getting serious about whether we

want them or not.

 

The situation oddly resembles the political impact of immigration.

When I first started writing about immigration, it was widely assumed

that the Hispanic share of the vote had become so huge that it was

political suicide to try to cut back on immigration. Yet closer study

showed this was far from true.

 

For example, in the overall 2004 exit poll, the un-massaged Hispanic

share of the respondents turned out to be only 5.9 percent, far below

the 8 or 9 percent forecast by Michael Barone.

 

Similarly, when it comes to human bioengineering, the future hasn't

yet gone through the formality of taking place.

 

We still have time to figure out what we want to do and what we

don't.

 

But how? Answer: By studying honestly the human genetic diversity we

see all around us - and learning how it already affects society.

 

Unfortunately, political taboos against the study of human

biodiversity retard this crucial work.

 

Occasionally, I get emails telling me I'm foolish to worry about the

long term effects of immigration because genetic engineering will

soon give us all IQs of 1,000 ... or we'll live forever ... or robots

will take over and enslave us ... or nanotechnology will make us all

richer than Croesus ... or nanotechnology will run amok and suck all

the life out of everything on Earth ... or ...

 

But technological trees don't always grow to the sky. Consider the

rise and fall of the Transportation Revolution. From the development

of the steamship to the moon landing took less than 170 years. Smart

science fiction writers like Robert A. Heinlein assumed that this

progress would continue.

 

Yet, in the last quarter of a century, the greatest breakthrough in

transportation technology has been, what, the minivan? The Concorde

is dead, the Space Shuttle is teetering ...

 

Nor do technical revolutions always arrive on time. Medical gene

engineering of humans has been much slower to become usable than many

assumed a decade ago.

 

One problem: getting the effectiveness to risk level high enough.

Operating on humans isn't like engineering corn or mice, where you

can throw away your mistakes.

 

Another difficulty: although there was a vast amount of publicity

back in 2000 about how the genome had been "mapped," we still don't

know what most genes actually do.

 

Moreover, while a few diseases, such as sickle cell anemia and

Huntington's, are the result of a single bad gene, the big bad

illnesses seem to have other causes. Indeed, Darwinian logic, as

first enunciated by Gregory Cochran, suggests we might have been

focusing too hard on finding heritable genetic causes for diseases.

In the words of top British genetic journalist Matt Ridley, "Your

genes don't exist to kill you."

 

Indeed, a new report called "Microbial Triggers of Common Human

Illness" from the American Academy of Microbiology supports Cochran's

insight that many diseases that are assumed genetic may more likely

be triggered by germs.

 

That's because natural selection would tend to eliminate harmful

genes in us, but pathogens evolve at least as fast as our defenses

against them.

 

Your genes haven't evolved to make you sick, but to give you

capabilities to survive and reproduce. So genetic technologies might

be more suited to enhance skills than to cure illnesses.

 

Yet some capacities are likely to require many genes working together

in complex ways, so the payoff from altering a single gene would be

small. Superstar cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has said, "I think

an Achilles heel of genetic enhancement will be the rarity of single

genes with consistent beneficial psychological effects."

 

Considering the intricacy of the human brain, this is particularly

likely to be true of intelligence, which would make engineering

higher IQs difficult.

 

Conversely, single genes often have multiple uses, which means that

genetic engineering could often have unfortunate side effects.

 

For example, back in 1999, Time Magazine ran a cover story called

"The I.Q. Gene?" about how Dr. Joe Tsien had genetically engineered

"Doogie" mice to have superior memories.

 

But subsequent studies showed the Doogie mice (named after the

supersmart TV character Doogie Howser, M.D.) are also more sensitive

to chronic inflammatory pain, which isn't a trait you'd want your

children to possess.

 

Farmers have been modifying their barnyard animals' genetic

frequencies for thousands of years through selective breeding. One of

the many interesting aspects of the new book Animals in Translation:

Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by animal

sciences professor Temple Grandin, who is America's best known

autistic, is how she documents some of the weird things that go wrong

when breeders emphasize a single genetic trait.

 

For example, don't expect Lassie to figure out anymore that the way

to rescue little Timmy from the quicksand is by extending a long

branch to him. Since WWII, collie breeders have been trying to give

collies narrower and narrower snouts because they look so darn

elegant that way. Unfortunately, they made their skulls so narrow

there is no room left for brains. Collies are now dumb as a box of

rocks.

 

Side effects can be more unpredictable and even nastier. In recent

years, as chicken ranchers have bred for more meat on their birds,

they've had to deal with an unprecedented rash of rooster sex

murderers who kill hens.

 

In humans, Cochran has pointed out that torsion dystonia, a

hereditary illness which puts about 10 percent of its sufferers in

wheelchairs at an early age, may be a side effect of intense

selection pressure for higher IQ. In one study, the average IQ of

patients was 122.

 

So parents may not rush into genetic engineering their children quite

as fast as the futurists expect.

 

Futurists - being smart, nerdy guys - generally assume that the most

desirable human trait is IQ.

 

But we can look right now at racial groups with higher average IQs,

such as Northeast Asians and Ashkenazis, to get some idea of the

social impact of high IQ.

 

Higher IQ groups tend to exhibit positive social patterns such as low

crime rates and high wealth creation rates. Unfortunately, what Amy

Chua calls "market dominant minorities" haven't always been looked

upon favorably by the masses. Top IQ researcher Linda Gottfredson

points out in her important article "What If the Hereditarian

Hypothesis Is True?" that "Virtually all the victim groups of

genocide in the 20th century had relatively high average levels of

achievement (e.g., German Jews, educated Cambodians, Russian Kulaks,

Armenians in Turkey, Ibos in Nigeria)."

 

Among average people, it is not at all clear that intelligence is

considered as desirable as desirability. I suspect that most parents

would choose attractiveness over intelligence for their children,

because being able to outcompete your peers for the best spouse is so

important, especially in making grandchildren, that looks matter

greatly.

 

Heinlein might have been the first thinker to explore some of the

consequences.

 

In his prescient 1942 novel about a genetically engineered future,

Beyond This Horizon, the world is populated by fairly intelligent but

extremely sexy people straight out of a Hollywood casting call.

 

The men are manly and the ladies lovely. The men are so macho in

fact, that no gentleman would be seen without his gun, and dueling

has made a major comeback. The strict code of etiquette that limits

when these square-jawed bravos are allowed to blast away at each

other inspired Heinlein's famous remark, "An armed society is a

polite society."

 

As insightful as the best science fiction writers are, we can learn

the pros and cons of a higher testosterone future society right now

by examining the social behavior of current racial groups with higher

levels of male hormones and stronger male hormone receptors, such as

African-Americans.

 

But, that kind of research on naturally occurring genetic diversity

is largely taboo. Instead, we will probably walk blindly into the era

of genetic engineering.

 

Good luck to us all. We're going to need it.

 

[steve Sailer , is founder of the Human Biodiversity

Institute and movie critic for The American Conservative. His website

www.iSteve.com features site-exclusive commentaries.]

[DominO123]

In all seriousness Armen, Steve Sailer is a dubvious character, his "Human Biodiversity Institute" which he founded, and the way he uses it to discredit credible biologists and genetic researchers, really exposes him to be the character with a hidden agenda, and place him as a self-proclaimed racialist(a new term racists uses to call themselves to hide behind).

[Armen]

QB, I don't know him as well as about race research in general, however, I could also come up with a theoretical notion that those who put a tabu on race research want to conceal the real differences between the ability of races so that the underdeveloped races never get a chance to develop. Anyway, as far as I can see those who indiscriminatly label every effort in this direction "racism" are establishing such a dogmatic approach that it is very hard not to be sceptical about them.

[DominO123]

QB, I don't know him as well as about race research in general, however, I could also come up with a theoretical notion that those who put a tabu on race research want to conceal the real differences between the ability of races so that the underdeveloped races never  get a chance to develop. Anyway, as far as I can see those who indiscriminatly label every effort in this direction "racism" are establishing such a dogmatic approach that it is very hard not to be sceptical about them.

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

Armen, there is no "tabou" on race research as this bigot suggest... most biologists and geneticists don't believe in the existance of races, forcenic anthropologists place races purely as an identification way, with characteristics as given parametters.

 

The reason why race concepts are rejected by many, is not only a a question of preventing racism.