[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
it make a difference if the means for producing fine off-
spring are no longer determined by moralized speculation
but instead by evidence-based genetic science?
It seems to me that, insofar as the goal itself is acceptable,
the change in the means for its advancement need pose no
obstacle to its pursuit. This is so of course provided that
the new means are not morally objectionable. To work out
a Judaic response to the sort of new eugenics now looming
on our horizon it will be necessary to evaluate the various
specific means that might serve a modern individualized
eugenics. I hope that some of the groundwork for that has
been laid in this examination of traditional Judaic voices.
The Suppression of Eugenics
Democracy demands that all of its citizens begin the race even.
Egalitarianism insists that they all finish even.
Roger Price, The Great Roob Revolution
Although the attack on eugenics had been launched in the late
1920s, eugenics survived even the embrace of Nazi Germany,
and in 1963 the Ciba Foundation convened a conference in Lon-
don under the title Man and His Future, at which three distin-
guished biologists and Nobel laureates (Herman Muller, Joshua
Lederberg, and Francis Crick) all spoke strongly in its favor. De-
spite this upbeat note, eugenics was about to undergo a total
rout.
Outraged by pictures of police dogs attacking civil rights
protesters in the South, the public found discussions of genetic
racial differences intolerable. In 1974, a large group of black stu-
dents descended upon the office of Professor Sandra Scarr in the
Institute of Child Development of the University of Minnesota:
One graduate student in education said he was going to
kill us if we continued to do research on black children.
Another paced up and down in front of us calling, hon-
kie, honkie, honkie.
When Arthur Jensen of the University of California at
Berkeley visited the Institute in 1976, he and Scarr were spat
upon by a phalanx of radical students, some of whom physically
attacked the speakers and those who had invited him. Not only
72 The History and Politics of Eugenics
were Jensen s lectures regularly broken up, he also received
bomb threats, and he had to be put under constant guard.
In March 1977, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored
a forum in Washington, D.C., on research with recombinant
DNA. As the first session began, protestors began marching
down the aisles waving placards and charts.
Hans Eysenck at a lecture to have been delivered at the
London School of Economics was first prevented from speaking
by the chanting of No Free Speech for Fascists! and then
physically attacked and had to be rescued from the stage, his
eyeglasses broken and blood streaming from his face. When his
book The IQ Argument appeared in the United States, wholesal-
ers and booksellers were threatened with arson and violence,
and the book became almost impossible to obtain.
The above scenes, and many others like them, were trig-
gered by assertions of mean IQs differing between racial groups,
specifically between whites and blacks. No one seemed to notice
that the issue was essentially irrelevant to the cause of a univer-
salist eugenics advocated for all groups, without exception.
The second chief factor in the suppression of eugenics was
the launching of the Holocaust memorial movement subsequent
to the 1967 Arab/Israeli war. So effective was the campaign that
polls show that many more Americans can identify the Holo-
caust than Pearl Harbor or the atomic bombing of Japan. Those
who are familiar with the term eugenics now associate it with
Holocaust and racism. The general public is totally unaware
that on September 16, 1939, the leaders of the eugenics move-
ment in the United States and England explicitly rejected the
racist doctrines of the Nazi government (see Appendix 1 of the
unabridged edition), as did many German eugenicists. An enor-
mous, albeit fully understandable, confusion has taken place
within the Jewish community, and this confusion is fraught with
significance for Jews today. According to the National Jewish
Population Survey, Jews in America entered into a precipitous
decline in numbers in the decade 1990-2000, reflecting a pattern
typical of high-IQ groups. Half of Jewish women aged 30-34
have no children, and nearly half of American Jews are 45 or
older. This is literally a matter of survival.
Beginning in the early 1980s, publications on eugenics en-
joyed a considerable upswing, including a huge number of arti-
The History and Politics of Eugenics 73
cles in the published literature and later over the Internet, but
even so the majority of these publications are still either hostile
or, at best, guarded. One relatively recent example is William H.
Tucker s The Science and Politics of Racial Research (1994).
While claiming to support freedom of scientific inquiry, Tucker
dismisses the trivial scientific value of IQ heritabilities, main-
tains that scientific rights of research might be qualified by the
rights of others, muses whether certain research topics should
be pursued at all, advocates denying government funding to ra-
cial research, proposes applying the Nuremburg Code to re-
searchers, states that the subjects of psychological research can [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl wyciskamy.pev.pl
it make a difference if the means for producing fine off-
spring are no longer determined by moralized speculation
but instead by evidence-based genetic science?
It seems to me that, insofar as the goal itself is acceptable,
the change in the means for its advancement need pose no
obstacle to its pursuit. This is so of course provided that
the new means are not morally objectionable. To work out
a Judaic response to the sort of new eugenics now looming
on our horizon it will be necessary to evaluate the various
specific means that might serve a modern individualized
eugenics. I hope that some of the groundwork for that has
been laid in this examination of traditional Judaic voices.
The Suppression of Eugenics
Democracy demands that all of its citizens begin the race even.
Egalitarianism insists that they all finish even.
Roger Price, The Great Roob Revolution
Although the attack on eugenics had been launched in the late
1920s, eugenics survived even the embrace of Nazi Germany,
and in 1963 the Ciba Foundation convened a conference in Lon-
don under the title Man and His Future, at which three distin-
guished biologists and Nobel laureates (Herman Muller, Joshua
Lederberg, and Francis Crick) all spoke strongly in its favor. De-
spite this upbeat note, eugenics was about to undergo a total
rout.
Outraged by pictures of police dogs attacking civil rights
protesters in the South, the public found discussions of genetic
racial differences intolerable. In 1974, a large group of black stu-
dents descended upon the office of Professor Sandra Scarr in the
Institute of Child Development of the University of Minnesota:
One graduate student in education said he was going to
kill us if we continued to do research on black children.
Another paced up and down in front of us calling, hon-
kie, honkie, honkie.
When Arthur Jensen of the University of California at
Berkeley visited the Institute in 1976, he and Scarr were spat
upon by a phalanx of radical students, some of whom physically
attacked the speakers and those who had invited him. Not only
72 The History and Politics of Eugenics
were Jensen s lectures regularly broken up, he also received
bomb threats, and he had to be put under constant guard.
In March 1977, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored
a forum in Washington, D.C., on research with recombinant
DNA. As the first session began, protestors began marching
down the aisles waving placards and charts.
Hans Eysenck at a lecture to have been delivered at the
London School of Economics was first prevented from speaking
by the chanting of No Free Speech for Fascists! and then
physically attacked and had to be rescued from the stage, his
eyeglasses broken and blood streaming from his face. When his
book The IQ Argument appeared in the United States, wholesal-
ers and booksellers were threatened with arson and violence,
and the book became almost impossible to obtain.
The above scenes, and many others like them, were trig-
gered by assertions of mean IQs differing between racial groups,
specifically between whites and blacks. No one seemed to notice
that the issue was essentially irrelevant to the cause of a univer-
salist eugenics advocated for all groups, without exception.
The second chief factor in the suppression of eugenics was
the launching of the Holocaust memorial movement subsequent
to the 1967 Arab/Israeli war. So effective was the campaign that
polls show that many more Americans can identify the Holo-
caust than Pearl Harbor or the atomic bombing of Japan. Those
who are familiar with the term eugenics now associate it with
Holocaust and racism. The general public is totally unaware
that on September 16, 1939, the leaders of the eugenics move-
ment in the United States and England explicitly rejected the
racist doctrines of the Nazi government (see Appendix 1 of the
unabridged edition), as did many German eugenicists. An enor-
mous, albeit fully understandable, confusion has taken place
within the Jewish community, and this confusion is fraught with
significance for Jews today. According to the National Jewish
Population Survey, Jews in America entered into a precipitous
decline in numbers in the decade 1990-2000, reflecting a pattern
typical of high-IQ groups. Half of Jewish women aged 30-34
have no children, and nearly half of American Jews are 45 or
older. This is literally a matter of survival.
Beginning in the early 1980s, publications on eugenics en-
joyed a considerable upswing, including a huge number of arti-
The History and Politics of Eugenics 73
cles in the published literature and later over the Internet, but
even so the majority of these publications are still either hostile
or, at best, guarded. One relatively recent example is William H.
Tucker s The Science and Politics of Racial Research (1994).
While claiming to support freedom of scientific inquiry, Tucker
dismisses the trivial scientific value of IQ heritabilities, main-
tains that scientific rights of research might be qualified by the
rights of others, muses whether certain research topics should
be pursued at all, advocates denying government funding to ra-
cial research, proposes applying the Nuremburg Code to re-
searchers, states that the subjects of psychological research can [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]