Why Politicized Science is Dangerous

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

Natural selection does work on humans. However this doesn’t mean that Eugenics is needed to “weed out” undesirable traits. Human population genetics is a continuum. For the majority of people to be born with good eyesight some people on either end of the spectrum are going to be either nearsighted or farsighted. If we start trying to “breed out” bad eyesight we will not accomplish what we set out to do because the genes for “bad eyes” are in people with good eyes as well, and two people with good eyes can give birth to a nearsighted or farsighted child based on the random assortment of their “good genes”. In my case I have better than 20/20 vision and my father is nearsighted and my mother is farsighted; so I got “good genes” for something that they had “bad genes” for.

If Eugenics held any weight, then societies with ‘unrestricted breeding’ (i.e. almost all of them) would be showing declining fitness, fecundity, height, weight, aptitude, intelligence, etc. Humans have been topping the charts on all of these in recent decades, as well as breaking records in speed skill and endurance. Through thousands of years of civilization blithely not going Spartan on the weak and leaving them out to die and people who are the product of thousands of years of continuous civilization and ‘unrestricted breeding’ have yet to seen any decline, in fact the opposite.

Eugenics isn’t bad Science because the Nazi’s embraced it. It is just bad Science because it was motivated by political do gooders who thought they knew better than anyone else, and that they should have the power to say who gets to do what when and with whom (all for the good of the future of humanity of course).

It was taking a hammer to a surgeons problem. They had little idea of what the ‘problem’ was or what the means were to ‘fix’ it. If you want to breed humans like race horses there is no doubt that you would be successful. But look at all the problems that race horses have as a cost to their fantastic speed. Then think about what kind of traits those at the top rung of society would like to breed humans for.

And without doubt, I also recognize that when Mr. Jefferson wrote that, he was _not_ referring to all men of everywhere in the world, but from the perspective that “all men” meant all the men of the known civilized world.

- John

What part of the world did you think was unknown in Thomas Jefferson’s time?

What men do you think he did not mean to count as equal?

“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever”

Thomas Jefferson

“The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.”

Thomas Jefferson

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