Posted on 09/29/2003 4:44:06 PM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
A DANISH academic has sparked an uproar by calling for state measures to encourage childbearing among intelligent people but to dissuade those with low intellectual ability, to create what he called a better Danish society.
Helmuth Nyborg, a well-known psychology professor at the University of Aarhus who specialises in intelligence research, said it was time to "abandon the politically correct" and to practice selection in order to "improve the coming generations and avoid degenerates in the population", in comments this weekend that have been widely reported on national television and the country's main newspapers.
"I'm aware that my proposal breaks a taboo that dates back more than half a century, since Hitler's Aryan race program, and it is very controversial," he said.
"But the debate has to be raised now because the trend is cause for concern in Denmark, where we have an increasing number of problem kids," he said.
His proposals triggered outrage among many politicians and experts, including Integration Minister Bertel Haarder, who said Nyborg's suggestions were "against all moral principles".
But he said statistics show that women with lower educations have more children than highly educated women, who tend to spend more time studying and working before starting a family.
Nyborg suggested that highly educated women could have their workloads reduced while less intelligent parents could be paid to not have children.
"It's easy to make associations to Hitler and Nazism, as my critics do. But this has nothing to do with Nazism. Hitler was not a eugenicist, but an ideologue who abused the program of procreation," he said.
"He didn't want to improve the human race, he wanted to eliminate certain groups such as Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, and he massacred the most intelligent among them," Nyborg said.
Nyborg claimed intelligence was hereditary, and said it was "unfortunate and worrying if parents of lower intelligence bring more children into the world, as is the case today in Denmark, than highly intelligent parents".
"We can already choose to have children or not by doing practical tests in fertility clinics which show whether the fetus has hereditary genetic malformations," he said.
"It's possible to choose the eggs. So why not keep the best ones, in terms of intelligence," he said.
"Between 10 and 20 per cent of the population, who are at the lower echelon of society and who cannot fill in a time sheet at work or who cannot hold down a job or take care of their children, should not have children," he said.
"We are all aware of this problem, but we don't dare talk about it. But we should, for the sake of society and the future, so that we can have productive citizens and not people who need help," he said.
I am not sure that’s completely true. I believe the term used is “IQ tends to the median” of 100. Children of parents with IQ’s of 80 would likely have IQ’s between 80 and 100. The reverse is also true; children of parents with 150 IQ’s would likely have IQ’s between 150 and 100.
So while smarter people do generally have smarter kids, you can’t take two parents with 150 IQ’s and expect a kid with a 200 or 300 IQ.
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