Science blog

1977: The Age of biotechnology arrives with “somatostatin” - a human growth hormone-releasing inhibitory factor, the first human protein manufactured in bacteria by Genentech, Inc. A synthetic, recombinant gene was used to clone a protein for the first time. 1978: Genentech, Inc. and The City of Hope National Medical Center announce the successful laboratory production of human insulin using recombinant DNA technology. Hutchinson and Edgell show it is possible to introduce specific mutations at specific sites in a DNA molecule. 1979: Sir Walter Bodmer suggests a way of using DNA technology to find gene markers to show up specific genetic diseases and their carriers. John Baxter reports cloning the gene for human growth hormone. 1980: The prokaryote model, E. coli, is used to produce insulin and other medicine, in human form. Researchers successfully introduce a human gene - one that codes for the protein interferon- into a bacterium. The U.S. patent for gene cloning is awarded to Cohen and Boyer. 1981: Scientists at Ohio University produce the first transgenic animals by transferring genes from other animals into mice. The first gene-synthesizing machines are developed. Chinese scientists successfully clone a golden carp fish. 1982: Genentech, Inc. receives approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market genetically engineered human insulin. Applied Biosystems, Inc. introduces the first commercial gas phase protein sequencer. 1983: The polymerase chain reaction is invented by Kary B Mullis. The first artificial chromosome is synthesized, and the first genetic markers for specific inherited diseases are found. 1984: Chiron Corp. announces the first cloning and sequencing of the entire human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) genome. Alec Jeffreys introduces technique for DNA fingerprinting to identify individuals. The first genetically engineered vaccine is developed. 1985: Cetus Corporation's develops GeneAmp polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology, which could generate billions of copies of a targeted gene sequence in only hours. Scientists find a gene marker for cystic fibrosis on chromosome number 7. 1986: The first genetically engineered human vaccine - Chiron's Recombivax HB - is approved for the prevention of hepatitis B. A regiment of scientists and technicians at Caltech and Applied Biosystems, Inc. invented the automated DNA fluorescence sequencer. 1987: The first outdoor tests on a genetically engineered bacterium are allowed. It inhibits frost formation on plants. Genentech's tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), sold as Activase, is approved as a treatment for heart attacks. 1988: Harvard molecular geneticists Philip Leder and Timothy Stewart awarded the first patent for a genetically altered animal, a mouse that is highly susceptible to breast cancer 1989: UC Davis scientists develop a recombinant vaccine against the deadly rinderpest virus. The human genome project is set up, a collaboration between scientists from countries around the world to work out the whole of the human genetic code. 1990: The first gene therapy takes place, on a four-year-old girl with an immune-system disorder called ADA deficiency. The human genome project is formally launched. 1991: Mary-Claire King, of the University of California, Berkeley, finds evidence that a gene on chromosome 17 causes the inherited form of breast cancer and also increases the risk of ovarian cancer. Tracey the first transgenic sheep is born. 1992: The first liver xenotransplant from one type of animal to another is carried out successfully. Chiron's Proleukin is approved for the treatment of renal cell cancer. 1993: The FDA declares that genetically engineered foods are "not inherently dangerous" and do not require special regulation. Chiron's Betaseron is approved as the first treatment for multiple sclerosis in 20 years. 1994: The first genetically engineered food product, the Flavr Savr tomato, gained FDA approval. The first breast cancer gene is discovered. Genentech's Nutropin is approved for the treatment of growth hormone deficiency. 1995: Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted hearts from genetically altered pigs into baboons, proving that cross-species operations are possible. The bacterium Haemophilus influenzae is the first living organism in the world to have its entire genome sequenced. 1996: Biogen's Avonex is approved for the treatment of multiple sclerosis. The discovery of a gene associated with Parkinson's disease provides an important new avenue of research into the cause and potential treatment of the debilitating neurological ailment. 1997: Researchers at Scotland's Roslin Institute report that they have cloned a sheep--named Dolly--from the cell of an adult ewe. The FDA approves Rituxan, the first antibody-based therapy for cancer. 1998: The first complete animal genome the C.elegans worm is sequenced. James Thomson at Wisconsin and John Gearhart in Baltimore each develop a technique for culturing embryonic stem cells. 1999: A new medical diagnostic test will for the first time allow quick identification of BSE/CJD a rare but devastating form of neurologic disease transmitted from cattle to humans. 2000: "Golden Rice," modified to make vitamin A. Cloned pigs are born for the first time in work done by Alan Coleman and his team at PPL, the Edinburgh-based company responsible for Dolly the sheep. 2001: The sequence of the human genome is published in Science and Nature, making it possible for researchers all over the world to begin developing genetically based treatments for disease. 2002: Researchers sequence the DNA of rice, and is the first crop to have its genome decoded. 2003: The sequencing of the human genome is completed.

(1) How can we tell the artificial from the natural? How can we be sure to distinguish Alien artifacts from naturally-occurring objects? How can we tell apart with certainty Alien languages from random noise or other natural signals? (2) If we have absolutely nothing in common with the Aliens, can we still recognize them as intelligent life forms and maintain an exchange of meaningful information with them? II. Artificial vs. Natural "Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) Complexity rises spontaneously in nature through processes such as self-organization. Emergent phenomena are common as are emergent traits, not reducible to basic components, interactions, or properties. Complexity does not, therefore, imply the existence of a designer or a design. Complexity does not imply the existence of intelligence and sentient beings. On the contrary, complexity usually points towards a natural source and a random origin. Complexity and artificiality are often incompatible. Artificial designs and objects are found only in unexpected ("unnatural") contexts and environments. Natural objects are totally predictable and expected. Artificial creations are efficient and, therefore, simple and parsimonious. Natural objects and processes are not. As Seth Shostak notes in his excellent essay, titled "SETI and Intelligent Design", evolution experiments with numerous dead ends before it yields a single adapted biological entity. DNA is far from optimized: it contains inordinate amounts of junk. Our bodies come replete with dysfunctional appendages and redundant organs. Lightning bolts emit energy all over the electromagnetic spectrum. Pulsars and interstellar gas clouds spew radiation over the entire radio spectrum. The energy of the Sun is ubiquitous over the entire optical and thermal range. No intelligent engineer - human or not - would be so wasteful. Confusing artificiality with complexity is not the only terminological conundrum. Complexity and simplicity are often, and intuitively, regarded as two extremes of the same continuum, or spectrum. Yet, this may be a simplistic view, indeed. Simple procedures (codes, programs), in nature as well as in computing, often yield the most complex results. Where does the complexity reside, if not in the simple program that created it? A minimal number of primitive interactions occur in a primordial soup and, presto, life. Was life somehow embedded in the primordial soup all along? Or in the interactions? Or in the combination of substrate and interactions? Complex processes yield simple products (think about products of thinking such as a newspaper article, or a poem, or manufactured goods such as a sewing thread). What happened to the complexity? Was it somehow reduced, "absorbed, digested, or assimilated"? Is it a general rule that, given sufficient time and resources, the simple can become complex and the complex reduced to the simple? Is it only a matter of computation? We can resolve these apparent contradictions by closely examining the categories we use. Perhaps simplicity and complexity are categorical illusions, the outcomes of limitations inherent in our system of symbols (in our language). We label something "complex" when we use a great number of symbols to describe it. But, surely, the choices we make (regarding the number of symbols we use) teach us nothing about complexity, a real phenomenon! A straight line can be described with three symbols (A, B, and the distance between them) - or with three billion symbols (a subset of the discrete points which make up the line and their inter-relatedness, their function). But whatever the number of symbols we choose to employ, however complex our level of description, it has nothing to do with the straight line or with its "real world" traits. The straight line is not rendered more (or less) complex or orderly by our choice of level of (meta) description and language elements. The simple (and ordered) can be regarded as the tip of the complexity iceberg, or as part of a complex, interconnected whole, or hologramically, as encompassing the complex (the same way all particles are contained in all other particles). Still, these models merely reflect choices of descriptive language, with no bearing on reality. Perhaps complexity and simplicity are not related at all, either quantitatively, or qualitatively. Perhaps complexity is not simply more simplicity. Perhaps there is no organizational principle tying them to one another. Complexity is often an emergent phenomenon, not reducible to simplicity. The third possibility is that somehow, perhaps through human intervention, complexity yields simplicity and simplicity yields complexity (via pattern identification, the application of rules, classification, and other human pursuits). This dependence on human input would explain the convergence of the behaviors of all complex systems on to a tiny sliver of the state (or phase) space (sort of a mega attractor basin). According to this view, Man is the creator of simplicity and complexity alike but they do have a real and independent existence thereafter (the Copenhagen interpretation of a Quantum Mechanics). Still, these twin notions of simplicity and complexity give rise to numerous theoretical and philosophical complications. Consider life. In human (artificial and intelligent) technology, every thing and every action has a function within a "scheme of things". Goals are set, plans made, designs help to implement the plans. Not so with life. Living things seem to be prone to disorientated thoughts, or the absorption and processing of absolutely irrelevant and inconsequential data. Moreover, these laboriously accumulated databases vanish instantaneously with death. The organism is akin to a computer which processes data using elaborate software and then turns itself off after 15-80 years, erasing all its work. Most of us believe that what appears to be meaningless and functionless supports the meaningful and functional and leads to them. The complex and the meaningless (or at least the incomprehensible) always seem to resolve to the simple and the meaningful. Thus, if the complex is meaningless and disordered then order must somehow be connected to meaning and to simplicity (through the principles of organization and interaction). Moreover, complex systems are inseparable from their environment whose feedback induces their self-organization. Our discrete, observer-observed, approach to the Universe is, thus, deeply inadequate when applied to complex systems. These systems cannot be defined, described, or understood in isolation from their environment. They are one with their surroundings. Many complex systems display emergent properties. These cannot be predicted even with perfect knowledge about said systems. We can say that the complex systems are creative and intuitive, even when not sentient, or intelligent. Must intuition and creativity be predicated on intelligence, consciousness, or sentience? Thus, ultimately, complexity touches upon very essential questions of who we, what are we for, how we create, and how we evolve. It is not a simple matter, that... III. Intersubjectivity and Communications The act of communication implies that the parties communicating possess some common denominators, share some traits or emotions, and are essentially more or less the same. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1999 edition) defines empathy as: "The ability to imagine oneself in anther's place and understand the other's feelings, desires, ideas, and actions. It is a term coined in the early 20th century, equivalent to the German Einfьhlung and modelled on 'sympathy'." Empathy is predicated upon and must, therefore, incorporate the following elements: Imagination which is dependent on the ability to imagine; The existence of an accessible Self (self-awareness or self-consciousness); The existence of an available Other (other-awareness, recognizing the outside world); The existence of accessible feelings, desires, ideas and representations of actions or their outcomes bo

th in the empathizing Self ("Empathor") and in the Other, the object of empathy ("Empathee"); The availability of common frames of reference - aesthetic, moral, logical, physical, and other. While (a) is presumed to be universally present in all agents (though in varying degrees), the existence of the other components of empathy cannot be taken for granted. Conditions (b) and (c), for instance, are not satisfied by people who suffer from personality disorders, such as the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Condition (d) is not met in autistic people (e.g., those who suffer from Asperger's Disorder). Condition (e) is so totally dependent on the specifics of the culture, period and society in which it exists that it is rather meaningless and ambiguous as a yardstick. Thus, the very existence of empathy can be questioned. It is often confused with inter-subjectivity. The latter is defined thus by "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995": "This term refers to the status of being somehow accessible to at least two (usually all, in principle) minds or 'subjectivities'. It thus implies that there is some sort of communication between those minds; which in turn implies that each communicating minds aware not only of the existence of the other but also of its intention to convey information to the other. The idea, for theorists, is that if subjective processes can be brought into agreement, then perhaps that is as good as the (unattainable?) status of being objective - completely independent of subjectivity. The question facing such theorists is whether intersubjectivity is definable without presupposing an objective environment in which communication takes place (the 'wiring' from subject A to subject B). At a less fundamental level, however, the need for intersubjective verification of scientific hypotheses has been long recognized". (page 414). On the face of it, the difference between intersubjectivity and empathy is double: Intersubjectivity requires an EXPLICIT, communicated agreement between at least two subjects. It pertains to EXTERNAL things (so called "objective" entities). Yet, these "differences" are artificial. This is how empathy is defined in "Psychology - An Introduction (Ninth Edition) by Charles G. Morris, Prentice Hall, 1996": "Closely related to the ability to read other people's emotions is empathy - the arousal of an emotion in an observer that is a vicarious response to the other person's situation... Empathy depends not only on one's ability to identify someone else's emotions but also on one's capacity to put oneself in the other person's place and to experience an appropriate emotional response. Just as sensitivity to non-verbal cues increases with age, so does empathy: The cognitive and perceptual abilities required for empathy develop only as a child matures... (page 442) Thus empathy does require the communication of feelings AND an agreement on the appropriate outcome of the communicated emotions (an affective agreement). In the absence of such agreement, we are faced with inappropriate affect (laughing at a funeral, for instance). Moreover, empathy often does relate to external objects and is provoked by them. There is no empathy in the absence of an (external) empathee. Granted, intersubjectivity is confined to the inanimate while empathy mainly applies to the living (animals, humans, even plants). But this is distinction is not essential. Empathy can, thus, be recast as a form of intersubjectivity which involves living things as "objects" to which the communicated intersubjective agreement relates. It is wrong to limit our understanding of empathy to the communication of emotions. Rather, it is the intersubjective, concomitant experience of BEING. The empathor empathizes not only with the empathee's emotions but also with his or her physical state and other parameters of existence (pain, hunger, thirst, suffocation, sexual pleasure etc.). This leads to the important (and perhaps intractable) psychophysical question. Intersubjectivity relates to external objects: the subjects communicate and reach an agreement regarding the way THEY have been AFFECTED by said external objects. Empathy also relates to external objects (to Others) - but the subjects communicate and reach an agreement regarding the way THEY would have felt had they BEEN said external objects. This is no minor difference, if it, indeed, exists. But does it really exist? What is it that we feel in empathy? Do we feel OUR own emotions/sensations, provoked by an external trigger (classic intersubjectivity) or do we experience a TRANSFER of the object's feelings/sensations to us? Probably the former. Empathy is the set of reactions - emotional and cognitive - triggered by an external object (the Other). It is the equivalent of resonance in the physical sciences. But we have no way of ascertaining that the "wavelength" of such resonance is identical in both subjects. In other words, we have no way of verifying that the feelings or sensations invoked in the two (or more) subjects are the same. What I call "sadness" may not be what you call "sadness". Colours, for instance, have unique, uniform, independently measurable properties (their energy). Even so, no one can prove that what I see as "red" is what another person (perhaps a Daltonist) would call "red". If this is true where "objective", measurable phenomena, like colors, are concerned - it is infinitely more so in the case of emotions or feelings. We are, therefore, forced to refine our definition: Empathy is a form of intersubjectivity which involves living things as "objects" to which the communicated intersubjective agreement relates. It is the intersubjective, concomitant experience of BEING. The empathor empathizes not only with the empathee's emotions but also with his physical state and other parameters of existence (pain, hunger, thirst, suffocation, sexual pleasure etc.). BUT The meaning attributed to the words used by the parties to the intersubjective agreement known as empathy is totally dependent upon each party. The same words are used, the same denotates, but it cannot be proven that the same connotates, the same experiences, emotions and sensations are being discussed or communicated. Language (and, by extension, art and culture) serve to introduce us to other points of view ("what is it like to be someone else" to paraphrase Thomas Nagle). By providing a bridge between the subjective (inner experience) and the objective (words, images, sounds), language facilitates social exchange and interaction. It is a dictionary which translates one's subjective private language to the coin of the public medium. Knowledge and language are, thus, the ultimate social glue, though both are based on approximations and guesses (see George Steiner's "After Babel"). But, whereas the intersubjective agreement regarding measurements and observations concerning external objects IS verifiable or falsifiable using INDEPENDENT tools (e.g., lab experiments) - the intersubjective agreement which concerns itself with the emotions, sensations and experiences of subjects as communicated by them IS NOT verifiable or falsifiable using INDEPENDENT tools. The interpretation of this second kind of agreement is dependent upon introspection and an assumption that identical words used by different subjects possess identical meanings. This assumption is not falsifiable (or verifiable). It is neither true nor false. It is a probabilistic conjecture, but without an attendant probability distribution. It is, in short, a meaningless statement. As a result, empathy itself is meaningless. In human-speak, if you say that you are sad and I empathize with you, it means that we have an agreement. I regard you as my object. You communicate to me a property of yours ("sadness"). This triggers in me a recollection of "what is sadness" or "what is to be sad". I say that I know what you mean, I have been sad before, I know what it is like to be sad. I empathize with you. We agree about being sad. We have an intersubjective agreement. Alas, such an agreement is meaningless. We cannot (yet) measure sadness, quantify it, crystallize it, a

ccess it in any way from the outside. Both of us are totally and absolutely reliant on your introspection and on my introspection. There is no way anyone can prove that my "sadness" is even remotely similar to your sadness. I may be feeling or experiencing something that you might find hilarious and not sad at all. Still, I call it "sadness" and I empathize with you. FINIS

Schools across the country have found new ways to make math add up for students-and the country's most recent "report card" is showing the results of that hard work. According to the U.S. Department of Education, a study called the Nation's Report Card, which provides state-by-state educational data, shows across-the-board gains in mathematics. In fact, overall fourth-grade and eighth-grade math scores rose to all-time highs, according to the study. The news comes as many Americans have focussed on ways to help their children improve their math scores in an effort to help ensure that their children have more successful academic and financial futures. To help, many schools have used new types of technology to teach kids math. For instance, an interactive computer program called Accelerated Math, by Renaissance Learning, Inc., helps educators personalize their lessons to each student in a classroom. The technology prints personalized math practice sheets for students, corrects their work and then reports their results. Detailed reports and record keeping functions give educators a daily snapshot of each student's progress and mastery. The process makes it easier for teachers to gauge each student's individual strengths and weaknesses and to help kids meet state and federal test requirements. Accelerated Math content is designed to work with existing math textbooks and is aligned to state standards. Teachers can learn more about how to use Accelerated Math by working with a specialist from the company. The specialists advise on ways to use classroom-proven routines and best practices associated with the software, as well as ways to get the most time-saving benefits from the technology. For instance, teachers using the software need to grade fewer papers and develop fewer lesson plans, freeing them up to pay more attention to their students. It's thought such technology can help schools remain competitive in the global academic arena.

"It is clear that modern medicine has created a serious dilemma ... In the past, there were many children who never survived - they succumbed to various diseases ... But in a sense modern medicine has put natural selection out of commission. Something that has helped one individual over a serious illness can in the long run contribute to weakening the resistance of the whole human race to certain diseases. If we pay absolutely no attention to what is called hereditary hygiene, we could find ourselves facing a degeneration of the human race. Mankind's hereditary potential for resisting serious disease will be weakened." Jostein Gaarder in "Sophie's World", a bestselling philosophy textbook for adolescents published in Oslo, Norway, in 1991 and, afterwards, throughout the world, having been translated to dozens of languages. The Nazis regarded the murder of the feeble-minded and the mentally insane - intended to purify the race and maintain hereditary hygiene - as a form of euthanasia. German doctors were enthusiastic proponents of an eugenics movements rooted in 19th century social Darwinism. Luke Gormally writes, in his essay "Walton, Davies, and Boyd" (published in "Euthanasia Examined - Ethical, Clinical, and Legal Perspectives", ed. John Keown, Cambridge University Press, 1995): "When the jurist Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche published their tract The Permission to Destroy Life that is Not Worth Living in 1920 ... their motive was to rid society of the 'human ballast and enormous economic burden' of care for the mentally ill, the handicapped, retarded and deformed children, and the incurably ill. But the reason they invoked to justify the killing of human beings who fell into these categories was that the lives of such human beings were 'not worth living', were 'devoid of value'" It is this association with the hideous Nazi regime that gave eugenics - a term coined by a relative of Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Galton, in 1883 - its bad name. Richard Lynn, of the University of Ulster of North Ireland, thinks that this recoil resulted in "Dysgenics - the genetic deterioration of modern (human) population", as the title of his controversial tome puts it. The crux of the argument for eugenics is that a host of technological, cultural, and social developments conspired to give rise to negative selection of the weakest, least intelligent, sickest, the habitually criminal, the sexually deviant, the mentally-ill, and the least adapted. Contraception is more widely used by the affluent and the well-educated than by the destitute and dull. Birth control as practiced in places like China distorted both the sex distribution in the cities - and increased the weight of the rural population (rural couples in China are allowed to have two children rather than the urban one). Modern medicine and the welfare state collaborate in sustaining alive individuals - mainly the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, the sick, and the genetically defective - who would otherwise have been culled by natural selection to the betterment of the entire species. Eugenics may be based on a literal understanding of Darwin's metaphor. The 2002 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say: "Darwin's description of the process of natural selection as the survival of the fittest in the struggle for life is a metaphor. 'Struggle' does not necessarily mean contention, strife, or combat; 'survival' does not mean that ravages of death are needed to make the selection effective; and 'fittest' is virtually never a single optimal genotype but rather an array of genotypes that collectively enhance population survival rather than extinction. All these considerations are most apposite to consideration of natural selection in humans. Decreasing infant and childhood mortality rates do not necessarily mean that natural selection in the human species no longer operates. Theoretically, natural selection could be very effective if all the children born reached maturity. Two conditions are needed to make this theoretical possibility realized: first, variation in the number of children per family and, second, variation correlated with the genetic properties of the parents. Neither of these conditions is farfetched." The eugenics debate is only the visible extremity of the Man vs. Nature conundrum. Have we truly conquered nature and extracted ourselves from its determinism? Have we graduated from natural to cultural evolution, from natural to artificial selection, and from genes to memes? Does the evolutionary process culminate in a being that transcends its genetic baggage, that programs and charts its future, and that allows its weakest and sickest to survive? Supplanting the imperative of the survival of the fittest with a culturally-sensitive principle may be the hallmark of a successful evolution, rather than the beginning of an inexorable decline. The eugenics movement turns this argument on its head. They accept the premise that the contribution of natural selection to the makeup of future human generations is glacial and negligible. But they reject the conclusion that, having ridden ourselves of its tyranny, we can now let the weak and sick among us survive and multiply. Rather, they propose to replace natural selection with eugenics. But who, by which authority, and according to what guidelines will administer this man-made culling and decide who is to live and who is to die, who is to breed and who may not? Why select by intelligence and not by courtesy or altruism or church-going - or al of them together? It is here that eugenics fails miserably. Should the criterion be physical, like in ancient Sparta? Should it be mental? Should IQ determine one's fate - or social status or wealth? Different answers yield disparate eugenic programs and target dissimilar groups in the population. Aren't eugenic criteria liable to be unduly influenced by fashion and cultural bias? Can we agree on a universal eugenic agenda in a world as ethnically and culturally diverse as ours? If we do get it wrong - and the chances are overwhelming - will we not damage our gene pool irreparably and, with it, the future of our species? And even if many will avoid a slippery slope leading from eugenics to active extermination of "inferior" groups in the general population - can we guarantee that everyone will? How to prevent eugenics from being appropriated by an intrusive, authoritarian, or even murderous state? Modern eugenicists distance themselves from the crude methods adopted at the beginning of the last century by 29 countries, including Germany, The United States, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Venezuela, Estonia, Argentina, Norway, Denmark, Sweden (until 1976), Brazil, Italy, Greece, and Spain. They talk about free contraceptives for low-IQ women, vasectomies or tubal ligations for criminals, sperm banks with contributions from high achievers, and incentives for college students to procreate. Modern genetic engineering and biotechnology are readily applicable to eugenic projects. Cloning can serve to preserve the genes of the fittest. Embryo selection and prenatal diagnosis of genetically diseased embryos can reduce the number of the unfit. But even these innocuous variants of eugenics fly in the face of liberalism. Inequality, claim the proponents of hereditary amelioration, is genetic, not environmental. All men are created unequal and as much subject to the natural laws of heredity as are cows and bees. Inferior people give birth to inferior offspring and, thus, propagate their inferiority. Even if this were true - which is at best debatable - the question is whether the inferior specimen of our species possess the inalienable right to reproduce? If society is to bear the costs of over-population - social welfare, medical care, daycare centers - then society has the right to regulate procreation. But does it have the right to act discriminately in doing so? Another dilemma is whether we have the moral right - let alone the necessary knowledge - to interfere with natural as well as social and demographic trends. Eugenicists counter that contraception

and indiscriminate medicine already do just that. Yet, studies show that the more affluent and educated a population becomes - the less fecund it is. Birth rates throughout the world have dropped dramatically already. Instead of culling the great unwashed and the unworthy - wouldn't it be a better idea to educate them (or their off-spring) and provide them with economic opportunities (euthenics rather than eugenics)? Human populations seem to self-regulate. A gentle and persistent nudge in the right direction - of increased affluence and better schooling - might achieve more than a hundred eugenic programs, voluntary or compulsory. That eugenics presents itself not merely as a biological-social agenda, but as a panacea, ought to arouse suspicion. The typical eugenics text reads more like a catechism than a reasoned argument. Previous all-encompassing and omnicompetent plans tended to end traumatically - especially when they contrasted a human elite with a dispensable underclass of persons. Above all, eugenics is about human hubris. To presume to know better than the lottery of life is haughty. Modern medicine largely obviates the need for eugenics in that it allows even genetically defective people to lead pretty normal lives. Of course, Man himself - being part of Nature - may be regarded as nothing more than an agent of natural selection. Still, many of the arguments advanced in favor of eugenics can be turned against it with embarrassing ease. Consider sick children. True, they are a burden to society and a probable menace to the gene pool of the species. But they also inhibit further reproduction in their family by consuming the financial and mental resources of the parents. Their genes - however flawed - contribute to genetic diversity. Even a badly mutated phenotype sometimes yields precious scientific knowledge and an interesting genotype. The implicit Weltbild of eugenics is static - but the real world is dynamic. There is no such thing as a "correct" genetic makeup towards which we must all strive. A combination of genes may be perfectly adaptable to one environment - but woefully inadequate in another. It is therefore prudent to encourage genetic diversity or polymorphism. The more rapidly the world changes, the greater the value of mutations of all sorts. One never knows whether today's maladaptation will not prove to be tomorrow's winner. Ecosystems are invariably comprised of niches and different genes - even mutated ones - may fit different niches. In the 18th century most peppered moths in Britain were silvery gray, indistinguishable from lichen-covered trunks of silver birches - their habitat. Darker moths were gobbled up by rapacious birds. Their mutated genes proved to be lethal. As soot from sprouting factories blackened these trunks - the very same genes, hitherto fatal, became an unmitigated blessing. The blacker specimen survived while their hitherto perfectly adapted fairer brethren perished ("industrial melanism"). This mode of natural selection is called directional. Moreover, "bad" genes are often connected to "desirable genes" (pleitropy). Sickle cell anemia protects certain African tribes against malaria. This is called "diversifying or disruptive natural selection". Artificial selection can thus fast deteriorate into adverse selection due to ignorance. Modern eugenics relies on statistics. It is no longer concerned with causes - but with phenomena and the likely effects of intervention. If the adverse traits of off-spring and parents are strongly correlated - then preventing parents with certain undesirable qualities from multiplying will surely reduce the incidence of said dispositions in the general population. Yet, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. The manipulation of one parameter of the correlation does not inevitably alter it - or the incidence of the outcome. Eugenicists often hark back to wisdom garnered by generations of breeders and farmers. But the unequivocal lesson of thousands of years of artificial selection is that cross-breeding (hybridization) - even of two lines of inferior genetic stock - yields valuable genotypes. Inter-marriage between races, groups in the population, ethnic groups, and clans is thus bound to improve the species' chances of survival more than any eugenic scheme.