Robert K. Graham was co-founder and director of The Repository for Germinal Choice, a California-based sperm bank which stores and distributes the sperm of Nobel Prize winners and other men of exceptional ability. He invented and manufactured the plastic used for shatter-proof eye glasses, and is author of The Future of Man. The following interview was conducted by Marian Van Court on January 20, 1983 in Austin, Texas.

Approximately how many applications have you received so far?

Over 1000.

And how many women have actually begun the program?

Well, we've had two births and we have 15 pregnancies, as of this speaking. There are also 45 currently undergoing insemination – those are all in the USA. Although we've had many applications from outside the country, they present various importation problems that have to be worked out first.

Are there legal questions this project has raised which never existed before?

Yes, quite a few. In fact, there are major legal expenses involved in setting this up on the present scale, to avoid lawsuits if there's a faulty child born. Because the chances of a faulty child are just inherent in the situation – sooner or later, there will be some youngster who is not well-endowed, perhaps even a child with Down's syndrome.

What originally inspired you to create The Repository for Germinal Choice?

Shall I go way back to the beginning?

Yes, please.

Early in my life it dawned on me that bright people – at least the desirable citizens, the ones who carry on the real planning and doing in the community – weren't reproducing themselves. This became apparent to me in the little town in northern Michigan where I grew up. The doctor had only one child, the banker had one child, the leading lumber mill operator had three children, none of whom married. The richest and most famous man in town was childless. So was the only man listed in Who's Who. My dad was a dentist. These were among his friends, and the people I knew best and regarded most highly. It troubled me they weren't even reproducing themselves.

Then after college, for ten years I was a salesman calling on doctors. There again, I found that most of them had only one or two children. I accumulated information and observations, and did a lot of reading for ten years. Finally I wrote a book. I asked a friend, Raymond Cattell, if he would review the manuscript, which he did. He was also a friend of Hermann J. Muller, who was as great a geneticist as there was in that day, perhaps still as great as any. Cattell told Muller about the manuscript because in it I had suggested several ways of encouraging bright people to have bigger families, and one of them was similar to Muller's plan. But Muller had conceived it first, and had thought it through much more thoroughly than I. Muller was willing to go over the manuscript and helped me immensely. In fact, he came to Pasadena where I lived, and we spent most of three days going over it.

Ever since then, until Muller's death, he and I worked together, first on the manuscript, and then on the establishment of The Repository for Germinal Choice. That was Muller's name, incidentally. All of his friends, including me, threw up their hands at the thought of such an awkward, academic name. But it's a precise name. Nobody has come up with a better one.

At any rate, Muller and I decided to jointly establish a Repository. I was to finance it, and he was to guide it. We drew up and signed an agreement to that effect. I set up a laboratory. But we never did anything about it as long as Muller lived. He always wanted to think through some of the problems. He dreaded any publicity, and it would indeed have been adverse at that time. He was a sensitive man. The equipment sat idle the rest of Muller's life, and for years thereafter, because I was busy manufacturing lenses. But when I sold my lens company to 3M, I began contacting Nobelists. Muller had named several Nobelists as desirable donors. I didn't intend to limit it to Nobelists, but I did want to start with them. Now we've extended the donors to Fields medalists. For some reason, Nobel specifically excluded mathematicians from the scientists who could win a Nobel Prize. Fields medalists in mathematics are younger, and at least the equivalent of Nobelists in the hard sciences, especially since there's only one award every four years.

Is William Shockley the only donor who has publicly acknowledged taking part?

Yes. And I would like to explain why I'm eternally indebted to him. When I started recruiting donors for the Repository, I went to a number of Nobelists in California – there were about 21 in that state. One who agreed to be a donor was Shockley. [William Shockley won the Nobel Prize for his invention of the transistor.] Two others also agreed, and were making repeat donations. I called a press conference [February 29, 1980] and announced that The Repository was set up and looking for recipients. Immediately after the conference, one of the reporters called all the Nobelists in California to ask if they were donors. They all denied it. Even the donors denied having anything to do with it. And I understand why they had to. But Shockley said "Yes, I'm a donor, and the others should be too They should be ashamed if they're not." He was the one person who saved me from looking like the country's champion liar. So when he ran for the U.S. Senate, I plugged for Shockley.

I read a little something about that, but I don't think it got much national coverage.

He didn't expect to win. But he had a point to make, that dysgenics is a serious problem that the legislature should be aware of. And I think he did accomplish that, to some extent.

How many different donors do you have now?

We now have about 19, most of whom are repeat donors.

Do you make any attempt to assess the personality and character traits of the donors?

When it comes to donors, we can be as rigorous as you could wish. There are hundreds of top-notch, world-class scientists. We can go to the ones we want. Most of them decline. But among those who agree to donate, we use only those with great creativity, which correlates closely with high IQ in the sciences, and those who have no serious hereditary taint. Myopia, hemorrhoids – we ignore a few minor things like that.

We include details about the personality and character of the donors on the information sheet. The recipients naturally want to know height, weight, coloring, ancestry and so forth. If there's anything else worthy of note, we include that too – like "He is a highly skilled amateur musician," or "He was an exceptional athlete when in college." We list a comprehensive description. In the donor's questionnaire, he has to answer hundreds of questions in order to eliminate the possibility of deleterious hereditary traits.

Do you ask about all the members of their family, like if there's any schizophrenia or other mental illness?

If there's any schizophrenia in the family history at all, they're out And there are many other things, like Tay Sachs, we try to eliminate

I've read that Muller's widow wants to dissociate his name from this project. It's abundantly clear from his writings that Muller was an ardent proponent of eugenics, and that he specifically supported artificial insemination using the sperm of eminent men. How do
you account for Mrs. Muller's attitude?

I named it the Hermann J. Muller Repository for Germinal Choice. It was his concept, and it was unthinkable not to give him credit. But Thea, his wife, resented my using his name. Furthermore, she didn't think that, in limiting it to Nobelists, I was doing it exactly the way Joe had said. Now, Joe had contemplated a lot of different ways in our years of discussion. There was no one, set final way to do it. We took his name off the letterhead, but retained the name Repository for Germinal Choice. Instead, I put on the letterhead 'Co-founders: Hermann J. Muller and Robert K. Graham." We are that – I have the documents

Do you think she might have been upset about the publicity?

No, but I think the embarrassing circumstances of the first two births made her think we weren't doing things quite right. And there's some truth to that contention, as we were naive at first. 'Still are, but less so (laughs). At first, we had a one-page questionnaire which we sent to potential recipients, and we required the husband to sign the application. In the first case (in which the woman had formerly been convicted of a felony) there was a husband. But we didn't ask "Do you have a criminal record?" We do now. In the second case, there was the name of a husband on the application that was returned. It's never been quite clear – I've purposely not delved into the specifics too closely, because there's embarrassment all the way around, embarrassment that the husband didn't materialize. I really think that Dr. Blake fully intended to have a husband, but I think he decided not to get married. Meanwhile, she was pregnant. We had supplied the material. So now with our questionnaire we require a photocopy of the marriage certificate. And we've lengthened the questionnaire to ten pages.

Then it's an absolute requirement, that a woman be married? Or would you consider any exceptions, say if a single woman wanted to have a child, and had the economic and psychological resources to raise it on her own?

No, it's absolute. It's a matter of principle with us. We feel we're innovative enough without trying to disrupt the mores of our society.

If this became widely used – for example, if a11 women who had artificial insemination went to The Repository for Germinal Choice – wouldn't it be necessary to keep detailed records to avoid inadvertent inbreeding in the future? Especially if a relatively small number of donors is used for a large number of inseminations.

Our present system is to ask in the questionnaire we send the potential recipient "Will you tell any child born of this arrangement the Repository number assigned to the germinal father?" If they agree to do that, then we make no special demands on them in that respect. If the child later wishes to marry, then he or she can ask the intended mate if the father's number is the same.

And the chances are miniscule.

Right. But at least it makes for an absolute elimination of consanguinity, more accurate even than our present social system. In the few cases in which they elect not to tell the child, in which they prefer for the child to believe the husband is also the biological father, we will not use the donor they chose again in that state. Any subsequent applications from that state will not get that donor as a possible choice.

Does the Repository make any profit?

No, the Repository is a non-profit organization. We do not charge for the semen. We charge only for the incidentals – that is, shipping costs, costs of maintaining liquid nitrogen (which keeps the semen frozen) over several months. And we do charge an evaluation fee, because we have to engage at least two physicians to pass on these ten-page questionnaires the applicants return.

Is this essentially to make sure they're healthy?

That's right. One or more physicians will talk to the individual, usually by telephone. So we do thoroughly go into the characteristics of the recipients.

What other criteria do you have for selection of recipients, other than they be married and healthy?

Married, healthy, the brighter the better. They must be 40 or under. The incidence of Down's syndrome goes up with the age of the mother. It never is very high, but Down's syndrome is a major tragedy. So we want to minimize that possibility.

On the Phil Donahue Show [originally aired in Chicago on NBC on October 29, 1982] , Paul Smith said that the Repository sends the germinal material to the recipients in little ampules which you refer to as "straws"' that are an eighth of an inch in diameter and two inches long. Is it a correct inference that one donation will be good for a number of inseminations?

Oh, yes. One donation theoretically might inseminate 20 or 40 women. Because first of all, we use extenders to help in the freezing. The real trick in doing this successfully is to freeze the semen rapidly so that ice crystals won't form. The spermatazoa are preserved, without harm, indefinitely – at least 11 years that we're sure of. To elaborate on your question – by using extenders, we can fill one straw (which is sufficient for one insemination) with only a fraction of a donation. It's effective because the contents are placed at the os of the cervix. It's not necessary to fill the vagina wastefully as nature does – it's put right where it should go. We supply three straws for each ovulation, and recommend that they use one the day before they are scheduled to ovulate, one the day they are due to ovulate, and one the day after. So we shotgun it a bit, to allow for miscalculations. I might digress at this point – we try to encourage the husband to do the insemination, to give him a sense of involvement. Also, not many physicians know how to do it, and even those who do will be away on week-ends, so if the woman ovulates then, the opportunity would be lost. So for a number of reasons, we try to make this a domestic program.

What does Paul Smith do exactly?

Paul makes our collections from donors. They wish it to be anonymous, so when Paul appears on television, he always wears a surgeon's mask so he won't be recognized. He also makes some deliveries of the germinal material, and the husband doesn't want Paul to be recognized either. There are a lot of delicate feelings involved in this whole project. So we have to maintain absolute anonymity.

How do you feel generally about your treatment from the press?

Well, initially the press and other media were highly speculative and mostly adverse. But this is slowly changing. They've made every crude, sexy joke they can think of, and now they've totally depleted their imaginations (laughs). But even at the start, when the media were quite adverse, the message got through to the people who needed us. And we were willing to go anyplace and submit to scorn and ridicule in order to spread the word.

----- Section Missing ----

[I think we were talking about the prevailing belief that heredity is unimportant with regard to IQ, and to human behavior generally.]

Do you think we're seeing any changes in that regard?

I think so. By going over every study which bears on the subject of heredity versus environment, Arthur Jensen has concluded that variations in intelligence are about 69% hereditary, 25% environmental, and 5% attributable to test error. I think this is a fact of life, and it will be increasingly recognized. Cattell has said, and said very well, that hereditary improvement in the intellectual level of the population is by far the most permanent and the least expensive way to raise the level of capability in the pop
ulation. But it's not being sufficiently utilized. We spend billions on education, which is important. But there you have to start over again with each generation, whereas an hereditary improvement continues on for generations.

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic about the future of eugenics?

I'm optimistic. It has a long way to go to become a common consideration when people contemplate parenthood. But I think with further education, people will pay more attention to it. And I think probably lots of people who don't need our services are being made more cognizant by hearing about us and our concerns for good heredity in a child. Slowly people are becoming more "eugenics-minded."

Some people involved in eugenics have religious or spiritual motivations. Do you see it as a humanitarian endeavor, or do you have some kind of religious basis for it?

I'm not myself a very spiritual person.

So you'd characterize your motives as essentially humanitarian?

Yes, essentially. Look at it from the point of view of the parents. These are couples who want a child, but can't have one because the husband is infertile. With this program, they can have a child, and they can maximize the probability of having a bright, healthy and creative child. Consider the child, too. As a consequence he spends his life with the genes of the donor, as well as those of the mother. Why not provide the best genes possible?

Thank you so much for a fascinating interview.

It was my pleasure.

Raymond B. Cattell obtained his Ph.D. and D.Sc. at London University, where he worked with Charles Spearman developing the theory of intelligence measurement. He has since taught at Harvard and has been for 30 years Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Illinois. His research publications cover 80 books and over 400 articles. His book, New Morality from Science: Beyondism, (Pergamon Press, 1973) contains interesting ideas about eugenics. His latest book, The Inheritance of Personality and Ability, has been hailed for its methodological breakthroughs. The following interview was conducted by Marian Van Court on May 31, 1984. (A list of questions was mailed to Professor Cattell in Hawaii, and he sent back an audio cassette to Autin, TX, with his answers, where they were transcribed.)

Do you know of any studies comparing personality traits of environmentalists and hereditarians?

I don't know of any reliable study on that question. But I can tell you my hunch, that Factor I, which we call "premzia," is likely to be related, since it contrasts wishful thinking with down-to-earth realism. One would expect hereditarians to be more realistic, and therefore lower on Factor I. And they are also probably higher on Factor C, ego strength.

What is the best test of creativity?

A test of creativity often used is Guilford's test of flexibility. However, the results can be completely misleading, in my opinion, because the test measures only a quite superficial, gamesroom creativity. Creativity is closely correlated with personality factors of dominance, introversion, and ego strength. So I wouldn't try to measure creativity by using a test of creativity per se, but rather by measuring personality factors that correlate highly with it. It has been shown that intelligence is also a precondition for creativity in any socially useful sense. So I would test for creativity with the 16 PF [Personality Factors] Test and a culture-fair intelligence test.

The United States has been characterized as a "nation of strangers." Do you think our ethnic and racial diversity is in part responsible for our alienation and rootlessness?

Societies in the past that have become too pluralistic, like India, and the old Mediterranean countries like the Roman Empire, didn't perceive the danger to moral standards that arose from having too many differing moral standards, too many differing religions, too many differing cultures. On the other hand, there are advantages to a country in having some diversity, in that each can be used as an experiment to see in which direction the group as a whole might advantageously go. I think that there's a happy medium on this matter of diversity, and it has probably been overshot in the U.S. at the present. Alienation is now quite severe, and it's partly due to wholesale, unchecked immigration. Few politicians seem willing to confront the issue. I think it might not be a bad idea to remove the inscription from the Statue of Liberty which calls for the "wretched refuse" of the other countries to migrate here. This is not what you want to build a nation of. If we have immigration, we ought to have it from the best sources. At the moment, the sociologists have won out on that issue with their claims that there are no differences among immigrants. But I would maintain that there are most marked differences, in both innate intelligence and personality, among people who enter the U.S.

You have written that dominance is negatively correlated with grades in school, but positively correlated with creativity. In using grades as a major criterion for graduate admission, doesn't this mean graduate schools are actually selecting against creativity to some extent?

Yes. Dominance is negatively related to grades in high school and undergraduate work, but the opposite is true in graduate work – with dissertations and theses, the better work is done by high-dominance people who show more creativity and independence of mind. Of course, that dominance isn't necessarily welcomed, because professors may still find docility in students to be a desirable trait. Incidentally, creative people have a personality profile which is not everybody's cup of tea. They are often difficult people. Their combination of high dominance and introversion is not always easy to deal with. But there is, as you suggest, a definite difference between personality traits associated with examination success and those associated with creative research. I believe all promotions and scholarships should be based on personality tests, as well as on measures of intellectual ability. If this were done, selection could be directed toward creative people. The personality traits associated with creativity have now been worked out quite well. For example, we've compared administrative academic people to creative researchers of the same age, and we've compared creative writers and artists to those who aren't really so creative. There's an amazing similarity – you see the same high dominance, the same high ego strength, in creative people in all these fields.

In nearly every interview in The Eugenics Bulletin the same question is asked: "Specifically, what should people who are concerned about eugenics do?" How would you answer this question?

I agree with Carl Bajema's suggestions in the Fall '83 issue – the only way to progress is to enter political controversies, to set up programs for research in the area, to support the Eugenics Special Interest Group, and in general to stir up people's thinking by critical observations. Instances of neglect of eugenics are all around us. I haven't seen a single reference in all the current discussions on jobs for women to the dysgenic effect of having more women employed full time so that they can't beget as many children. This amazes me, this current trend in which women get so involved in their professions that they cannot take time off to have children. In addition, of course, there are lots of things in the economy that could be changed. For example, taxing those of higher social status more tends to be dysgenic, and this should be changed. One policy I view as eugenic is the rule in the British civil service which allows a woman to take off at least three months when she has a child without any effect on her promotional status or income.

There should also be much more emphasis during the last years of schooling on reminding children that not only their own children, but their own lives, will be happier if they choose more intelligent and stable individuals as spouses. It isn't impossible for even average members of the population to have a certain sense of dynasty. In some parts of the world, notably in Sweden and Japan, people know their genealogies much further back than most Americans do. This attention to genealogy would be, I think, a real aid to eugenics.

If society wants to go on at a proper cultural level, it should be handling these problems by economic means so as to achieve a eugenic balance. There are, in fact, many other things that could be done in economic terms to aid eugenics; for example, there could be a far larger child allowance in income taxes than presently exists. Obviously, a person with eugenic ideals should have as large a family as health and circumstances permit. Intelligent people, for example, university graduates, should be thinking in terms of four children per family, because this is little more than replacement. Nothing beats a good example.

What would you advocate in place of the present welfare system?

W
ell, I would advocate some change, because I'm most dissatisfied with it and its consequences. It appears to act as a stimulant for a higher birth rate among those who cannot look after their children on their own. Monetary advantages are given to those who have the most children. That is what one would like to see at the upper level, but instead it is being brought about at the lowest level.

I think a single solution is not possible. However, I would advocate that social workers put as item #1 of their duties the reduction of the birth rate of their clients by supplying birth control knowledge. After all, poverty is due either to bad luck, on the one hand, or to systematic defects in intelligence or personality, on the other. Insofar as poverty arises partly from heritable defects, we certainly don't want a welfare system that encourages them to have even more children.

Is it a reasonable assumption that practically all that's considered good about human nature, such as altruism, has come about as the result of group selection, and that which is considered bad about human nature, such as selfishness and insincerity, exists as a result of individual selection?

Yes, there's much truth in that. The psychopath may do very well for himself as an individual – it's only that a group with too many psychopaths wouldn't survive. Group selection and individual selection work differently. Although individual selection may favor selfishness, for example, it's caught up and corrected by group selection in the long run--one has to stress that. A society dies if it exceeds a certain degree of individual selfishness. However, behavioral genetic research doesn't show a lot of genetic influence on superego strength – it's only about 20 percent. That is enough, of course, for group selection to act in favor of increased altruism. Today we're up against the "one-world" enthusiasts, who want all group competition to cease. Of course, none of us wants war, but it's throwing away the baby with the bath water to stop group selection because of the risk of war, if group selection is the only way to advance altruistic traits, as I think one can demonstrate.

The authors of a recent article in a psychology journal voiced concern about the fact that the mentally retarded don't vote nearly as often as people of normal intelligence do, and suggested various ways to entice them to the polls. How do you react to this?

The article you describe strikes me as the highest form of idiocy. Writers such as Shaw and Wells spoke good sense a generation ago when they demanded qualifications for voting, such as some knowledge of history and current events and a certain level of intelligence. This, surely, is needed if democracy is to work.

One question which arises perennially among social scientists is why the social sciences haven't progressed at the same rate as the physical sciences. How would you explain the difference?

To focus on psychology, in which I've been working for the last 50 years, I think the trouble lies in the mediocrity of the researchers and teachers. The whole subject is a very difficult one. McDougall said that the trouble with psychology is that it is too difficult for psychologists. Quite advanced mathematics – actually quite beautiful mathematics, seemingly beyond the comprehension of most psychologists today--is necessary to solve the next issues awaiting us. We've got to get more acute selection in psychology, and take it out of the hands of the do-gooders and the social workers and really make a science of it.

A related problem is that social scientists confuse their findings with their values. Policy recommendations must necessarily be a product of the two. But when social scientists can't separate them, they're merely expressing their personal opinions with a pseudoscientific patina.

What are some of the major new points you've made about Beyondism- in your forthcoming book The Beyondist Solution to Contemporary Problems?

It aims to get nearer to contemporary problems than I got in my first complete statement of Beyondism in 1972. I begin by saying that we have cut adrift from revealed religions and their morality, and we are seeking a new morality and a new ethical system. I propose evolution as the basis for our goals, that selection among nations is vital and necessary. There is a biological and cultural experiment implicit in each of the 130 or so nations in the world. We should encourage both genetic and cultural variation, and permit selection to go on. Just as in nature there have been thousands of extinct species, so will there be extinct nations. We must allow this to take place because it is a natural and essential part of evolution.

The spiritual values of Beyondism turn out to be much the same as those of the big dogmatic religions, up to a certain point. But after that point they diverge, and I take trouble to define how Beyondism leads to a different and more adventurous set of values. A general concept that helps our thought on this question is that of "genetic lag." Societies can progress culturally beyond the genetic capacities of many or most of the individuals in them. Eugenics is required to catch up with the cultural demands of society. At present, we have unemployment on rather a large scale in most industrialized countries – and in most nonindustrialized countries, for that matter – which can be eliminated only by elimination of genetic lag on the culture. So there is an emphasis on genetics in the book, primarily because it needs emphasizing in a culture which has grossly neglected it.

I conclude with a call for action. We have studied enough to be able to act with a greater chance of progress than previously. We need huge research endowments to compare and contrast the 130 or so societal experiments, to measure, record, and plot, and to give out advice from a central world research institute. This, I think, is the only way to carry out a process comparable to variation among nations, and to avoid the all-gray "one world" which would stop evolution. For evolution to proceed, there must always be genetic variation followed by natural selection. So I call for a society of Beyondism to help in years to come the buildup of adequate social research data – research information on the effects of various experiments.

Many eugenicists feel it's best to be noncommittal on the race question, since it's not our major concern. What do you think?

I agree that the only reasonable thing is to be noncommittal on the race question – that's not the central issue, and it would be a great mistake to be sidetracked into all the emotional upsets that go on in discussions of racial differences. We should be quite careful to dissociate eugenics from it – eugenics' real concern should be with individual differences.

In her article "Test Scores as Measures of Human Capital" in Intelligence and National Achievement, Barbara Lerner stated: "We sent more of our young people to school for longer periods of time than any other nation in the world, and they emerged with more diplomas than any other people on earth." But despite all this education, SAT scores in the U.S. have been declining steadily, our relative economic productivity has dropped, and on tests of math and science the only students whose average test scores have been lower than those of Americans have been those in underdeveloped countries. What are the major causes?

The current decline in educational achievement is, like most things, multiply determined. The evidence points, first, to about 50-100 years of genetic decline in ability. It doesn't take much--perhaps a one-point decline every 30 years--to reduce substantially the percentage in the upper range of IQ. With our present mean IQ of 100, 1 person in 250 would
exceed an IQ of 140. If, however, the average dropped to 85, you'd have only 1 in 8,000 who would exceed an IQ of 140. We must suppose that academic standards are much affected by the percentages of high IQ individuals, and that their becoming more scarce will lower academic performance. So part of the remedy for this problem definitely lies in eugenic practices.

But there are some environmental factors as well, such as the failure to do "streaming" in schools, in which children of much the same ability level are put together. And I think something in the way of general idleness and slackness has gotten into the system since the 1960's which could account for a part of the decline, particularly in the more precise subjects like mathematics.

In your autobiography, you wrote that you have always been intrigued by great people. What constitutes greatness?

Greatness is something that is surely very different in different areas such as politics, art, music, and science. What I think is fundamental, however, is creativity and an ability to break away from conventional views, a combination of high intelligence with high ego strength. Great people are largely responsible for whatever progress society makes, yet they actually take quite a beating in the process. So qualities of endurance are necessary as well.

What would you consider to be the mean IQ necessary for a country to support a true democratic system of government?

It depends upon just what you mean by "a true democratic system of government," but generally I would say that we can not go much below what we have today and still maintain a real democratic system.

How do you think the irrational opposition to the idea of genetic influences on human behavior cane into being, and why does it persist?

One might suppose that all one had to do to overcome this opposition was to point to striking research in behavior genetics. But this research has been around for some time, and still the opposition persists. For example, there are five successive studies of criminal behavior cited in my 1982 book. They show that if a man in prison has an identical twin, it's likely his cotwin will also be in prison. If the twin is fraternal [with 50 percent shared genes, on average], the likelihood is not nearly as great that he'll be in prison, too, but it's greater than chance. How could one possibly account for this difference with environmentalist explanations? The strong genetic component in criminality has already been proven up to the hilt.

The role of genetics in personality and intelligence has been extensively demonstrated in the last 30 or 40 years. The information is available in numerous textbooks. In almost all traits an appreciable genetic influence exists, varying from 70-80 percent in the case of intelligence, to about 20 percent in the case of superego.

Now, the question is: why aren't these facts known to the American people? Why have academe and the media withheld this information? In Britain, when I was growing up in the '20's, it was common sense to place considerable importance upon heredity in choosing a person to marry, in choosing the occupation for which one was suited, and so on. I was astonished when I came to America to find that eugenics was almost a bad word. One may trace this situation to the sociologists, to Boas and others, and to pressure from minority groups who oppose anything aristocratic.

I think there is a problem widespread in certain societies, notably in America, which consists of the denial, for political or other reasons, of the influence of genetics on human behavior. Of course, the Declaration of Independence has written in it Jefferson's and Franklin's statement that "all men are created equal." Now, neither of those men could possibly have believed that literally, as their other writings amply attest. But to my amazement, I find that two out of three people I ask take that statement to mean that they're genetically equal. The ideal of equality of opportunity has been distorted to mean biological equality. Roger Williams has written a telling little book [Free and Unequal, by Roger J. Williams, 1953; Liberty Press, Indianapolis] about inequality and freedom. He points out that the French Revolutionary trio of ideals of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" is internally inconsistent – a society can't have both liberty and equality. Given that people are born unequal in their innate abilities, the only way for a government to bring about equality is by coercion, but ultimately it's futile.

There may also be deeper, unconscious sources of opposition to any form of biological determinism. For example, the individual may feel that heredity somehow restrains him, so he will prefer to deny its influence. But obviously the only reasonable way to deal with nature is to accommodate to its laws, as we do to the law of gravity. If one refuses to acknowledge the importance of gravity and blithely jumps off a cliff, one will find himself in serious trouble. Our society may be jumping off a cliff, so to speak, with regard to its denial of the role of genetics in human behavior.

Kevin Macdonald's books explain *why* the current suffocating Zeitgeist came into being -- who created it, and why. Political correctness, multiculturalism, massive immigration into the U.S. (despite the fact that polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans strongly opposed) -- the whole miserable ball of wax. This Zeitgeist makes eugenics totally hopeless, at least for the short term, because it forbids any public debate of the issue. Read The Culture of Critique first and you'll be amazed at how it all happened, and grateful that someone figured it all out and had the courage to write a book about it.

"MacDonald makes a shocking case, but one which is compelling and extensively documented, that Jewish influence has undermined Gentile society. Every European and European-American needs to understand what MacDonald has written.

For the first time, MacDonald explains, using historical documents and quoting largely from Jewish sources, the history of Jewish influence in the United States and its historical antecedents. Is it a Jewish conspiracy? Well, yes, if you consider, as does MacDonald, the activities of those individuals who are part of "organized Jewry." There are, of course, dissident Jewish intellectuals who adamantly oppose the machinations of organized Jewry, but this does not negate MacDonald's deep research and important expose.

MacDonald's 3-volume series is "must reading" for anyone who wants to learn about the origins of our most serious problems: from the decadence of modern society, through "multiculturalism," celebration of "diversity" [but not in Israel] to the disastrous results of reverse discrimination and run-away Third World immigration. . . . Western Christian civilization may truly be on the ropes, but it did not get there spontaneously or without help.

Read MacDonald's trilogy to understand the 20th century."

GLAYDE WHITNEY, PROFESSOR, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

1. Doesn't the Declaration of Independence state that all men are created equal?

This is an objection that is frequently brought up. The Declaration of Independence reads, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." This means they are equal before the law, that government can't (or shouldn't) take away these fundamental rights. The historical record is quite clear that the Founding Fathers meant equal before the law, not that everyone was born equal in intelligence, talent, or athletic ability. Their other writings amply attest to the fact that they did not believe in biological equality – between individuals, or between races. A number of them were slaveholders. In a letter to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson rejected the aristocracy based on one's birth as an artificial one, and spoke of "the natural aristocracy of talent and virtue," which he felt was our country's most precious gift. (And isn't that a lovely turn of phrase to express what he valued most highly?) Furthermore, in spite of the great admiration Americans rightfully feel towards the Founding Fathers, even if they had made the assertion that all people are biologically exactly the same (which they didn’t!), then it could be easily demonstrated that science has subsequently proven it to be false.

2. Is there something inherently bad about having a low IQ?

Yes! The chances for a happy, successful life are considerably reduced because low-IQ people are much more likely to become criminals, chronically dependent on welfare, unemployed, illiterate – in fact, they’re way over-represented in every category of social problems. From the standpoint of our whole society, it’s also bad because these social problems cost taxpayers billions of dollars annually.

The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray, is a brilliant book. It's wonderfully well-written, and easy to read. It explains the role of IQ in our society far better than I can here. Anyway, the authors found that when they moved the average IQ of their sample down statistically by just 3 points, from 100 to 97, all social problems were exacerbated: the number of women chronically dependent on welfare increased by 7%; illegitimacy increased by 8%; men interviewed in jail increased by 12%; and the number of permanent high school dropouts increased by nearly 15%.

Everyone should be treated with respect, even retarded people, but compassion requires us to face the fact that they frequently suffer from a variety of problems, and they are a big drain on our economy.

3. In the British Medical Journal (# 7108, September 6, 1997, p. 563) there’s an article entitled "Thousands of women sterilized in Sweden without consent.” The Swedish government is investigating why thousands of women were forcibly sterilized on eugenic grounds from the 1930s to the 1970s. There are similar allegations about forced sterlisations in Switzerland, Austria and Finland. Is this the kind of thing you support?

This conjures up shocking images: a young woman – selected for no good reason – is dragged from her home, kicking and screaming, pinned to the operating table, and sterilized against her will. But it's really hard to imagine that such things happen in Sweden. Sweden certainly appears to be a highly civilized country. Could it be the case that in every imaginable respect it's a highly civilized country, except for these isolated, totally atypical acts of barbarism? Or is it possible there's a higher ethical principle operating here that we can see only if we probe beneath the surface? The sad fact is that there are women in this world who are mentally incompetent (either severely retarded or mentally ill) who are also fertile. They present a serious ethical dilemma. It's easy to condemn Sweden's actions, but it's difficult to find alternatives that are demonstrably better.

There's a very real danger that if such women aren't sterilized, they'll get pregnant, because history has shown that there are plenty of unscrupulous men ready to take advantage of them. In mental institutions, women are sometimes impregnated ("raped" is probably more accurate) by attendants or janitors. Then, the infant is taken away from the mother (is this a good thing?) and given up for adoption. In many cases, the adoptive parents are never informed that the biological mother is a schizophrenic who was raped by an employee of the institution (is this fair to the adopting parents?). Most of the children born of such unions will be alright, but as a group, they are far more likely to develop psychopathologies of various sorts, causing them and their families much unhappiness.
And what, precisely, does the phrase "without consent" mean when talking about mentally incompetent people? By definition, mentally incompetent people cannot make rational decisions on their own. And what if they were to give their consent? What would such consent even mean if they were incapable of understanding what they were consenting to? Maybe the authorities in Sweden realized they'd have to decide the issue of reproduction for these women, just as they must decide many other issues for them. Maybe they didn't bother to ask permission because they knew it would be meaningless.

Furthermore, it might be asked, "Did these women give their consent to get pregnant, give birth, and have their babies taken away from them?" The answer is “No.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, pregnancy and childbirth, in and of themselves, are not terrific experiences! They involve nausea, depression, mood swings, bladder problems, severe discomfort towards the end (just from being so fat), to say nothing of pain. Surrogate mothers are paid considerable sums of money by infertile couples, presumably because there aren't lots of women volunteering to do it for free. If, after being pregnant for nine months, a woman delivers a baby and then has it forcibly taken away from her, this is a wrenching experience which is far more traumatic than having a simple operation to prevent pregnancy in the first place, a procedure that many thousands of normal women choose to have each year.

One crucial point must be emphasized: By sterilizing these women, Sweden is not depriving them of the joys of motherhood – they are already denied that by the fact that they would be unfit mothers as a consequence of their severe mental impairment. Rather, society is depriving them of the dubious joys of pregnancy and childbirth, which, as the majority of women would attest, is doing them a big favor. In addition, it's preventing altogether the heartbreak of having babies taken from their mothers at birth, never to be seen again. (It should be noted parenthetically that the problem of fertility among mentally incompetent men is not nearly as serious because they are rarely able to find sexual partners.)

It's inappropriate to use words like "coercion" in such a situation because there's no way of knowing what the women would want if they were rational and could see things clearly. The only sensible and compassionate solution is for the authorities to do for them what most women would want
in their position, and most women would much rather not risk getting pregnant if they couldn't keep the baby.

The mentally incompetent must have decisions made by others for their own good, and for the good of everyone involved, in the area of reproduction, just as in all other facets of their lives. Clearly, it's in their best interest, and in the best interest of society, if these people do not procreate.

4. Everyone knows that IQ tests are biased – what makes you think they’re not biased?

“Everyone knows” that IQ tests are biased because the media keep telling us this, but it’s an outright lie. Here's an example of real bias: Say an IQ test is created and standardized in England, and the vocabulary section includes words like "lorry" and "scones." If this same test were given to American kids, these items would stand out rather conspicuously. When you looked at the data, you would recognize immediately that: (1) answers to these questions were merely random guesses, (2) kids who scored high on the test as a whole weren’t any more likely to get them right than those who scored low, and (3) older kids didn’t do any better than younger kids. This means they're worthless questions with no predictive value for the American kids, because all they do is add "noise," thereby reducing the reliability and validity of the test. Furthermore, if nobody ever bothered to look at the data and delete these questions from the American version, they could legitimately be said to be "biased" against American kids in relation to the English kids.

By analyzing the data this way, it’s possible to determine definitively whether a test is, or is not, biased against any group, or whether particular items are biased. If a test doesn't satisfy the criteria for bias, it's not biased. People's feelings, and what may appear on the surface to be bias, have nothing to do with making this determination. Also, there's the crucial question of whether the test predicts success equally well for all groups. The fact is that IQ tests and other standardized tests predict success in college and in career in blacks as well as whites.

In Arthur Jensen’s authoritative work on the subject, Bias in Mental Testing, he found that IQ tests are not biased (using statistical criteria), except that the tiny unreliability of the tests slightly favors low-scoring groups. Also, it’s hard to imagine how the argument of bias in favor of Caucasians could be refuted any more effectively than by the finding that American kids of Japanese ancestry score higher on average.

5. Wouldn’t it be impossible to make a serious dent in the incidence of recessive metabolic disorders through eugenics?

Yes, that’s a good point. Most children born with them come from parents who didn’t know they were carriers. But nowadays, there are many powerful new ways to deal with these problems. Parents can be tested to see if they’re carriers, and if a fetus is affected, they have the option to abort. Or, they could have in vitro fertilization, and implant only the fertilized egg that is not affected. These procedures are part of contemporary eugenics, which has many more options than early eugenics had.

6. There are good reasons to reject eugenics, even if it’s scientifically valid. One is that the world is not ready to handle this research. It’s true the media have a kind of filter that is heavily biased in favor of equality, so pro-eugenics views are hardly ever heard. However, there’s a reason this filter exists: it’s more important for the majority of people to have a good life than it is for them to consider dangerous or volatile ideas.

Ahh, now you've hit on something! You very aptly describe the suppression of these ideas as a "filter." I agree absolutely that this belief – that the public should be protected from radical ideas, particularly ones the media themselves find distasteful – is a major reason journalists and others have lied to the public about IQ. But as reasons go, this one is not nearly good enough! Don’t journalists have an ethical obligation to report the facts? In The IQ Controversy, Snyderman and Rothman showed that in this debate, the ultra-liberal media have actually kept expert opinion from the public.

Are you suggesting that the public is too stupid and too unstable to be trusted with the truth? What a handy rationalization for journalists and others who are simply too cowardly to express an unpopular truth! They don't even have to admit it to themselves. Instead, they can congratulate themselves on being "real humanitarians.”

To me, the attitude you express conveys a chilling arrogance, and utter contempt for the humanity of the public. It indicates they (you?) don't value truth, or freedom, very much. Because you "care" about them, you want to decide what's best for them to believe?! Would you want people to "care" about you that way? Who are you – who is anyone – to decide what truths the masses can, and cannot, be told? Do you believe in freedom of speech? Or is it only for certain people? Who is the fascist here?

7. There are many admirable human qualities that aren’t measured by IQ tests. There will never be consensus on what all of those qualities are. What gives any of us the right to decide which ones to phase out?

There’s already a consensus on the fundamental traits we value – for example, what traits would you want to see in your children? Most people want their children to be healthy, intelligent, sane, law-abiding, and conscientious – meaning possessing good character (honest, hard-working, concerned for well-being of others). These are universally valued traits. Have any parents, anywhere, ever said, “We’re hoping our son will grow up to be a psychopath”? Or, “We hope our daughter will be retarded”? These values were exactly the same 100 years ago, and 1000 years ago.

Another way this consensus is expressed is in government expenditures on hospitals, research on diseases and mental illness, prisons, police, etc. We as a society are already very clearly trying to change people, using environmental engineering in a marginally-effective attempt to make people smart, law-abiding, sane, and healthy. Why not do something that really works?

A “right” implies there’s something in it for us, when in reality, there’s nothing in it for us. I believe that we have a responsibility to future generations, and a great and unique opportunity to help them. We already agree on what is good, and what is not. There’s absolutely no doubt about it – we are quite sure that we wouldn't want to be diseased, retarded, a criminal, a psychopath, or insane – so it's no great leap of faith to assume people of the future don't want that, either.

But it's not as if a “Eugenics Court” will dictate each individual who can and cannot be born! A likely scenario is that legislators, in response to public opinion, will form a new Eugenics Department that will provide attractive incentives for criminals and the mentally deficient to be sterilized, and incentives for bright, healthy couples to have more children, and medical professionals to help prospective parents make decisions on how best to utilize the new reproductive technologies.

8. Lately, the issue of over-population has pretty much gotten drowned out by other problems in the world. But wouldn't well-educated people be more likely to know about it, and take it seriously, than poorly-educated people? And wouldn't this have a dysgenic effect?

Absolutely. People who have no children, or fewer children, as a result of concern about over-population would most likely be smart, well-educated, and altruistic, with a sense of social responsibility, and these are all traits we need more of, not less.

Around 1970 (back when I was just a “fledgling eugenicist
”) I had a friend, a retired professor, who was the leader of Zero Population Growth for the San Francisco Bay Area. I told him about my concerns about ZPG, and he was interested. He invited me to give a little presentation at the meeting of all the regional leaders held yearly in Northern California. Looking back on it today, it's almost funny to recall that I honestly expected that they would all welcome my talk with enthusiasm. I was quite naïve (21-years-old), but I really should have had enough common sense to realize that some of them had been working on ZPG for a long time, and they were all “rah rah” about the cause, yet there I was, telling them that actually, all their hard work was doing more harm than good!! But they listened politely until the end, when a middle-aged physician became positively livid. “What you're talking about is exactly the reason we fought World War II!” he declared angrily. I really had no idea how to respond to that, so I just stared at him for a long, awkward moment, and then sat down. Interestingly enough, three regional leaders came up to me later to thank me, saying they had the very same misgivings.

9. Maybe there are valid reasons why many people are ignorant about sociobiology and eugenics – i.e., because they are scared of their implications.

But is it ever a good strategy to stick our heads in the sand like an ostrich? The scientific facts are basically the same things people have believed since the beginning of time – that individuals and races differ genetically. Now science has confirmed what common sense told people for millennia, so there’s no reason to think these beliefs will somehow bring about the end of the world. The belief that everyone is born exactly equal on everything that matters is totally fabricated, and has only empty assertions to back it up, nothing in the way of evidence. Before Marx and Freud and political correctness, it would have been scoffed at, and it will be scoffed at again in the future, because a gigantic falsehood – especially one this blatantly obvious – can’t sustain itself indefinitely.

10. What is intelligence?

One simple, straightforward definition of intelligence is is “problem-solving ability.” Another definition is “that which IQ tests measure.” Egalitarians will object, "Since we can’t all agree on a definition, it’s a useless concept." Not true! Intelligence is like heat. We know the difference between hot and cold, and we can measure fine gradations of heat. Some people will say, "It's too hot in here!" while others say, "It's too cold!" Does this mean we must discard the concept of heat? No. Almost any definition of any word could give rise to disagreement. We don't have unanimity on definitions of many important constructs which we use every day, but we carry on nevertheless, and we are much better off with them, than without them.

Egalitarians also love to say, "But IQ isn’t everything!" That’s true. (Is there anything which is everything?) But IQ clearly is something very important. Those who pooh-pooh it have an impossible task explaining why IQ is the single best predictor of success in school and in life. How could anything which measures nothing – or even something trivial – predict success so well?

11. It seems like there’s a total "disconnect" on this issue between science on the one hand, and popular opinion, on the other.

You’re absolutely right. There are 2 arenas in which the Nature-Nurture debate is taking place – the scientific one, and the public one – and the outcomes are exactly opposite. Scientifically, the egalitarian (Nurture) position that heredity has no influence on behavior, that everyone is born exactly the same, and that the environment determines everything – is totally bankrupt. Proponents of this view have been not just beaten, but clobbered by overwhelming evidence from numerous twin studies and adoption studies, despite the fact that the "playing field" is absurdly uneven in their favor – it is far easier to get funds for research if you take an egalitarian stance, your articles will be greeted with great interest and approval, and you won't have even one-thousandth the problem finding a publisher for your book, which will get rave reviews and sell lots of copies. In spite of all that, the egalitarians have been thoroughly trounced in the scientific arena for the plain and simple reason that they’re wrong, and the evidence against them is overwhelming.

In the public arena, just the opposite is true, and Nurture has clearly won the day. The egalitarian strategy has been to snipe at the research of the hereditarians. [I use "hereditarians" to mean people who believe heredity exerts a strong influence on behavior. No hereditarians I’ve ever heard of believe the environment is unimportant.] Egalitarians use ad hominim attacks, portraying hereditarians as evil men who deliberately distort their data because they want to make themselves feel superior, and because they want to deliberately make other people feel bad. (Oh please! How stupid can you get?!)

Egalitarians have no evidence and they know it. They try to confuse the issue: "Nobody can ever know for sure." "It hasn't been proven." They like to say that heredity and environment are so hopelessly entangled, how could anyone figure out the relative influence of each? [Easy – by studying identical twins reared apart.] Their obscurantist strategy is powerless against vast areas of new research such as biological correlates of IQ (e.g., .4 with brain size) so they simply ignore them. They point to a small flaw in one twin study done 50 years ago, for example, in an attempt to discredit twin studies, but neglect to inform their readers that a dozen more studies conducted since then have reported exactly the same results. They give examples of questions taken from IQ tests discarded decades ago, saying they’re "obviously biased," as if it's sufficient to simply make an assertion and leave it at that. But do the egalitarians really want to get at the truth? Ask yourself this question, "What research have Gould, Kagan, Lewontin, Rose, et al ever produced?" Answer: None.

Among researchers in the field of IQ, it’s been common knowledge for many years that the leading proponents of egalitarianism are not merely mistaken or misinformed, they are thoroughly dishonest. They deliberately mislead people into accepting egalitarianism in order to further their own political agenda, and their allies in the media do likewise. (And in so doing, they all make lots of money – they must be in hog heaven.) Brilliant and sincere scientists, such as Jensen, Whitney, Lynn, Rushton, Herrnstein, and Murray, who consistently report the truth even though they know it’s unpopular, are branded “racists” and “bigots,” while the egalitarians portray themselves as the "good guys." It’s downright disgusting the way they take on pious airs while blatantly lying to the public.

Everyone knows that if a person listens to only one side in a bitter divorce, he/she is likely to come away with a totally biased impression. (The wife's friends say "The husband is a monster!" and the husband's friends say "The wife’s a psychopath!") But even though we know better, we still fall prey to believing what we hear based on just one side, and we do it all the time, because there are only so many hours in a day, and we can’t probe deeply into every single issue. On the question of genetics and behavior, the egalitarians and the liberal media have tightly controlled public discourse, so for decades, only their side has been presented to the public. Is it any wonder the public accepts what they say uncritically? It’s certainly not anyone’s fault for believing it. If I didn't happen to study and do research on IQ, I'd probably believe it, too.

But then maybe someday, I might think to myself, "Why not just see what the other side has to say?
" Many, many people are incapable of doing this, because they’re terrified the other side might be right, and to discover that they've been completely wrong would be such a jolt to their psyches they might never recover. Anyway, just imagine I summoned up the courage to venture into forbidden territory – I might read one really good book, such as The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray. I'd think to myself "Gee, what a totally different world this is! It's not a pretentious piece of propaganda like Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man – it's down-to-earth, clearly stated, interesting, even engrossing. Hmmm . . . kind of exciting! It’s easy to read, yet it feels more . . . substantive, more satisfying, like meat-and-potatoes compared to that other stuff, which was like cotton candy. And look – all these interesting graphs and tables! I guess that's because this is, well, science." And when I'd finished, I don't think I'd feel foolish at all – I think I'd be plenty angry at the dishonest low-lifes who had blatantly lied to me for decades.

12. Whatever happened to The Repository for Germinal Choice? I read that it closed in 1999, but were the children born from this program ever studied?

All prospective parents signed statements promising that they would take part in surveys in the future, but I remember Graham saying that when they sent out questionnaires about the children, many parents never returned them, so this was a source of frustration and disappointment to him. He understood their desire to protect their privacy, but he wanted very much to follow the children to see how they turned out, yet this study was never done. I interviewed him in Austin, TX in 1983 for a small publication I edited, The Eugenics Bulletin. I also met with Graham maybe a dozen times or so over the years for lunch, dinner, or coffee. (As a man, I found him to be warm, kind, gracious, and very smart.)

The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Sperm Bank, by David Plotz, was published in 2006. Plotz, a journalist, wrote a series of articles about The Repository, and each time he published one, people who had been involved with The Repository – mothers, children, and even a few donors – contacted him. Of the over 200 children born from this program, he eventually communicated with 30. Some children even met their donors. It’s an interesting book, although I detected several inaccuracies and instances of bias. For example, he writes something to the effect that “William Shockley loved attention.” This kind of statement naturally raises a red flag about an author’s objectivity because it’s such a transparent cheap shot. Plotz portrays Graham as a kook who thought he could create a bunch of little geniuses, but that’s demonstrably false, and quite frankly, I suspect that Plotz knew it was false when he wrote it. Nowhere in Graham’s book or in his interviews did he ever say he expected all geniuses to be born from this program, a majority of geniuses, or even half geniuses. So why did Plotz characterize Graham that way, in the complete absence of any evidence to support it? Perhaps Plotz felt obligated to forsake truth and conform to standard journalist scorn and ridicule for fear of being ostracized by the “politically correct club,” and a “kook” may be a better subject for book sales than a courageous, innovative, and altruistic man. Graham had amassed a fortune, and he was no fool – he understood mutations, regression to the mean, and other basic facts of genetics, and he understood probability, and he told me once that, as a matter of chance, there were bound to be a few Repository children who were not blessed genetically, possibly one with something as serious as Down’s syndrome.

Graham said in his interview with me: “Look at it from the point of view of the parents. These are couples who want a child, but can't have one because the husband is infertile. With this program, they can have a child, and they can maximize the probability [my emphasis] of having a bright, healthy and creative child. Consider the child, too. As a consequence he spends his life with the genes of the donor, as well as those of the mother. Why not provide the best genes possible?”

In spite of his obvious bias, Plotz tells some interesting stories about the children, the mothers, and the donors, some positive and some not, but given questions about his credibility, it’s difficult to know how much faith to have in them. However, by far the most important thing I learned from the book is that The Repository really revolutionized artificial insemination.

Before The Repository, most doctors inseminated patients whose husbands were infertile with little concern about the donors. Prospective mothers were sometimes able to select the donor’s hair and eye color, but little else. The Repository opened in 1980, and it gave much more detailed information about each donor – in addition to his coloring, his height and weight, age, occupation, accomplishments, hobbies, athletic pursuits, whether he played a musical instrument, often his IQ, and so on. Donors also had to pass very thorough medical exams. Suddenly women didn’t need doctors anymore, they had the power to choose what they wanted, and this changed everything. From the very beginning, there was far more demand for sperm than The Repository could provide. Despite constant indoctrination by the media that genes don’t matter, apparently many women weren’t so easily brainwashed. The Repository demonstrated that, overwhelmingly, they wanted the very best sperm. Paul Broder, who worked for Graham, later co-founded his own sperm bank, the California Cryobank, and he readily acknowledges his debt to Graham. Basically, all sperm banks became eugenics sperm banks because The Repository showed that that’s what women want.

Today, California Cryobank, one of the largest sperm banks with over 200 donors and offices in Los Angeles, Palo Alto and Cambridge, provides a great deal more information on donors than did the Repository, and it charges for the information, and for the sperm. It also pays donors. Whereas The Repository gave “germinal material” only to married women with infertile husbands, nowadays sperm banks also cater to lesbians and single women.

According to Plotz, there have been about a million children born from artificial insemination in America as of the year 2000, with around 30,00 more born each year. Graham was disappointed that The Repository children were never studied, but the whole point of studying them was to show how well they turned out, so other sperm banks might follow his lead. The study would have been interesting, but it was largely a means to an end. Graham died in 1999, but he accomplished his objective much faster than he anticipated because The Repository revolutionized sperm banks. Half the genetic heritage of upwards of a million children – with many thousands more each year – has been greatly improved as a result, and that is a huge victory for eugenics.

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Dear Future Generations:

The last large group of institutional Eugenicists were the Nazis. They didn't survive very long. From that I must conclude that belief in Eugenics is a maladaptive trait resulting from inferior genes.

In that regard, by your own paradigm, you folks should be the first to be euthanized so as to eliminate from the Human gene pool those particular highly antisocial genes which you apparently possess. Removal of your patently antisocial genes from the Human gene pool would be a very good first, last and final process of applied Eugenics.

Your next historical example and object lesson shall be the current self-destruction of Israel, which like the Nazis were, is also composed largely of a small group of people who are gravely mistaken in the belief that somehow they are superior to other Humans.

Here are some philosophical terms and concepts you need to study and learn about, so as to relieve your ignorance. I suggest you do it before it is too late for you.

-altruism.
-fatalism.
-jingoism.

Everyone born has something to offer. If your goal is to prevent unwanted birth defects, there exist plenty of opportunities to educate the medically ignorant on ways to avoid pregnancy with an unsuitable mate. But if that were to succeed, doctors would be much the poorer as a result, and we all know the AMA can't have that, can they?

Sincerely,

Tom Lowe
Borrego Springs, CA

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October 16, 2004

I can't believe people like you still exist in the world, hopefully by your case for Eugenics, if you're what you perceive as being 'Intelligent' types such as yourself will be bred out by the 'dysgenics' of the world. I'd still prefer someone that I could relate to not based on a number from a test, but in terms of views and acceptance - to any person claiming to be 'intelligent.' It's the year 2004, the world doesn't need people who believe in sterilizing others for the sake of humanity, or what ever bullshit you believe it's for, we need people who don't slander others, and who believe that everyone should have the right to equality. You're the only f*cking dysgenic in the world. By the way, I scored 116 on an IQ test, it doesn't mean shit.

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July 20, 2004

Even before I knew that the idea of eugenics existed, I knew that it wasn't a good idea for people like me to breed. I have "depression with psychosis." It's genetic. My dad hears voices, my sister is paranoid-schitzophrenic, and my mom is a "neurotic narcissicist." On top of that, diseases like cancer and heart disease run rampant on both sides of the family. I'm not even a pretty person. It's bad when six-year-olds yell "hey ugly girl" at you when you're taking a jog around the neighborhood.

I know it would be unfair to let my genes spread, allowing myself to make descendants who suffer like me. I don't want them to experience the things I do, like seeing and hearing things, or to be like my sister, who is highly obsessed with "catching" the "spies" who are "out to get" her--for instance she covers up the vents in her room because she thinks people watch her through them. However, it's too bad that my genius IQ won't be passed on.

I found out about eugenics from a History Channel program which portrayed eugenics as something only "evil Nazis" believe in. But that didn't sway me from my beliefs. I was happy when I found out from the internet that other people believe the same way that I do.

Kittie

P.S. If you happen to put this on your letters page, please don't display my e-mail address. Thank you.

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Hello,

I think I agree that the world is dumbing down. The Flynn Effect is not, however, a barrier to this thesis. The Effect disappears when one realizes that its problematic conclusion follows merely from asking the wrong question. As Flynn presents it, the question is whether the mean IQ of later populations is greater than the mean of earlier ones--which is to say, whether you or I, if dropped in our present state among test-takers of the past, would be able to up our percentile rank among the ancient plodders. And the obvious and correct answer to this wrong question is that it should be and we would but that doesn't tell us anything worth knowing because each generation can only devise tests according to cues given the neural circuitry by the education, materials, and circumstance of the life of its time; and if the life of its time is more adjusted to, or more difficult with respect to, certain problems (however petty) the
neural circuitry will be more cued to deal with those problems (however petty) and the tests, which of course are designed expressly to produce a bell curve sort of distribution of results, will be adjusted accordingly; and it is merely in the nature of change that the cues of today might include most of the cues of yesterday, but not vice versa ( because one reviews--perhaps unconsciously-- the past, not the future) especially given the naivety of the test devisers of the the past. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that earlier IQ tests are easier than later ones. This conclusion should direct one away from Flynn's path, not along it. The real question, the only interesting one, is whether you or I, if born and raised among the test takers of the past, could solve the problems of that time any easier than we can, in our present circumstance, solve the problems of our own time. However, this question, too, has an obvious answer: Probably Not, for the obvious reason that our problem-solving circuitry would be cued to the world as it was then. The obverse is the question whether Thomas Jefferson, if born as Thomas Jefferson but born today, would rise to great heights and do great things or just be a stockroom clerk. And again, the answer is obvious: he would probably do something notable because his problem solving circuitry would be cued to present times--and he would still be Thomas Jefferson. (This is an elitist view, I know, but I am an elitist.)

Of course, with respect to a Jefferson and those others who do or have done (as opposed to those who merely talk about it), "the pudding" (as in "the proof") always trumps any IQ test. In other words, if I prove the Riemann Conjecture all other tests of my math ability become irelevant. Therefore, while it may well be true that a knowledgeable physicist of today could explain certain things to Isaac Newton, the Flynn effect readjustment of Newton's intelligence downward is idiotic, to put it mildly.

No, my own strongly held opinion is that people are indeed getting stupider. Recently I had occasion to remark upon how glad I was to get out of junior high fifty years ago. But then, it all seems like junior high today, and the idiots I despised then are running the world. (At least, they are giving us the news.)

Here is a subject that I opine may well be connected to the dumbing of the species: the ballistics of the human brain. Have you perhaps noticed that very few persons today can speak even a single sentence without a continual jerking of the brain container. I would be interested in the neuropsychiatry of this phenomenom, which is self-evident in modern movies, almost absent in old movies, and positively correlates, I would guess, with stupidity.

Regards,

Michael O'Hair

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“The Truth Shall Make You Free” (John 8:32)

Think Noble This Day
Think noble this day
For it is life
The life of life.
All is there
In its brief moment
All the reality
All the truth of existence
The joy of growth
The splendor of action
The glory of strength . . . .

For yesterday he is but a dream
And tomorrow but a vision
But today, well lived
Forms each yesterday
Into a memory/dream of happiness
And each tomorrow
Into a vision of hope/realization of trust.
Thus, live this day with honor/confidence.

From Idylls from the Sanskrit

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

Winston Churchill

“Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs.”

Roger Ebert, Life Itself

The result of not being involved in politics is being governed by one's inferiors.

Plato

Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary.

One would like to ask: by whom has it been elected, and to whom is it responsible?

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

How many ideas have there been in the history of mankind which were unthinkable ten years before and which, when their mysterious hour struck suddenly appeared, and spread all over the earth?

Dostoyevsky

When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become a new race.

Margaret Sanger (1883-1966)

What nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.

Sir Francis Galton (1905)

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In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

George Orwell

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"General impressions are never to be trusted. Unfortunately when they are of long standing they become fixed rules of life, and presume a prescriptive right not to be questioned. Consequently, those who are not accustomed to original inquiry entertain hatred and a horror of statistics. They cannot endure the idea of submitting their sacred impressions to cold-blooded verification."

Sir Francis Galton

"Where the government fears the people there is liberty; where the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

Thomas Jefferson

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Thomas Jefferson

All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed,
and third, it is accepted as self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer,1788-1860

Ram, ass, and horse, my Kyrnos, we look over
With care, and seek good stock for good to cover;
And yet the best men make no argument,
But wed, for money, runts of poor descent.
So too a woman will demean her state
And spurn the better for the richer mate.
Money's the cry. Good stock to bad is wed
And bad to good, till all the world's cross-bred.
No wonder if the country's breed declines-
Mixed metal, Kyrnos, that but dimly shines.

Theognis of Megara on eugenics and dysgenics, circa 520 B.C.

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

George Orwell

(Examples: eugenics, racist, anti-Semite, hater.)

Nature is the art of God.

Dante

The dangerous things ain't what we know that is so,
it's what we know that ain't.

(Author unknown, but frequently attributed to Mark Twain.)

'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we k
now only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World:
Science as a Candle in the Dark

Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.

Wynn Cotlin

"Naturam non vinces nisi parendo."
(You will not master [conquer] nature unless you obey it.)

Roger Bacon

The greatest threats to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal -- well-meaning but without understanding.

US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928

You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.

Robert Darwin, to his son Charles

If you sit by the river long enough, the bodies
of your enemies will float by.

Taoist saying

Goodie-goodies are the thieves of virtue.

Lao-tzu

When cosmic energy became life a new dimension was added to the drama of time and space. For the first time in forever, there would be pain and pleasure. For the first time in forever, there could be hope, faith, and love. Forever would never be the same again.

from "The Human Factor," by R.L. Hart

The heresy of heresies is common sense.

George Orwell

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is "not done" to say it... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the high-brow periodicals.

George Orwell, 1945, Introduction to Animal Farm

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Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for a moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

I have pledged upon the altar of God Almighty eternal hostility to tyranny over the minds of men.

Thomas Jefferson

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Samuel Adams

Evolution is the development of the energy of the universe in such a way that it has an increasing ability to consciously control itself and the universe around it. It is a progressive change from the unconscious to the conscious. We are the universe trying to comprehend itself. Man is the corporeal manifestation of the universe trying to control its own destiny. Man is God in the process of coming into existence.

James Hart
Eugenic Manifesto

The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To undertake the responsibility--to bestow a life which my be either a curse or a blessing--unless the being on whom it is bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being.

John Stuart Mill, essay On Liberty

There is no permanent status quo in nature; all is the process of adjustment and readjustment, or else eventual failure. But man is the first being yet evolved on earth which has the power to note this changefulness, and, if he will, to turn it to his own advantage, to work out genetic methods, eugenic ideas, yes, to invent new characteristics, organs, and biological systems that will work out to further the interests, the happiness, the glory of the God-like being whose meager foreshadowings we the present ailing creatures are.

Herrman J. Muller, 1935
From R. M. Sonneborn, 1968, ?Muller, crusader for human betterment,Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â? Science, 162, 772-776

To know [how a civilization comes into being] you must be aware of two prerequisites . . . namely leadership and problem-solving ability on the part of the general public. They are necessary not only as preludes to a civilization but as a continuing requirement for its survival.

Where whole segments of population, either geographic segments or classes within an area, are bungling their problems, the chances are not only that the leaders are inadequate as leaders, but that the masses are mostly composed of far-down specimens of humanity, biologically incapable of producing wise leaders. Essential to wise leadership are high quality brains. The only source of brains is heredity . . .

Problem-makers reproduce in greater percentage than problem-solvers, and in so doing cause the decline of civilization.

Since civilization is an accumulation it must necessarily lag behind the concentration of brain power on which it depends . . . [Since] the manifestations of a civilization, its visible structures, are an accumulation, they may linger on for decades after the average intellect, the inherited brain power, has declined below the level that would have been necessary to initiate it.

In short, if capable, intelligent people had most babies, society would see its problems and solve them.

Elmer Pendell, from Sex Versus Civilization, 1967

Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective. This is precisely the aim of eugenics.

It has now become a serious necessity to better the breed of the human race. The average citizen is too base for the everyday work of a modern civilization. Civilized man has become possessed of vaster powers than in old times for good or ill, but has made no corresponding advance in wits and goodness to enable him to direct his conduct rightly.

[Man has] already furthered evolution very considerably, half unconsciously and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so deliberately and systematically. . . . The chief result of these Inquiries has been to elicit the religious significance of the doctrine of evolution. It suggests an alteration in our mental attitude, and imposes a new moral duty. The new mental attitude is one of a greater sense of moral freedom, responsibility, and opportunity; the new duty which is supposed to be exercised concurrently with, and not in opposition to the old ones upon which the social fabric depends, is an endeavour to further evolution, especially that of the human race.

Those who enjoy a sense of communion with God can dwell on the undoubted fact that there exists a solidarity between themselves and what surrounds them, through the endless reaction of physical laws among which the hereditary influences are to be included. They know that they are descended from an endless past, that they have a brotherhood with all that is, and have each his own share of responsibility in parentage of an endless future.

Francis Galton (quoted in C.P. BlackerÃ?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?s Eugenics: Galton and After, 1952)

The process of change is like a children's slide. One climbs laboriously to the top, but once over the edge, the downward movement is quick, abrupt, inevitable, and complete.

D.C. Lau

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through...all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

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Eugenics and evolutionary ethics involves much more than merely the mechanics of selective breeding like we human beings were merely a new breed of cattle or a new strain of wheat. Evolutionary ethics is an entirely new understanding of man and his relationship to the universe.

Good and evil are not myths, although many myths have been written about them: they are biological laws no more arbitrary or subjective than any of the laws of mathematics or chemistry. Morality is not some superstitious fairy tale: it is the mathematics of survival.

Man is the real miracle, the real God, and he has proven it for a thousand generations. All that is science or religion comes from him and is less than him. The purpose of life is the evolution of man toward perfection.

Our fathers endured starvation, glaciers, jungles, monsters through the struggles of eons of evolution so that we might be veritable Gods today. If you do not have the courage to carry on the sacred flame of life, then die, but do not encourage others in your ignominious anti-life, anti-child cowardice.

Dysgenic suicide is only possible in a society that refuses to accept the moral responsibility for what it does. . . . Ironically, we are using the intellectual capacity that made us great in order to destroy that capacity itself.

It is not a question of beginning or initiating a eugenic program. It is a matter of recognizing that we have already begun an anti-eugenic program which is a suicidal and disastrous one because it selects the inferior for
survival and eliminates the superior. We are practicing eugenics in reverse. We are causing the reversal of evolution. Since we are already manipulating genetics, we should be made conscious of our responsibility for the results of our actions on future generations. We are responsible for what our children will be. We can no longer plead ignorance. We have a voluntary choice to make between superior and inferior, between prosperity and starvation, between evolution and devolution. Doing nothing is a choice and a disastrous one.

The cause of our suffering is within us. The source of our salvation is also within us.

Evolution is the systematic and progressive development of life toward perfection. Evolution is the development of the energy of the universe in such a way that it has an increasing ability to consciously control itself and the universe around it. It is a progressive change from the unconscious to the conscious. We are the universe trying to comprehend itself. Man is the corporeal manifestation of the universe trying to control its own destiny. Man is God in the process of coming into existence.

James Hart, Eugenic Manifesto

This idea has recently been expanded considerably and put into practice in what has come to be called bofaellsskaber in continental Europe, and “cohousing” in the English-speaking world. Cohousing communities first appeared in Denmark in the late 1960s, and the idea spread to a number of other European countries, as well as the United States and Canada. Today in Europe, there are many hundreds of cohousing communities, and hundreds more in North America.

Modern cohousing began in Denmark in the 1960s.

Several years ago, as a young married couple, we began to think about where we were going to raise our children. What kind of setting would allow us to best combine our professional careers with child rearing? Already our lives were hectic. Often we would come home from work exhausted and hungry, only to find the refrigerator empty. Between our jobs and housekeeping, where would we find the time to spend with our kids? Relatives lived in distant cities, and even our friends lived across town. Just to get together for coffee we had to make arrangements two weeks in advance. Most young parents we knew seemed to spend most of their time shuttling their children to and from day care and playmates' homes, leaving little opportunity for anything else.?(MacCamant, Katherine, and Durrett, Charles (1988) Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, Ten Speed Press, California, p. 9.)

What is Cohousing?

The Danish word for cohousing, bofaellsskaber, translates living communities. When Katherine McCamant and Charles Durrett wrote Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves in 1988, they coined the English term short for collaborative housing. In a nutshell, cohousing is that which is organized in such a way as to create a natural community, much like the villages in which our ancestors lived for thousands of years.

There are many variations on the cohousing theme. One cohousing venture was constructed inside an abandoned iron foundry, another was created in a high-rise apartment building. In one Toronto neighborhood, six families tore down their backyard fences and began sharing gardening equipment, buying in bulk, and eating dinner together several nights each week. Some cohousing communities have as few as 4 families, some as many as 80 (although the latter is subdivided into smaller groups). However, there are several essential elements which most cohousing communities have in common:

• self-sufficient, single-family residences
• a common house for group activities
• participation by residents in decision-making on matters affecting the group

Although some cohousing groups modify existing structures, most embark on the more ambitious journey of building their communities from scratch. An individual or couple usually begins the process by placing an advertisement in the local newspaper or on the internet announcing their intention, asking like-minded people to contact them. After a series of meetings and considerable attrition, the group enters into in a loose-knit partnership and begins looking for a site upon which to build. Next they consult with a developer and an architect, with who
m they work especially closely so they can build homes to fit each family's needs. From start to moving in, it takes a minimum of 2 years, sometimes as many as 4 or 5.

Most cohousing is situated on the outskirts of a metropolitan area where many of the residents work. One typical arrangement is clusters of 2-story townhouses constructed in an oval shape surrounding a courtyard, along with one large, collectively-owned building at the end the common house used for dining and other group activities. The complex provides homes for 25 families of various compositions couples with children, single parents with children, elderly couples, and singles. Houses may vary from one to four bedrooms. Each house is designed to be self-sufficient, and each kitchen is fully furnished. The front door opens into the courtyard with a semi-private yard for each household, and the back door opens to the outside to a private yard, and then the parking lot. This arrangement creates a village atmosphere where, in the course of ordinary, every-day activities, residents naturally interact and get to know one another.

The Common House

The common house is the hub of social activity, where people can chat with neighbors, play indoor sports, and, most importantly, eat dinner. The evening meal is the main collective endeavor. Most cohousing communities serve dinner in the common house every night to the majority of residents. There are very substantial practical advantages of communal dinners over individually-prepared dinners, both in terms of time and money. Buying food in bulk is much cheaper, and one big effort spent preparing a communal dinner once a month for everyone is far less trouble than each family shopping, cooking, serving, and cleaning up independently each night. Two adults and two children may work together for several hours once a month to prepare a meal for everyone, and clean up afterwards. This entitles them to inexpensive, work-free dinners for the entire rest of the month. I don't have to cook all those other nights, one woman resident exclaimed cheerfully. I can just waltz in there at 6 p.m. to a homemade dinner!

Almost all cohousing communities chose to include the following basic features in their common house, in order of priority:

• a common kitchen which is convenient for use by several cooks at the same time with the capacity for preparing meals regularly for most of the community, and occasionally for all the community, plus guests
• a dining area and gathering space, capable of seating most residents regularly and all residents, plus guests, occasionally
• a children's play area visually connected, but acoustically isolated, from the dining area
• mail pick-up location, with bulletin boards

Many cohousing communities also include storage areas, a laundry room, an adult lounge area, guest rooms for visiting friends and family members, office spaces, and other special-use spaces in the common house. Cohousing communiti
es in Scandinavia often have glass-covered pedestrian streets or courtyards, which can be a blessing during their frigid winters.

Practical Matters

Financially, owning a house in a co-housing community is like owning a condominium, where each household owns its own home, plus a share of the common facilities. In Europe, existing cohousing complexes are highly prized because buyers receive the benefits without all the developmental work involved in finding a site and building on it. Attempts are made to standardize as much as possible during the building phase not customize to keep costs down. Turnover in cohousing complexes is less than in conventional housing, and appreciation is considerable greater, as they're considered desirable places to live.

Children

In conventional housing, parents especially tend to feel isolated and stressed. If a couple decides to go out to a movie, for example, or if a wife wants to go shopping, what was formerly a simple act suddenly becomes a major undertaking when small children are involved, requiring finding a babysitter, picking her up, paying her, and driving her home again. Usually this must be planned well ahead of time in order to work smoothly, so there's little opportunity for spontaneity. In contrast, the social network which naturally develops in cohousing enables parents to take time away from their children on the spur of the moment. As one resident explained, When you have children, you lose some of your freedom. To move into cohousing is to regain it.

Potential babysitters are always around. Children easily find playmates. The courtyard makes a safe haven for toddlers where mothers can keep an eye on them. Crime is virtually non-existent because everyone knows his neighbors, and a stranger will be spotted immediately. Cars are parked safely outside, on the periphery of the complex. Another resident explained it thus:

If I had to chose one word to describe what cohousing meant to me, it would be security in the emotional sense that I know there are people that I can depend on, people I can call for help. When I couldn't make it home the other night, I called a neighbor to ask him to feed the chickens. When I got home, I found that he had not only fed the chickens but also the rabbits, figuring I had forgotten about them. We never worry about finding a baby sitter because we know we can depend on one of the neighbors and the kids are very comfortable staying with them. The older kids can just stay home because they have neighbors to call if they have any problems. (Ibid., p. 87)

Children seem to thrive in this environment. Field trips become possible when a critical mass is reached such that if one or two participants drop out at the last minute, the outing doesn't fall through. As one cohousing resident put it:

[T]here are favorable conditions for children here socially, physically, and educationally. They are exposed to many more interests and stimulations than usual . . . They also have a strong sense of identity. They are not anonymous here; and like the children of any village, they know that there is a place they are recognized and have a sense of belonging. This enhances their self-confidence. Children who live in cohousing are usually can do people because they learn from participating in so many kinds of activities, and receive recognition for their accomplishments. (Ibid., p. 87)

Many families nowadays home-school their children, which can be a big burden on the mother, but it's made much easier by tackling the job collectively, as is day care for the younger children.

Shared Facilities: More Stuff, Lower Cost

While few people would consider relinquishing private ownership of their houses, cars, or personal possessions, there will always be a myriad of impersonal items which people need occasionally which quite reasonably might be purchased collectively. Examples: guest rooms for visiting friends or family, soccer field, workshop, swimming pool, tree house, tennis court, exercise machines, and garden. In conventional housing, the family must either foot the bill for the entire thing, or go without. Cohousing makes it possible to own these sometimes-needed items collectively, at a fraction of the cost. A few cohousing communities even maintain a small store stocked with household items, cereal, toiletries, etc. The store is unattended, but all residents have a key so they can shop any time. They simply record the items they've bought, for which they're billed later. Residents appreciate the convenience of an on-site store, and benefit from the savings of buying in bulk.

Who are These People?

Virtually everyone in cohousing is on at least one committee, and most people attend at least some meetings. The alternative to attending meetings is to have no impact on how things are run, and to leave decisions to others who may or may not see things the same way. The point is that in this environment, unlike a typical suburban house or urban apartment, total lack of participation can have costs.

New people assimilate quickly in cohousing, and become part of the community, which is an advantage in technologically advanced countries where more and more people work all day at the computer, never meeting anyone in the course of their workday, and where others move frequently to better jobs.

People who chose cohousing are an interesting, self-selected bunch. They tend to be well-educated, with a broad range of interests, often active in local affairs such as politics or the school board. They also tend to be predominantly professionals, who often work at home, with higher than average incomes, of European descent, ranging from early thirties to retirement age, and politically somewhat Left of center. Efforts to increase ethnic diversity have not been successful. The authors of The Cohousing Handbook describe them as experienced and successful controllers, accustomed to controlling the world around them, at least more so than the average person. When asked what most attracted them to cohousing, they reply that it offers safety and security; an ideal place for raising children; flexibility and choice in such things as meals and socializing; savings in terms of both money and time; and greater control of their lives. (Scott-Hansen, Kelly, and Scott-Hansen, Chris (2004) The Cohousing Handbook, New Society Publishers, p. 120)

Cohousing is not for everyone. It probably wouldn't be a congenial environment for extreme introverts or people who dislike children. Personality clashes are inevitable in any group endeavor, and in small communities, they will have more impact than in larger ones, where it's easier for two people to simply avoid one another. In small communities, if the disagreement is serious, one party may decide to move out.

Back to the Future

Medium-sized cohousing complexes (15-35 units) seem to work best. It's interesting that Sir Thomas More chose the figure of 30 families per village in Utopia, because it's not far from the median number of 25 which recent experience seems to have chosen as ideal (Ibid., p. 15). Evolutionary psychologists frequently talk about the environment of evolutionary adaption (EEA). The EEA is said to influence our innate psychological predispositions today by the process of natural selection. Since human beings are social animals and evolved in small groups, it stands to reason that they are best suited psychologically for living in a similar environment to the one in which they evolved. The pioneers of cohousing tried to imagine the optimum arrangement of houses to create a community. There are limits to how many people we can get to know, or how many names we can remember. Originally intuition and reason were the only guidelines to such things as optimum size, but now there's the experience of others to draw from. 

Cohousing and Eugenics

Eugenicists are interested in cohousing because it makes parenthood easier and more enjoyable. Women who have children as a result of a conscious choice are, on average, much brighter and more responsible than women who have their children as a result of a series of so eugenicists favor anything that makes motherhood easier. Moreover, high-IQ women often have fewer children than they would ideally like to have because of conflicts with career. Living in a cohousing community makes juggling career and motherhood easier and less stressful, so it could reasonably be expected to increase the fertility of this group.

Many wives either want to work, or need to work. Few young couples can afford full-time nannies, but most want to have children. However, they don't want to become slaves to their children they want to retain a good deal of their freedom. But is this even possible? In the Western world today, few couples have an on-call, 'round-the-clock baby-sitter living nearby, so it may not be possible. Cohousing provides couples the opportunity to have small, medium, or even large families while still retaining a good portion of their freedom.

21st-Century Cohousing

In the future, cohousing ventures may increasingly be organized around one unifying principle for example, all elderly residents, vegetarians, environmentalists, artists, musicians, writers, scientists, and those with specific religious or political philosophies. People who are committed to a religious or a political belief can be empowered by joining forces with others who have the same convictions. The value of such gatherings is already well-known, viz. universities, conferences, and churches. Inspiration doesn't occur in a vacuum, and having the opportunity to meet informally with colleagues on a regular, day-to-day basis could be ideal. When people get together who share the same beliefs and interests, it sparks imagination and fosters collaboration, and the kind of deep communication that makes life worthwhile. A unique and priceless takes place that frequently results in original creative work.

Conclusion

Beyond sharing common facilities, dinners, and child care, cohousing has little else in common with Sir Thomas More's Utopia, and residents don't claim that life resembles a utopia in the more general sense of the word. Not surprisingly, however, cohousing communities bear a strong resemblance to traditional villages of the past. Cohousing offers major time, money, and convenience advantages over conventional 21st-century housing, particularly for parents and children, which probably account for its rather marked growth worldwide, despite the very considerable trouble and expense of starting such endeavors from scratch and seeing them through to completion. In addition to practical advantages, cohousing seems to have struck an emotional cord because it provides a more natural balance between autonomy and community.

Once I saw an interview with a woman whose child had cystic fibrosis. The child was forced to endure long medical treatments every day just to stay alive. Tests showed early in the pregnancy that her baby would be afflicted with cystic fibrosis, but the woman decided not to abort because, she said, “I figured that I’d rather have a life with health problems than no life at all.”

Strangely enough, I’d heard this exact same statement once before from another woman who gave birth to a child with a genetic defect. But what does it mean? You and I are conscious beings, and as such, we certainly recoil at the prospect of having no life at all. That would definitely be a loss. But if we had died before we were conscious beings, was there anyone there to suffer “having no life at all”?

I do have a problem with late-term abortions, and I was appalled to learn some of the excuses women give for waiting so long, such as, “I kept meaning to do something about it, but I just kept putting it off.” It seems monstrous to take a viable fetus from a woman’s womb and then kill it, so I am personally sympathetic to the idea that there’s a point at which abortion is no longer an option. The timing is problematic, of course, because the fetus matures very gradually, and it doesn’t achieve viability and consciousness on any particular date.

Numerous embryos develop naturally in the womb and then spontaneously abort (the woman’s period is “late”). In fact, geneticists believe that perhaps the majority of conceptions spontaneously abort. It would be interesting to hear what Pro-Lifers have to say about that. According to their own dubious reasoning, everything that happens “naturally” is God’s will. Wouldn’t this mean that God aborts vast numbers of embryos and fetuses? It’s an inescapable conclusion. And if God commits abortion, then how could it be a terrible sin against God? I see no way out of this contradiction. Embryos and fetuses that spontaneously abort are usually defective, often with chromosomal abnormalities, so maybe this gives us a clue into God’s intention. Maybe God doesn’t want defective fetuses coming to term and becoming defective children. And if God is a eugenicist, would it be so wrong for us to follow God’s lead and only deliver healthy babies?

Suppose a woman learns early in her pregnancy that her potential child, if she carries it to term, will suffer from severe mental retardation. I believe that to knowingly give birth to a baby with any serious defect is cruel, immoral, and a crime against that being. Some pro-lifers are concerned with life to the exclusion of all other considerations – such as quality of life. Do they care at all about suffering? No woman should let herself be frightened or made to feel guilty if she decides to have an abortion in such a situation. She might not want to sacrifice her life in order to spend decades changing the diapers of a severely retarded child, and she surely need not apologize for that. But would she be “righteous” if she carried it to term and became its unpaid, unappreciated, round-the-clock, lifetime slave? No. In my opinion, she’d be a fool. The mother’s life matters plenty, and there are other people to be concerned about, in addition to the mother – such as the father, the other children, and the potential child itself should be considered when there’s little chance it would lead a normal life. What about the potential healthy children that the mother might forego bearing because of the time and expense of taking care of a severely handicapped or retarded child? Often it’s an act of courage and compassion to abort and to try again to have a healthy baby.

Typically, a severely retarded child (or any other child with serious genetic impairment) requires an extraordinary amount of care, more than any one person can provide, and the state (a.k.a. “the taxpayer”) virtually always ends up paying for it. Fairness would seem to require that the state should therefore have some input if it pays the bills, but, of course, it doesn’t. A strong case can be made that parents have no right to impose a huge financial burden on the rest of society if they can possibly avoid it.

If the parents sign a legally-binding contract that they will assume the entire life-time cost of the child themselves, that would be different, but few people have that much money. Parents who knowingly give birth to seriously defective children are also evading their responsibility to the larger society unless they accept full financial responsibility for them.

Some would maintain that evading responsibility in this way is both immoral and un-Christian, and unfortunately, this is the rule rather than the exception. Almost invariably, the larger society is burdened with the enormous expense. It’s my understanding that even parents with very substantial incomes still obtain social services for these children. If all such parents were required to take full responsibility, a few might very well change their minds regarding their total and unconditional opposition to abortion. When taking full responsibility means financial ruin and life-long slavery, my guess is that at least some Pro-Lifers will find their unwavering principles beginning to waver.

Ideally, eugenicists want Western countries to have nation-wide eugenics programs of incentives and disincentives, much like the eugenics program that exists today in Israel. (Isn’t that the very height of irony?) But sadly, we are nowhere near “ideally.” Political oppression has made this impossible for the time being because a tiny ethnic minority controls our world, and they want eugenics for themselves, and dysgenics for everyone else.

While we continue to promote eugenics generally, as we have always done, and work to free ourselves from this oppression, we can also engage politically in ways that advance eugenics without even having to mention the word. In the United States, for example, Republicans have taken control of many state governments recently, and they have dramatically reduced the number of women’s clinics, sometimes cutting the number by more than 50%. Limiting access to contraception and abortion is horribly dysgenic. Smart, responsible women with initiative and drive will find ways to get them, whereas less-capable women often will not, so closing clinics only makes a bad situation worse.

Just to clarify one point: there’s exactly zero chance that we will ever return to the days in which there was no contraception. People already know all about it, clearly they want it, and there are numerous companies that make and sell it. We will never stuff that genie back in the bottle.

Planned Parenthood is a “natural ally” of eugenics. Margaret Sanger (1883-1966) founded Planned Parenthood, she pioneered the use of contraception, and she was an outspoken eugenicist. She’s most frequently quoted as having said, “When motherhood becomes the fruit of a
deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become a new race.” This is why nearly all eugenicists are pro-choice, and support “reproductive rights.” Sometimes I wonder how many of Planned Parenthood’s present-day leaders are “closet eugenicists.”

Recall that the major cause of dysgenics (genetic deterioration) is that low-IQ women have far more accidental pregnancies than higher-IQ women have, and the end result is that they typically have many more children than they intended to have. These children are unplanned, and often unwanted, and they have disadvantages in terms of both heredity and environment. If we could somehow halt that trend, we could eliminate dysgenics. Then at least we would “break even” genetically.

Eugenics is not an “all or nothing” proposition. Rather, every miniscule bit of progress we make helps real people in the immediate future. Regardless of where things stand today – whether we live in a eugenic utopia, or a dysgenic hell hole, or somewhere in between – we can always improve the lives of those who follow us. Even if we can only reduce the severity of dysgenics, that’s a totally worthwhile endeavor because many lives can be improved, and soon. Keeping one more women’s clinic open is worth the fight.

Eugenicists must vigorously oppose all so-called “pro-life” candidates, and the utterly outrageous “personhood” amendments. “Pro-life” is a superficially attractive term that conceals a sinister interior, because what it really means is unequal access to contraception and abortion, which invariably causes genetic deterioration. Just as the idea of Communism sounded appealing in the beginning, the reality was untold misery. It is the same with pro-life.

One useful thing to come out of social psychology is the discovery that spouses who are very similar get along much better, and are far less likely to divorce, and it’s fairly easy to measure these traits (like introversion-extroversion) and make predictions.

When I first learned about this research around 1970, I envisioned starting something remarkably similar to eHarmony. But I was still an undergraduate, and computers were just being invented, so it was a bit premature. It seemed to me that it would be much better for the whole world if couples were happy and didn’t get divorced, and it was exciting to think that science could really make this happen.

Today, more than half the marriages in America end in divorce, and of those who remain married, about half are unhappy. So that gives us over 75% bad outcomes.

Neil Clark Warren founded and now runs eHarmony, and he is both a theologian and a clinical psychologist. He’s the kindly, white-haired man in the TV commercials. Dr. Warren has determined that most marriages that fail are actually doomed from the outset because the couple is incompatible.

n his book, Falling in Love for All the Right Reasons, Warren tells the story of eHarmony, and the 29 dimensions of compatibility. He counseled couples for several decades, and performed “autopsies” on marriages that failed, and that’s how he became involved in this endeavor. As far as chemistry goes, he believes it’s either there, or it isn’t, and he has no idea why, but that it’s necessary in a marriage.

He says it’s fashionable nowadays to emphasize “friendship first,” and that’s good, but he believes if a man and a woman are good friends and are very compatible, and they have a strong physical attraction, that’s great, but if there’s no attraction, they should stay friends and absolutely not get married.

It was interesting to learn that if couples are strongly attracted to one another but are not fundamentally compatible, very often they will ignore red flags and rationalize their partner’s bad behavior because a great sex life clouds their judgment.

Warren also seems to think a good deal of who we are is genetic, especially IQ, and that ideally, partners shouldn’t be more than 10 points apart. Now they’ve started making homosexual matches, too, with the same purpose of finding enduring love.

Most people sign up for 6 months or 1 year. It begins with a long list of questions which takes over an hour to complete, and this is no doubt off-putting to many people, but remember that prospective mates will answer those questions, too, and the answers are what determines compatibility, so this is important. Each person is actively involved in the process from beginning to end.

It’s a good idea to be as flexible as possible about things that don’t matter – for example, where the person lives – because anybody can take a flight to anywhere, and most long distance phone calls are free, as is Skype. I’ve never actually done eHarmony myself. (I’m very old and not personally interested in finding a mate.) But hypothetically, as a woman, I would include the entire English-speaking world if possible, and I would definitely not rule out bald guys, short guys, or even “below average in looks” guys, because intelligence and character are crucial, and they are in short supply, as well as warmth and kindness, and sensible political beliefs.

To belabor the point, if you are flexible about all the things that don’t matter, you create a larger pool of potential mates, so this increases your chances of finding someone with the qualities that do matter. There’s no guarantee with eHarmony, but it’s definitely worth a try for at least 6 months, especially in light of the alternatives. The “old fashioned” method is only somewhat better than a crap shoot. Say you meet someone attractive who has similar interests, you fall in love, get married, have 3 kids, and then finally one day, after years of turmoil and conflict, you finally reach the conclusion that it’s just hopeless. Kind of a kick in the stomach.

If you’re in it for the long haul, it might be wise to step back and look at your situation objectively, in a state of total calmness. Sometimes when people are trying to solve a problem, especially one that’s sensitive, personal or embarrassing, they think that somehow this particular problem is “different.” A sense of fatalism sets in, they feel stuck, unable to take any action at all.

But that’s wrong! Applying creative intelligence, imagination, hard work, trial-and-error, patience, persistence, soliciting expert advice, taking reasonable risks – all these apply to finding a mate, just like they do to any other problem. Granted that it seems strange to employ science for this purpose – and it is strange! But so what? What matters is results.

According to eHarmony’s website, altogether they’ve had 600,000 marriages, with an average of 542 new marriages each day. Almost 5% of all new marriages in America today are the result of eHarmony.

People may object, “But what about chemistry?” eHarmony doesn’t attempt to figure out who is physically attracted to whom. That part’s up to the individual. When you find potential mates (who are similar to you and meet your preferences), most likely at least one of them will attract you, and be attracted to you, but if not, the situation requires a bit of patience. After all,10,000 new people sign up each day.

There’s always been a severe woman-shortage for men who hold radical conservative beliefs, because women on average, tend to be more liberal. But this could be a way to find a wife who is at least in the same ballpark politically.

People looking for a mate today are lucky that eHarmony exists. It’s not magic, it’s just a tool – a very useful tool – that substantially increases the probability of success. And if you succeed, the lifetime pay-off is huge. I believe that Warren and eHarmony have made a unique and valuable contribution by applying science to match-making.

The Bell Curve devoted one chapter to the question of where we are evolving with regard to IQ (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994). Dysgenics picks up where The Bell Curve left off. Professor Lynn surveys studies from all over the world, and everywhere finds the least intelligent people having the most children. The only exception is sub-Saharan Africa where contraception is rarely used. Our genetic potential for intelligence has been declining in Europe and North America since the mid- 1800s, with a total loss of about 5-8 IQ points. Currently, we are losing almost one IQ point each generation.

The decline in genotypic intelligence coincided with the dissemination of information about contraception. For several centuries prior to 1800, married couples had natural fertility, essentially uninfluenced by efforts to limit it. During this period, there was a strong taboo against sex outside of marriage, and many people never had children because they were too poor to marry. Illegitimacy was rare. Infant mortality was high, especially among the lower classes. Harsh though it may have been, natural selection operated to maintain a healthy population, and to keep intelligence gradually increasing.

Then in the early 1800s, several books on contraception were published. These ideas naturally affected the reading classes disproportionately. Goodyear perfected the vulcanization of rubber, making it an ideal material for the mass production of condoms and diaphragms. By the middle of the century, it was becoming apparent that educated people were having fewer children than the uneducated. Charles Darwin worried about the fact that "the scum" of society were so prolific, and expressed deep concern about the future of civilization because natural selection had ceased to operate. Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, coined the term "eugenics," and was its main proponent:

The chief result of these Inquiries has been to elicit the religious significance of the doctrine of evolution. It suggests an alteration in our mental attitude, and imposes a new moral duty. The new mental attitude is one of a greater sense of moral freedom, responsibility, and opportunity; the new duty . . . is an endeavour to further evolution, especially that of the human race.

Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective. This is precisely the aim of eugenics. (Blacker, 1952).

In the early decades of the 1900s, eugenics societies were being formed in Great Britain and the United States, and eugenics was advocated by leading thinkers along all points of the political spectrum. H.G. Wells summed up its common-sense appeal: "It seemed to me that to discourage the multiplication of people below a certain standard, and to encourage the multiplication of exceptionally superior people, was the only real and permanent way of mending the ills of the world. I think that still." Julian Huxley described eugenics as "of all outlets for altruism, that which is most comprehensive, and of longest range" (Van Court, 1982).

Eugenics made sense because few doubted that heredity was important. Life was more closely tied to the land, and farmers knew from experience that plants and animals vary widely depending on their inborn qualities. Common sense dictated that human beings, like all the rest of nature, are strongly influenced by heredity. In addition, most people had larger families back then. If a couple had many children, all of whom turned out good except one, it was perfectly reasonable to think that what accounted for the difference was inborn, especially if there were signs from early childhood. Since all the children grew up in the same house, with the same parents, eating the same food, it was just a matter of common sense.

Common Sense Confirmed by Science

Professor Lynn's major thesis in Dysgenics is that scientific evidence has proven the eugenicists were absolutely right in their concerns about genetic deterioration, and that we, as a society, have made a serious mistake by discounting them. Twin studies and adoption studies have established beyond any doubt the important role of heredity in determining IQ. Identical twins separated at birth have quite similar IQ's. When adopted children grow up, they resemble their biological parents more closely than their adoptive parents in IQ. Just as the eugenicists assumed, social mobility over centuries has produced a social class gradient for intelligence, and social class is determined partly by innate intelligence. One U.S. study found that in families with 2 or more brothers, the boys with higher IQ's tended to move up the SES ladder when they grew up, whereas those with lower IQ's tended to move down. Finally, the evidence shows we are deteriorating genetically because the most intelligent people are having the fewest children.

A number of recent studies point to contraceptive practices as the key to understanding dysgenics today. People with low IQ's, whether married or unmarried, are less likely to use any form of birth control. Among women using the same birth control methods, those with low IQ's have much higher failure rates. After an unwanted pregnancy has occurred, low IQ couples are less likely to obtain abortions. Thus each factor selects against intelligence. One minor contribution to dysgenics is the fact that high IQ women often end up not having as many children as they would have liked to have had. By the time a baby is "convenient," it may be too late. However, the major reason for the decline in our genetic potential for intelligence is greater birth control failure on the part of low IQ women. In the United States, women of all IQ levels report that they would like, on average, about 2.3 children. But low IQ women frequently have more children, often far more children, than they would ideally like to have. If all women had exactly the number of children they desired, there would be no dysgenics, and we would at least break even in our genetic potential for intelligence (Van Court, 1983).

The loss of a 5-8 IQ points may not be a tragedy for an individual, but when applied to a population, it has profound consequences. As readers of The Bell Curve may remember, small shifts in the average of a bell-shaped distribution produce large effects on the tails--in this case, the retarded and the gifted. For example, a decrease in the average IQ of just under 5 points doubles the number of retardates (IQ less than 70), and cuts in half the number of gifted (IQ over 130). Furthermore, Herrnstein and Murray found that when they moved the average IQ down statistically by just 3 points, from 100 to 97, all social problems were exacerbated: the nu
mber of women chronically dependent on welfare increased by 7%; illegitimacy increased by 8%; men interviewed in jail increased by 12%; and the number of permanent high school dropouts increased by nearly 15%.

One anomalous finding known as 'the Flynn effect' adds an element of mystery to this picture. James Flynn, political scientist from New Zealand, has reported "massive gains" in IQ in the U.S. and elsewhere. When IQ tests are standardized, people consistently find earlier versions of the tests easier, and score higher, than did the original test-takers. There's no consensus on whether this is due to actual increases in intelligence, or some sort of artifact. Certainly, enormous gains are difficult to reconcile with casual observation and declining SAT scores. Many people dismiss 'the Flynn effect' on the grounds that if the population had actually gained 3 points per decade since 1932 as claimed, "Our ancestors would have been morons." Flynn himself is not unsympathetic to this view. Christopher Brand makes a convincing case that people have merely become more savvy test-takers over the years (Brand, 1996). Professor Lynn believes the gains are real, and probably due to better nutrition, which is thought to be the cause of comparable increases in stature. He likens the situation to poorer quality seeds given ever greater quantities of fertilizer. But even if his optimistic view proves to be correct, there should soon be a limit to how much more benefit can be derived from nutrition, if the limit hasn't been reached already.

Decline in Health and Conscientiousness

Throughout our evolution, the weak and diseased died young and didn't pass on their genes. Now, because of modern medicine, people with numerous genetic diseases live long enough to reproduce and transmit defective genes to their children. (Examples: cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, diabetes, pyloric stenosis, various heart defects, thalassemia, phenylketonuria, and sickle cell anemia.) The incidence of many of these disorders is doubling or tripling each generation. No one would deny sufferers treatment, but it's important to realize that, as a result of it, our genetic potential for robust good health is declining. Life-long care will require ever-increasing expenditures. Furthermore, while sufferers are grateful for medical advances, most would nevertheless be quick to point out that the quality of their lives would be far better if they'd never inherited a disease in the first place.

Conscientiousness, traditionally known as "good character," consists of honesty, a strong work ethic, and concern for others. Since IQ is positively correlated to a number of desirable traits (such as altruism, anti-authoritarian attitudes, and middle-class values of hard work, thrift, and sacrifice), when IQ declines, so do these traits. People with low IQ's are far more likely to become criminals, so the fact that our genetic potential for intelligence is declining means our genetic potential for crime is increasing. Moreover, some evidence suggests that despite lengthy sojourns in jail, criminals still manage to procreate at a faster rate than the rest of us. Professor Lynn's research on London criminals found they had nearly twice as many offspring as non-criminals, and those figures are almost certainly underestimates. In demographic studies of fertility, the entire category of underclass males is frequently omitted because reliable data on their offspring simply can't be obtained – their sexual behavior is often promiscuous, and their relationships transient. Since twin studies and adoption studies have established that there is a substantial genetic component to criminality, the higher fertility of criminals significantly increases the genetic potential for criminality in the population.

What to do?

The solution to genetic deterioration in intelligence, health, and conscientiousness is not a matter of know-how or resources. Rather, it's a matter of overcoming the pernicious association of eugenics with Nazi genocide. This association has made eugenics a taboo subject, and prevented most rational discussion of it for at least the past few decades. Previously I have addressed this issue:

An almost primitive fatalism and superstition underlie the assumption that as a society, we are utterly powerless to alter our course, however disastrous a legacy we may be leaving to future generations through our negligence, and the irrational fear that if we dare attempt to guide [our evolution] . . . . we run a grave risk of being suddenly forced against our wills through some mysterious, outrageously implausible yet inexorable sequence of events culminating in genocide and World War III (Van Court, 1983).

The public has witnessed numerous grim and frightening stories about the Holocaust, along with Nazi propaganda on the creation of "a master race," so quite understandably, it has come to associate eugenics with Nazis and genocide. Who could ever forget the sight of bulldozers shoving mountains of emaciated bodies into mass graves? It's not surprising that the Nazi's strong and vocal support for eugenics has utterly destroyed it as a social movement, because nothing, no matter how inherently benevolent, could survive an association with such nightmarish images. But Germany is just one example of a country with a eugenics program – one very, very conspicuous example.

In the first half of the 20th century, a total of 29 countries passed eugenics laws, including Germany, The United States, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Venezuela, Estonia, Argentina, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Brazil, Italy, Greece, and Spain. History tells us that in one country, Germany, there was genocide; in the other 28, there was not (Saetz, 1985). Furthermore, numerous cases of genocide have been committed without so much as a mention of eugenics. Communism – far and away history's biggest mass murderer – never advocated eugenics, and, in fact, held the opposite beliefs from the Nazis, that the environment causes everything, and heredity counts for nothing. So how can there possibly be a causal connection between eugenics and genocide? In order to prove causation, it's necessary minimally to show a true association. Put simply, one case out of 29 does not an association make.

Consider the following analogy: Imagine that the most salient historical event of all times was the Crusades, instead of the Holocaust, and that for the past 50 years, the Crusades had been the subject of highly sensational movies, documentaries, commemorative ceremonies, newspaper and magazine articles, books, lectures, museum exhibits, and so on. If we didn't know much about Christianity, it would be easy to conclude that it was a war-like religion, and quite reasonably, we'd be concerned that if we should ever convert to Christianity, we might wind up fighting and dying in some Crusade. The emotionally-charged association between "Christianity" and "war" would become indelibly imprinted in our consciousness after being paired thousands of times. It wouldn't be a true association, with predictive value – whenever there's Christianity, there's likely to be war (and vice versa), as would be the case if Christians had actually engaged in a disproportionate share of the wars throughout history – but in fact, it would be a false association, because it's based on just one single event which is replayed again and again and again.

Ghost of Adolf Hitler

To say, "The Nazis believed in eugenics, and they did terrible things" just isn't good enough as a reason to reject eugenics forevermore. Before rejecting the only solution to dysgenics – a serious problem which isn't 'could be' or 'might be' but rather is – it must be firmly established that a eugenics program would actually cause more harm than genetic deterioration of the population. In order to do that, it would have to be shown that genocide (or some other clearly-specified catastr
ophe) is, in fact, a very real danger of a eugenics program, and not merely hysteria and irrational anxiety resulting from a false association with Nazi's. The idea that there's an actual risk of genocide as a result of implementing a eugenics program is preposterous, and it has never been established flimsily, let alone firmly!

Draconian practices would be wholly unacceptable and unnecessary in a modern-day eugenics program. Professor Lynn offers no recommendations in Dysgenics, leaving that for his promised sequel, to be entitled Eugenics. But in light of the problems touched upon in this review, several possible eugenic measures come to mind. Since low-IQ women are much more likely to have unwanted children due to birth control failure, a reasonable first step might be to offer them free long-term and permanent contraception. (Prevention of unwanted births would be a worth-while humanitarian goal in itself, aside from eugenic benefits, because unwanted children are far more likely to be neglected and abused.) A second step might be to provide incentives to criminals (such as reduced sentences) to have vasectomies or tubal ligations. A third step might be to implement various measures to ease the burden of parenthood for college students. Such a program could go a long way toward halting dysgenics, or possibly even reversing it.

Professor Lynn concludes Dysgenics with a word to his critics:

[W]e have considered the criticisms of the view that the genetic quality of modern populations is deteriorating. These are that there is no genetic determination of intelligence, conscientiousness, crime, educational attainment or socioeconomic status; that there can be an inverse association between intelligence and fertility without genetic deterioration occurring; that there are no genetic differences between the social classes; that there are no such things as bad genes; that the genes for genetic diseases should be preserved, especially in other people, because they make a positive contribution to creative achievement; and that all human types, including the mentally retarded, criminals and psychopaths, are equally valuable. All these arguments have been examined and found wanting. Only one verdict is possible concerning the critics of eugenics who have advanced these arguments, and that is that they have not taken the trouble to examine the research evidence. The eugenicists believed that modern populations were deteriorating genetically. The evidence set out in this book shows they were correct.

Perhaps Professor Lynn is being charitable to his critics by suggesting that they are merely ignorant. A decidedly less charitable view would be that – at least with regard to the high percentage of Marxists and nihilists among them – his critics have read the research, and know perfectly well that it's true, but publicly they insist it's utterly false (in a tone of moral indignation, no less) because it threatens their thinly-veiled political agenda. Like all important works on genetics and IQ of the past few decades, Dysgenics is bound to send Marxists/ nihilists into apoplexies of agitation and rage. They respond to scientific facts which don't fit their egalitarian ideology by attempting to suppress them, branding scientists who report them "Nazis" and "racists," and publishing devoid-of-substance, pseudo-scientific "rebuttals," which – unlike the scholarly, substantive, straightforward works they line up en masse to rebut – are welcomed with open arms by the politically-correct media. They can do all of these things, and they can pitch a fit 'till they rupture an artery in their collective brain. But they cannot make these facts go away.

We are deteriorating genetically, and the only alternative to leaving future generations an increasingly chaotic, violent, degraded society is called "eugenics." What a dilemma! Have we no other choice than to bequeath to our children a poorer genetic legacy than the one we ourselves inherited? And what if they too live in terror of the ghost of Adolph Hitler? Where will it end?

From every imaginable perspective – the economy, education, literacy, crime, welfare, government, the "misery quotient," advancing civilization, and science, to name just a few – human genetic deterioration in intelligence, conscientiousness, and health is a disaster. For the believers among us, add to these the religious implications of dysgenics: How could it be God's will for us to behave irresponsibly and cruelly to people who come after us? Would it not be a sacrilege to thoughtlessly squander God's most precious gifts--in fact, the very ones used to create us in His image?

In retrospect, it seems inevitable that at some point, the widespread knowledge and use of contraception would bring about dysgenics. Many people feel it's wrong for society to attempt to influence reproduction in any way. But it should be borne in mind that dysgenics came about as a result of society's “meddling” with the natural order of things by introducing contraception, and it's clear some sort of “compensatory meddling” will be required if we are ever going to set our evolution back on a healthy course.

REFERENCES

Blacker, C.P., (1952) Eugenics Galton and After, London: Duckworth

Brand, Christopher (1996) The 'g' Factor, New York: Wiley & Sons

Herrnstein, Richard, and Charles Murray (1994) The Bell Curve, New York: Free Press

Saetz, Stephen B. (1985) "Eugenics and the Third Reich," The Eugenics Bulletin, reprinted on Future Generations website at http://www.ziplink.net/~bright/

Van Court, Marian (1982) "Eugenics Revisited," Mensa Bulletin, #254

Van Court, Marian (1983), "Unwanted births and dysgenic fertility in the United States," The Eugenics Bulletin, reprinted on Future Generations website at http://www.ziplink.net/~bright/

Van Court, Marian, and Frank Bean (1985) "Intelligence and fertility in the United States: 1912-1982," Intelligence 9, 23-32