James Watson on Eugenics

[James Brody]

Michael (Weiner) Savage referred to this article last night. You might enjoy it. There were problems with eugenics in Galton's time, there still are in my time. Nonetheless, if I offered a gene transplant that raised IQ, lines would form to give me money...and some people in those lines would insist on moving to the front because they were denied by unfair biology!

As for IQ: I'm intrigued how many times we ridicule the impaired and for an equal number of times we ridicule the blessed and the gifted, rejoice in their defeats, and rejoice more if their humiliation is greater.

Another idea of Galton's, "regression to the mean" shadows many things and is often unseen!

Excerpts: "WHAT I'VE LEARNED: James Watson
Esquire, January 2007, Volume 147, Issue 1
http://www.esquire.com/features/arti...07_watson.html

"turned against the left wing because they don't like genetics, because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail we have bad genes. They want all failure in life to be due to the evil system.

"I've wondered why people aren't more intelligent. Why isn't everyone as intelligent as Ashkenazi Jews? And it may be societies work best when there's a mixture of abilities?the bright people would never be an army. Or has our intelligence been limited by leaders killing off any potential competitors? I suspect time is not a factor. The Ashkenazi Jews have a thousand years. So these are the sorts of things we'll find out?how many mutations would you need to be more intelligent?

"went to a meeting on genetic enhancement in New York City, and a few of us were for it. The rest were appalled. To just a defensive reaction of people on the top?they're afraid someone else might be on the top. But what if you were dumb? Wouldn't it be nice to have a child who would let you get out of the slums? If you could make people with ten-point-higher IQs, we'd probably have fewer wars.

"Francis Crick said we should pay poor people not to have children. I think now we're in a terrible situation where we pay the rich people to have children. If there is any correlation between success and genes, IQ will fall if the successful don't have children. These are self-obvious facts."