The earth seems to have no shortage of nut jobs, and there have been all sorts of groups/cults dedicated to various missions that they deemed important. Have there ever been any groups dedicated to selectively breeding humans? Of course, this would have to be voluntary or I imagine they would find themselves in trouble pretty quickly. And, being a multi-generational project, it might be hard to hold true to the original goal as time passed. Still, crazier things have happened.
Any knowledge of groups like this? What were their goals? How far did they get?
I think the closest thing you’d get to this would be the royal families. And that would be a very loose definition of selective breeding since they weren’t breeding for a trait or traits, but for connections.
I’d include the White Supremacists/Aryan Nation groups of today. They do not believe in what they call “mixing of the races” and frequently talk of members being “pure.”
The trouble is keeping on focus for more than a generation.
(You may be thinking about the Methuselah’s Children “future history” of Robert Heinlein, where he suggests a very rich eccentric with a short lifespan endows an institute to pay couples with long-lived grandparents to marry/breed, resulting in people with exceptional lifespans.)
The downside is what one generation may consider acceptable behaviour is not acceptable a generation later - Hitler’s racial purity efforts, or the early 20th century drive to sterilize the “defective”.
Plus, there’s the timeline. It takes so many generations - Jared Diamond, in comments about agriculture, mentions that the life cycle of trees was too long for many to be domesticated by breeding; most are still cultivated to produce usable fruit with grafts. Similarly, IIRC reading once, there are no dometicated elephants; they are captured wild, usually young, and trained. Unlike real domestic animals, the breeding times are too long for them to have been selectively bred for tasks.
I guess the other question would be - what traits? And, who says that your “breeding stock” is going to cooperate, when even the guards are tempted to make an off-plan contribution, and the people in charge of the plan are certainly going to be tempted by the opportunity to make an off-plan contribution to the gene pool?
singaporean dopers might want to comment concerning their government’s policy on “streamlining” educational paths, various incentives for married couples, selection polices for immigration applicants, etc.
NB: i’m not implying that the state of singapore is a cult of some sort.
I’m not sure it counts, but as I recall some of the Jewish groups that practice variations on arranged marriage have deliberately ensured that no two people with recessive genes for certain genetic diseases prevalent among them marry. Which hasn’t eliminated the genes, but has dropped the incidence of actual disease to near-zero.
also some (unofficial) attempts on US track and field athletes. there was this doping acticle on tv once (highlighted by the death of florence griffith-joyner.)
David Koresh forbade the men in his cult from having sex, but rutted at will with the female members.
Polygamist sects in Utah have the system rigged so the male elders get their pick of nubile teenaged girls. Millenarian sects in 19th Century US all originally had similar arrangements.
Few of these lasted more than the first generation.
Dr. William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor and co-winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for said achievement, also believed in IQ as a measurement of intelligence (of the useful sort), in its genetic determination, and in racial differences thereof. He advocated, funded and even participated in (with sperm donation) eugenics programs to encourage more reproduction from high-IQ whites, to suppress fertility of minorities and to encourage paid voluntary sterilization of anyone with IQs below 100.
Specifically to answer the OP: the organization with the “breeding program” that he participated in was called the Repository for Germinal Choice.
With the implication, I suppose, that if they ever hooked up with the right people who then got in power, the word “Choice” could simply be replaced with “Policy” and “Repository” with “Bureau”.
I know of no factual examples, but two from fiction leap to mind.
Dark Angel- The series featured a centuries old cult whose members all bred according to plan. I cannot remember what traits the cult valued though.
Andromeda- The Niezcheans are a centuries old cult. Originally, they were slightly changed through genetic engineering (they have bone spikes on their forearms for example). Over time, their belief in being stronger, faster and smarter has led to people who are superior to normal humans. An interesting side note, as the best and brightest win the most mates and as the environment and values Niezcheans are raised with haven’t changed in centuries, sometimes a child will be born who is genetically (and largely mentally and emotionally) identical to an ancestor.
The Chinese government doesn’t qualify as a cult, but I’ve read that the parents of Yao Ming, the tallest-ever NBA basketball star, were introduced to each other by the government and strongly encouraged to marry and have kid(s). Both of them were tall and were former professional basketball players themselves.
Authoritarian states often take sports very seriously.
Although not carried out with the idea of hewing to some genetic goal, the relatively high rates of in-group intermarriage within some cultural or religious groups like (for example) some European Jewish populations has produced some unique genetic diseases and (it could be argued) some unique genetic traits that were differentially favored in those populations re highly valued traits that provided preferential access to breeding females, like an aptitude for scholarship, which is usually linked to higher than normal mental aptitude.
