And now it looks like one of the discovers of DNA, a Nobel Prize winner, must have caught it.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993451
Quote:**
“If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease,**” says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York.
Why do you say that? What do you think produces stupidity (and how do you define it)?
Watson, provocative, as always, has suggested that geneticists look for ways to provide a “cure” (to use the loose analogy with which he began) to address the issues of people who score in the bottom 10% of IQ tests.
Even someone who dismisses the general use of IQ tests as meaningful when applied to the vast majority of people (as I do) recognize that the people who score in the bottom 10% are functionally disabled for a modern society. I see no reason why we should not consider ways to improve their lot.
Now, there are a whole host of ethical issues surrounding any such attempt and I would not encourage geneticists to rush in looking for a “cure” before they even understand how to define the “disease,” but I hardly think that a call for research is cause to brand Watson stupid.
The article, for example, mentions two genetic diseases that are highly correlated with low intelligence. Should we stop looking for ways to cure them on the grounds that we can’t cure stupidity?
What is your specific objection?
(And I think that Watson’s call to genetically “beautify” women is nutso–but is consistent with his “push the envelope” type of rhetoric.)
The question to you remains,
WHY do you believe or feel or think that his proposal is wrong?
Yeah, I don’t know why there has to be a lowest ten percent…
Well… there’s ALWAYS going to be the lowest 10%. Unless we redefine statistics, that is 
The issue being, of course, as to how low down the bottom 10% go. In economics, most societies view it as beneficial for the whole if the bottom 10% isn’t dying in the gutter (even if they don’t admit it). Could “socialising” intelligence in this way provide benefits for everyone, shifting the whole curve upwards a few notches?
Of course, this kind of thing is merely a debating point right now: there’s no practical way of doing it. It’s a bit myopic to suggest that discussing it or suggesting it is “stupid” or “senile” stright off the bat, though. Why not tell us why, GOM? Use convincing arguments and we’ll maybe even believe you!
Is it necessarily such a ridiculous idea? Suppose you used CVS to determine that a fetus had Downs Syndrome, and you used some sort of chromosomal silencing technique to prevent the extra chromosome from doing any harm. We already know that an entire X chromosome is naturally silenced in women, so it might not be too far off before we find way to actually do it on command.
Yes.
Also, isn’t there a bit of a difference between intellectual disability due to genetic abnormality (or other organic reasons), and “stupidity” within the normal range of intelligence? “Intelligence” is notoriously hard to define anyway.
I wouldn’t automatically rubbish attempts to eliminate disability, though there are ethical implications here.
I was less impressed by Watson’s crass suggestion about engineering a race of “pretty girls”. Who is to be the model for this pretty race? What if the parents sue when they find they’ve ordered last year’s style? Are all women going to look like me in the future, heh heh heh…?
Where exactly in the article does Watson say that he wants to create a race of pretty girls?
I’ve got to be honest: apart from the controversy whether this sort of thing will ever be possible, I don’t see why there should be any controversy over whether it should be done. Maybe ignorance is bliss, but I’ve never heard that stupidity is. Should the ability to genetically alter a foetus become a straight forward affair, I can’t understand why allowing a child to be born stupid would be even remotely ethical. It is morally on par with refusing to allow you kid to go to school because if god wanted children to know algebra, he would have hard wired it into our DNA.
Unless everyone is equally smart, there will be a lowest ten percent. But that mathematical artifact is no reason to insist that we shouldn’t be helping those at the bottom become better off. “There, but for the grace of god, go I.” Not if I can help it. How can it possibly be ethical to force people to live with completely shitty traits because we’re too attached to the idea that dumb luck and historical contingencies are too sacred to affect, should the ability become available?!
The same thing holds for looks. Being ugly is shitty. Who seriously thinks it isn’t? It affects how a child is treated, what opportunities it has throughout life, and shrinks the pool of potential mates. While “looks” may come in and out of fashion, is butt-ugly ever in question? If pre-natal testing showed that my child was going to be healthy but ugly, you bet I’d pay a couple grand to make her attractive. Who wouldn’t? Who would subject their child to the torment and abuse inherent in being an ugly child? Do you remember going to school? How were the ugly kids treated? I recall them being tormented and ostracized. In what possible universe is allowing a child to suffer that sort of treatment–when it is fairly easily preventable–a moral thing to do?
That’s an assumption that is not currently valid, and may never be. We don’t know how to read the programming of life right now.
Besides the brain is not hardwired at birth. If Mr. Watson truly wants to fight the stupidity of the bottom 10% he might want to look at some of the research about what happens to children after birth.
Of course, that wouldn’t get him any of this exciting press coverage…
cite ? You don’t outgrow crappy chemistry.
While the statement that he wanted a “race” of pretty girls was a bit carless, he did say:
What we “don’t know how” is exactly what Watson is suggesting we study so that we might know. While the brain may not be hardwired for all functions, it is clearly susceptible to factors that reduce its function–many of them genetic. Since Watson is a geneticist, not a social scientist, any suggestions he would make for upgrading social conditions would be as a layman with no more weight than anyone else. On the other hand, he can speak to the community of geneticists and biologists and suggest actions where his voice would actually carry some weight.
And I don’t see a lot of “exciting press coverage.” His comments were made for a TV series that will probably not garner huge ratings in either the U.K. or U.S. Had he wanted “exciting press coverage,” he could easily have called a press conference to announce that his company was going to make the attempt.
Given your failure to produce any reasons for your objections, is it possible you accidentally posted this rant in GD when you were aiming for the Pit?
That doesn’t make him stupid. Based on advances in genetics in the last 20 years alone, his speculation is very plausible. I’m sure he holds stupid opinions, but his intelligence is surely in the top 10%. You trivialize what he’s really talking about, which is the prevention of brain damage and severely abnormal development in children.
It is partly hardwired. That is why babies can breathe and see. A brain that is very badly wired may never learn things that we take for granted.
As a researcher, I would like to know what research you claim familiarity with. Children born with very damaged or poorly developed brains are at a great disadvantage. Most cannot and will not develop normal brains. Infants with severe “stupidity” might never grow up to support themselves no matter what happens after birth. I’ve worked with such people, and I doubt that you know what you are talking about.
He’s not talking about intact people who happen to be on the low end of the intelligence curve. He’s talking about damaged humans who don’t learn well enough to feed, clothe, and protect themselves. He has personal experience of this with his own children.
As to the pretty girl comment, it sounds like a lighthearted quip rather than a deep belief about socio-genetics. Besides, what he said is mostly true – that genetic engineering could be used to alter beauty. I have little doubt that someday it will be used for that purpose.
I wonder what Rosalind Franklin would think about Watson’s aesthetic vision for gene therapy?
Considering that he didn’t acknowledge her contribution to the solution of the structure of DNA, I imagine that she would not think highly of it.
Since this is a debating forum, tell me what you suppose she would think of his aesthetic vision, and why?
I have a hunch that the words “pompous” “sexist” and “pig” might be used liberally in her assessment, based on their history.
I must admit that I know precious little about Rosalind (aside from her professional and academic jilting), though I know there are books and articles to be read about her.
I would think that she would be of the mind that it is better to favor more scientific knowlege and less technical application at this stage of gene therapy infancy.
In our existance, the Human animal has wrought tremendous havoc on the collective gene pools of the lifeforms that share this planet. Most of that has been the result of us only manipulating our tangible environment, and we really have no idea what the consequences of our actions will end up being. Now that we are tinkering with the code of life, where even the smallest change of base pairs can be magnified to drastic differences, our bull in the china shop becomes a herd.
I would think that she would tell Watson to shut up and get back in the lab, maybe take a few more apprentices with him, and try to prepare the Nobel winners of tommorrow for the burden of the discoveries that we make today.
It’s a pity that Franklin died so young. I’ve read a little about her and I’m sure that she would have been kicking establishment butt by the 1970’s.
I haven’t been able to discern if she had a conscience for the larger issues that emerge from genetic manipulation. I get the impression that she was highly technical, and therefore might have preferred to devote her time to the laboratory rather than working with students (pure speculation here).
If it’s a disease, I hope it’s not contagious
Judging by the inability of certain posters to convince anyone of their point of view, I would say stupidity is not contagious.