Dysgenics

Dysgenics (also known as cacogenics)[1] is the study of factors producing the accumulation and perpetuation of defective or disadvantageous genes and traits in offspring of a particular population or species.[2][3]

Not to be confused with Dysgenesis (embryology).

The adjective "dysgenic" is the antonym of "eugenic". It was first used c. 1915 by David Starr Jordan, describing the supposed dysgenic effects of World War I.[4] Jordan believed that healthy men were as likely to die in modern warfare as anyone else and that war killed only the physically healthy men of the populace whilst preserving the disabled at home.[5]

In the context of human genetics, a dysgenic effect is the projected or observed tendency of a reduction in selection pressures and decreased infant mortality since the Industrial Revolution resulting in the increased propagation of deleterious traits and genetic disorders. Richard Lynn in his Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations (1996) identified three main concerns: deterioration in health, in intelligence, and in conscientiousness.

Genetic disorders

Rui Nunes wrote that dysgenics is the selection of genetic traits that are "commonly accepted as a disabling condition," and like eugenics, dysgenics can be positively selected or negatively selected.[6] Nunes defined positive dysgenics as a selection that increases the number of individuals with dysgenic traits, while negative dysgenics is the discarding of genetics that cause disability.[6]

Improved medical and social care may possibly lead to increased incidence of genetic disorders. Practices such as genetic counselling and prenatal screening may counteract this effect.[7][8]

Fertility and intelligence
Main article: Fertility and intelligence

Lynn argued that natural selection in pre-industrial societies favored traits such as intelligence and character but no longer does so in modern societies, finding that criminals in the United Kingdom tend to have more children.[9] The hypothesized dysgenic decline in human intelligence is traced to a change in the distribution in fertility and intelligence by Woodley (2015).[10]

Selective fertility

Lynn and Harvey (2008)[11] suggest that designer babies may have an important counter-acting effect in the future. Initially this may be limited to wealthy couples, who may possibly travel abroad for the procedure if prohibited in their own country and then gradually spread to increasingly larger groups. Alternatively, authoritarian states may decide to impose measures such as a licensing requirement for having a child, which would only be given to persons of a certain minimum intelligence. The Chinese one-child policy was an example of how fertility can be regulated by authoritarian means.[12] Geoffrey Miller claims the one-child policy was implemented to reduce China's population explosion, and "to reduce dysgenic fertility among rural peasants."[13] While the one-child policy made exceptions for rural families so that those families could have 2 children, this only applied "if their first-born is a girl."[14]

In fiction

Cyril M. Kornbluth's 1951 short story "The Marching Morons" is an example of dysgenic fiction, describing a man who accidentally ends up in the distant future and discovers that dysgenics has resulted in mass stupidity. Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy has the same premise, with the main character the subject of a military hibernation experiment that goes awry, taking him 500 years into the future. While in the Kornbluth short story, civilization is kept afloat by a small group of dedicated geniuses, in Judge's film, voluntary childlessness wipes out the bloodlines of above-average intelligence and leaves only automated systems to fill that role in Idiocracy.[15]

See also

Notes
  1. "cacogenics". Freedictionary.com. Retrieved 2008-06-29. Cacogenics, the study of the operation of factors that cause degeneration in offspring, especially as applied to factors unique to separate races. Also called dysgenics.
  2. "Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -- Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and hundreds more". www.bartleby.com. Archived from the original on 2009-03-18.
  3. "Definition of dysgenics". Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary.
  4. Oxford English Dictionary
  5. Jordan, David Starr (2003). War and the Breed: The Relation of War to the Downfall of Nations (Reprint ed.). Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of the Pacific. ISBN 978-1-4102-0900-9.
  6. Nunes, Rui (March 2006). "Deafness, genetics and dysgenics". Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. 9 (1): 25–31. doi:10.1007/s11019-005-2852-9. PMID 16645795. S2CID 46237044.
  7. Holloway, S. M.; Smith, C. (1975). "Effects of various medical and social pracitices on the frequency of genetic disorders". American Journal of Human Genetics. 27 (5): 614–627. PMC 1762830. PMID 1163536.
  8. Matsunaga, E. (1983). "Perspectives in mutation epidemiology: 5. Modern medical practice versus environmental mutagens: Their possible dysgenic impact". Mutation Research/Reviews in Genetic Toxicology. 114 (3): 449–457. doi:10.1016/0165-1110(83)90040-4. PMID 6835245.
  9. Lynn, R. (2008). "Dysgenic fertility for criminal behaviour". Journal of Biosocial Science. 27 (4): 405–408. doi:10.1017/S0021932000023014. PMID 7593047.
  10. Woodley, Michael A. (2015). "How fragile is our intellect? Estimating losses in general intelligence due to both selection and mutation accumulation". Personality and Individual Differences. 75: 80–84. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.10.047.
  11. Lynn, Richard; Harveyb, John (2008). "The decline of the world's IQ". Intelligence. 36 (2): 112–120. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2007.03.004.
  12. Lynn, R.; Harvey, J. (2008). "The decline of the world's IQ". Intelligence. 36 (2): 112–120. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2007.03.004.
  13. Edge, Chinese Eugenics, http://edge.org/response-detail/23838/
  14. Tsintolas, Alexa. "Exceptions - China's One-Child Policy". Retrieved 14 June 2018.
  15. Mitchell, Dan (2006-09-09). "Shying away from Degeneracy". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-06-29.

Further reading
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