Posting Date: March 01, 2003

Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer -- "Fifty years to the day from the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of its co-discoverers has caused a storm by suggesting that stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured." (Comments: Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health)

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U.S. Eugenics Like Nazi Policy (ABC News, 2000) -- “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind,” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in the majority opinion of a landmark eugenics case in 1926.

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on March 1, 2003 04:46 PM

Perhaps we are all stupid as we are all continuing to learn :)

Posted by: daniel szuc on March 1, 2003 10:34 PM

In the long term Watson is right in suggesting we should look for a genetic cause of stupidity and, if possible, a cure.

Look at the alternatives:
* Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's opinion was an attempt to find a humane and just solution with the technology available in 1926.
* The rich and powerful will eventually get such treatments (and the beauty treatment, if discovered). If their existence is not publicised and they are not made widely available to those who need it most, we wind up with Brave New World.

Posted by: Philip Chalmers on March 4, 2003 03:41 AM

If I recall correctly, in _Brave New World_, the Beta, Gammas, and Deltas were all deliberatley damaged -- thus making the Alphas de facto superhumans. Huxley was talking about deliberately creating several tiers of slave races, engineered to be happy with its work. Huxley's fictional world needed _more_ stupid people. His operative vision was not eugenic but rather dysgenic.

Intelligence does not guarantee moral superiority. Smart people can be evil, and "stupid" people (who don't score well on standard intelligence tests) can excel in other ways (though they don't necessarily *have* to, and often will not).

The "problem" Holmes was responding to hasn't turned out to be a problem. Predictions based on Malthusian population projections (the idea that population increases exponentially while food increases mathematically) have been disproven numerous times.

Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz on March 7, 2003 03:21 PM

Sorry, obviously that should be "arithmetically" rather than "mathematically" in the above post.

Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz on March 7, 2003 11:47 PM

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