The gene delusion
By Philip Ball,
New Statesman
| 06. 10. 2020
The genetic data around human difference is inconclusive – but that does not stop right-wing thinkers such as Charles Murray using it to excuse profound social inequalities.
In February this year, the Downing Street adviser Andrew Sabisky was forced to resign when his incendiary comments on race and genetics from six years earlier came to light. Sabisky had been hired by Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, as part of a drive to recruit “weirdos and misfits”. But one of the most alarming aspects of the Sabisky affair is not that he had written that “There are excellent reasons to think the very real racial differences in intelligence are significantly – even mostly – genetic in origin”; it is that such views are hardly even controversial today among many right-wing thinkers.
Sabisky was just 21 when he made those comments, though neither he nor his would-have-been bosses Cummings and Johnson has said whether they agree with them today. So while Sabisky had added that “whether the politicians will pay any attention is debatable… [although] it would be nice if they did from the standpoint of immigration control”, we can’t be sure that the British government isn’t, on the contrary, paying very close attention indeed as it tells...
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By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 07.11.2024
Louise Perry’s recent article in The Spectator cautions against “The quiet return of eugenics,” a threat she locates in preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders. The technology is billed as a way for parents undergoing IVF to select which embryo to implant based on information about each embryo’s genetic risk factors and traits. These reports, she says, give parents “a very full picture of the adult that embryo could become”––from their child’s risk of developing different diseases to their “likely...
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Prophets of techno-paradise tend to bloom and then fade but not necessarily disappear. Malcolm and Simone Collins, a husband and wife team, have been on quite a roll for a couple of years. However, their time in the spotlight may at last be coming to a close, after a report revealed their parenting style.
The Collins family have already featured on this...
GATTACA was released in 1997, but — remarkably — is even more relevant now than it was then, as the technologies whose social implications it explores have developed considerably.
On Thursday, June 13, the California Film Institute presented GATTACA to a sold-out house at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center as part of their Science on Screen series. CGS Associate Director Katie Hasson offered framing for the film and participated in a Q+A discussion.
The film’s plot explicitly involves...