Nobel laureate, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory James Watson got himself into a bit of a pickle after opining in an interview with the UK’s Sunday Times (published Oct. 13) that he isn’t hopeful about our attempts to help Africa because Africans just aren’t as smart as other humans.

Within a week Watson had been soundly denounced by his scientific colleagues, the debate over cultural bias in intelligence testing was reignited, and the subject of modern day “New Eugenics” became prominent in dozens of internet forums and political websites.

By the end of the week Watson found himself out of a job as Cold Spring Harbor desperately tried to divert unwanted attention from its sordid history as the scientific base of American eugenics in the early decades of the last century. He also had his book tour cancelled and was sent home to “think things through.”

Now, it’s not unusual for James Watson to ruffle some PC feathers. He’s been at it ever since he stole Rosalind Franklin’s life’s work while simultaneously denouncing her for her ‘natural’ female inferiority. He has always been a notorious bigot, is probably lucky got to be 79 years old before his usually amused peers finally put him out to pasture.

Then this week the BBC weighed in with some rather humorous reporting on things genetic. Check the capture of their online website below, and see if you can figure out what’s wrong with this picture…

Now, the average person might look at that headline juxtaposed to that particular picture, and think that some input-flunky at BBC just decided to get cute. But last week that same BBC reported that according to “evolutionary theorist” Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics, humans are on a course to split into “a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass” representing two distinct sub-species within the next 100,000 years or so.

Curry described the two subspecies as an upper class of tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent and creative beings as opposed to the underclass of dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures. Hmmm…

One might wonder what’s going on in the biological fields of evolutionary theory and genetic research to suddenly break through the recently erected barriers of political correctness. When added to the robust emergence of this “New Eugenics” movement, people might begin to wonder if science ever really got over its fondness for eugenic ’solutions’ to human social issues. Perhaps they were just forced to lay low after the notorious debacle of Hitler’s Holocaust and various attempted genocides since then. Maybe racist eugenics just went underground for awhile, but never really swore off the political corruptions of science they once embraced so enthusiastically in the name of Charles Darwin.

At any rate, it’s something to think about. Since it’s so suddenly out there loud and clear asserting the same sort of garbage eugenicists asserted back when they testified in favor of laws to force sterilization on the poor, the imprisoned, the handicapped, and the orphan. In THIS country, not in Nazi Germany (which used American eugenics laws to promote its own version).

Links:

Liberal Eugenics

Science Magazine: Is a New Eugenics Afoot?

ZMagazine: The New Eugenics