A new book, IQ and the Wealth of Nations, by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, documents some facts immediately relevant to race science, but surely startling to some - particularly since their conclusions are radically incompatible with the centerpiece of the liberal agenda, egalitarianism. Here is review text from Amazon.com, posted 2002-Mar-8, by J. Philippe Rushton, professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario:

This brilliantly conceived, superbly-written, path-breaking book, does for the global study of economic prosperity what Herrnstein and Murray's (1994) The Bell Curve did for the USA. IQ and the Wealth of Nations examines IQ scores and economic indicators in 185 nations. It shows that national differences in wealth are explained first, by the intelligence levels of the populations; second, by whether the countries have market or socialist economies; and finally, by unique circumstances such as, in the case of Qatar, by sitting atop a sea of oil.

One striking fact is that the average national IQ of the world is 90. Few nations have IQs equal or near the British average of 100 (less than 20%). The highest average IQs are found among the Oriental nations of North East Asia (IQ = 104), followed by the European nations (IQ = 98), and the mainly White populations of North America and Australasia (IQ = 98), the nations of South and Southwest Asia from the Middle East through Turkey to India and Malaysia (IQ = 87), the nations of South East Asia and the Pacific Islands (IQ = 86), the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean (IQ = 85), and finally by the nations of Africa (IQ = 70). Because many nations have IQs of 90 or less (almost 50%), this poses a serious problem if the book's conclusion that IQ = 90 forms the threshold for a technological economy is correct. IQs can vary greatly within a geographic region. In Latin America and the Caribbean, IQs range from 72 in Jamaica to 96 in Argentina and Uruguay, and appear to be due to the racial and ethnic make-up of the populations.

... Mean national IQ correlates 0.71 with per capita Gross National Product (GNP) for 1998, and 0.76 with per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 1998, and that national IQs predict both long term (1820-1922) and short term (1950-90; 1976-1998) economic growth rates measured variously by per capita GNP and GDP (mean rs ~ 0.60). Lynn and Vanhanen prove that the widespread though rarely stated assumption of economists and political scientists that all peoples and nations have the same average IQ is wildly wrong. They document that IQs predate earnings, are heritable, and are stable from age 5 onwards, and predict educational level and many other positive outcomes as evidence that IQ is the cause, not antecedent. The take home message of IQ and the Wealth of Nations is that national differences in IQ are here to stay and so is the gap between the rich and the poor nations.

and this, posted by Prof. Rushton on Ian Pitchford's evolutionary psychology list on 2002-Mar-15:

John Winston Bush asked how to deal with the hypothesis that IQ and individual wealth may have common cause such as parental socio-economic status?

Longitudinal family studies can tease apart genetic and enviromental components. Twin and adoption studies look at gene-environment covariance. For example, children grow to resmble their biological parents not the adopting parents who raised them. Within families, children with IQs higher than their fathers are upwardly socially mobile, whereas those with lower IQs than their fathers are downwardly mobile. A lot of this work is reviewed in full in Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve, Jensen's The g factor, or my own Race, Evolution, and Behavior. A brief but good introduction to that literature (with lots of refernces) is to be found in the book under discussion, i.e., IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Incidentally, the authors also discuss a wide range of environmental and cultural factors that they believe work to raise IQ scores, especially including, breast feeding and improved nutrition generally, improved public health (e.g., anti-malarial programs), and education. However they doubt (with evidence) that these raise the IQs of populations by much more than about 6 or 7 IQ points. They also discuss eugenic and dysgenic trends that operate in different parts of the world (e.g., China vs Latin America). It is a very sophisticated but easy to read book, discussing almost all the issues likely to be raised.

from Scientific American, 2003-Nov-10, by Michael J. Bamshad and Steve E. Olson:

Does Race Exist?

If races are defined as genetically discrete groups, no. But researchers can use some genetic information to group individuals into clusters with medical relevance

Look around on the streets of any major city, and you will see a sampling of the outward variety of humanity: skin tones ranging from milk-white to dark brown; hair textures running the gamut from fine and stick-straight to thick and wiry. People often use physical characteristics such as these--along with area of geographic origin and shared culture--to group themselves and others into "races." But how valid is the concept of race from a biological standpoint? Do physical features reliably say anything informative about a person's genetic makeup beyond indicating that the individual has genes for blue eyes or curly hair?

The problem is hard in part because the implicit definition of what makes a person a member of a particular race differs from region to region across the globe. Someone classified as "black" in the U.S., for instance, might be considered "white" in Brazil and "colored" (a category distinguished from both "black" and "white") in South Africa.

Yet common definitions of race do sometimes work well to divide groups according to genetically determined propensities for certain diseases. Sickle cell disease is usually found among people of largely African or Mediterranean descent, for instance, whereas cystic fibrosis is far more common among those of European ancestry. In addition, although the results have been controversial, a handful of studies have suggested that African-Americans are more likely to respond poorly to some drugs for cardiac disease than are members of other groups.

Over the past few years, scientists have collected data about the genetic constitution of populations around the world in an effort to probe the link between ancestry and patterns of disease. These data are now providing answers to several highly emotional and contentious questions: Can genetic information be used to distinguish human groups having a common heritage and to assign individuals to particular ones? Do such groups correspond well to predefined descriptions now widely used to specify race? And, more practically, does dividing people by familiar racial definitions or by genetic similarities say anything useful about how members of those groups experience disease or respond to drug treatment?

In general, we would answer the first question yes, the second no, and offer a qualified yes to the third. Our answers rest on several generalizations about race and genetics. Some groups do differ genetically from others, but how groups are divided depends on which genes are examined; simplistically put, you might fit into one group based on your skin-color genes but another based on a different characteristic. Many studies have demonstrated that roughly 90 percent of human genetic variation occurs within a population living on a given continent, whereas about 10 percent of the variation distinguishes continental populations. In other words, individuals from different populations are, on average, just slightly more different from one another than are individuals from the same population. Human populations are very similar, but they often can be distinguished.

Classifying Humans

As a first step to identifying links between social definitions of race and genetic heritage, scientists need a way to divide groups reliably according to their ancestry. Over the past 100,000 years or so, anatomically modern humans have migrated from Africa to other parts of the world, and members of our species have increased dramatically in number. This spread has left a distinct signature in our DNA.

To determine the degree of relatedness among groups, geneticists rely on tiny variations, or polymorphisms, in the DNA--specifically in the sequence of base pairs, the building blocks of DNA. Most of these polymorphisms do not occur within genes, the stretches of DNA that encode the information for making proteins (the molecules that constitute much of our bodies and carry out the chemical reactions of life). Accordingly, these common variations are neutral, in that they do not directly affect a particular trait. Some polymorphisms do occur in genes, however; these can contribute to individual variation in traits and to genetic diseases.

As scientists have sequenced the human genome (the full set of nuclear DNA), they have also identified millions of polymorphisms. The distribution of these polymorphisms across populations reflects the history of those populations and the effects of natural selection. To distinguish among groups, the ideal genetic polymorphism would be one that is present in all the members of one group and absent in the members of all other groups. But the major human groups have separated from one another too recently and have mixed too much for such differences to exist.

Polymorphisms that occur at different frequencies around the world can, however, be used to sort people roughly into groups. One useful class of polymorphisms consists of the Alus, short pieces of DNA that are similar in sequence to one another. Alus replicate occasionally, and the resulting copy splices itself at random into a new position on the original chromosome or on another chromosome, usually in a location that has no effect on the functioning of nearby genes. Each insertion is a unique event. Once an Alu sequence inserts itself, it can remain in place for eons, getting passed from one person to his or her descendants. Therefore, if two people have the same Alu sequence at the same spot in their genome, they must be descended from a common ancestor who gave them that specific segment of DNA.

One of us (Bamshad), working with University of Utah scientists Lynn B. Jorde, Stephen Wooding and W. Scott Watkins and with Mark A. Batzer of Louisiana State University, examined 100 different Alu polymorphisms in 565 people born in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Europe. First we determined the presence or absence of the 100 Alus in each of the 565 people. Next we removed all the identifying labels (such as place of origin and ethnic group) from the data and sorted the people into groups using only their genetic information.

Our analysis yielded four different groups. When we added the labels back to see whether each individual's group assignment correlated to common, predefined labels for race or ethnicity, we saw that two of the groups consisted only of individuals from sub-Saharan Africa, with one of those two made up almost entirely of Mbuti Pygmies. The other two groups consisted only of individuals from Europe and East Asia, respectively. We found that we needed 60 Alu polymorphisms to assign individuals to their continent of origin with 90 percent accuracy. To achieve nearly 100 percent accuracy, however, we needed to use about 100 Alus.

Other studies have produced comparable results. Noah A. Rosenberg and Jonathan K. Pritchard, geneticists formerly in the laboratory of Marcus W. Feldman of Stanford University, assayed approximately 375 polymorphisms called short tandem repeats in more than 1,000 people from 52 ethnic groups in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. By looking at the varying frequencies of these polymorphisms, they were able to distinguish five different groups of people whose ancestors were typically isolated by oceans, deserts or mountains: sub-Saharan Africans; Europeans and Asians west of the Himalayas; East Asians; inhabitants of New Guinea and Melanesia; and Native Americans. They were also able to identify subgroups within each region that usually corresponded with each member's self-reported ethnicity.

The results of these studies indicate that genetic analyses can distinguish groups of people according to their geographic origin. But caution is warranted. The groups easiest to resolve were those that were widely separated from one another geographically. Such samples maximize the genetic variation among groups. When Bamshad and his co-workers used their 100 Alu polymorphisms to try to classify a sample of individuals from southern India into a separate group, the Indians instead had more in common with either Europeans or Asians. In other words, because India has been subject to many genetic influences from Europe and Asia, people on the subcontinent did not group into a unique cluster. We concluded that many hundreds--or perhaps thousands--of polymorphisms might have to be examined to distinguish between groups whose ancestors have historically interbred with multiple populations.

The Human Race

Given that people can be sorted broadly into groups using genetic data, do common notions of race correspond to underlying genetic differences among populations? In some cases they do, but often they do not. For instance, skin color or facial features--traits influenced by natural selection--are routinely used to divide people into races. But groups with similar physical characteristics as a result of selection can be quite different genetically. Individuals from sub-Saharan Africa and Australian Aborigines might have similar skin pigmentation (because of adapting to strong sun), but genetically they are quite dissimilar.

In contrast, two groups that are genetically similar to each other might be exposed to different selective forces. In this case, natural selection can exaggerate some of the differences between groups, making them appear more dissimilar on the surface than they are underneath. Because traits such as skin color have been strongly affected by natural selection, they do not necessarily reflect the population processes that have shaped the distribution of neutral polymorphisms such as Alus or short tandem repeats. Therefore, traits or polymorphisms affected by natural selection may be poor predictors of group membership and may imply genetic relatedness where, in fact, little exists.

Another example of how difficult it is to categorize people involves populations in the U.S. Most people who describe themselves as African-American have relatively recent ancestors from West Africa, and West Africans generally have polymorphism frequencies that can be distinguished from those of Europeans, Asians and Native Americans. The fraction of gene variations that African-Americans share with West Africans, however, is far from uniform, because over the centuries African-Americans have mixed extensively with groups originating from elsewhere in Africa and beyond.

Over the past several years, Mark D. Shriver of Pennsylvania State University and Rick A. Kittles of Howard University have defined a set of polymorphisms that they have used to estimate the fraction of a person's genes originating from each continental region. They found that the West African contribution to the genes of individual African-Americans averages about 80 percent, although it ranges from 20 to 100 percent. Mixing of groups is also apparent in many individuals who believe they have only European ancestors. According to Shriver's analyses, approximately 30 percent of Americans who consider themselves "white" have less than 90 percent European ancestry. Thus, self-reported ancestry is not necessarily a good predictor of the genetic composition of a large number of Americans. Accordingly, common notions of race do not always reflect a person's genetic background.

Membership Has Its Privileges

Understanding the relation between race and genetic variation has important practical implications. Several of the polymorphisms that differ in frequency from group to group have specific effects on health. The mutations responsible for sickle cell disease and some cases of cystic fibrosis, for instance, result from genetic changes that appear to have risen in frequency because they were protective against diseases prevalent in Africa and Europe, respectively. People who inherit one copy of the sickle cell polymorphism show some resistance to malaria; those with one copy of the cystic fibrosis trait may be less prone to the dehydration resulting from cholera. The symptoms of these diseases arise only in the unfortunate individuals who inherit two copies of the mutations.

Genetic variation also plays a role in individual susceptibility to one of the worst scourges of our age: AIDS. Some people have a small deletion in both their copies of a gene that encodes a particular cell-surface receptor called chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5). As a result, these individuals fail to produce CCR5 receptors on the surface of their cells. Most strains of HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, bind to the CCR5 receptor to gain entry to cells, so people who lack CCR5 receptors are resistant to HIV-1 infection. This polymorphism in the CCR5 receptor gene is found almost exclusively in groups from northeastern Europe.

Several polymorphisms in CCR5 do not prevent infection but instead influence the rate at which HIV-1 infection leads to AIDS and death. Some of these polymorphisms have similar effects in different populations; others only alter the speed of disease progression in selected groups. One polymorphism, for example, is associated with delayed disease progression in European-Americans but accelerated disease in African-Americans. Researchers can only study such population-specific effects--and use that knowledge to direct therapy--if they can sort people into groups.

In these examples--and others like them--a polymorphism has a relatively large effect in a given disease. If genetic screening were inexpensive and efficient, all individuals could be screened for all such disease-related gene variants. But genetic testing remains costly. Perhaps more significantly, genetic screening raises concerns about privacy and consent: some people might not want to know about genetic factors that could increase their risk of developing a particular disease. Until these issues are resolved further, self-reported ancestry will continue to be a potentially useful diagnostic tool for physicians.

Ancestry may also be relevant for some diseases that are widespread in particular populations. Most common diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes, are the cumulative results of polymorphisms in several genes, each of which has a small influence on its own. Recent research suggests that polymorphisms that have a particular effect in one group may have a different effect in another group. This kind of complexity would make it much more difficult to use detected polymorphisms as a guide to therapy. Until further studies are done on the genetic and environmental contributions to complex diseases, physicians may have to rely on information about an individual's ancestry to know how best to treat some diseases.

Race and Medicine

But the importance of group membership as it relates to health care has been especially controversial in recent years. Last January the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued guidelines advocating the collection of race and ethnicity data in all clinical trials. Some investigators contend that the differences between groups are so small and the historical abuses associated with categorizing people by race so extreme that group membership should play little if any role in genetic and medical studies. They assert that the FDA should abandon its recommendation and instead ask researchers conducting clinical trials to collect genomic data on each individual. Others suggest that only by using group membership, including common definitions of race based on skin color, can we understand how genetic and environmental differences among groups contribute to disease. This debate will be settled only by further research on the validity of race as a scientific variable.

A set of articles in the March 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine debated both sides of the medical implications of race. The authors of one article--Richard S. Cooper of the Loyola Stritch School of Medicine, Jay S. Kaufman of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Ryk Ward of the University of Oxford--argued that race is not an adequate criterion for physicians to use in choosing a particular drug for a given patient. They pointed out two findings of racial differences that are both now considered questionable: that a combination of certain blood vessel?dilating drugs was more effective in treating heart failure in people of African ancestry and that specific enzyme inhibitors (angiotensin converting enzyme, or ACE, inhibitors) have little efficacy in such individuals. In the second article, a group led by Neil Risch of Stanford University countered that racial or ethnic groups can differ from one another genetically and that the differences can have medical importance. They cited a study showing that the rate of complications from type 2 diabetes varies according to race, even after adjusting for such factors as disparities in education and income.

The intensity of these arguments reflects both scientific and social factors. Many biomedical studies have not rigorously defined group membership, relying instead on inferred relationships based on racial categories. The dispute over the importance of group membership also illustrates how strongly the perception of race is shaped by different social and political perspectives.

In cases where membership in a geographically or culturally defined group has been correlated with health-related genetic traits, knowing something about an individual's group membership could be important for a physician. And to the extent that human groups live in different environments or have different experiences that affect health, group membership could also reflect nongenetic factors that are medically relevant.

Regardless of the medical implications of the genetics of race, the research findings are inherently exciting. For hundreds of years, people have wondered where various human groups came from and how those groups are related to one another. They have speculated about why human populations have different physical appearances and about whether the biological differences between groups are more than skin deep. New genetic data and new methods of analysis are finally allowing us to approach these questions. The result will be a much deeper understanding of both our biological nature and our human interconnectedness.

from Science News, 2005-Apr-9, by Christen Brownlee:

Code of Many Colors
Can researchers see race in the genome?

Historian Frank W. Sweet of the University of Florida in Gainesville recounts the classic rags-to-riches tale of Louetta Chassereau, an early 20th-century socialite. As a baby, Chassereau was adopted from an orphanage by a well-to-do white couple. She later married a wealthy man, and her children attended the best white-only schools.

However, a dilemma developed when Chassereau's husband died, leaving everything in his will to his beloved wife. Enraged, her husband's relatives contested the will. The reason? Although people in her community had always thought of her as white, "Louetta had started life as a Black baby," says Sweet in a recent essay. Because Chassereau was born of black parents, according to an antimiscegenation law of the time, Chassereau legally could marry only a black man. The white family claimed that she had no right to the fortune.

Although the courts ruled in Chassereau's favor in 1940, saying that her life's path had made her "irrevocably white," her in-laws remained unconvinced.

In the past 65 years, defining race hasn't become less ambiguous. While it's abundantly clear that race exists from a sociological standpoint—racism wouldn't take place without it—does that categorization also exist biologically?

Current genetic research hasn't yet come up with a black-and-white answer. Nevertheless, understanding the biology underlying perceptions of race could have dramatic implications.

Racy subject

It's difficult to get most scientists even to say the word race when referring to people. That's because in traditional scientific language, races are synonymous with subspecies—organisms in the same species that can interbreed but nevertheless are distinctive genetically.

Many species split into subspecies after being separated geographically for an extended amount of time. During generations of genetic mixing within but not between the isolated groups, some of each group's genes develop slightly different versions, or alleles. Scientists often use a rule called Wright's F statistic to judge whether separate groups are actually subspecies. If 25 percent or more of one group's alleles are different from another's, then by F-statistic standards, the two groups are considered subspecies. A difference of 100 percent would separate them into distinct species.

Subspecies, or races, exist for many animals—for example, the alleles in some populations of grey wolves score up to 70 percent on the F-statistic scale. However, the groups of people considered to be of different races have allelic differences of at most 15 percent, too little to constitute subspecies.

To the nonscientist, however, race clearly is a meaningful term, says Vivian Ota Wang of the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Research Program at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Bethesda, Md. The concept seems to depend on a collection of physical features, "like a checklist," she says, "so that people can categorize each other into groups." Items on the list might include skin tone, hair texture, and the shapes of eyes, noses, or lips.

Most people don't carry a conscious perception of the checklist. Wang says that race has a lot in common with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography: We know it when we see it.

About 100,000 years ago, defining race wasn't an issue—all early humans lived in Africa and had similar characteristics. That relatively small population of recently evolved humans carried the majority of alleles present in people today.

But over the next 50,000 years or so, as humans separated into groups, slight differences among populations crept into the genome. First, as waves of emigrants left Africa and spread throughout the world, our ancestors took slightly different groups of alleles with them. Just as each handful of jellybeans scooped out of a jar might have a different mix of flavors, every group of migrant humans carried a slightly different array of alleles.

Later, when roaming humans settled into permanent residences on different continents, new genetic mutations gradually built up within groups as they adapted to their distinct environments. Because people mated most frequently with others from the same region, each population developed its own set of mutational differences, some influencing survival and some being just genetic quirks.

Share, share alike

According to Lisa Brooks, a geneticist at the NHGRI, the genetic differences within each population take several forms. Some people have certain segments of DNA wedged within stretches that run without interruption in other people. Conversely, genetic pieces present in many people are missing in others. Also, stretches of DNA can be flipped so that they read backwards, or they might contain small repeated segments, called microsatellites, that vary in number from person to person.

The genetic variation that most interests Brooks is called a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP (pronounced "snip"). It's a one-letter change in the string of DNA components that go by the letters A, C, G, and T. For example, where one person might have a section that reads TAAACA, another person's section might read TAAAGA.

Most SNPs occur in places in the genome that aren't used for making proteins—the so-called junk DNA. But the few SNPs that land squarely in a gene or in a regulatory region near a gene can alter characteristics influenced by that gene—for example, physical appearance or propensity for disease.

Sets of adjacent SNP alleles in the same chromosome region are called haplotypes. Through a collaboration called the International HapMap Project, researchers around the world are recording and analyzing the SNPs present in four populations: Utah residents with European ancestry, a Nigerian population called the Yoruba, Han Chinese in Beijing, and Japanese inhabitants of Tokyo.

Although the study wasn't designed to probe the genetics of race per se, one of the major findings from HapMap so far, says Brooks, is the enormous similarity between the four groups' SNP patterns. In an interview, Brooks illustrated her point by drawing on a piece of paper four largely overlapping circles, with only slim slivers of each ring peeking out at the edge.

RACING IN CIRCLES. Research has shown that the range of DNA variety in populations, represented here by circles of various colors, overlaps by about 85 percent. Only a few of each group's DNA snippets are unique. E. Roell

Brooks points to the large area where the circles overlap and explains that about 85 percent of variation is shared by all populations. By default, the genetic variation in the slivers includes the alleles that lead to differences among populations, including those on the typical racial checklist. "Superficial traits, like skin color or hair texture, aren't typical in their patterns of variation of [most of] the genome," says Brooks.

This concept can be hard to grasp for people who believe that racial groups are fundamentally different genetically, says Georgia Dunston of Howard University's National Human Genome Center in Washington, D.C.

Dunston studies how the human immune system distinguishes between a person's tissues and foreign material, such as a splinter, a bacterium, or a transplanted organ. The genes responsible for this recognition are called histocompatibility genes. Having similar histocompatibility genes is a major factor in successful organ transplants.

In tissue matching, a bastion of genetic differences between people, Dunston finds that race is not the determining factor. "We have this thinking in America that there are some deep differences in biology between whites and blacks, that tissue in whites is more similar to [tissue in] whites than tissue in blacks," she says. "But when we look at the genetics, because of the tremendous variation in all groups, and especially in the group called 'black,' it's not uncommon at all to find two blacks who could be very different from each other."

In some cases, a black organ donor, Dunston adds, can better match a white recipient than a black one.

What's the difference?

Nevertheless, no geneticist can overlook the slim fringes on Brooks' overlapping-circles diagram. According to Brooks, the longer people in a population have mated in close association, and so share the same ancestors and kin, the more similar will be their genes—and all the traits they encode—in that 15 percent of the genome.

Race and family origin aren't entirely synonymous in modern times, when people can relocate around the globe. However, many researchers have found that the distribution of certain genetic variations can lump people into ancient ancestral groups uncannily similar to what nonscientists call races.

For example, Noah Rosenberg of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and his colleagues published a study in 2002 that analyzed the number and type of microsatellite variations in the DNA of 1,056 people from 52 populations around the world.

Rosenberg's team masked any information about the study volunteers' ancestral backgrounds and then plugged the microsatellite information into a computer program that clusters people by genetic similarities. Six main clusters emerged.

After restoring individuals' ancestry data to the files, the researchers found that five of the six microsatellite clusters corresponded with geographic regions: Africa, Eurasia (Europe, the Middle East, central and south Asia), east Asia, Oceania (islands of the central and South Pacific), and the Americas (specifically native Americans). The sixth and smallest cluster linked to an isolated group of mountain-dwelling Pakistanis known as the Kalash.

The scientists weren't surprised that people's genetic mutations usually lump them into continental groups. For much of history, people have been land bound and so have mated mostly with people from the same continent.

However, Rosenberg says that he was surprised that he and his colleagues found it impossible to predict with certainty which combination of gene variants any specific person in each cluster had. The computer runs couldn't determine, for example, exact shades of skin color or types of hair texture for individuals.

"In a lot of classical anthropological views of race, race is thought to be a quality predictive of a large variety of traits about a person. We found that for any given person, it's not possible to predict accurately which [variant] they have at any particular site in the genome based on their group membership," Rosenberg says.

Neil Risch of the Stanford University School of Medicine and his colleagues recently used a similar method to come to a very different conclusion. Using microsatellite information from another study that had looked for a genetic link with hypertension in several U.S. populations, Risch's team ran data from 3,636 people through a computer program similar to Rosenberg's. However, instead of searching for clusters based on geography, Risch and colleagues compared clusters from the genetic data with self-described race/ethnicity categories.

The genetic data sorted into four categories—white, African American, east Asian, and Hispanic—which neatly matched what each person had checked on a form at the beginning of the study. Only five people had results inconsistent with their self-described race/ethnicity, giving an error rate of 0.14 percent, the team reports in the February American Journal of Human Genetics.

"This shows that people's self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background," says Risch.

Racism realism

Risch's results have stirred up controversy among many geneticists. For instance, Mark Shriver of Pennsylvania State University in State College says that Risch's method "can overcluster people," making associations between individuals and their race that don't exist with other types of analyses. Shriver and others haven't found similar clusters when they applied a different computer program to similar data.

Shriver also contends that the study's separation of people into four racial groups shrinks the natural range of genetic variation, making people within each group seem more alike than they really are.

Rather than there being clear racial lines, says Shriver, "there's really a continuum of variation across the globe." If researchers sampled only people in Africa and Sweden, the genetic differences between the two groups would be striking. However, a sampling of people from Africa, Sweden, and everywhere in between would reveal only small differences between each population and its neighbors. "You won't see a place where you'll say, 'There's the racial divide,'" says Shriver.

Nevertheless, Shriver works with a company that uses what variation there is among populations to trace people's ancestry. The company, DNAPrint Genomics in Sarasota, Fla., starts with DNA from a customer's inner cheek. After comparing the sample's genetic markers with those in a data set collected from people around the world, the company estimates what percentage of the person's ancestry is African, East Asian, European, or Native American.

The results can be surprising. When Shriver, who considers himself to be white, analyzed his own DNA, he found that it contained the Duffy null allele, found only in descendants of sub-Saharan Africans. "The test estimated that I have 11 percent west African ancestry," says Shriver.

In spring 2003, Shriver and his colleagues applied the test to an urgent task—they were instrumental in catching a Louisiana serial killer. After analyzing DNA from semen at the crime scenes, Shriver and his colleagues estimated that the killer was 85 percent African and 15 percent Native American. Officers eventually arrested Derrick Todd Lee, a black man whose DNA matched that left at the scenes. As testament to the uncertainty of eyewitnesses, Lee was convicted although several people had reported seeing a white man at the scene of several of the murders.

Although an ancestry test had put police on the right track in this case, Shriver expresses concern about the test's potential for misuse in other social realms. One danger, he notes, is attempting to correlate ancestry with qualities such as intelligence, athletic performance, or musical ability. "It's hard to know what the right use is. We have to be vigilant," he says.

Researchers may never nail down a precise connection between race and genetics, but there's little chance that the concept of race will ever go away, says Charles Rotimi of Howard University's genome center. Over the centuries, some people have used race to set discriminatory categories and then give themselves privileges and take privileges from others. People who have been advantaged by racism aren't likely to give it up, Rotimi says.

"Look at the Hutus and the Tutsis," he adds, referring to two Rwandan tribes that have been fighting each other for decades. "You don't need genetics to be racist."

from the Washington Post, 2009-May-1, by Joel Achenbach:

Africans Have World's Highest Genetic Diversity, Study Finds

Africans are more genetically diverse than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined, according to a sweeping study that carried researchers into remote regions to sample the bloodlines of more than 100 distinct populations.

The report, published yesterday in the journal Science Express, suggests that, because of historical migrations and genetic mixing across the continent, it will be hard for African Americans to trace their ancestry in fine detail. African American genealogies are increasingly popular and commercialized, but the authors of the new study cast doubt on how precise such searches can be, given the complexity of the genetic makeup of Africans.

"It may be very challenging to trace back ancestry to particular tribes or ethnic groups," said Sarah Tishkoff, a University of Pennsylvania geneticist who led the international research team.

The first anatomically modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, and all humans today are their direct descendants. The study points to an area along the Namibia-South Africa border, the homeland of the San people, as the starting point for a southwest-to-northeast migratory route that carried people through Africa and across the Red Sea into Eurasia.

Tishkoff said the new findings will help medical researchers tailor drug treatments for different groups of Africans rather than treating them as homogenous.

"This is an absolute landmark. It's incredible," said Alison Brooks, a professor of anthropology and international affairs at George Washington University. "It's the most comprehensive document ever published describing the very complex issue of African genetic variation." She added, "There's been so much genetic analysis that's been so Eurocentric."

Tishkoff, who until last year was a professor at the University of Maryland, did much of her fieldwork in remote areas reachable only with four-wheel-drive vehicles. She had to haul centrifuges, for processing blood samples, into villages without electricity, often running her devices by connecting them to her car battery.

"Some people had never seen a fair-skinned person before," Tishkoff said. "Many of these groups have been studied by linguists and anthropologists, and we've known nothing about their genetic history. Until now."

One of her collaborators, Muntaser Ibrahim of the University of Khartoum, said indigenous people were eager to help the research. "They would like to know about their past as much as everybody else," he said. "The notion that people in remote areas are not interested in genetics is not true."

Although the study's main focus was on Africa, Tishkoff and her colleagues studied DNA markers from around the planet, identifying 14 "ancestral clusters" for all of humanity. Nine of those clusters are in Africa. "You're seeing more diversity in one continent than across the globe," Tishkoff said.

Her team looked at 98 African Americans from North Carolina, Baltimore, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The researchers determined that, on average, 71 percent of their genes could be traced to the far-flung African linguistic group Niger-Kordofanian, 8 percent to other African groups and 13 percent to Europe, with a smattering of genetic markers pointing to other places on the globe.

But the percentages vary widely from individual to individual. In a conference call with reporters, Tishkoff said the 13 percent figure for European genetic markers may be a slight underestimate; other studies have found numbers closer to 20 percent.

Her findings provide a kind of caveat to the increasingly popular gene-based genealogical searches among African Americans. Tishkoff studied very short snippets of nuclear DNA; some commercial research companies focus only on the Y chromosome or on a type of DNA known as mitochondrial DNA. These latter techniques can offer a kind of thread into the past to a single ancestor, rather than to the full complement of ancestors.

"There is no relevance to what we do at African Ancestry," said Rick Kittles, scientific director of that company. "We do not use nuclear markers like Sarah did in this study."

Brooks, of George Washington University, said the report will help resolve academic debates among archeologists and linguists: "The study shows that single sources of data, whether from archaeology, oral history, genetics or linguistic similarity, are not sufficient to understand the complex history of an African region -- one can be transmitted without the others, and each has a different story to tell about the past."

from the New York Times, 2007-Nov-11, by Amy Harmon:

In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice

When scientists first decoded the human genome in 2000, they were quick to portray it as proof of humankind's remarkable similarity. The DNA of any two people, they emphasized, is at least 99 percent identical.

But new research is exploring the remaining fraction to explain differences between people of different continental origins.

Scientists, for instance, have recently identified small changes in DNA that account for the pale skin of Europeans, the tendency of Asians to sweat less and West Africans' resistance to certain diseases.

At the same time, genetic information is slipping out of the laboratory and into everyday life, carrying with it the inescapable message that people of different races have different DNA. Ancestry tests tell customers what percentage of their genes are from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. The heart-disease drug BiDil is marketed exclusively to African-Americans, who seem genetically predisposed to respond to it. Jews are offered prenatal tests for genetic disorders rarely found in other ethnic groups.

Such developments are providing some of the first tangible benefits of the genetic revolution. Yet some social critics fear they may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal.

“We are living through an era of the ascendance of biology, and we have to be very careful,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. “We will all be walking a fine line between using biology and allowing it to be abused.”

Certain superficial traits like skin pigmentation have long been presumed to be genetic. But the ability to pinpoint their DNA source makes the link between genes and race more palpable. And on mainstream blogs, in college classrooms and among the growing community of ancestry test-takers, it is prompting the question of whether more profound differences may also be attributed to DNA.

Nonscientists are already beginning to stitch together highly speculative conclusions about the historically charged subject of race and intelligence from the new biological data. Last month, a blogger in Manhattan described a recently published study that linked several snippets of DNA to high I.Q. An online genetic database used by medical researchers, he told readers, showed that two of the snippets were found more often in Europeans and Asians than in Africans.

No matter that the link between I.Q. and those particular bits of DNA was unconfirmed, or that other high I.Q. snippets are more common in Africans, or that hundreds or thousands of others may also affect intelligence, or that their combined influence might be dwarfed by environmental factors. Just the existence of such genetic differences between races, proclaimed the author of the Half Sigma blog, a 40-year-old software developer, means “the egalitarian theory,” that all races are equal, “is proven false.”

Though few of the bits of human genetic code that vary between individuals have yet to be tied to physical or behavioral traits, scientists have found that roughly 10 percent of them are more common in certain continental groups and can be used to distinguish people of different races. They say that studying the differences, which arose during the tens of thousands of years that human populations evolved on separate continents after their ancestors dispersed from humanity's birthplace in East Africa, is crucial to mapping the genetic basis for disease.

But many geneticists, wary of fueling discrimination and worried that speaking openly about race could endanger support for their research, are loath to discuss the social implications of their findings. Still, some acknowledge that as their data and methods are extended to nonmedical traits, the field is at what one leading researcher recently called “a very delicate time, and a dangerous time.”

“There are clear differences between people of different continental ancestries,” said Marcus W. Feldman, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University. “It's not there yet for things like I.Q., but I can see it coming. And it has the potential to spark a new era of racism if we do not start explaining it better.”

Dr. Feldman said any finding on intelligence was likely to be exceedingly hard to pin down. But given that some may emerge, he said he wanted to create “ready response teams” of geneticists to put such socially fraught discoveries in perspective.

The authority that DNA has earned through its use in freeing falsely convicted inmates, preventing disease and reconstructing family ties leads people to wrongly elevate genetics over other explanations for differences between groups.

“I've spent the last 10 years of my life researching how much genetic variability there is between populations,” said Dr. David Altshuler, director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass. “But living in America, it is so clear that the economic and social and educational differences have so much more influence than genes. People just somehow fixate on genetics, even if the influence is very small.”

But on the Half Sigma blog and elsewhere, the conversation is already flashing forward to what might happen if genetically encoded racial differences in socially desirable — or undesirable — traits are identified.

“If I were to believe the `facts' in this post, what should I do?” one reader responded on Half Sigma. “Should I advocate discrimination against blacks because they are less smart? Should I not hire them to my company because odds are I could find a smarter white person? Stop trying to prove that one group of people are genetically inferior to your group. Just stop.”

Renata McGriff, 52, a health care consultant who had been encouraging black clients to volunteer genetic information to scientists, said she and other African-Americans have lately been discussing “opting out of genetic research until it's clear we're not going to use science to validate prejudices.”

“I don't want the children in my family to be born thinking they are less than someone else based on their DNA,” added Ms. McGriff, of Manhattan.

Such discussions are among thousands that followed the geneticist James D. Watson's assertion last month that Africans are innately less intelligent than other races. Dr. Watson, a Nobel Prize winner, subsequently apologized and quit his post at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island.

But the incident has added to uneasiness about whether society is prepared to handle the consequences of science that may eventually reveal appreciable differences between races in the genes that influence socially important traits.

New genetic information, some liberal critics say, could become the latest rallying point for a conservative political camp that objects to social policies like affirmative action, as happened with “The Bell Curve,” the controversial 1994 book that examined the relationship between race and I.Q.

Yet even some self-described liberals argue that accepting that there may be genetic differences between races is important in preparing to address them politically.

“Let's say the genetic data says we'll have to spend two times as much for every black child to close the achievement gap,” said Jason Malloy, 28, an artist in Madison, Wis., who wrote a defense of Dr. Watson for the widely read science blog Gene Expression. Society, he said, would need to consider how individuals “can be given educational and occupational opportunities that work best for their unique talents and limitations.”

Others hope that the genetic data may overturn preconceived notions of racial superiority by, for example, showing that Africans are innately more intelligent than other groups. But either way, the increased outpouring of conversation on the normally taboo subject of race and genetics has prompted some to suggest that innate differences should be accepted but, at some level, ignored.

“Regardless of any such genetic variation, it is our moral duty to treat all as equal before God and before the law,” Perry Clark, 44, wrote on a New York Times blog. It is not necessary, argued Dr. Clark, a retired neonatologist in Leawood, Kan., who is white, to maintain the pretense that inborn racial differences do not exist.

“When was the last time a nonblack sprinter won the Olympic 100 meters?” he asked.

“To say that such differences aren't real,” Dr. Clark later said in an interview, “is to stick your head in the sand and go blah blah blah blah blah until the band marches by.”

Race, many sociologists and anthropologists have argued for decades, is a social invention historically used to justify prejudice and persecution. But when Samuel M. Richards gave his students at Pennsylvania State University genetic ancestry tests to establish the imprecision of socially constructed racial categories, he found the exercise reinforced them instead.

One white-skinned student, told she was 9 percent West African, went to a Kwanzaa celebration, for instance, but would not dream of going to an Asian cultural event because her DNA did not match, Dr. Richards said. Preconceived notions of race seemed all the more authentic when quantified by DNA.

“Before, it was, `I'm white because I have white skin and grew up in white culture,' ” Dr. Richards said. “Now it's, `I really know I'm white, so white is this big neon sign hanging over my head.' It's like, oh, no, come on. That wasn't the point.”

from Reuters, 2005-Dec-15, by Maggie Fox:

Stripy fish helps pinpoint human skin color gene

WASHINGTON - A little striped fish has helped scientists begin to solve one of the biggest mysteries in biology -- which genes are responsible for differences in human skin, eye and hair color.

The large, international team of scientists reported on Thursday that they had found a gene that makes African zebrafish of a lighter-than-normal color -- and say the same gene helps explain the light-colored hair, skin and eyes of many Europeans.

While they stress that they have not found a genetic basis for race, they say just a tiny change in a single amino acid plays a major role in causing the distinctive light European coloring.

The gene is called SLC24A5, Keith Cheng of Pennsylvania State University and colleagues said.

"Our results suggest that SLC24A5 explains between 25 and 38 percent of the European-African difference in skin melanin index," they wrote in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Cheng's team was originally looking for genes involved in cancer. They were using zebrafish, a favored tool of genetic researchers because they are small, reproduce quickly and are well understood.

They found a gene that appeared to make some zebrafish "golden" -- with lighter-than-usual stripes. Under a microscope, the skin of these fish have smaller, fewer structures called melanophores.

In people of European descent, pigment granules called melanosomes are fewer, smaller, and lighter than those from people of West African ancestry. The melanosomes of East Asians fall in between.

This suggested gene variations may be responsible and may be similar in vertebrates -- which include fish, mice and people.

UNDERSTANDING MUTATIONS

Scientists know that more than 100 genes are involved in pigment production, so the process is complex. But most of the genes identified so far are found in unusual conditions such as albinism, which causes very light skin and eyes.

"...the genetic origin of the striking variations in human skin color is one of the remaining puzzles in biology," the researchers wrote.

But researchers have published several maps of the human genome and made them available to anyone. Cheng's team made use of them.

They zeroed on SLC24A5. Penn State pharmacologist Victor Canfield found that all vertebrates have a version of the gene.

They found that one version appears to be the "base" version and is found in most people of African and East Asian descent. Europeans have a mutant version that differs by only a few letters of the genetic alphabet.

Nearly all Africans and East Asians have an amino acid called alanine in that gene, while 98 percent of Europeans tested had an amino acid called threonine there. Amino acids are the building blocks of the proteins controlled by genes.

The researchers injected the base human version into "golden" zebrafish embryos and found it made them develop into normal dark-striped fish. This clinched the idea that the human gene was the equivalent of the fish gene.

Tests of African-Americans and African-Caribbeans found that the version a person carried of SLC24A5 correlated with their skin color.

But it alone cannot explain the great range of human coloring. "Our estimates of the effect of SLC24A5 on pigmentation are consistent with previous work indicating that multiple genes must be invoked to explain the skin pigmentation differences between Europeans and Africans," the researchers wrote.

Cheng said the work does more than answer curiosity about the concepts of race and skin tone.

"Working out the details of pigmentation with help from model systems like zebrafish is a great paradigm for seeking understanding of other complex diseases such as diabetes or heart disease," Cheng said in a statement.

from the New York Times, 2005-Sep-9, by Nicholas Wade:

Brain May Still Be Evolving, Studies Hint

Two genes involved in determining the size of the human brain have undergone substantial evolution in the last 60,000 years, researchers say, leading to the surprising suggestion that the brain is still undergoing rapid evolution.

The discovery adds weight to the view that human evolution is still a work in progress, since previous instances of recent genetic change have come to light in genes that defend against disease and confer the ability to digest milk in adulthood.

It had been widely assumed until recently that human evolution more or less stopped 50,000 years ago.

The new finding, reported in today's issue of Science by Bruce T. Lahn of the University of Chicago, and colleagues, could raise controversy because of the genes' role in determining brain size. New versions of the genes, or alleles as geneticists call them, appear to have spread because they enhanced brain function in some way, the report suggests, and they are more common in some populations than others.

But several experts strongly criticized this aspect of the finding, saying it was far from clear that the new alleles conferred any cognitive advantage or had spread for that reason. Many genes have more than one role in the body, and the new alleles could have been favored for some other reason, these experts said, such as if they increased resistance to disease.

Even if the new alleles should be shown to improve brain function, that would not necessarily mean that the populations where they are common have any brain-related advantage over those where they are rare. Different populations often take advantage of different alleles, which occur at random, to respond to the same evolutionary pressure, as has happened in the emergence of genetic defenses against malaria, which are somewhat different in Mediterranean and African populations.

If the same is true of brain evolution, each population might have a different set of alleles for enhancing function, many of which remain to be discovered.

The Chicago researchers began their study with two genes, known as microcephalin and ASPM, that came to light because they are disabled in a disease called microcephaly. People with the condition are born with a brain much smaller than usual, often with a substantial shrinkage of the cerebral cortex, that seems to be a throwback to when the human brain was a fraction of its present size.

Last year, Dr. Lahn, one of a select group of researchers supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, showed that a group of 20 brain-associated genes, including microcephalin and ASPM, had evolved faster in the great ape lineage than in mice and rats. He concluded that these genes might have had important roles in human evolution. As part of this study, he noticed that microcephalin and ASPM had an unusual pattern of alleles. With each gene, one allele was much more common than all the others. He and his colleagues have now studied the worldwide distribution of the alleles by decoding the DNA of the two genes in many different populations.

They report that with microcephalin, a new allele arose about 37,000 years ago, although it could have appeared as early as 60,000 or as late as 14,000 years ago. About 70 percent of people in most European and East Asian populations carry this allele of the gene, but it is much rarer in most sub-Saharan Africans.

With the other gene, ASPM, a new allele emerged 14,100 to 500 years ago, the researchers favoring a midway date of 5,800 years. The allele has attained a frequency of about 50 percent in populations of the Middle East and Europe, is less common in East Asia, and is found at low frequency in some sub-Saharan Africa peoples.

The Chicago team suggests that the new microcephalin allele may have arisen in Eurasia or as the first modern humans emigrated from Africa some 50,000 years ago. They note that the ASPM allele emerged about the same time as the spread of agriculture in the Middle East 10,000 years ago and the emergence of the civilizations of the Middle East some 5,000 years ago, but say that any connection is not yet clear.

Dr. Lahn said there might be a fair number of genes that affect the size of the brain, each making a small difference yet one that can be acted on by natural selection. "It's likely that different populations would have a different makeup of these genes, so it may all come out in the wash," he said. In other words, East Asians and Africans probably have other brain-enhancing alleles, not yet discovered, that have spread to high frequency in their populations.

He said he expected that more such allele differences between populations would come to light, as have differences in patterns of genetic disease. "I do think this kind of study is a harbinger for what might become a rather controversial issue in human population research," Dr. Lahn said. But he said his data and other such findings "do not necessarily lead to prejudice for or against any particular population."

A greater degree of concern was expressed by Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Dr. Collins said that even if the alleles were indeed under selection, it was still far from clear why they had risen to high frequency, and that "one should resist strongly the conclusion that it has to do with brain size, because the selection could be operating on any other not yet defined feature." He said he was worried about the way these papers will be interpreted.

Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Maryland and a co-author of both studies, said the statistical signature of selection on the two genes was "one of the strongest that I've seen." But she, like Dr. Collins, said that "we don't know what these alleles are doing" and that specific tests were required to show that they in fact influenced brain development or were selected for that reason.

Dr. Lahn acknowledges this point, writing in his article that "it remains formally possible that an unrecognized function of microcephalin outside of the brain is actually the substrate of selection."

Another geneticist, David Goldstein of Duke University, said that the new study was "very well done," but that "it is a real stretch to argue for example that microcephalin is under selection and that that selection must be related to brain size or cognitive function." The gene could have risen to prominence through a random process known as genetic drift, Dr. Goldstein said.

Richard Klein, an archaeologist who has proposed that modern human behavior first appeared in Africa because of some genetic change that promoted innovativeness, said the time of emergence of the microcephalin allele "sounds like it could support my idea." If the allele did support enhanced cognitive function, "it's hard to understand why it didn't get fixed at 100 percent nearly everywhere," he said.

Dr. Klein suggested the allele might have spread for a different reason, that as people colonizing East Asia and Europe pushed north, they adapted to colder climates.

Commenting on critics' suggestions that the alleles could have spread for reasons other than the effects on the brain, Dr. Lahn said he thought such objections were in part scientifically based and in part because of a reluctance to acknowledge that selection could affect a trait as controversial as brain function.

The microcephalin and ASPM genes are known to be involved in determining brain size and so far have no other known function, he said. They are known to have been under strong selective pressure as brain size increased from monkeys to humans, and the chances seem "pretty good" the new alleles are continuing that, he said.

Dr. Lahn said he had tested Dr. Goldstein's idea of alleles' spreading through drift and found it unlikely.

from the New York Times, 2009-Apr-15, printed 2009-Apr-16, p.A29, by Nicholas D. Kristof:

How to Raise Our I.Q.

Poor people have I.Q.'s significantly lower than those of rich people, and the awkward conventional wisdom has been that this is in large part a function of genetics.

After all, a series of studies seemed to indicate that I.Q. is largely inherited. Identical twins raised apart, for example, have I.Q.'s that are remarkably similar. They are even closer on average than those of fraternal twins who grow up together.

If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong. Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has just demolished this view in a superb new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It,” which also offers terrific advice for addressing poverty and inequality in America.

Professor Nisbett provides suggestions for transforming your own urchins into geniuses — praise effort more than achievement, teach delayed gratification, limit reprimands and use praise to stimulate curiosity — but focuses on how to raise America's collective I.Q. That's important, because while I.Q. doesn't measure pure intellect — we're not certain exactly what it does measure — differences do matter, and a higher I.Q. correlates to greater success in life.

Intelligence does seem to be highly inherited in middle-class households, and that's the reason for the findings of the twins studies: very few impoverished kids were included in those studies. But Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia has conducted further research demonstrating that in poor and chaotic households, I.Q. is minimally the result of genetics — because everybody is held back.

“Bad environments suppress children's I.Q.'s,” Professor Turkheimer said.

One gauge of that is that when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.'s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study. For example, a French study showed that children from poor households adopted into upper-middle-class homes averaged an I.Q. of 107 by one test and 111 by another. Their siblings who were not adopted averaged 95 on both tests.

Another indication of malleability is that I.Q. has risen sharply over time. Indeed, the average I.Q. of a person in 1917 would amount to only 73 on today's I.Q. test. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today's measurements, Professor Nisbett says.

Good schooling correlates particularly closely to higher I.Q.'s. One indication of the importance of school is that children's I.Q.'s drop or stagnate over the summer months when they are on vacation (particularly for kids whose parents don't inflict books or summer programs on them).

Professor Nisbett strongly advocates intensive early childhood education because of its proven ability to raise I.Q. and improve long-term outcomes. The Milwaukee Project, for example, took African-American children considered at risk for mental retardation and assigned them randomly either to a control group that received no help or to a group that enjoyed intensive day care and education from 6 months of age until they left to enter first grade.

By age 5, the children in the program averaged an I.Q. of 110, compared with 83 for children in the control group. Even years later in adolescence, those children were still 10 points ahead in I.Q.

Professor Nisbett suggests putting less money into Head Start, which has a mixed record, and more into these intensive childhood programs. He also notes that schools in the Knowledge Is Power Program (better known as KIPP) have tested exceptionally well and favors experiments to see if they can be scaled up.

Another proven intervention is to tell junior-high-school students that I.Q. is expandable, and that their intelligence is something they can help shape. Students exposed to that idea work harder and get better grades. That's particularly true of girls and math, apparently because some girls assume that they are genetically disadvantaged at numbers; deprived of an excuse for failure, they excel.

“Some of the things that work are very cheap,” Professor Nisbett noted. “Convincing junior-high kids that intelligence is under their control — you could argue that that should be in the junior-high curriculum right now.”

The implication of this new research on intelligence is that the economic-stimulus package should also be an intellectual-stimulus program. By my calculation, if we were to push early childhood education and bolster schools in poor neighborhoods, we just might be able to raise the United States collective I.Q. by as much as one billion points.

That should be a no-brainer.

from Knight Ridder Tribune News Service via the Bradenton Herald, 2005-Dec-4, by Sue Goetinck Ambrose:

Gene may affect male IQ

DALLAS - Scientists in North Carolina say they have identified a gene that affects IQ, a finding that, if confirmed, would be a significant step toward understanding the genetic basis for intelligence.

The new research could also have ethical implications because the effect of the gene appears to be quite dramatic: The scientists say that males who inherit a particular version of the gene have, on average, an IQ that is 20 points lower than males who don't.

"I have to admit, the ramifications of it are great," said Randy Jirtle, the Duke University biologist who led the new research, noting that current genetic testing techniques can easily determine which males have the gene version and which ones do not.

However, he stressed that the IQ results in his research were based on a group average; individual males carrying the gene version had a wide range of IQ scores. While females also can carry the gene variation, it does not appear to affect their IQ, he said.

Jirtle reported the new findings last month at a scientific conference in Durham, N.C.

Connections between IQ and specific genes have so far been just correlations, with little supporting evidence. The new research, Jirtle and other experts said, will need to be replicated before it is considered definitive.

Jirtle's research centers on a gene identified by the abbreviation IGF2R, for type 2 insulin-like growth factor receptor. The gene governs the production of a protein that, among other jobs, affects cell growth. All people carry the gene, but some have a version with a slightly different code, Jirtle said. This gene variation, he and his colleagues found, correlates with a lower IQ.

The researchers studied about 300 children with an average age of 10. The children, all white, came from six counties in the Cleveland area. As a group, males - but not females - who had the variant gene had IQ scores about 20 points lower than males who didn't.

The new research has not been published in a journal, so it is not yet widely known in the scientific community. And many researchers question the usefulness of IQ as a measure of mental ability, saying it's a broad measurement that encompasses many brain functions.

"I think they are probably looking at something much smaller than IQ, like reaction time or working memory," said Elena Grigorenko, a geneticist and psychologist at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven.

The new research is likely to spark interest among parents and those considering having children, said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He said he could imagine people wanting to test newborns - or even embryos created through in vitro fertilization - for the gene.

from the Economist, 2008-Dec-4:

Balls and brains
The quality of a man's sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa

THERE are few better ways of upsetting a certain sort of politically correct person than to suggest that intelligence (or, rather, the variation in intelligence between individuals) is under genetic control. That, however, is one implication of a paper about to be published in Intelligence by Rosalind Arden of King's College, London, and her colleagues. Another is that brainy people are intrinsically healthier than those less intellectually endowed. And the third, a consequence of the second, is that intelligence is sexy. The most surprising thing of all, though, is that these results have emerged from an unrelated study of the quality of men's sperm.

Ms Arden is one of a group of researchers looking into the connections between intelligence, genetics and health. General intelligence (the extent to which specific, measurable aspects of intelligence, such as linguistic facility, mathematical aptitude and spatial awareness, are correlated in a given individual) is measured by psychologists using a value called Spearman's g. Recently, it has been discovered that an individual's g value is correlated with many aspects of his health, up to and including his lifespan. One possible explanation for this is that intelligent people make better choices about how to conduct their lives. They may, for example, be less likely to smoke, more likely to eat healthy foods or to exercise, and so on.

Alternatively (or in addition) it may be that intelligence is one manifestation of an underlying, genetically based healthiness. That is a view held by many evolutionary biologists, and was propounded in its modern form by Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, who is one of Ms Arden's co-authors (and, as it happens, her husband). These biologists believe intelligence, as manifested in things like artistic and musical ability, is such a reliable indicator of underlying genetic fitness that it has been chosen by members of the opposite sex over the millennia. In the ensuing arms race to show off and get a mate it has been exaggerated in the way that a peacock's tail is. This process of sexual selection, Dr Miller and his followers believe, is the reason people have become so brainy.

Hitting the g spot

Ms Arden sought to test this idea in a way that excluded intelligent choice and got directly at any correlations between intelligence and health that operate at the physiological level. She chose sperm quality because it is both easily measured and about as far from intelligent choice as it is possible to imagine—and because the relevant data had already been collected.

Her retrospective “volunteers” were former American soldiers enrolled in what was known as the Vietnam Experience Study. In 1985 almost 4,500 veterans of that war volunteered for extensive medical and mental examinations. Some of them gave semen samples that were analysed for sperm concentration (ie, number of sperm per cubic centimetre), sperm count (ie, total number of sperm in the ejaculate) and sperm motility.

Ms Arden found 425 cases where samples had been collected and analysed from unvasectomised men who had managed to avoid spilling their seed during the collection process and had answered all the necessary questions for her to test her hypothesis, namely that their g values would correlate with all three measures of their sperm quality.

They did. Moreover, neither age nor any obvious confounding variable that might have been a consequence of intelligent decisions about health (obesity, smoking, drinking and drug use) had any effect on the result. Brainy men, it seems, do have better sperm.

By implication, therefore, they have fitter bodies over all, at least in the Darwinian sense of fitness, namely the ability to survive, to attract mates and to produce offspring. That is an important finding. Hitherto, biologists have tended to disaggregate the idea of fitness into a series of adaptations that are more or less independent of each other. This work adds to the idea of a general fitness factor, f, that is similar in concept to g—and of which g is one manifestation. To him that hath, in other words, shall be given. Unfortunately for the politically correct, Dr Miller's hypothesis looks stronger by the day.

Income Inequality and IQ, by Charles Murray (1998), published by The AEI Press (the American Enterprise Institute), rigorously documents a robust and dramatic correlation between inherited cognitive capacity and individual economic achievement.

from City Journal, 2009-Winter, by James Q. Wilson:

The DNA of Politics
Genes shape our beliefs, our values, and even our votes.

Children differ, as any parent of two or more knows. Some babies sleep through the night, others are always awake; some are calm, others are fussy; some walk at an early age, others after a long wait. Scientists have proved that genes are responsible for these early differences. But people assume that as children get older and spend more time under their parents’ influence, the effect of genes declines. They are wrong.

For a century or more, we have understood that intelligence is largely inherited, though even today some mistakenly rail against the idea and say that nurture, not nature, is all. Now we know that much of our personality, too, is inherited and that many social attitudes have some degree of genetic basis, including our involvement in crime and some psychiatric illnesses. Some things do result entirely from environmental influences, such as whether you follow the Red Sox or the Yankees (though I suspect that Yankee fans have a genetic defect). But beyond routine tastes, almost everything has some genetic basis. And that includes politics.

When scholars say that a trait is “inherited,” they don’t mean that they can tell what role nature and nurture have played in any given individual. Rather, they mean that in a population—say, a group of adults or children—genes explain a lot of the differences among individuals.

There are two common ways of reaching this conclusion. One is to compare adopted children’s traits with those of their biological parents, on the one hand, and with those of their adoptive parents, on the other. If a closer correlation exists with the biological parents’ traits, then we say that the trait is to that degree inherited.

The other method is to compare identical twins’ similarity, with respect to some trait, with the similarity of fraternal twins, or even of two ordinary siblings. Identical twins are genetic duplicates, while fraternal twins share only about half their genes and are no more genetically alike than ordinary siblings are. If identical twins are more alike than fraternal twins, therefore, we conclude that the trait under consideration is to some degree inherited.

Three political science professors—John Alford, Carolyn Funk, and John Hibbing—have studied political attitudes among a large number of twins in America and Australia. They measured the attitudes with something called the Wilson-Patterson Scale (I am not the Wilson after whom it was named), which asks whether a respondent agrees or disagrees with 28 words or phrases, such as “death penalty,” “school prayer,” “pacifism,” or “gay rights.” They then compared the similarity of the responses among identical twins with the similarity among fraternal twins. They found that, for all 28 taken together, the identical twins did indeed agree with each other more often than the fraternal ones did—and that genes accounted for about 40 percent of the difference between the two groups. On the other hand, the answers these people gave to the words “Democrat” or “Republican” had a very weak genetic basis. In politics, genes help us understand fundamental attitudes—that is, whether we are liberal or conservative—but do not explain what party we choose to join.

Genes also influence how frequently we vote. Voting has always puzzled scholars: How is it rational to wait in line on a cold November afternoon when there is almost no chance that your ballot will make any difference? Apparently, people who vote often feel a strong sense of civic duty or like to express themselves. But who are these people? James Fowler, Laura Baker, and Christopher Dawes studied political participation in Los Angeles by comparing voting among identical and fraternal twins. Their conclusion: among registered voters, genetic factors explain about 60 percent of the difference between those who vote and those who do not.

A few scholars, determined to hang on to the belief that environment explains everything, argue that such similarities occur because the parents of identical twins—as opposed to the parents of fraternal twins—encourage them to be as alike as possible as they grow up. This is doubtful. First, we know that many parents make bad guesses about their children’s genetic connection—thinking that fraternal twins are actually identical ones, or vice versa. When we take twins’ accurate genetic relationships into account, we find that identical twins whom parents wrongly thought to be fraternal are very similar, while fraternal twins wrongly thought to be identical are no more alike than ordinary siblings.

Moreover, studying identical twins reared apart by different families, even in different countries, effectively shows that their similar traits cannot be the result of similar upbringing. The University of Minnesota’s Thomas Bouchard has done research on many identical twins reared apart (some in different countries) and has found that though they never knew each other or their parents, they proved remarkably alike, especially in personality—whether they were extroverted, agreeable, neurotic, or conscientious, for example.

Some critics complain that the fact that identical twins live together with their birth parents, at least for a time, ruins Bouchard’s findings: during this early period, they say, parenting must influence the children’s attitudes. But the average age at which the identical twins in Bouchard’s study became separated from their parents was five months. It is hard to imagine parents teaching five-month-old babies much about politics or religion.

The gene-driven ideological split that Alford and his colleagues found may, in fact, be an underestimate, because men and women tend to marry people with whom they agree on big issues—assortative mating, as social scientists call it. Assortative mating means that the children of parents who agree on issues will be more likely to share whatever genes influence those beliefs. Thus, even children who are not identical twins will have a larger genetic basis for their views than if their parents married someone with whom they disagreed. Since we measure heritability by subtracting the similarity among fraternal twins from the similarity among identical ones, this difference may neglect genetic influences that already exist on fraternal twins. And if it does, it means that we are underestimating genetic influences on attitudes.

When we step back and look at American politics generally, genes may help us understand why, for countless decades, about 40 percent of all voters have supported conservative causes, about 40 percent have backed liberal ones, and the 20 percent in the middle have decided the elections. On a few occasions, the winning presidential candidate has won about 60 percent of the vote. But these days we call a 55 percent victory a “landslide.” It is hard to imagine a purely environmental force that would rule out a presidential election in which one candidate got 80 percent of the vote and his rival only 20 percent. Something deeper must be going on.

All of this leaves open the question: Which genes help create which political attitudes? Right now, we don’t know. To discover the links will require lengthy studies of the DNA of people with different political views. Scientists are having a hard time locating the specific genes that cause diseases; it will probably be much harder to find the complex array of genes that affects politics.

There are problems with the observed link between genes and politics. One is that it is fairly crude so far. Liberals and conservatives come in many varieties: one can be an economic liberal and a social conservative, say, favoring a large state but opposing abortion; or an economic conservative and a social liberal, favoring the free market but supporting abortion and gay rights. If we add attitudes about foreign policy to the mix, the combinations double. Most tests used in genetic studies of political views do not allow us to make these important distinctions. As a result, though we know that genes affect ideology, that knowledge is clumsy. In time, I suspect, we will learn more about these subtleties.

Further, it’s important to emphasize that biology is not destiny. Genetic influences rarely operate independently of environmental factors. Take the case of serotonin. People who have little of this neurotransmitter are at risk for some psychological problems, but for many of them, no such problems occur unless they experience some personal crisis. Then the combined effect of genetic influences and disruptive experiences will trigger a deep state of depression, something that does not happen to people who either do not lack serotonin or who do lack it but encounter no crisis. Recently, in the first study to find the exact genes that affect political participation, Fowler and Dawes found two genes that help explain voting behavior. One of the genes, influencing serotonin levels, boosts turnout by 10 percent—if the person also attends church frequently. Nature and nurture interact.

The same is probably true of political ideology. When campus protests and attacks on university administrators began in the late 1960s, it was not because a biological upheaval had increased the number of radicals; it was because such people encountered events (the war in Vietnam, the struggle over civil rights) and group pressures that induced them to take strong actions. By the same token, lynchings in the South did not become common because there were suddenly more ultra-racists around. Rather, mob scenes, media frenzies, and the shock of criminal events motivated people already skeptical of civil rights to do terrible things.

Another challenge is politicized assessment of the genetic evidence. Ever since 1950, when Theodor Adorno and his colleagues published The Authoritarian Personality, scholars have studied right-wing authoritarianism but neglected its counterpart on the left. In his study of identical twins reared apart, Bouchard concludes that right-wing authoritarianism is, to a large degree, inherited—but he says nothing about the Left. This omission is puzzling, since as Bouchard was studying twins at the University of Minnesota, he was regularly attacked by left-wing students outraged by the idea that any traits might be inherited. A few students even threatened to kill him. When I pointed this out to him, he suggested, in good humor, that I was a troublemaker.

Yet if you ask who in this country has prevented people from speaking on college campuses, it is overwhelmingly leftists. If you ask who storms the streets and shatters the windows of Starbucks coffee shops to protest the World Trade Organization, it is overwhelmingly leftists. If you ask who produces campus codes that infringe on free speech, it is overwhelmingly leftists. If you ask who invaded the classroom of my late colleague Richard Herrnstein and tried to prevent him from teaching, it was overwhelmingly leftists.

A better way to determine if authoritarianism is genetic would be to ask people what the country’s biggest problems are. Liberals might say the inequality of income or the danger of global warming; conservatives might indicate the tolerance of abortion or the abundance of pornography. You would then ask each group what they thought should be done to solve these problems. An authoritarian liberal might say that we should tax high incomes out of existence and close down factories that emit greenhouse gases. A conservative authoritarian might suggest that we put abortion doctors in jail and censor books and television programs. This approach would give us a true measure of authoritarianism, left and right, and we would know how many of each kind existed and something about their backgrounds. Then, if they had twins, we would be able to estimate the heritability of authoritarianism. Doing all this is a hard job, which may explain why no scholars have done it.

Genes shape, to varying degrees, almost every aspect of human behavior. The struggle by some activists to deny or downplay that fact is worrisome. The anti-gene claim is ultimately an ill-starred effort to preserve the myth that, since the environment can explain everything, political causes that attempt to alter the environment can bring about whatever their leaders desire.

The truth is that though biology is not destiny, neither is it an easily changed path to utopia.

James Q. Wilson, formerly a professor at Harvard and at UCLA, now lectures at Pepperdine University. In 2003, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

from ABC News, 2000-Mar-22, by Valerie Parker:

Breeding Better Citizens

In 1934, Adolf Hitler's chilling quest for superior humans was becoming a reality.

He had secured passage of a new law in Germany that authorized the sterilization of ``feebleminded'' men and women, and within months the Nazis had operated on thousands of people.

Although Hitler's philosophy and practices would eventually be repudiated globally, it may be a surprise to many that at the same time, people were being sterilized for similar reasons in the United States.

The Eugenics Movement

It was all part of a movement called eugenics that took a scientific approach to creating a genetically superior race. The idea was that by sterilizing people considered ``mental defectives,'' societal problems, such as poverty and crime, would be reduced.

Eugenics became a popular concept, and at its height, it infused many areas of American culture. There were magazines such as Eugenics Quarterly, and many state fairs featured contests searching for ``Fitter Families'' and ``Better Babies.'' The topic even became the central theme of some movies.

With the support of many prominent Americans, the movement gained such momentum that 35 states had laws on forced sterilization. The idea was even endorsed by the Supreme Court in the 1927 Buck vs. Bell decision, in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that ``three generations of imbeciles are enough.''

As eugenics swept across the country, an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people were sterilized. Many of these people did not have any mental illness.

One Man's Tragic Secret

One man who has carried this dark secret with him was Fred Aslin. When Aslin was a boy in 1936, his father died, leaving his mother to bring up nine children. For unknown reasons, Michigan state representatives deemed her unable to care for her children, and they were taken to a state mental institution and left there.

When Aslin was first admitted, doctors' reports labeled him ``a feebleminded moron,'' but during his years at the institution, he received glowing reports from his teachers. Nevertheless, the ``feebleminded'' label stuck, and when Aslin turned 18 he was told that he would be sterilized.

``I [didn't] want anybody cutting on me - and they knew I wasn't crazy - they knew I wasn't retarded,'' says Aslin. Although he protested, a court order supported the surgery, and he was sterilized.

Checking courthouse records, 20/20 producers were not able to find Aslin's original documents, but they did come across hundreds of files on sterilizations that were authorized for a wide range of reasons.

Families Confront Past

Producers also researched records in Indiana and discovered that state even had a Committee on Mental Defectives, which was partially funded by the state Legislature. This committee culled information from data submitted by doctors, teachers and government officials. College-educated surveyors would also go to individual homes throughout the state and write reports on possible mentally defective families of Indiana.

In the committee's 1918 report to the governor, it defined ``mental defective'' as including the insane, epileptics and the ``feebleminded.'' It claimed that mental defects were ``transmitted from parent to offspring.'' It also classified three grades of ``feeblemindedness'': idiot, imbecile and moron.

While these reports were thought to be thorough, modern experts have said they were heavily tainted by the prejudices of the researchers who wrote them.

Many of the people described in these reports were spared sterilization as the Committee of Mental Defectives ran out of funding. The organization's research, however, was kept intact. 20/20 found many descendants of some people mentioned in the Indiana reports, and many families were shocked to discover what was written about their relatives.

The eugenics movement now seems very un-American, but it is indeed part of the nation's past. And even though its proponents believed they were ``fostering a public good,'' scientists and historians affiliated with the DNA Learning Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory feel differently.

Concerned by the impact of eugenics on people like Fred Aslin, they believe ``the coercive tactics of eugenics - race separation, marriage restriction, immigration restriction, and sterilization - fly in the face of current ideals for a compassionate, pluralistic society.''

from Reuters via ABC News, 2000-Feb-14, by David Morgan:

U.S. Eugenics Like Nazi Policy
Study: Forced Sterilizations Carried Out Longer Than Thought

P H I L A D E L P H I A, Feb. 14 -- U.S. doctors who once believed that sterilization could help rid society of mental illness and crime launched a 20th-century eugenics movement that in some ways paralleled the policies of Nazi Germany, researchers said today.
     A Yale study tracing a once-popular scientific movement aimed at improving society through selective breeding indicates that state-authorized sterilizations were carried out longer and on a larger scale in the United States than previously believed, beginning with the first state eugenics law in Indiana in 1907.
     Despite modern assumptions that American interest in eugenics waned during the 1920s, researchers said sterilization laws had authorized the neutering of more than 40,000 people classed as insane or ``feebleminded'' in 30 states by 1944.
     Another 22,000 underwent sterilization between the mid-1940s and 1963, despite weakening public support and revelations of Nazi atrocities, according to the study, funded by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Merck Co. Foundation.
     Forced sterilization was once legal in 18 U.S. states, and most states with eugenics laws allowed people to be sterilized without their consent by leaving the decision to a third party.
     ``The comparative histories of the eugenical sterilization campaigns in the United States and Nazi Germany reveal important similarities of motivation, intent and strategy,'' the study's authors wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a journal published by the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine.

Taking Social Darwinism Another Step

Eugenics sprang from the philosophy known as social Darwinism, which envisioned human society in terms of natural selection and suggested that science could engineer progress by attacking supposedly hereditary problems including moral decadence, crime, venereal disease, tuberculosis and alcoholism.
     German and American eugenics advocates both believed science could solve social problems, tended to measure the worth of the individual in economic terms and felt mental illness a threat to society grave enough to warrant compulsive sterilization.
     And while Nazi Germany's claims of Aryan superiority are well known, researchers said U.S. advocates of sterilization worried that the survival of old-stock America was being threatened by the influx of ``lower races'' from southern and eastern Europe.
     There was also mutual admiration, with early U.S. policies drawing glowing reviews from authorities in pre-Nazi Germany.
     ``Germany is perhaps the most progressive nation in restricting fecundity among the unfit,'' editors of the New England Journal of Medicine wrote in 1934, a year after Hitler became chancellor.

`Better for All the World ...'

But the study, based partly on old editorials from the New England Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association, also demonstrated how the U.S. eugenics movement gradually waned while its Nazi counterpart carried out 360,000 to 375,000 sterilizations during the 1930s and grew to encompass so-called mercy killings.
     ``In the United States, a combination of public unease, Roman Catholic opposition, federal democracy, judicial review and critical scrutiny by the medical profession reversed the momentum,'' the article said.
     The U.S. practice of neutering ``mentally defective'' individuals was backed by most leading geneticists and often justified on grounds that it would relieve the public of the cost of caring for future generations of the mentally ill.
     Sterilizations also took place mainly in public mental institutions, where the poor and ethnic or racial minorities were housed in disproportionately high numbers.
     ``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.

from the National Center for Policy Analysis, 1997-Sep-3, by Bruce Bartlett, senior fellow:

Eugenics in Socialist Sweden

Last week it was revealed that Sweden imposed forced sterilization for 40 years, a practice that ended only in 1976. During this period, some 62,000 Swedes were sterilized in an effort to improve the quality of the Swedish people. Those of mixed race, low intelligence or with physical defects underwent forced sterilization by the state in order to prevent such qualities from being passed on. However, there is evidence that sterilization extended even to those who were merely rebellious, promiscuous or did not fit in somehow.

The philosophy underlying the Swedish policy, which has raised a storm of condemnation, is known as eugenics. Eugenics grew out of scientific advances in the field of genetics in the 19th century. As it became clear that many physical qualities are inherited, advocates of eugenics favored efforts to ensure that positive human qualities were fostered and negative ones suppressed. This was to be done by encouraging men and women with positive qualities to intermarry, while those considered defective were to be segregated or sterilized.

The Nazis carried the practice of eugenics to its ultimate end. It could be argued that the entire Holocaust grew out of eugenic principles. Not only were 6 million Jews murdered in the process, but thousands of gypsies, homosexuals and others deemed to be inferior. At the same time, the Nazis encouraged selective breeding of those considered to be outstanding examples of the Aryan race.

When the facts about Nazi atrocities became known after World War II, there was a revulsion against eugenics for having given birth to such horrors. That is why the news that Sweden was still practicing eugenics as recently as 1976 has led to such an outcry. It also came as a shock that Sweden, long known as a liberal paradise rather than some fascistic state, should have behaved in such a patently illiberal manner. Since World War II it has been assumed that eugenics was part of the far right's philosophy, not the liberal left's.

But in fact, eugenics has always been part of the left's collectivist agenda.

• In The Open Society and Its Enemies, philosopher Karl Popper pointed out that Plato believed strongly in eugenics and urged that humans be bred like dogs to develop superior qualities.

• By the early 1900s eugenics was something of a fad among liberals in the United States, leading a number of states to pass laws requiring compulsory sterilization of those with hereditary defects.

• In 1927 the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of such laws in the case of Buck vs. Bell. It was in this case that liberal Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

In his book Social Darwinism, liberal historian Richard Hofstadter conceded that eugenics was indeed part of the liberal reform agenda. "In spite of its fundamental conservatism," Hofstadter wrote, "the eugenics craze had about it the air of a 'reform.' Like the reform movements, it accepted the principle of state action toward a common end, and spoke in terms of the collective destiny of the group rather than individual success."

But as the Nazi and Swedish examples show, it is too easy to use eugenics not just to improve the physical quality of humans, but as a tool of social control. As Aldous Huxley wrote in the forward to his utopian horror Brave New World, eugenics can be used to control those with "dangerous thoughts about the social system" who "infect others with their discontents." After all, parents pass on not only their genes to their children, but also their knowledge, values and opinions. That is why eugenics and totalitarianism go together.

from PRI Review, 1997-Nov/Dec, by James A. Miller:

The Knife in the Closet
European nations begin to confront their eugenic pasts

Although the modern international population control movement began after WWII, its roots actually go back far further - to a time when many of the largest international contributors to worldwide population control first began sterilizing their own citizens.

In 1943 Maria Nordin, a 17-year-old Swedish girl, was diagnosed as suffering from a "genetic inferiority" that, in the interest of the Swedish welfare state, was best not passed on to any offspring.

A lackluster student, Maria had fallen behind in her studies. Though a school report described her as "kind, obedient and nice in appearance," doctors said her family had a history of alcoholism, promiscuity and mental illness. Accordingly, on instructions from the headmistress and physician at the reform school for girls that Maria attended, her ovaries were removed.

Unfortunately, no one bothered to check her eyes. Maria, who had no glasses, could barely see the blackboard. The school's doctor, however, classified her as "feeble-minded" and "unable to raise children." The National Board of Health agreed, and Maria Nordin became one of 1,327 Swedes who were sterilized that year under the country's sterilization program which began in 1935.¹

Nordin, still alive at 72, to this day "carr[ies] a hatred that never leaves [her] heart" for those who denied her the ability to have the children and the kind of life she so much wanted. Only recently has she come forward to disclose her terrible secret, and in the process start a public examination of Sweden's little-scrutinized sterilization program, which finally ended in 1975 after 62,888 officially recorded state-sponsored procedures.

Sweden's "barbaric" system

Although Sweden's sterilization program was abandoned in 1975, the reason behind the shift in government policy was more pragmatic than repentant: abortion had recently been legalized and newer, more effective forms of birth control were now available to replace the surgeon's sterilization scalpel.

Swedish Social Minister Margot Wallstroem, who in 1996 rejected Miss Nordin's application for damages for her forced sterilization, has officially apologized for the nation, saying "What happened was nothing but barbaric." This was the first acknowledgement by the government that the program, although legal, was morally wrong. The Swedish government has created a national commission to examine the history of the sterilization program and to devise a plan to compensate its victims, an estimated 20,000 of whom are still alive.

During its 40 years of operation, the Swedish sterilization program targeted women (and a considerably lesser number of men) who were judged to be of "inferior" racial types, or of "poor or mixed racial quality," meaning with learning difficulties or from poor families who were not of the common Nordic blood stock. The feebleminded and mentally deficient were especially singled out for state ordered sterilizations. Although nearly all of the sterilizations were officially recorded as "voluntary," the victims were ordered to sign permission slips as a condition for release from institutions, or to keep their children and various welfare benefits.

A prime consideration of the sterilization program was to lower the cost of Sweden's "cradle-to-grave" welfare system, which was allegedly overutilized by inferior types. One woman was sterilized because of her "chronic poverty." Another was selected simply because she already had three children.² An "asocial way of life"‒by which was meant severe alcoholism, incorrigible vagrancy or serious criminality‒was an indication for sterilization of those "obviously unfit" to care for their children.³

The allegedly voluntary nature of Sweden's program is further questionable in view of those who were authorized ‒ indeed mandated ‒ to submit an application for sterilization to the national Health Board. Besides a request from the person on whom the sterilization was to be performed, a class unlikely to be large at that time in Sweden's history, and minors or incompetents whose guardians sought their sterilization, six categories of public officials and doctors were specifically authorized and "obliged" to seek the sterilization of various classes of "unfit" persons whom they might encounter in the course of their duties.

Among the six categories were: (1) Public Welfare Board members for those persons (or whose mates or minor children) who receive public welfare; (2) Child Welfare Board members for those persons or their children who receive child welfare aid; (3) the doctors delivering care to patients receiving public medical aid; (4) the doctors responsible for the institution or providing the care for persons treated in a public hospital or a public medical facility; (5) the doctors or superintendents of public institutions other than those already enumerated; and (6) certain doctors in public medical service.⁴ The emphasis on reducing public welfare costs is obvious.

The Swedish law placed particular importance on the sterilization of the "feebleminded," especially those due to be discharged from institutions. The National Health Board ordered that every feeble-minded person prior to his discharge should be examined with regard to his "qualification for sterilization." The strictness of this rule is evident from the requirement that in the cases where feebleminded persons were not sterilized prior to discharge, the reason for not doing so had to be recorded in the files of the person concerned.

Throughout the years during which the Swedish program operated, many sterilizations were done for reasons which had nothing to do with feeblemindedness or mental deficiency. During the period 1935-39, for instance, sterilizations were performed on individuals who had suffered from "weakness in reading and writing," or the "inability to support oneself," syphilis, alcoholism and other "anti-social tendencies," allegedly "hereditary abnormalities," including blindness, deafmuteness, hemophilia and epilepsy (125 recorded cases). At least 69 sterilizations were also performed on mothers allegedly "worn-out" from multiple births.⁵

Non-mental considerations continued to be a major reason for sterilization during the period 1 July 1941-31 December 1948. The second largest category (after mental deficiency) for sterilization at that time was women "exhausted through many childbirths," with a total of 2,162 such cases being officially recorded. There were also 567 sterilizations performed for epilepsy and 236 for alleged "hereditary diseases and defects."⁶

Other nations also sterilized

Adverse publicity from Sweden's sterilization program led to the review of old sterilization programs in other countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, France, Belgium and the Czech Republic. Although all these sterilization laws were legal and largely noncontroversial at the time they were enacted by democratically elected governments ‒ and had largely been forgotten or long ignored ‒ they are now a source of public embarrassment and scrutiny following the revelations from Sweden.

Eugenic sterilization was first introduced into Europe in Denmark, which enacted the first such law in 1929. In a few years time, the Nordic nations of Norway and Sweden (1934), Finland (1935), Estonia (1936) and Iceland (1938) all followed suit. The most notorious eugenic sterilization law of all, that of Nazi Germany, was enacted in 1934.

In each instance, the new laws were patterned after similar laws in the United States, which had led the way into the "brave new world" of eugenic sterilization.

US sterilizations led the way

The first eugenic sterilization bill in history was introduced in 1897 in the Michigan legislature, but failed passage by just a few votes. Pennsylvania passed the nation's first sterilization law in 1905 but it was vetoed by the governor.⁷ Finally, in 1907, Indiana became the first state to enact a eugenic sterilization law. The Indiana law permitted the compulsory sterilization of "confirmed idiots, imbeciles and rapists" in state institutions as long as a committee of "experts" agreed that the individuals were beyond hope of improvement.⁸

During this period, however, superintendents of various state mental institutions were, without benefit of law, secretly sterilizing (generally by castration) some of the feebleminded and idiot inmates in their care. The most notorious incidents of these illegal sterilizations occurred at the Indiana State Reformatory, an institution for delinquent boys. Between 1899-1907, Dr. H.C. Sharp, the institutional physician in charge, experimented on most of his young inmates to develop a new surgical sterilization procedure for males, the vasectomy. Altogether, Dr. Sharp sterilized at least 465 young men.⁹

Back in Pennsylvania, despite a number of attempts, the state never managed to pass a sterilization law. That little detail, however, did not prevent the forced sterilization of at least 270 inmates of the Elwyn State School between the years 1889 and 1931.¹⁰

Following the lead of Indiana, eugenic sterilization laws were quickly enacted in 24 more states prior to a 1927 ruling of the US Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the practice. Seven of these laws were declared unconstitutional by state or Federal courts (Indiana, Nevada, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, and Oregon); new sterilization laws, which went unchallenged legally, were subsequently reenacted by Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Oregon. In all, prior to the Supreme Court's ruling, 22 states had valid eugenic sterilization laws on the books (Indiana, Washington, California, Connecticut, Iowa, North Dakota, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Alabama, Montana, Delaware, Virginia, Idaho, Utah, Minnesota, and Maine).¹¹

"Three generations of imbeciles"

In its only ruling on the legality of state eugenic sterilization laws, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 on 2 May 1927 in the Virginia case of Buck v. Bell, that the compulsory sterilization of mental defectives and others, under careful state safeguards, was constitutional. The case has subsequently become notorious as one of the Court's greatest miscarriages of justice, and is generally ranked among such other Supreme Court legal atrocities as the Dred Scott decision (slavery), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Korenmatsu v. United States (Japanese wartime internment), and Roe v. Wade (abortion).

Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old feebleminded woman in Virginia's State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, was the daughter of a feebleminded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feebleminded daughter. The Colony's superintendent, Albert S. Priddy, selected Carrie for sterilization, a decision that was upheld by two Virginia courts prior to an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.¹²

The Virginia statute in question provided for the superintendents of state institutions for mental incompetents to direct the sterilization of persons under their care "in the best interests of the patient and society." The sterilization operation, however, could not be carried out unless a "board of experts" prescribed the same treatment. Patients had the right to defend themselves before the board, or in appeals to the higher courts of the state.

This protocol won the expressed approval of the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in an opinion written by the legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (joined by such judicial luminaries as Louis D. Brandeis and William Howard Taft), held that, "so far as procedure is concerned the rights of the patient are most carefully considered, and as every step in this case was taken in scrupulous compliance with the statute. . . . there is no doubt that in that respect the plaintiff. . . has had due process of law."¹³

The Court further held that inasmuch as the "public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives [in wartime] it would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices [sterilization]. . . ."

Justice Holmes' remarkable, and oft quoted, obiter dicta followed: "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. . . .Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

American eugenicists lauded the decision, as did the nation's premier public health group, the American Public Health Association. Armed with the pronouncement of "constitutionality," eugenic sterilization spread into Mississippi (1928), West Virginia and Arizona (1929), Vermont and Oklahoma (1931), and North Carolina (1933). The decade of the 1930s was the highwater mark of eugenic sterilization in the United States, with sterilization laws on the books of 28 states and some 25,000 sterilizations officially recorded throughout the nation during the period.

There was only one hidden, festering problem at the very core of the miserable business: the Supreme Court's decision in the Carrie Buck case was based on a fraud - neither Carrie, nor her mother, nor Carrie's illegitimate daughter were mentally deficient!

Endnotes

1 Dean Murphy, "Sweden's shameful chapter in history," The Sun (Baltimore), 9 September 1997, 2A, reprinted from The Los Angeles Times.

2 Weintraub, "Sterilization in Sweden: Its Law and Practice," American Journal of Mental Deficiency, Vol. 56, No. 2, October 1951, 364-74, at 366.

3 Ibid., 368.

4 Ibid., 368-9.

5 Ibid., 372.

6 Ibid., 373.

7 Gosney and Popenoe, Sterilization For Human Betterment (New York: Macmillan Company, 1930), 15.

8 Gardella, "Eugenic sterilization in America and North Carolina," North Carolina Medical Journal, Vol. 56, No. 2, February 1995.

9 Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1985), 93.

10 Robitscher, Eugenic Sterilization, (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1973), 7.

11 Landman, Human Sterilization (New York: Macmillan Company, 1932), 54-91, Appendix C, 294-299.

12 John H. Bell's name became connected to the case when he succeeded Priddy, who had died, as superintendent. The two original Virginia court decisions are known as Buck v. Priddy. Unfortunately for Bell, however, it is his name which lives in infamy.

13 Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 47 S. CT. 584, (1927).

from Reuters, 2000-Feb-14:

Study says U.S. eugenics paralleled Nazi Germany

PHILADELPHIA, Feb 14 (Reuters) - U.S. doctors who once believed that sterilisation could help rid society of mental illness and crime launched a 20th century eugenics movement that in some ways paralleled the policies of Nazi Germany, researchers said on Monday.

A Yale study tracing a once-popular scientific movement aimed at improving society through selective breeding, indicates that state-authorised sterilisations were carried out longer and on a larger scale in the United States than previously believed, beginning with the first state eugenics law in Indiana in 1907.

Despite modern assumptions that American interest in eugenics waned during the 1920s, researchers said sterilisation laws had authorised the neutering of more than 40,000 people classed as insane or "feebleminded" in 30 states by 1944.

Another 22,000 underwent sterilisation between the mid-1940s and 1963, despite weakening public support and revelations of Nazi atrocities, according to the study, funded by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Merck Co. Foundation.

Forced sterilisation was once legal in 18 U.S. states, and most states with eugenics laws allowed people to be sterilised without their consent by leaving the decision to a third party.

"The comparative histories of the eugenical sterilisation campaigns in the United States and Nazi Germany reveal important similarities of motivation, intent and strategy," the study's authors wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a journal published by the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine.

Eugenics sprang from the philosophy known as social Darwinism, which envisioned human society in terms of natural selection and suggested that science could engineer progress by attacking supposedly hereditary problems including moral decadence, crime, venereal disease, tuberculosis and alcoholism.

German and American eugenics advocates both believed science could solve social problems, tended to measure the worth of the individual in economic terms and felt mental illness a threat to society grave enough to warrant compulsive sterilisation.

And while Nazi Germany's claims of Aryan superiority are well known, researchers said U.S. advocates of sterilisation worried that the survival of old-stock America was being threatened by the influx of "lower races" from southern and eastern Europe.

There was also mutual admiration, with early U.S. policies drawing glowing reviews from authorities in pre-Nazi Germany.

"Germany is perhaps the most progressive nation in restricting fecundity among the unfit," editors of the New England Journal of Medicine wrote in 1934, a year after Hitler became chancellor.

U.S. eugenics movement waned

But the study, based partly on old editorials from the New England journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association, also demonstrated how the U.S. eugenics movement gradually waned while its Nazi counterpart carried out 360,000 to 375,000 sterilisations during the 1930s and grew to encompass so-called "mercy" killings.

"In the United States, a combination of public unease, Roman Catholic opposition, federal democracy, judicial review and critical scrutiny by the medical profession reversed the momentum," the article said.

The U.S. practice of neutering "mentally defective" individuals was backed by most leading geneticists and often justified on grounds that it would relieve the public of the cost of caring for future generations of the mentally ill.

Sterilisations also took place mainly in public mental institutions, where the poor and ethnic or racial minorities were housed in disproportionately high numbers.

"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.

from the Boston Globe, 1999-Aug-7 p.A1, by Ellen Barry, Globe Correspondent:

Pages from past breed uneasiness
Historian chronicles Vermont's project to cleanse bloodlines

It changes the way you think of those paragons of New England society, the Yankees, to learn that Vermont scientists had an active program to breed them.

But there it is, in the archives at the Public Records Office in Burlington: the long-abandoned paperwork of the Vermont Eugenics Survey, tracing in businesslike diagrams the ''degenerate'' bloodlines that social scientists in the 1920s and '30s hoped to eliminate and the ''old pioneer stock'' they hoped to replenish.

A dozen times, as she paged through the old records, Nancy Gallagher thought about abandoning her project.

On the one hand, no historian had ever written a book about Vermont Eugenics Survey's 12-year study of ''good'' and ''bad'' families, which was widely circulated among policymakers and culminated in a law providing for the sterilization of several hundred poor, rural Vermonters, Abenaki Indians, and other people deemed unfit to reproduce.

The story of state-level eugenics was largely untold. Somewhere, between Gregor Mendel's revolutionary work in genetics and the Nazis' bizarre distortion of it, there was a void in the teaching of history.

But on the other hand, she knew there are people in the state who would read their own family histories in her book.

Gallagher wasn't a bomb-throwing revisionist historian, she was a 50-year-old former biology teacher who expected her doctoral thesis to ''sit on a shelf,'' and she had stumbled into a subject both unexplored and painful.

''Every step of the way,'' said Gallagher, ''I wondered if I should even be writing it.''

When her book, ''Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State,'' is published by the University Press of New England later this year, the wondering will be over. Gallagher and the rest of the state will be left with the emotional fallout of a historical episode that no one, not even its victims, particularly wants to discuss. The Eugenics Project was an obscure independent effort whose only real effect was the sterilization law, but its archives reveal a mindset so abhorrent that the historian who first discovered the papers walked away from the subject.

''I don't have a real dark streak in me, and it's very dark material. You can try and not be affected by it, but there's a lot of hate in it,'' said Kevin Dann, a historian in Woodstock who came upon the crates of eugenics surveys almost accidentally in the mid-1980s and published the first article about it in 1986. ''The tales of redemption and human kindness and serendipity and grace are not there.''

Vermont's social scientists were hardly alone in embracing eugenics, the science of human breeding that branched off from social Darwinism. All over the United States during the first two decades of this century, progressives were on fire to prevent, and not just manage, the misery of the poor. New science seemed to supply an answer: domestic abuse and alcoholism, long blamed on bad social conditions, were thought to be caused by recessive genes and inbreeding. By reducing the number of babies born to sick or unwed parents, and by attracting desirable settlers, social scientists thought they could a build a healthier society.

In fact, Vermont was the 31st state to pass a law allowing for sterilization of the handicapped or ''feebleminded.'' The number of sterilizations that took place in Vermont was a tiny fraction of the 60,000 that took place in states before the laws were rolled back in the 1960s and '70s, according to Diane Paul, a UMass-Boston political scientist and author of the book ''Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present.''

But in some ways, Gallagher argues, Vermonters were uniquely ready to accept eugenic solutions. The state's population was dwindling and the draft board was rejecting an increasing number of young men - trends that dealt a blow to the closely-held Yankee Protestant ideal. In 1930, 71 percent of the state's 350,000 people were native Vermonters. This kind of population can be changed more readily, encouraging eugenicists to ''improve the quality of its native stock,'' as one put it. The global craze for bettering society through selective breeding could be applied to local aims.

It was in this atmosphere that the University of Vermont zoology professor Henry Perkins threw himself into the project of tracing what Gallagher calls ''pedigrees of degeneracy'' in a series of Vermont families.

Field workers selected particular ''notorious'' families and issued reports with titles like ''The Results of the Matrimonial Adventures of Four Degenerate Offspring of the Fourth Generation of the Doolittle Family.''

The reports drew on interviews with neighbors and local officials, and were sometimes supplemented with estimates of the families' cost to taxpayers, terming one extended family ''Expensive Luxuries.'' One researcher reported that ''the state of Vermont would have been better off had Richard, Simon, John and Joseph of Generation III not been allowed to produce children.''

The work paid off for Perkins in 1931, when a sterilization bill finally passed, and between then and the early 1960s, the state would fund and arrange sterilizations, often on young men and women living in institutions for the ''feebleminded'' or handicapped, frequently as a condition of release.

Although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence about sterilization policy, particularly among the Abenaki, there is no documentation of how widespread the phenomenon was, or how the option was presented to its subjects. The only published summary of state sterilization, from the 1940s, puts the number at 212, although many suspect the real number is higher, Dann said.

The eugenics movement radically changed direction in the 1930s, as people recoiled from the Nazis' ''race hygiene.'' When Perkins's student Elin Anderson published a 1937 study of Burlington called ''We Americans,'' her work showed less nostalgia for the ''old pioneer stock'' and assigned positive value to racial diversity. By 1940, Perkins had omitted from his abstracts any mention of the years spent following Vermont's ''degenerates.''

And that whole project would have faded into obscurity except for a pair of accidents: Perkins's proud record keeping and Dann's chance discovery of 40 crates of surveys in the laundry room of a state mental hospital in the mid-1980s. He quickly realized that the history was still painfully fresh.

''You can still go into high schools in Vermont and mention the families that were studied and they'll say, `They're still the troublemakers,''' he said.

Among the Abenaki - who, historians have established, made up a large contingent of the families Perkins studied - the sterilization law is hardly history at all. Rushlow, the 31-year-old Abenaki acting chief, said that female relatives of her father's generation were sterilized without their consent, and that stories of the Perkins research were not taught in school but were ''passed down through the elders of the community.''

To her, Rushlow said, Perkins has always seemed ''just like Hitler.''

The recent spike of scholarly interest has drawn mixed responses, she said - on the one hand, printing the history of Perkins's project could ''finally let the public know what happened.'' But the historians' interest has also churned up painful episodes that had been ''kind of buried.'' She told of a 53-year-old man who realized five years ago, after reading a revisionist account of the closing of the Brandon Home for the Feebleminded, that he had probably been sterilized when he was 7.

Nancy Gallagher, who taught biology in Vermont schools for years, is haunted by another possibility: That at some point, unknowingly, she may have popularized scientific inquiry with equally horrifying applications. Right now she's worried about the human genome project. After reading through boxes of Perkins's pedigrees, she'll never be as trustful of science, or of herself.

''It humbles you,'' she said. ''To their dying day they probably thought they were doing the right thing.''

from the Washington Post, 2009-Feb-28, p.A1, by Rob Stein:

Health Workers' 'Conscience' Rule Set to Be Voided

The Obama administration's move to rescind broad new job protections for health workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable triggered an immediate political storm yesterday, underscoring the difficulties the president faces in his effort to find common ground on anything related to the explosive issue of abortion.

The administration's plans, revealed quietly with a terse posting on a federal Web site, unleashed a flood of heated reaction, with supporters praising the proposal as a crucial victory for women's health and reproductive rights, and opponents condemning it as a devastating setback for freedom of religion.

Perhaps most tellingly, the move drew deep disappointment from some conservatives who have been hopeful about working with the administration to try to defuse the debate on abortion, long one of the most divisive political issues.

"This is going to be a political hit for the administration," said Joel Hunter, senior pastor of the Northland Church in Longwood, Fla., whom Obama recently named to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. "This will be one of those things that kind of says, 'I knew it. They talk about common ground, but really what they want is their own way.' "

Administration officials stressed that the proposal will be subject to 30 days of public comment, which could result in a compromise. They said they remain committed to seeking a middle ground but acknowledged that will not always be possible.

"We recognize we are not going to be able to agree on every issue," said an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the process has just begun. "But there remains a substantive area of common ground, and we continue to believe we can make progress and will make progress."

The announcement capped a week when anger among conservatives was already running high because of the ambitious progressive agenda outlined in the administration's proposed $3.6 trillion budget.

The debate centers on a Bush administration regulation, enacted in December, that cuts off federal funding for thousands of state and local governments, hospitals, health plans, clinics and other entities if they do not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists or other employees who refuse to participate in care they feel violates their personal, moral or religious beliefs.

The rule was sought by conservative groups that argued that workers were increasingly being fired, disciplined or penalized in other ways for trying to exercise their "right of conscience."

Women's health advocates, family-planning proponents, abortion rights activists and others condemned the regulation, saying it created a major obstacle to providing many health services, including family planning and infertility treatment, and possibly a wide range of scientific research. After reviewing the regulation, newly appointed officials at the Health and Human Services Department agreed.

"We've been concerned that the way the Bush rule is written, it could make it harder for women to get the care they need," said an HHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for the same reason. "It is worded so vaguely that some have argued it could limit family-planning counseling and even potentially blood transfusions and end-of-life care."

An array of family-planning groups and others praised the move.

"The Obama administration is taking the right step forward to rescind this misguided rule," said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who has introduced legislation to overturn the regulation.

But the Family Research Council, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and others condemned it.

"It is open season to again discriminate against health-care professionals," said David Stevens, head of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations. "Our Founding Fathers, who bled and died to guarantee our religious freedom, are turning over in their graves."

The announcement -- which follows an administration decision to lift restrictions on federal funding of international family-planning groups that perform abortions or provide abortion information -- was also disappointing to some who have been working more closely with the administration on reducing the number of abortions.

"I think what was in place was as good as one could find in terms of seeking and securing common ground," said the Rev. Frank Page, the immediate past president of the Southern Baptist Convention and another member of Obama's faith council. "It's a matter of respect. I felt like what was in place was that middle ground of common respect."

Administration officials stressed that the president remains committed to protecting the rights of health-care workers who do not want to participate in abortions; such rights have been guaranteed for decades by several federal laws.

"We recognize and understand that some providers have objections to providing abortions. We want to ensure that current law protects them," the HHS official said. "But the Bush rule goes beyond current law and seems to have upset the balance."

The administration is open to a new rule that would be more focused on abortion, the official said, adding, "We believe that this is a complex issue that requires a thoughtful process where all voices are heard."

Some predicted that the administration will produce a narrower regulation that protects workers who object to abortion but ensures access to other types of care.

"If the president kept in place the conscience clause in regard to abortion but reversed it in regard to birth control, most Americans would agree that's common ground," said Rachel Laser of the group Third Way, which is working to find compromise approaches to a number of contentious issues.

But Page noted that some health-care workers consider certain forms of birth control, such as the morning-after emergency contraception pill, to be the moral equivalent of abortion.

"If they choose not to be part of the distribution of that, that should be their conscience and their right," Page said.

While some family-planning groups acknowledged privately that they might consider a compromise, others said they are doubtful that any regulation is needed.

"Our general feeling is this was an area that does not cry out for further clarification," said Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center. "I would be skeptical."

from Time.com, 2009-Jan-23, by Amy Sullivan:

Shhh. Obama Repeals the Abortion Gag Rule, Very Quietly

Washington -- On the day after the 36th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, President Barack Obama repealed a Reagan-era policy that prohibited foreign nongovernmental family-planning groups from receiving U.S. funds if they provided abortions or even lobbied for abortion rights in their country. It is an action his abortion-rights supporters have waited eight years for and one they had encouraged him to waste no time taking. But by first issuing a statement urging support for common-ground efforts to reduce abortion rates and then waiting to sign the Executive Order late on a Friday afternoon — a time traditionally reserved for the release of information an Administration would like to bury — Obama sent a clear signal that he wants to turn down the heat on an issue that has defined and divided American politics for more than three decades. (See pictures behind the scenes at the Inauguration.)

The Mexico City policy, as it is known, has been one of the most visible differences between the two major political parties on the issue of abortion, in part because incoming Presidents have taken action on it within days of entering the White House. Bill Clinton repealed the policy on Jan. 22, 1993, citing his concern that the ban prevented women and children from receiving health services. Eight years later, George W. Bush reinstated the policy on Jan. 22, 2001. "It is my conviction," Bush said, "that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion, either here or abroad." (View new fronts in the abortion battle.)

Bush's statement is one being echoed by supporters of the policy today. But in fact, since 1973, federal law has banned the use of U.S. taxpayer funds for abortions in other countries. What the Mexico City policy did was take that prohibition several steps further. Under the policy, NGOs that applied for family-planning funds from the U.S. Agency on International Development (USAID) had to refrain from using any of their own funds to provide abortion (with exceptions for cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother). The organizations also were not eligible if they lobbied to make or keep abortion legal in their own country or if they provided abortion referrals — a requirement that led many opponents of the policy to dub it a "global gag rule."

As a result of the policy — which is named for the city in which the Reagan Administration first announced it at the 1984 United Nations International Conference on Population — some groups, including Planned Parenthood organizations in Romania and Colombia, altered their activities in order to qualify and continued to receive funding. But at least 16 developing nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East have been affected, with all NGOs in those countries denied U.S. funding to help provide contraceptives and other much needed services.

See who's who in Barack Obama's White House.

See pictures of the civil rights movement from Emmett Till to Barack Obama.

Planned Parenthood of Zambia, for example, has lost nearly a quarter of its funding and almost 40% of its staff because of the policy. The group still provides abortions, but the activities that have been affected by the loss of that aid are more diverse: pre- and postnatal care, early child immunizations, malaria screenings and tests for cervical cancer. The lack of funding for contraception in some African countries actually became such an obstacle to preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS that Bush exempted PEPFAR, his global AIDS initiative, from the Mexico City restrictions. Opponents of the policy also argue that it actually increases abortion rates because the rate of unintended pregnancy rises when access to contraception is limited.

By choosing to take action on the Mexico City policy just two days into their first Administrations, both Clinton and Bush ended up igniting culture wars before they'd even had a chance to find their way around the office. Clinton entered the White House having tempered the skepticism of many pro-life voters with his insistence that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." But his decision to repeal the Mexico City ban as one of his first acts in office led many to wonder if the slogan was just empty words. With Bush, his reinstatement of the ban and accompanying explanation signaled from the get-go that "compassionate conservatism" was still very much conservative. (Read "McCain and Obama on Abortion.")

Obama sought to avoid creating such political theater by waiting to issue his repeal of the policy until the annual face-off between pro-life and pro-choice advocates on Jan. 22 was over and by doing it out of sight of the cameras. He observed the anniversary of Roe v. Wade by issuing a statement reaffirming his support for a woman's right to choose but also appealing — as he did throughout the presidential campaign — for common-ground approaches to abortion policy: "We are united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families in the choices they make." (Read "The Grass-Roots Abortion War.")

But the President who so carefully cultivates a postpartisan image will not be able to entirely avoid pressure from allies to demonstrate a concrete commitment to changing the cycle of whipsaw abortion policy that takes place whenever a new President occupies the White House. Already he has been lobbied by pro-life religious progressives who urged him to wait a few weeks before issuing the Executive Order. The progressive group Catholics United participated in Thursday's March for Life, carrying a banner that read "Congress Reduce Abortion Now." The shifting ground in the abortion debates means he has more allies willing to work with him on abortion-reduction strategies such as efforts to expand access to contraceptives and provide economic supports for pregnant women. But it also means he has more supporters who expect their pro-life views to be heard. They'll have to decide if what they saw today was a mixed message — or a step toward common ground.

In the Netherlands the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act (text 2000-Nov-20, from the Upper House of the States General of the Netherlands, made law on 2001-Apr-10) institutes a system of state-sanctioned human euthanasia. It is now legal for two concurring doctors to forcibly murder a Dutchman they declare to be mentally ill with no prospect for escape from misery. Murder of the elderly is similarly legal. Review of doctors' decisions is after the fact.

from the Associated Press, 2004-Nov-30, by Toby Sterling:

Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives - a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.

In August, the main Dutch doctors' association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.

The Health Ministry is preparing its response, which could come as soon as December, a spokesman said.

Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of adult patients suffering great pain with no hope of relief.

The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.

The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.

Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life, such as severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a rare blistering illness.

The hospital revealed last month it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors. There have been no legal proceedings against the hospital or the doctors.

Roman Catholic organizations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to the announcement, and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend the proposal shows the Dutch have lost their moral compass.

"The slippery slope in the Netherlands has descended already into a vertical cliff," said Wesley J. Smith, a prominent California-based critic, in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Child euthanasia remains illegal everywhere. Experts say doctors outside Holland do not report cases for fear of prosecution.

"As things are, people are doing this secretly and that's wrong," said Eduard Verhagen, head of Groningen's children's clinic. "In the Netherlands we want to expose everything, to let everything be subjected to vetting."

According to the Justice Ministry, four cases of child euthanasia were reported to prosecutors in 2003. Two were reported in 2002, seven in 2001 and five in 2000. All the cases in 2003 were reported by Groningen, but some of the cases in other years were from other hospitals.

Groningen estimated the protocol would be applicable in about 10 cases per year in the Netherlands, a country of 16 million people.

Since the introduction of the Dutch law, Belgium has also legalized euthanasia, while in France, legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide is currently under debate. In the United States, the state of Oregon is alone in allowing physician-assisted suicide, but this is under constant legal challenge.

However, experts acknowledge that doctors euthanize routinely in the United States and elsewhere, but that the practice is hidden.

"Measures that might marginally extend a child's life by minutes or hours or days or weeks are stopped. This happens routinely, namely, every day," said Lance Stell, professor of medical ethics at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. "Everybody knows that it happens, but there's a lot of hypocrisy. Instead, people talk about things they're not going to do."

More than half of all deaths occur under medical supervision, so it's really about management and method of death, Stell said.

from Zenit.org, 2004-Sep-3:

Catholic Doctors Criticize Nonconsensual Euthanasia of Children in Holland
Reaction of World Federation of the Catholic Medical Associations

ROME, SEPT. 3, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Catholic doctors warned that the new practice in Holland to euthanize children is another step towards a society in which life is not respected.

The World Federation of the Catholic Medical Associations published a statement in response to the decision to allow Groningen University Hospital to euthanize children under 12 when their suffering is intolerable, or if they have an incurable illness.

The document states that this initiative "is another violent laceration of the very fundamentals of our social coexistence."

"Officially aimed at putting an end to 'unbearable suffering,' in fact it permits the killing of human beings without their consent," the statement continues, signed by Dr. Gian Luigi Gigli, president of the federation.

"This happens in a society, as the Dutch one, in which euthanasia on adults has been legally performed even on depressed persons and where, as documented by official studies, there is already an illegal but tolerated euthanasia performed by physicians" on patients who have not given their consent, the statement adds.

The "decision proposes a death solution in situations which could be addressed by modern palliative care," the Catholic doctors stress.

Moreover, "the decision raises the suspicion of a financial interest of the public authorities, since it decreases the 'burden' of prolonged and expensive care in clinical conditions for which any extension of life duration is considered meaningless," the statement continues.

Worse yet, "it opens the door on a national scale to the 'mercy killing' of other mentally incompetent persons, to be eliminated without their consent for reasons based on an external appreciation of their quality of life," said the federation.

This move is also in line with the Aug. 26 decision of the Kentucky Supreme Court, which granted legal authority to the state to end the life of one of its citizens, the statement adds.

"The case involved a mildly retarded black male, Matthew Woods, who was placed on a ventilator after suffering cardiac arrest at the age of 54. The state requested permission to remove his life support, contrary to the wishes of Woods' guardian ad litem," the statement explains.

The statement appeals to "medical doctors still committed to the Hippocratic Oath, to feel the moral imperative to contrast the slippery slope that, step by step, is permitting the public authorities to take decisions on which lives are worthy to be lived."

"The next steps will be the mental capacity bill under scrutiny by the British Parliament, and the attempt by local authorities to change the ethical code of Belgian doctors," the statement stresses.

"The risks of such an attitude, in terms of violence and discrimination, should be evident for physicians and call them to resist and fight," the statement concludes.

from the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, 2001-Apr-28, by Richard Miniter:

The Dutch Way of Death
Socialized medicine helped turn doctors into killers.

AMSTERDAM--Seven years ago, Dr. Wolss Winkel was asked to kill someone.

On a Monday morning that he will never forget, the Dutch physician's patient, a 77-year old woman dying from cancer, asked him to kill her.

As a purely legal matter, he knew he could do it. While euthanasia had not yet been officially decriminalized in the Netherlands--that happened earlier this month--in practice, it had. A string of high-profile court rulings in the 1980s made it nearly impossible for prosecutors to win euthanasia cases, and in the few instances in which doctors were convicted, their sentences were suspended. The Royal Dutch Medical Association had publicly approved of euthanasia, which was common even then. All that stood between euthanasia and his patient, Dr. Winkel knew, was his own willingness to comply.

On that day, he searched his conscience. "It is very hard to speak of these things," Dr. Winkel said, with a quiet sadness in his voice. "Thirty years ago, this was something that people didn't ask for."

He couldn't bring himself to kill his patient; doctors are supposed to be healers, not killers. And, as a Christian, he believed it was wrong to take into his hands the power of God. A few days later, his patient died naturally.

---

Most Dutchmen have come to a different conclusion; more than 80% favor "voluntary euthanasia," according to recent polls. The Dutch Parliament recently passed a measure completely decriminalizing euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide. The Netherlands is now the first democratic nation on earth to permit, under law, doctors to kill their patients.

And they may be accustomed to doing so. Of the 130,000 Dutchmen who died in 1990, some 11,800 were killed or helped to die by their doctors, according to a 1991 report by the attorney general of the High Council of the Netherlands. (The 1991 report is the only complete report on euthanasia practices by the Dutch government.)

Some of these deaths are the classic cases cited by right-to-die advocates: A terminally ill patient, in agony, demanding to "die with dignity." But many are not. An estimated 5,981 people--an average of 16 per day--were killed by their doctors without their consent, according to the Dutch government report.

And these numbers do not measure several other groups that are put to death involuntarily: disabled infants, terminally ill children and mental patients. Some 8% of all infants who die in the Netherlands are killed by their doctors, according to a 1997 study published in the Lancet, a British medical journal. Consider the case of Dr. Henk Prins, who killed--with her parents' consent--a three-day old girl with spina bifida and an open wound at the base of her spine. Dr. Prins never made any attempt to treat the wound, according to Wesley J. Smith, author of the book "Culture of Death." The treatment was death. Euthanasia critics have talked about the "slippery slope" as a possibility; in the Netherlands, it is a fact.

Many old people now fear Dutch hospitals. More than 10% of senior citizens who responded to a recent survey, which did not mention euthanasia, volunteered that they feared being killed by their doctors without their consent. One senior-citizen group printed up wallet cards that tell doctors that the cardholder opposes euthanasia.

What makes the Dutch comfortable with euthanasia? One factor is that their doctors became comfortable with it. "The Dutch have got so far so fast because right from the beginning, they have had the medical profession on their side," Derek Humphrey, founder of the Hemlock Society, told the Toronto Globe and Mail last September. "Until we get a significant part of the medical profession on our side, we won't get very far."

Some suggest that Dutch doctors are naturally more inclined toward euthanasia. That seems unlikely. In contrast to the physicians of every other Nazi-occupied country, Dutch doctors never recommended or participated in a single euthanasia during World War II, according to a 1949 New England Journal of Medicine article. Even Nazi orders not to treat the old or those with little chance of recovery were disobeyed. It only took a generation, essayist Malcolm Muggeridge noted, "to transform a war crime into an act of compassion."

---

How did Dutch doctors change their thinking so dramatically in the space of one lifetime?

The path to the death culture began when doctors learned to think like accountants. As the cost of socialized medicine in the Netherlands grew, doctors were lectured about the importance of keeping expenses down. In many hospitals, signs were posted indicating how much old-age treatments cost taxpayers. The result was a growing "social pressure" from doctors and others, says Arno Heltzel, a spokesman for the Catholic Union of the Elderly, the largest Dutch senior-citizen group, which favors voluntary euthanasia. "Old people have to excuse themselves for living. When they say that all of their friends are dead, people say, 'Maybe it is time for you to go too,' rather than, 'You need to find new friends.' "

With such pressure, even the "voluntary" euthanasia cases may not be truly consensual. Add to that the remarkable 33% drop in elderly suicides with an almost equal rise in euthanasia in the same age group over the past two decades. What Dr. Herbert Hendin, a euthanasia opponent, calls "the Dutch cure for suicide" may simply be evidence of untreated depression. But treatment is costly.

Professional restrictions against euthanasia were cast aside. The Hippocratic Oath, a 2,500-year old credo meant to curb ancient temptations, includes the pledge: "I will not give a fatal draught to anyone if I am asked, nor will I suggest any such thing." Few medical schools in any developed nation require the oath. Other professional codes have been rewritten to be neutral or supportive of euthanasia.

Medical school curricula and professional standards were changed, too. Nearly every major medical school offers a bioethics class in which euthanasia is considered, at least, an open question. Euthanasia is now an option, not a taboo. The Dutch Pediatric Society issued guidelines for killing infants in 1993; the Royal Dutch Society of Pharmacology sends a book to all new doctors that includes formulas for euthanasia-inducing poisons.

Then came the bogus ethicists. Many of these "medical ethics experts" are drawn from or influenced by the global pro-death subculture--the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies lists 36 groups in 21 countries--that stretches from Australia's Dr. Philip Nitschke ("Dr. Death") to Princeton University's Peter Singer. Many of them are doctors. "They can be very charming," said Rita L. Marker, executive director of the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force. They can also be very influential; they seemed to have shaped the thinking of the Dutch health minister, Els Borst. Ms. Borst, who is 69, recently called for a suicide pill for healthy but "bored" old people.

Over time, euthanasia came to be seen as normal. When I phoned Amsterdam's Academic Medical Center, a spokeswoman told me that she approved of involuntary euthanasia for disabled infants: "It is the same in all the hospitals in the world; we are just more open about it." Most hospitals try heroically to save disabled children, but the contrary view seems to be widely held among the Dutch.

Finally, the feckless politicians enter the frame. There is no major party unequivocally opposed to euthanasia in principle, not even the right-of-center Christian Democrats, who have shared power for most of the postwar period. "There is no broad opposition to euthanasia, even in Christian circles," laments Kars Veling, a member of Parliament who will lead the Christian Union party next year.

After speaking to a packed party meeting in Spakenburg, Mr. Veling soberly talks about watching his father die. The old man was suffering terribly. "We prayed for the Lord to take him," he said. The doctor offered a lethal injection. It was hard to say no, he said, but his father had never asked for death and such an end would have been contrary to the values by which he lived.

Dutch doctors are free to make such fatal offers. Every legal and professional barrier to euthanasia has been demolished, often by doctors themselves. Euthanasia began with doctors, and only an awakening of their conscience can stop it now.

Mr. Miniter is an editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal Europe.

from The Telegraph of London, 2000-Nov-29, by Joan Clements in The Hague:

MPs back euthanasia law but Dutch public are bitterly divided

HOLLAND became the first democratic country to legalise euthanasia yesterday when Dutch MPs voted by more than two to one to allow doctors to help patients to die under strict conditions.

Although the practice has been tolerated for more than two decades - and more than 2,000 people each year have been killed on request - doctors have always risked criminal prosecution for murder unless they followed certain guidelines.

The decision polarised opinion in the country, with opponents of euthanasia, especially in the Calvinist churches and hospice movement, fearing the new law will open the floodgates to thousands more deaths. One critic said: "In the Netherlands your life is no longer safe."

Yesterday's 104-40 decision by the Dutch parliament's lower house has to be ratified next year by the upper house. But this is regarded as a formality. Holland is unique in its readiness to countenance euthanasia. There was a brief period four years ago in Australia's Northern Territory when physician-assisted suicide was allowed but the law was repealed the following year.

The Dutch experience dates to the early Eighties when the Supreme Court held that a doctor who in certain circumstances killed a patient could successfully invoke the defence of necessity to justify his action.

Euthanasia remained in theory illegal, though no doctor was ever successfully prosecuted for murder. Many doctors, fearful of facing murder charges, backed the new Bill. Other supporters said it championed the rights of patients and brought a long-standing practice into the open. Thom DeGraaf, parliamentary leader of the Liberal D'66 party, said: "This is for people who are in great pain and have no prospect for recovery."

But smaller parties in the parliament were appalled. One MP said: "This will certainly open the floodgates. How can individual cases be controlled? What about family pressure. Would this not be an easy way to get rid off ailing relatives because nursing them has become too much trouble?"

Religious groups drew parallels with Nazi Germany. "The same line of reasoning is being used as in Germany in 1935 . . . In the Netherlands your life is no longer safe," said Bert Dorenbos, of the Scream for Life organisation."

An opinion poll two years ago showed support from 50 per cent of the population, with the remainder either opposed or undecided. Under the new law, euthanasia may be carried out only if an adult patient makes a voluntary, well-considered and lasting request to die and faces a future of continuous and unbearable suffering.

The doctor must inform the patient about his or her prospects and reach the firm conclusion that there is no reasonable alternative. A second physician must be consulted and life must be ended in a "medically appropriate" way.

A Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, said it was regretted that Holland had become "the first country to adopt legislation that divides legislators and public opinion, a law that violates the dignity of human beings".

from the Telegraph of London, 2001-Apr-11:

Netherlands 'yes' to legal euthanasia

HOLLAND became the first country in the world last night to legalise euthanasia.

The Upper House of the Dutch parliament approved a euthanasia Bill yesterday, endorsing a vote in the Lower House last November.

Outside, a crowd of 3,000, many of them young, protested against allowing doctors to end the lives of patients considered to be suffering "unbearably and without hope".

"Euthanasia is still murder," read one placard. "We believe in the Lord, and he is the only one who can decide on taking life," said Henriett Schutta, 18.

Some protesters had their faces painted with crosses, but most were soberly dressed. They listened to speeches punctuated by periods of silent prayer.

In response to suggestions that the Netherlands could become a haven for foreigners seeking mercy killing, Dutch authorities pointed out that a continuing relationship with a patient's GP was necessary. This was unlikely to be developed during a short trip.

A Melbourne doctor interviewed on Dutch television said he planned to buy a Dutch-registered cruiser which he would moor off the Australian coast. "If I fly it under the Dutch flag it will be officially Dutch territory, which means I can provide mercy killing for my patients on board," he said.

from the Telegraph of London, 1998-Oct-18, by Rachel Bridge:

Dutch carry cards that say: Don't kill me, doctor

MORE than 10,000 people in Holland have started carrying anti-euthanasia "passports" because they are frightened of being killed prematurely by over-enthusiastic doctors if they fall ill.

The move comes as the newly-elected Dutch government presses ahead with a proposal to legalise "assisted suicide" by doctors, the first of its kind in Europe.

The Bill is being pushed through despite the government's own surveys showing that Dutch doctors are increasingly practising non-voluntary euthanasia and are ending patients lives without their approval. It is estimated that every year up to 25,000 people die when their treatment is terminated on medical grounds.

According to the most recent survey into euthanasia - carried out in 1995 and sponsored by the Dutch government - 23 per cent of doctors said that they had ended a patient's life without his or her explicit request.

Although euthanasia is technically illegal in Holland, doctors who assist with voluntary euthanasia rarely face prosecution. As a consequence an estimated 3,000 patients die each year after they have specifically requested that their lives be terminated.

The "declaration of life" cards, which are being distributed by pro-life groups throughout Holland, carry the words: "I request that no medical treatment be withheld on the grounds that the future quality of my life will be diminished, because I believe that this is not something that human beings can judge. I request that under no circumstances a life-ending treatment be administered because I am of the opinion that people do not have the right to end life."

Opponents are concerned that enshrining voluntary euthanasia into law will turn assisted suicide into a fully accepted medical practice. In particular they fear that it will encourage doctors to carry out euthanasia without prior consultation. But supporters of the law say that it will bring all assisted suicides under closer scrutiny.

Under current guidelines, a doctor is required to report all cases of euthanasia to the public prosecutor. But many do not comply, partly because of the stigma of reporting to the public prosecutor's office, but also because they run the risk of prosecution if they are judged to have wrongly applied the euthanasia process.

From next month, however, doctors will report to an advisory committee, comprising medical, ethical and legal experts. Only if the committee is dissatisfied will a case be referred to the public prosecutor.

Dr Peggy Norris, the chairman of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life, said: "This is awful. It is the most vulnerable who will be affected. There will be added pressure on patients to think that they are a nuisance to their family and that perhaps it is better to ask the doctor for something and die now rather than later."

Helen Watt, a research fellow at the Roman Catholic church-backed Linacre Centre of Healthcare Ethics in London, said: "If something is legally tolerated then people tend to assume it is right. It becomes part of the medical culture."

The Dutch Physicians Association said that doctors who oppose voluntary euthanasia are frightened to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. The association, whose predominately Christian membership is against the practice of voluntary euthanasia, has begun telling its 500 members not to mention their views when applying for a job.

Dr Krijn Haasnood, the association's spokesman, said: "There is much pressure on doctors to practise euthanasia. Up to now a doctor who did not want to carry out euthanasia could say that it was against the law, but now it will be the right of the patient to request it. It will be part of the job of the doctor. We are going into a new area and we don't know where it will end. It is a total change in the role of the doctor if killing patients becomes part of the job."

Anneke Verhoeven, a spokesman for the Lifewish Declaration Foundation, part of the Dutch Patients Association, which produces one of the anti-euthanasia passports, said: "When you are ill, euthanasia seems to be a solution but it is not. There is so much that can be done to ease pain and suffering. Sometimes people too quickly think that the pain is unbearable and that life is no longer worth living."

Here are reviews of a new paperback printing of The Nazi Connection - Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism, posted to Ian Pitchford's evolutionary psychology list by Pitchford on 2002-Apr-5:

From Kirkus Reviews
Narrowly focused yet chillingly effective indictment of the American scientists and social theorists who inspired and applauded Nazi racist ideology. Eugenics--part science, part twisted Social Darwinism, according to German sociologist Köhl--was first defined in 1883 by Francis Galton as the ``science of improving the stock''--a science that went on to give academic respectability to the earliest expressions of Nazi racism. Insisting that many of the assumptions underlying Nazi thought were ``by no means limited to German scientists,'' the author skillfully dismantles postwar attempts to marginalize the activities of the worldwide eugenics establishment, particularly in the US. With European ties frayed post-WW I, America became the main scientific reference point for German theorists seeking international legitimacy: it unfortunately proved an influential model, not only intellectually but politically. A 1907 Indiana law permitting the sterilization of the mentally handicapped long predated Germany's 1933 Law on Preventing Hereditarily Ill Progeny, and the 1924 American Immigration Restriction Act was later praised by the future Führer in Mein Kampf. Meanwhile, US sponsors--including the Rockefeller Foundation and Jewish philanthropist James Loeb--helped fund major eugenics institutes in Germany. In turn, many of these sought greater recognition by offering honorary degrees to leading US eugenicists- -two of whom, Leon Whitney and Madison Grant, are glimpsed here proudly comparing appreciative letters from Hitler. A brief reference to a resurgence of scientific racism in today's academia adds an especially pertinent cautionary note. More a monograph than a fully realized history but, still, a well-documented revisionist rebuke to those who would isolate Nazism as a unique phenomenon. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Ingram
Examines the links between the American eugenics movement--exemplified by the U.S. Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and American compulsory sterilization laws for ""defectives""--and the Nazi German program of racial hygiene. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

____

The shocking story of the ties between the Nazi "racial hygiene" program and American eugenicists

Solidly documents American scientists' admiration of Hitler's sterilization laws and marriage restrictions

Shows how the Nazis held up American eugenics laws as a model for their own plans

Description

"Despite several excellent recent books on the history of eugenics, Köhl's little book has moved the history of eugenics to a new level: the international connections that nationally researched studies have heretofore failed to make. The role of American intellectual and scientific encouragement for first German and then Nazi ideas on eugenics--and beyond--is simply dynamite information. Köhl's close dissection of the persistence of eugenical ideas despite shifts in definition over time is a powerfully documented and necessary contribution."--Carl N. Degler, author of Out of Our Past and Affluence & Anxiety

"Narrowly focused yet chillingly effective indictment of the American scientists and social theorists who inspired and applauded Nazi racist ideology....A well-documented revisionist rebuke to those would isolate Nazism as a unique phenomenon."--Kirkus Reviews

"A thorough-going expose of the multiple and nefarious connections between Nazi racial hygiene and American eugenics."--Robert N. Proctor, author of Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis

"An important book that should not be ignored."--San Francisco Bay Guardian

Winner of the 1993 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History, The Nazi Connection shows how the Nazis drew upon American eugenic thought, scientific research, and widespread sterilization laws to install their program of eugenics after 1933.

Readership: Students and scholars of racial and eugenics studies, American and German history.

What follows is a detailed systematical case study explaining the cause of the statistical phenomenon, and a satirical systematical response to it. In the process, it is demonstrated that the system dynamics approach can be abused to awful effect. As you read the demonstration, try to predict how I will discount the apparently systematic results, using my own more thorough systematic model and method.

The starting pointing is this (an empirical observation, the satire hasn't begun yet):

The class of college-educated men and women with intellectually substantial vocations is dramatically less fertile than the class of relatively uneducated men and women with no vocations or intellectually insubstantial vocations. These are empirical statistics, and are also as one would predict from basic principles. The case with women is the easiest to understand. Obviously, in industrialized societies in which higher education is widely available to women, and in which the number of intellectually substantial positions open to women corresponds to a sizeable proportion of the population, a statistically significant effect is observed. Moreover, the average intelligence of the members of the group engaged in intellectual employment is reliably greater than that of the group that isn't. Since people tend to mate with partners who are of roughly similar intelligence, and since an individual's intelligence propensity and ceiling is determined genetically, the result is that the average of the intelligences of the individuals in the population falls, and hence the population becomes less suited to living in a techno-industrial society, causing ever-increasing stress in the society.

from BBC News, 2000-Feb-29:

Smart teenagers 'delay sex'

Study examined teenagers' sexual habits Smarter adolescents start having sexual relations later than teens of average intelligence, researchers have found.

According to US scientists, intelligent adolescents also tend to postpone any kind of lesser sexual activity - from holding hands and kissing to heavy petting.

The researchers, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also found that the least intelligent teens also appear to delay sexual contact.

Dr Carolyn Halpern, assistant professor of maternal and child heath, said an adolescent with an intelligence score of 100 - average intelligence - was up to five times as likely to have had sexual relations than a peer with an intelligence score of 120-130.

Smarter girls were even less likely than their male counterparts to have sex at an early age.

Researchers analysed information from two detailed confidential surveys

They used a test called the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test to measure intelligence.

The analysis revealed that for each point increase in intelligence score the chance of necking went down 2.5% for boys and 1.6% for girls.

The likelihood of intercourse decreased 2.7% for boys and 1.7% for girls.

It is commonly assumed that students who get good grades are more reluctant to have sexual relations because they are focused on their studies, and do not want to jeopardise their future.

But the researchers found that more intelligent students did not even engage in behaviours such as kissing.

Dr Halpern said: "It is hard to believe that teens avoid kissing because they see it as the start of a slippery slope to sexual intercourse and possible pregnancy."

Surprising finding

Dr Halpern said the finding that the least intelligent teenagers also refrained from sexual relations was surprising.

She said: "We thought that teens on the high end would be least likely to have sex, and teens on the low end would be most likely.

"We thought teens of lower intelligence might be more vulnerable to being taken advantage of or less likely to consider possible negative consequences of having sex."

The researchers suggest that less intelligent teenagers may be more likely to be sheltered by their parents or guardians.

Anne Weyman, chief executive of the Family Planning Association, said: "We know that young people with aspirations to achieve in life are less likely to engage in early sexual activity and that ambition is the best form of contraception.

"Children with special needs on the other hand, be they physical, emotional or intellectual, are likely to be more closely supervised and therefore have less opportunity to engage in early sexual experiences."

Ms Weyman said it was important that all young people received responsible education about sex and relationships.

from Bloomberg News via azstarnet.com, 2006-Jun-1:

Education is linked to delays in fatherhood

About half of U.S. men without a high-school education have fathered a child outside of marriage, while 6 percent of male college graduates have done so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released Wednesday.

The report also shows that men with a college education on average expected to have two children, fewer than the average 2.9 children expected by men without a high-school diploma.

"Education is a big driving factor for a lot of the results in this survey," Gladys Martinez, the CDC demographer who led the study, said in an interview. "When you get higher education, you're more focused on that, so you're waiting to do other things."

The report also found disparities in when men of different races have children. About 25 percent of black fathers had their first child before age 20, compared with 19 percent of Hispanic fathers and 11 percent of whites. About 37 percent of black men were married when their first child was born, compared with 52 percent for Hispanic men and 77 percent for white men, according to the study.

About one-third of men marry by age 25, and two-thirds are married by age 30, according to the study. Women tend to wed at a younger age, with half married by 25 and three-quarters married by age 30.

People who married later were more likely to stay together, with about half of the men who married as teen-agers getting divorced or separated within 10 years compared with 17 percent of men who married at age 26 or older, according to the study.

Institutional eugenics - the systematical coercive manipulation of mate pairings and relative fertilities - is an ill-advised method whereby this effect can be countered. If one were to pursue this avenue to its logical conclusions, the result is something like this:

The system described above (which is my reconstruction of the Rockefeller methodology) exhibits the cardinal sin of the errant systematician: tunnel vision, or stated differently, cost externalization. It pursues the stated objective, with no consideration for the collateral damage the system produces. The significance of costs that do not bear on the stated objective are artificially discounted.

Consider one of the tamer externalizations: the psychological cost of the propaganda effort described within the voluntary policy framework. The ``reasoning'' that allows this cost to be ignored is similar to the ``reasoning'' behind state lotteries. Ostensibly, a system in which the state operates a heavily advertised lottery and directs a portion of the profits to gambling addiction recovery programs does no net harm, and produces additional state revenue, ostensibly channeled into the public school system and other popular programs. The reality is quite at odds with this, of course. Avoiding addiction entirely is manifestly preferable to creating addiction then treating it. And the revenue generated by lotteries is simply added to the general funds, enabling state growth.

Another example of collateral damage is that inherent to programs of surrogacy and foster parenting. These suffer from the major flaw that intelligent people are raised by less intelligent strangers, a demoralizing and diminishing prospect. Nonetheless, surrogacy and foster parenting are not menaces, at least when the decision to enter the arrangement is individual.

As the tactical catalog continues, it becomes increasingly obvious that the systematician who designed the program was treating people not as people, but as inanimate, unfeeling figures in an accountant's spreadsheet, just as Adolf Eichmann did in his orchestration of the Jewish Holocaust.

To vividly appreciate the danger of the methodology described above, notice that in my reconstruction I used the term ``desirable,'' seemingly as an equivalent for ``intelligent.'' It could just as easily have been intended to be understood as equivalent to ``tractable'' and ``obediently productive,'' or some variation thereon. There is no hint of a constraint by which the elites who coordinate the eugenical apparatus might be prevented from changing the policy in such a manner. For that matter, they could base the policy on nose size or pungency of body odor. These eugenical systems are perverse and often criminal at their outset, and can be made engines of utter ruin at the drop of a hat.

Also see National Security Study Memorandum 200, "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests," initiated by Henry Kissinger in 1974. The above enumeration of a eugenical tactical palette is an effort to reconstruct the covert policy Kissinger designed in his capacity as a Rockefeller consultant and protegé. Of course, many of the tactics antedate Kissinger's involvement.

Inherent to eugenical regimentation is the prevention of pairings for which outcomes are unpredictable. Hybridization has unpredictable results, and in particular, hybridization of European and Semitic people possibly tends to result in headstrong, principled genius, a worst-case scenario from the perspective of the Rockefeller-Rothschild apparatus. This obviously helps to explain the effort to instill radical segregation.

The greatest horror of eugenical regimentation is that it destroys normal competition for and choice of mates, placing that choice in the control of elites. It is a command economy of sex. This type of system is a gross affront to humanity. In terms of its effects on its individual subjects, it is perverted, grotesque, alienating, hateful, and fantastically demoralizing.

In terms of society and humanity as a whole, eugenical regimentation is identical to the economic regimentation of a command economy: the result is bare shelves, homogenized blandness, and plenty of senseless and destructive underproduction and overproduction. Academics are partial to command economies because, in their arrogance and power lust, they have only contempt for the principle and ideal of individual autonomy, and particularly, its relevance to the population at large. They believe themselves to be evidently superior decision-makers in matters of production, supply, and consumption. When their corrupt ideology becomes practice, economies are ruined and people die.

The result with eugenical regimentation is identical. The type of regimentation envisioned by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, and approximately depicted in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, lays bare the rows of humans themselves. The principle is the same as with a command economy: it is the tragicomical conviction of elite academics that they are better able to choose your wife than you are, and the malicious facilitation of the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, who are subconsciously bent on annihilating humanity.

It is well to observe that a technological society with a free market system automatically tends to the ostensible goals of the eugenicists. Through individual, voluntary arrangements of paid surrogacy, those with greater aptitude are more fertile, since they have more money. It is as simple as that. When academics discard the free market in pursuit of their corrupt ideology, they destroy the possibility of this automatic, non-corrupting eugenical process.

One of the central thought processes of racism, on an individual level, relates to choosing a mate. Nordic people tend to choose Nordic people as mates, given the option. Indians choose Indians. Those of African extraction choose those of African extraction. Hispanics choose Hispanics. Chinese choose Chinese. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and anyone who asserts otherwise is a monster. It's partly due to acculturation, and partly due to genetic predisposition. It's also not a hard and fast rule by any means. But a basic thought that subconsciously occurs to a member of a race is that, if his race weren't there, then he wouldn't be able to choose a mate of his own race.

This is not unlike feeling threatened by the possibility that one's parents might not have met and one might not have been born. In other words, it's silly.

Cultural survival is a separate, related issue, and I empathize emphatically with those who hope to see their culture survive and thrive - be they New Yorker, Tibetan, or Timorese. It is not only American culture that is under siege today. All sorts of cultures, all around the world, are dead or dying. Culture worldwide is shrivelling and vanishing in surrender to the onslaught of the Hollywood cultural incinerator. Hollywood is a fountain of madness, manufacturing sociopathy, homogeneity, and moral vacuity, and fed by dissociation, Marxism, Scientology, and behind it all, the Rothschild-Rockefeller apparatus.

Now, to briefly address the immigration issue, particularly as it relates to racism.

I find the torrent of nondescript Hispanic, Mexicano, and Asian immigrants alarming and utterly unacceptable. These are people who do not share my culture and ideals at all, and frankly, tax an already horribly troubled country. On the other hand, if a Hispanic or Mexican or Taiwanese applicant (for example) is intelligent, industrious, a sincere Innovist, and speaks English well, he (or she) is an asset for my country that I welcome enthusiastically.

The reason the doors have been thrown open to a torrent of non-descript immigrants is because the policy is controlled by malicious people intent on subverting and destroying the constitutional government of the United States, and the spirit of the American people.

As one can see from the section of the Innovist constitution on immigration, my position very much forbids such an opening of doors. That opening is more than the maximum feasible freedom of movement allows. By freedom of movement, an ideal I espouse in my Innovist overview, I mean free movement and relocation within a nation, free movement to visit other nations, and tightly controlled immigration policies.

The counterpart to immigration of poor people to rich countries is subsidies of poor countries by rich countries. This is a form of socialism that I find diabolical and insidious. The Jubilee 2000 third world debt cancellation campaign, endorsed by the Pope and a variety of leftist organizations and celebrities, is an example of this type of socialism.

On the other hand, everyone can hitch a ride on innovations, more or less, sometimes involving payment of royalties. Consider that in those backward nations that don't defend the intellectual property rights of foreign innovators, all that technology is absolutely free for the taking. This is fine by me; it doesn't cost anyone a damn penny to ``subsidize'' the ``third world'' with these inventions. The effect is that, in time, the backward nations presumably become less backward.

Here, from Peter Morton's "The Vital Science: Biology and the Literary Imagination, 1860-1900", is the opening paragraph of Chapter 5: "Remember, Beethoven's Father Was a Drunkard: The Dubious Appeal of Eugenics":

If some fancier with the catholicity of Shakespeare would take us in hand, well and good; but I would not trust even Shakespeares, meeting as a committee. Let us remember that Beethoven's father was an habitual drunkard and that his mother died of consumption.

WILLIAM BATESON (1914)

---

It is a recognition almost as old as civilisation itself that, given the determination, a free people can selectively control their own breeding to make the succeeding generations approach more and more closely to some ideal of physical, mental and moral excellence. In seventh-century Lacedaemon the statesman-hero Lycurgus (if he was in fact a real person) began the deliberate and highly successful conversion of a city-state into an army camp, and the population into professional soldiers. In Sparta private family life was dissolved. Advantageous matings were encouraged and sponsored by the state, and infanticide practised regularly as part of a ritual which saw to it that only the physically hardiest babies could survive. Three centuries later in The Republic, which is Sparta elaborated, formalised and given a strong class-consciousness, Plato can be found advocating a similar scheme for the propagation of the Guardians, his ruling class. In Plato's Utopia there are legal, in fact compulsory, infanticide and abortion; there are marriage festivals with unlimited opportunities for copulation for those men who have distinguished themselves in war; and there are faked lotteries to quieten the resentment of the majority not selected for breeding. (Plato's exact words justifying this fraud are: 'we shall have to arrange an ingenious system of drawing lots, so that our inferior Guardians can . . . blame the lot and not the Rulers'1 - eugenics has continued to bring out the worst in thinkers for two and a half millennia.) Plato, like all eugenicists from his day to ours, faced the perpetual question: What qualities shall we breed for? The ancient politics answered it by taking their cue direct from nature. In nature the strongest, the fittest, the most cunning survive. Virtues good enough for nature were deemed good enough for Sparta and Plato's idealised Athens. But for the post-Darwinian eugenicists the virtues of the most prolific survivors were deemed not good enough at all.

[...]

Read the rest of the chapter from which this was excerpted, or view the table of contents for the entire book, all of which is available here.

from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the opening passage from Immigration and the Rise and Decline of American Cities, by Stephen Moore:

Executive Summary

More than half of all immigrants in the United States reside in just seven cities: Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, San Diego, Houston, and San Francisco. A controversial issue is whether immigrants are a benefit or a burden to these areas. A 1997 National Academy of Sciences study reports that "immigrants add as much as $10 billion to the national economy each year," but "in areas with high concentrations of low-skilled, low-paid immigrants," they impose net costs on U.S.-born workers. This essay questions that finding.

Examining a range of economic variables for the eighty-five largest U.S. cities over the period 1980-1994, this essay finds that those cities with heavy concentrations of immigrants outperformed cities with few immigrants. Compared with low-immigrant cities, high-immigrant cities had double the job creation rate, higher per capita incomes, lower poverty rates, and 20 percent less crime. Unemployment rates, however, were unusually large in high-immigrant cities. These findings do not answer the critical questions of whether the immigrants cause the better urban conditions or whether benign urban conditions attract the immigrants. But the essay does refute the assertion that the economic decline of cities is caused by immigration; that assertion cannot be true because, with few exceptions, the U.S. cities in greatest despair today--Detroit, Saint Louis, Buffalo, Rochester, Gary--have virtually no immigrants.

Introduction

What is the fiscal and economic impact of immigrants on the cities and states where they live? This question goes to the heart of the controversy over America's ability to assimilate immigrants into our economy and social infrastructure without imposing an undue burden on U.S. citizens. It is also a critical policy issue in the current debate over what is the "right number" of immigrants to admit to the United States each year.

The presumption inside the policy community is that immigrants impose a fiscal and economic burden on heavily affected states and cities. For example, Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida, one of the states so affected, complained that "federal immigration policy has created a nightmare for state and local governments."(1)

The nightmare is said to take many forms. One is an undesirable cultural transformation. Newsweek recently raised the alarm for Californians with the headline "Los Angeles 2010: A Latino Subcontinent."(2) Within a generation, predicts the article, "California will be demographically, culturally, and economically distinct from the rest of America." Gordon J. McDonald, former chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, is even more blunt in his assessment of the urban impact of immigrants: "Major cities have already been turned into extensions of foreign countries," he warns. "Aliens threaten to seize political power within a few short years."(3)

[...]

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2004-Nov-22, by Jason L. Riley:

Nix on Nativism
Ignore the anti-immigrant right. Bush did.

"Spin," says William Safire's "New Political Dictionary," is the "deliberate shading of news perception; attempted control of political reaction." Partisans typically use spin to burnish a bad outcome. But since the election, some on the right have attempted to downplay or divert attention from a positive development--the GOP's historic gains among Latino voters.

Exit polls put the president's share of the Latino vote at around 45%, an increase of nine percentage points from the 2000 election and far surpassing the previous record of 37% for a Republican presidential candidate set by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Yet conservative spinmeisters tell us this is no cause for jubilation.

Pat Buchanan insists that the exit polls are inaccurate, or at least the ones measuring the Hispanic vote. Other columnists have attached great significance to the fact that Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, a Republican who has made opposition to immigration his signature, won re-election. Yeah, him and 98% of House incumbents. Then there's National Review, which maintains that the real Hispanic story on Election Day isn't the Bush vote totals. Rather, it's the passage of Prop. 200, a redundant ballot measure in Arizona that bans illegal aliens from receiving government services that are already off-limits to them.

There are several explanations for all the conservative pooh-poohing. The most obvious is a fear among restrictionists that the Bush administration will interpret its Latino returns as a mandate to proceed with immigration reform. In January, President Bush floated the idea of a guest-worker program that would free up border agents to pursue terrorist threats instead of spending their time chasing down Mexicans who come here to work. The base went bonkers. Some on the right just can't bear the thought of a border policy that focuses less on militarization and more on balancing security with the needs of the economy.

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But there's another reason why these conservatives are downplaying this newfound Hispanic affinity for the GOP. Having insisted for years that Latinos are lost to Republicans--that time spent courting our largest ethnic minority group is time wasted--the editors at National Review, the commentators at Fox News and their anti-immigrant amigos at the Center for Immigration Studies are all loath to admit they were wrong.

Indeed, one way President Bush won a second term is by ignoring those who bash GOP outreach. His success is the fruition of a drive launched three years ago Karl Rove and Matthew Dowd. Exceeding everyone's expectations, Latino support for the president expanded in states in the West, South and Southwest that are essential to Republicans maintaining their current advantage.

Thus the result in the president's home state of Texas, the second-most populous after California. Nearly one of every four voters in Texas is Hispanic, and Mr. Bush upped his share of that vote to 59% from 43% in 2000. In Florida, which is the fourth-most populous state and where 15% of voters are Hispanic, his share of the Hispanic vote rose by seven percentage points. Still, it was Mr. Bush's success out West, where the Latino population is exploding, that probably made the most difference. "For all the attention paid to Florida and Ohio," reported the Houston Chronicle, "had Bush not done respectably in Latino communities in those two Western states [New Mexico and Nevada] and carried Iowa by a hair . . . he would have lost the election."

For many GOP-friendly political observers, attitudes toward the Hispanic vote stem from the California experience. The argument is that California, won handily by John Kerry, isn't competitive these days in presidential races due to a large immigrant population that tends to lean leftward. That's partly true, but before pinning this on the Mexican influx, consider that California's cultural liberalism has long been a magnet for Democrats. Consider the depleted Republican base as many middle-class whites in search of a better quality of life decamp for Boise, Tempe, Salt Lake City and Portland, Ore. And consider that from a PR perspective, the GOP's support for Prop. 187, California's forerunner to Arizona's Prop. 200, hasn't helped.

What the blame-Latinos-first faction might want to explore is why Republicans are able to compete in other states with sizable Hispanic populations, such as Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Florida. Is it possible that California is the exception, not the rule? The issue is probably moot. The demographic facts of life in America today make it plain that there's no alternative to dealing politically with Hispanics both here and on their way.

Yes, keepers of the Malthusian flame at places like the Federation of American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA have been insisting for years that the U.S. is overpopulated. The economist Thomas Sowell has challenged these alarmists to "name just one country that had a higher standard of living when its population was half of what it is today." Meanwhile, social conservatives preaching ethnocentrism fret that too many undesirables from south of the border are soiling our Anglo-American cultural fabric. At least one Manhattan Institute scholar is convinced that Latino men are congenital gangbangers.

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But this horse has left the barn. America is already home to 36 million people of Latin American descent who comprise nearly 13% of the population. A Census Bureau report released earlier this year says those numbers will climb to 103 million and 24% by mid-century. Over the same period, the percentage of non-Hispanic whites is expected to shrink to 50% from today's 69%. Mr. Bush may have claimed 58% of the white vote this year, but it's prudent for Republicans to anticipate diminishing future returns from this voter segment.

As my colleague Michael Gonzalez pointed out in this space recently, Election Day taught the GOP that Latinos can be turned into a viable swing voting bloc. Unlike blacks, who continue to pull the Democratic lever monolithically, Hispanics now stand poised to reap the spoils of our two-party system like other minority groups who split their allegiance. And while we know that President Bush can appeal to Latinos, we don't know whether that appeal can be transferred to the Republican Party and contribute to a possible long-term realignment.

Mr. Bush just met with Mexican President Vicente Fox and told him he is pushing ahead with a guest-worker program. The Republican Congress could do worse than meet Mr. Bush halfway. Immigration reform would go a long way toward solidifying the GOP's majority status. And it's not something that the nation's newest arrivals and their descendents would soon forget.

Mr. Riley is a senior editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2004-Nov-24, by Rupert Murdoch:

Give Thanks for Immigrants
And for a president who understands their importance to America.

When B.C. Forbes sailed for America from Scotland in 1904, he was following a course well worn by generations of Scots.

I know how the founder of Forbes magazine must have felt. The Murdochs originally hail from the same part of Scotland. Today, we are part of the most recent wave of immigrants attracted by the bright beacon of American liberty.

These days, it's not always easy to talk about the benefits of immigration. Especially since 9/11, many Americans worry about borders and security. These are legitimate concerns. But surely a nation as great as America has the wit and resources to distinguish between those who come here to destroy the American Dream--and the many millions more who come to live it.

The evidence of the contributions these immigrants make to our society is all around us--especially in the critical area of education. Adam Smith (another Scotsman) knew that without a decent system of education, a modern capitalist society was committing suicide. Well, our modern public school systems simply are not producing the talent the American economy needs to compete in the future. And it often seems that it is our immigrants who are holding the whole thing up.

In a study on high school students released this past summer, the National Foundation for American Policy found 60% of the top science students, and 65% of the top math students, are children of immigrants. The same study found that seven of the top award winners at the 2004 Intel Science Talent Search were immigrants or children of immigrants. This correlates with other findings that more than half of engineers--and 45% of math and computer scientists--with Ph.D.s now working in the U.S. are foreign born.

It's not just the statistics. You see it at our most elite college and university campuses, where Asian immigrants or their children are disproportionately represented. And a recent study of 28 prestigious American universities by researchers from Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania found something startling: that 41% of the black students attending these schools described themselves as either immigrants or children of immigrants.

The point is that by almost any measure of educational excellence you choose, if you're in America you're going to find immigrants or their children at the top. I don't just mean engineers and scientists and technicians. In my book, anyone who comes here and gives an honest day's work for an honest day's pay is not only putting himself closer to the American Dream, he's helping the rest of us get there too.

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As Ronald Reagan said at the Statue of Liberty, "While we applaud those immigrants who stand out, whose contributions are easily discerned, we know that America's heroes are also those whose names are remembered by only a few."

Let me share some of these names with you.

Start with Eddie Chin, an ethnic Chinese Marine who was born a week after his family fled Burma. You've all seen Cpl. Chin. Because when Baghdad fell, he was the Marine we all watched shimmy up the statue of Saddam Hussein to attach the cable that would pull it down.

Or Lance Cpl. Ahmad Ibrahim. His family came to the U.S. from Syria when the first Gulf War broke out. Now Cpl. Ibrahim hopes to be deployed to Iraq--also as a Marine--to put his Arabic language skills in the service of Corps and Country.

Or what about Cpl. José Gutierrez, who was raised in Guatemala and came to America as a boy--illegally! Cpl. Gutierrez was one of the first Marines killed in action in Iraq. As his family told reporters, this young immigrant enlisted with the Marine Corps because he wanted to "give back" to America.

So here we have it--Asian Marines, Arab Marines, Latino Marines--all united in the mission of protecting the rest of us. Isn't this what Reagan meant when he said that the bond that ties our immigrants together--what makes us a nation instead of a collection of individuals--is "an abiding love of liberty"? So the next time you hear people whinging about what a "drain" on America our immigrants are, it might be worth asking if they consider these Marines a drain.

Maybe this is more clear to businessmen because of what we see every day. My company, News Corporation, is a multinational company based in America. Our diversity is based on talent, cooperation and ability.

Frankly it doesn't bother me in the least that millions of people are attracted to our shores. What we should worry about is the day they no longer find these shores attractive. In an era when too many of our pundits declare that the American Dream is a fraud, it is America's immigrants who remind us--by dint of their success--that the Dream is alive, and well within reach of anyone willing to work for it.

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We are fortunate to have a president who understands that. Only a few days ago, the White House indicated that it intended to revive an immigration reform which the president had first offered before 9/11 and tried to revive back in January.

Politically speaking, a guest-worker plan is no easy thing. But as President Bush realizes, we'll never fix the problem of illegal immigration simply by throwing up walls and trying to make all of us police them. We've tried that for a decade or so now, and it's been a flop. What we need to do first is to make it easier for those who seek honest work to do so without having to disobey our laws. Fundamentally that means recognizing that an economy as powerful as ours is always going to have a demand for more workers.

Such a policy would benefit us all:

• It would help those who want nothing more than to work legally move out of the shadows.

• It would help our security forces stop wasting resources now spent on hunting down Mexican waitresses and start devoting them to tracking the terrorists who really threaten us.

• It would help the economy by providing America with the labor and talent it needs.

Given the tremendous pressures on President Bush and the considerable opposition from within his own ranks, the politically expedient thing for him to do would be to drop it. But he hasn't, and I for one am encouraged by his refusal to give in.

The immigrant editor B.C. Forbes spent much of the 20th century championing the glories of American opportunity. We who have arrived more recently likewise will never forget our debt we owe to this land--and the obligation to keep that same opportunity alive in the 21st.

Mr. Murdoch is chairman and chief executive of News Corporation. This is adapted from a speech he gave last Thursday, in acceptance of the 2004 B.C. Forbes Award.

from the Washington Post, 2007-Jan-4, p.D5, by Krissah Williams:

Immigrants a Driving Force Behind Start-Ups, Study Says
Tech Industry Clamors to Get More Visas for Foreign Workers

About 25 percent of the technology and engineering companies launched in the past decade had at least one foreign-born founder, according to a study released yesterday that throws new information into the debate over foreign workers who arrive in the United States on specialty visas.

The report, based on telephone surveys with 2,054 companies and projections by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and at Duke University, found that immigrants -- mostly from India and China -- helped start hundreds of companies with estimated sales of nearly $50 billion. It was written by a former technology executive who was an immigrant himself.

Technology-industry lobbyists have already cited the study in a push to persuade Congress to increase the annual allotment of H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to sponsor temporary workers in specialty occupations, such as computer programming and systems analysis. The companies say they cannot find enough Americans to fill jobs; other proponents contend that globalization requires U.S. companies to import talented workers.

"This research shows that immigrants have become a significant driving force in the creation of new businesses and intellectual property in the U.S. -- and that their contributions have increased over the past decade," wrote Vivek Wadhwa, the study's author, who immigrated from India with his family as a young man.

Another study will be released next month by the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports low levels of immigration. That report says most specialty visa holders come to the United States to do low-level professional jobs for relatively low pay.

Wadhwa's study looked at founders of engineering and technology companies started from 1995 to 2005, and analyzed the World Intellectual Property Organization Patent Cooperation Treaty database. About 25 percent of international patents filed in the United States in 2006 were submitted by immigrants.

Scott McNealy, chairman and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, is among the advocates for an expanded visa program, writing editorials, calling members of Congress and supporting political action committees.

McNealy noted that immigrants Vinod Kosla of India and Andy Bechtelsheim of Germany co-founded Sun. The company "created tens of thousands of jobs that have generated billions of dollars in exports and has created thousands of patents and intellectual-property positions," McNealy said. "Why would you have any arbitrary number on smart people?"

Last year, the industry raised the issue in the national debate over immigration reform, but Congress ended its session without acting on the Securing Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership Act. The bill would increase the annual quota on the H-1B visas to 115,000 from 65,000, eliminate green-card caps for some advanced-degree holders and streamline the processing of employment-based green cards. Tech lobbyists want to revive it.

"We are working on that new piece of legislation that will hopefully be a great fix for a lot of our companies," said Andrea Hoffman, vice president of government and political affairs for TechNet, an industry lobby backed by hundreds of technology companies, including Apple Computer, Microsoft and Google.

Those who favor low levels of immigration and oppose expanding the specialty-worker programs contend that foreigners accept lower pay and depress wages.

Jessica M. Vaughan, an analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, said an increase in the cap would amount to "a subsidy for business because it allows them to bring cheaper labor from overseas."

It is unknown how many of the immigrants who founded technology companies had H-1B visas.

At least two Northern Virginia tech companies were founded by former H-1B holders. Sudhakar V. Shenoy, founder and chief executive of Reston-based Information Management Consultants, immigrated to the United States in 1970 after graduating from the Indian Institutes of Technology -- known informally as the "MIT of India" -- and attending graduate school in Connecticut. In 1974, he was offered an H-1B visa, and a manufacturing company sponsored his green card in 1977. Four years later, he founded IMC, which has 350 employees in Reston and 125 in Pune, India.

Peter Harrison came from Britain on the specialty visa and later became chief executive of GlobalLogic (formerly Induslogic), a Vienna-based software development company founded in 2000 by two men from India, who were also H-1B holders.

The company has grown rapidly and employs 1,600 people in the United States, India and Ukraine. Only a few dozen of them have H-1B visas.

"They are very, very hard to come by," Harrison said. "We are always at a challenge to recruit people."

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-19, by Susan Hockfield:

Immigrant Scientists Create Jobs and Win Nobels
It's crazy to drive away talented young scholars.

Of the nine people who shared this year's Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine, eight are American citizens, a testament to this country's support for pioneering research. But those numbers disguise a more important story. Four of the American winners were born outside of the United States and only came here as graduate or post-doctoral students or as scientists. They came because our system of higher education and advanced research has been a magnet for creative talent.

Unfortunately, we cannot count on that magnetism to last. Culturally, we remain a very open society. But that openness stands in sharp contrast to arcane U.S. immigration policies that discourage young scholars from settling in the U.S.

Those policies come at a high price. Graduate and postgraduate student immigrants are essential to creating new, well-paid jobs in our economy. Of the 35 young innovators recognized this year by Technology Review magazine for their exceptional new ideas, only six went to high school in the United States. From MIT alone, foreign graduates have founded an estimated 2,340 active U.S. companies that employ over 100,000 people.

Amazingly, if as incoming students they had told U.S. immigration authorities that they hoped to stay on as entrepreneurs after graduation, they would have been turned back at the border. Our immigration laws specifically require that students return to their home countries after earning their degrees and then apply for a visa if they want to return and work in the U.S. It would be hard to invent a policy more counterproductive to our national interest.

If the U.S. was the only country in the world that offered scholars scientific freedom, a cumbersome immigration process might not be that harmful. But the world today is teeming with well-funded opportunities to do first-class science. To be competitive, the U.S. needs to send the unmistakable message that we want scholars to stay.

To do that we need the kind of broad new immigration policy that would allow foreign students who earn advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math to easily become legal permanent residents. President Barack Obama and many others are already calling for such a policy.

We also need to aggressively develop more homegrown talent. A recent report from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that we have lost our lead in education. In the 1960s, the U.S. had the highest high-school completion rate in the developed world; by 2005, we ranked 21st. In college completion, as recently as 1995 we ranked second. In 2005, we ranked 15th.

The OECD's report explains that we slipped in the rankings "not because U.S. college graduation rates declined, but because they rose so much faster" elsewhere. The U.S. now trails more than 16 nations in Europe and Asia in the proportion of 24-year-olds with bachelor's degrees in the natural sciences and engineering.

What we need is not just college graduates. We also need Ph.D.s in the sciences. Unfortunately, in the fields that spawn world-changing research and innovation, American graduate output has stagnated. From 1989 to 2003, despite a growing population, the number of American science and engineering Ph.D.s remained constant: an average of 26,600 a year. Over the same period and in the same fields, Ph.D.s awarded in China shot up to 12,000 from just 1,000.

In education, the world is accelerating while we are standing still, which is why Mr. Obama is pressing to revive our Sputnik-era commitment to science and math education.

Today, discovery and innovation increasingly spring from a creative network of the finest talent everywhere across the globe. From new advances in medicine to scientific breakthroughs that spawn new industries and sustainable jobs, the work of science and engineering is being done by individuals who can live almost anywhere.

To be part of that global creative network we must inspire more young Americans to pursue scientific careers, and we must rapidly reform U.S. immigration policies that drive away talented young scholars who would otherwise decide to live, work and innovate here. We should be proud of our Nobel Prize winners. But we should also craft policies that make it more likely that future Nobel laureates will do their work inside the U.S.

Ms. Hockfield is president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

from TPDL 2001-Sep-6, from the Washington Times, by Ralph Z. Hallow:

Policy on illegal aliens could cost taxpayers $30 billion

Rewarding illegal aliens with amnesty would be a financial loser for American taxpayers and a political loser for both Democrats and Republicans, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data and a just-released Zogby poll.

Although President Bush has ruled out a "blanket amnesty," he and Mexican President Vicente Fox are expected to announce the outlines of a new immigration agreement that eventually would have the same effect as amnesty.

But such a policy could cost American taxpayers some $30 billion a year, one study suggests. Low-skill immigrants are a net loss to the nation's economy, some researchers say, and illegal Mexican immigrants are 67 percent more likely to use major welfare programs compared to U.S.-born families.

The Zogby poll indicates little hope that Mr. Bush and Republicans can gain Hispanic support by granting amnesty to Mexican immigrants, while the same poll shows amnesty is opposed by voters of every political allegiance.

Large majorities of likely independent, Republican and Democrat voters oppose amnesty, according to the survey of 1,020 likely voters conducted Aug. 25-29 by pollster John Zogby.

The Zogby findings are particularly noteworthy, said Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), because it is the first national public poll on the subject that asks about amnesty for illegal immigrants without attempting to characterize them with such loaded terms as "hard-working" or "taxpaying" or as "violating our laws."

Even a slight majority of likely Hispanic voters oppose amnesty, the Zogby poll found. Only 15 percent of Hispanics would be more likely to vote for Mr. Bush's re-election if he embraced amnesty, while 33 percent said they would be less likely.

A majority of Hispanics -- 53 percent -- said amnesty wouldn't affect their vote on Mr. Bush one way or the other.

Without helping Mr. Bush among Hispanics, the Zogby polls show the amnesty issue hurts the president among other voters. The survey shows both Republicans and independent voters would be less likely, by more than a 3-to-1 margin, to vote for Mr. Bush if he grants amnesty to illegal aliens.

Despite the clear potential for political backlash, Mr. Bush has told aides that legalizing working immigrants is the right thing to do.

Mr. Bush and the Mexican president are expected to seek a program that would allow employed but illegal Mexican aliens to get temporary, renewable work permits.

The permits would lead, within six to 10 years, to permanent "green card" visas, full citizenship and voting rights.

The key will be convincing American voters that such a program is not really amnesty.

"We might try to persuade people that it's something other than amnesty, but I'd hate to start so far back as this poll suggests we are," confided a senior Republican party official.

It has long been believed that even unskilled immigrants are a boon to the U.S. economy, but that belief is under challenge. A CIS study claims that in 1992 immigrants cost the rest of the nation $29 billion more than they contributed in economic terms.

Some researchers see evidence in the government's own data that low-skilled immigrants are a net economic loss to the United States a loss that is likely to grow.

"The profits of employers who hire illegal aliens come at a loss to taxpayers who, all studies show, must pick up the tab for illegals' costs to America's schools, health care and criminal justice system," said Phil Kent, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation. "Some may work hard. But their children, influenced by the entitlements that flow to immigrants, may not. We simply can't afford to underwrite this growing underclass."

Mr. Camarota, the CIS research director, finds that "immigrants in general and Mexican households in particular" use more welfare and other means-tested social programs than do native-born Americans.

"Among working households, use of means-tested programs by Mexican immigrants is dramatically higher than that of natives," he said. "Thus, high rates of welfare use by Mexican immigrants are not the result of a lack of work [but rather] that a large share of Mexican households have low incomes and unstable employment histories and thus use a great deal of public services. ... Their incomes are low because they have little education, and making them legal residents won't change that fact."

Granting immigrants legal residency, as Mr. Bush is considering, does not substantially improve the welfare outlook: "Legal Mexican immigrants are more than twice as likely to use many means-tested social programs as are people born here," Mr. Camarota said.

Yet illegal immigrants use welfare programs at even higher rates. While 15 percent of native households use at least one major welfare program, that increases by two-thirds, to 25 percent, for households headed by an illegal Mexican immigrant, Mr. Camarota's analysis found.

"The findings also suggest that one possible unintended consequence of legalizing Mexican illegals already in the country would be to substantially increase their use of means-tested programs," he said.

An analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, voices a similar view.

"Clearly, the bulk of immigrants from Mexico and South America have characteristics that make them very prone for welfare," said Robert Rector, Heritage senior analyst, citing a recent government report that the unwed birth rate among U.S. Hispanics is now at 42.1 percent.

Be careful to remember, while reading about the horrors of coercive eugenics, that human abilities do have a very large genetic predetermination. This predetermination does in fact impose unshakeable constraints on individual human capacity, as surely as a tall man's noggin pokes above the bush more than a short man's, betraying his stalk, and a short man cannot change a light bulb in a ceiling as easily as a tall man can. These individual constraints are of immense economic and political significance. The following item explores the folly of a blanket denial of hereditary predetermination.

from The Public Interest, issue #74, 1983, p.41-59, by Bernard D. Davis:

Neo-Lysenkoism, IQ, and the press

At the time the following paper was published, Bernard D. Davis was Adele Lehman Professor of Bacterial Physiology at Harvard Medical School, where he formerly headed the Center for Human Genetics. Davis is also author of a book called ``Storm Over Biology: Essays on Science, Sentiment and Public Policy'' (1986, Buffalo: Prometheus).

Stephen Jay Gould, a professor of geology at Harvard, has become one of the best known American scientists. His many essays on natural history are entertaining and highly readable, and his attack on the ``establishment'' version of Darwinian evolution has received so much attention that his picture appeared on the cover of Newsweek. He personalizes his expository writing in a breezy, self-deprecating manner, and he comes across as warm-hearted, socially concerned, and commendably on the side of the underdog. Hence he is able to present scientific material effectively to a popular audience--a valuable contribution, and a public service, as long as his scientific message is sound.

It is therefore not surprising that Gould's history of the efforts to measure human intelligence, The Mismeasure of Man, received many glowing reviews in the popular and literary press, and even a National Book Critics Circle award.¹ Yet the reviews that have appeared in scientific journals, focusing on content rather than on style or on political appeal, have been highly critical of both the book's version of history and its scientific arguments. The paradox is striking. If a scholar wrote a tendentious history of medicine that began with phlebotomy and purges, moved on to the Tuskegee experiment on syphilitic Negroes, and ended with the thalidomide disaster, he would convince few people that medicine is all bad, and he would ruin his reputation. So we must ask: Why did Gould write a book that fits this model all too closely? Why were most reviewers so uncritical? And how can nonscientific journals improve their reviews of books on scientific aspects of controversial political issues?

Reviews in the popular press

Typical of the literary reviews of Gould's book is the one that appeared in the New York Times Book Review. June Goodfield, a historian and popular writer on science, is effusive: In his ``most significant book yet, Mr. Gould grasps the supporting pillars of the temple in a lethal grip of historical scholarship and analysis--and brings the whole edifice of biological determinism crashing down.'' The Mismeasure of Man, she writes, also shows that, while science can never be wholly objective, ``this gloriously human enterprise does provide us both with a method for challenging the status quo and for revealing true knowledge about the world.'' Moreover, Gould ``affirms that most things are humanly possible, and that attempts to confine human beings to limited categories are both downright wicked and bound to be self-defeating.''

In the New Yorker the book was reviewed by Jeremy Bernstein, a philosophically-inclined physicist. His analyses of scientific books have in general been excellent, and we might have expected him to be critical of Gould's methodology. But in fact, because Bernstein saw the book as a powerful salvo against racism, he misread it, imputing to Gould his own, different views on intelligence. Bernstein's answer to racism is to emphasize ``how numerous the genetically expressed variations are within any social group,'' whereas Gould in fact insists that in the area of behavior, genetic differences should be ignored. Missing this fundamental disagreement, Bernstein uncritically accepts Gould's indictment of intelligence tests: ``because of the false reification of intelligence hundreds of thousands--perhaps millions--of people's lives have been circumscribed or even ruined.''

The most perplexing review is Richard Lewontin's in the New York Review of Books. Lewontin represents a biased choice on the part of that journal, since he and Gould had taught a course together at Harvard on the dangers of applying biology to society, and he has called for the development of a true ``socialist science'' to challenge the ``bourgeois science'' of most Western culture. Yet he turns out to be an interesting choice, for his article is, as usual, brilliant, erudite, and idiosyncratic.

Lewontin agrees that political views, whether good or bad, will inevitably influence the conclusions of scientists, but be chides Gould for ignoring Marxist principles and overemphasizing racism: ``The Mismeasure of Man remains a curiously unpolitical and unphilosophical book.'' The emphasis ``on racism and ethnocentrism in the study of abilities is an American bias.'' Further, ``In America, race, ethnicity, and class are so confounded, and the reality of social class so firmly denied, that it is easy to lose sight of the general setting of class conflict out of which biological determinism arose.'' He concludes with a profoundly pessimistic bit of metaphysics: ``The reification of intelligence ... is an error that is deeply built into the atomistic system of Cartesian explanation that characterizes all of our national science. It is not easy, given the analytic mode of science, to replace the clockwork mind with something less silly.'' But ``the wholesale rejection of analysis in favor of an obscurantist holism has been worse. Imprisoned by our Cartesianism, we do not know how to think about thinking.'' It is unfortunate that this truly gifted scientist trapped himself in evolutionary genetics, a field so at odds with his social convictions.

The popular press has thought the issues to be more clear-cut. Newsweek refers to ``this splendid new case study of biased science and its social abuse.'' The Saturday Review speaks of ``a rare book--at once of great importance and wonderful to read.'' The Atlantic Monthly says, ``The tale would be funny if one could overlook the misery that such tests have inflicted on generations of defenseless school children.'' The Key Reporter (of Phi Beta Kappa) calls the book ``a strident, polemical, effective critique.''

The scientific reviews

While the nonscientific reviews of The Mismeasure of Man were almost uniformly laudatory, the reviews in the scientific journals were almost all highly critical. In Science, a widely read American publication that covers all the sciences, the book was reviewed by Franz Samelson, a psychologist at Kansas State University. He concludes that as a history of science the book has a number of problems. For example, he notes, Gould claims that Army intelligence tests led to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1925; in fact, no psychologist testified before Congress, and the three reports of the House Committee on Immigration do not mention intelligence tests at all. On another point, Gould's discussion of the ``fallacy of reification''--the grouping of different abilities, such as verbal reasoning and spatial reasoning, into one measure of intelligence--``remains blurred, since Gould's emphasis seems to shift about. Exactly what does he object to? [Gould] never tells us directly what his own proper, unreified conception of intelligence is.'' Finally, Gould fails to acknowledge that ability testing is ``a sizable industry in the real world and a smaller one in academia.'' And all Gould's incisive thrusts at finagling and fallacies seem to be almost irrelevant. ``... Whatever intellectual victories over the [mostly dead] testers Gould's eminently readable book achieves ... the real action seems to be elsewhere.''

In Nature, a distinguished British journal of general science, Steve Blinkhom, writing from the Neuropsychology Laboratory at Stanford University, is blunt: ``With a glittering prose style and as honestly held a set of prejudices as you could hope to meet in a day's crusading, S.J. Gould presents his attempt at identifying the fatal flaw in the theory and measurement of intelligence. Of course everyone knows there must be a fatal flaw, but so far reports of its discovery have been consistently premature.'' More specifically, ``the substantive discussion of the theory of intelligence stops at the stage it was in more than a quarter of a century ago.'' Gould ``has nothing to say which is both accurate and at issue when it comes to substantive or methodological points.'' Finally, many of his assertions ``have the routine flavor of Radio Moscow news broadcasts when there really is no crisis to shout about. You have to admire the skill in presentation, but what a waste of talent.''

Science 82, a journal designed for the general public, chose as its reviewer Candace Pert, a biochemist at the National Institute of Mental Health, who has been researching the application of molecular biology and cell biology to the study of the brain. ``Gould's history of pseudoscientific racism in measuring human intelligence,'' she writes, ``does not, despite his claims, negate the sociobiological notion that differences in human genetic composition can produce differences in brain proteins, resulting in differences in behavior and personality.'' In her view, ``if modern neuroscience reveals biochemical differences that account for human variability, we must deal with this important knowledge; ... ignoring differences because they could become abuses will not make them go away.''

The most extensive scientific analysis of Gould's book appeared in Contemporary Education Review. Arthur R. Jensen, of the Institute for Human Learning at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzes Gould's technical arguments in great detail and reaches sharply critical conclusions. He also discusses recent research demonstrating a high correlation of IQ with speed of information processing, as measured by simple reaction-time techniques. These findings encourage a hope that a merger with neurobiology may soon make studies of intelligence much more penetrating and less controversial.

The review that appeared in Scientific American is an exception to the harsh criticism in the scientific press. Ordinarily Scientific American presents solid science in an interesting way to a very broad audience, and it has been restrained and non-partisan in treating most controversial issues of science. However, there is one exception: The publisher, Gerard Piel, and the book editor, Philip Morrison, have long seen the study of the genetics of intelligence as a threat to racial justice. According to Morrison, as ``a persuasive chronicle of prejudice in science, founded on scrupulous examination of the record, enlivened by the talent of a gifted writer, this volume takes on some of the sinister appeal of a tale of heinous crime.''

Gould's selective history

It is important for the general public to understand why scientists close to the field have reacted so negatively to The Mismeasure of Man. The strength of science in analyzing reality comes from its strict separation of facts from values, of observations from expectations. Measurements of intelligence, and of its hereditary and environmental origins, are part of natural science--even though one must go beyond science, bringing in judgments of value, in order to probe the social implications of the results. Hence any purported scientific exposition of these topics must be as dispassionate and objective as possible about the facts, whatever the social views the author favors. These are precious standards, whose corruption we must resist. Unfortunately, throughout Gould's book they are not met.

The early chapters describe in detail some extremely naïve nineteenth-century attempts to measure intelligence in terms of brain size or body shape. These are fossils from the history of mental testing, and their excavation would ordinarily bore most readers. Gould, however, uses them skillfully, both to give the impression of a thorough scholarly analysis and to arouse indignation at such evil uses of science. Unfortunately, the advocacy and the emotional appeal betray the scholarship. In the early stages of any science, naïve ideas, often reflecting the prejudice of the time, are inevitable. Gould infers that this legacy will persist; but history demonstrates that the advance of science depends on continually discarding false hypotheses and preconceptions. Gould further arouses the reader's indignation by describing the ill-informed and prejudiced views of Paul Broca and Louis Agassiz on racial differences. But at a time when slavery was legal, and long before the science of genetics revolutionized our understanding of the nature of race, it is hardly surprising that these views were held by leading scientists--and even, as Gould notes, by such enlightened social critics as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. To remind us of these roots in the history of racism is instructive--but to imply a similar prejudice in today's investigators of intelligence is unfair.

After emphasizing that Alfred Binet developed the first intelligence test, in France in 1905, only in order to improve the education of backward children, Gould goes on to describe misuses of the subsequent tests. His most horrifying example is a primitive study conducted in 1912, in which H.H. Goddard administered intelligence tests to a number of Ellis Island immigrants. He set his standards at an absurdly high level, classifying in the end an extraordinarily large percentage of subjects as ``feeble-minded''--a term that then included ``morons'' who could nonetheless manage to make a living, though it is now applied only to those with a more severe deficiency. Probably nothing has so aroused antipathy to intelligence testing as his widely-cited findings that, for example, 83 percent of the Jews and 79 percent of the Italians he tested were ``feeble-minded.''

Gould's interpretation of Goddard's findings is summarized as follows: ``Could anyone be made to believe that four-fifths of any nation were morons?'' But let us look at what Goddard actually wrote. The first sentence of his paper states that ``this is not a study of immigrants in general but of six small highly selected groups'' leaving out those at either end of the scale who were ``obviously'' either normal or feeble-minded.² At that time immigration officers were using subjective impressions to reject those people who appeared to be too retarded to learn to make a living, and Goddard hoped that tests could provide a more reliable basis for such decisions. Surprised at the results, he added a discussion that Gould conveniently ignores:

``Are these ... cases of hereditary defects or cases of apparent mental defects by deprivation? ... We know of no data on this point, but indirectly we may argue that it is far more probable that their condition is due to environment than it is due to heredity. To mention only two considerations: First, we know their environment has been poor. It seems able to account for the result. Second, this kind of immigration has been going on for 20 years. If the condition were due to hereditary feeblemindedness we should properly expect a noticeable increase in the proportion of the feeble-minded of foreign ancestry. This is not the case.''

Goddard ended up favoring the immigration of people who appeared to possess limited present intelligence: Not only would they perform useful work, but ``we may be confident that their children will be of average intelligence and if rightly brought up will be good citizens.'' Goddard was hardly a great scientist, but he deserves a fair hearing. The statements cited here hardly warrant Gould's conclusion that to Goddard ``the cure [for feeble-mindedness] seemed simple enough: don't allow native morons to breed and keep foreign ones out.''

After some years, as Gould notes, most of the early enthusiasts changed their views. Goddard, Terman, and Brigham each admitted that he had overestimated the ability of tests to detect innate differences and had underestimated the influence of cultural background. One might take this example of growth in understanding as a sign of the whole field's increasing maturity and objectivity. Gould, however, sees these confessions only as support for his accusation of bias.

What is ``biological determinism''?

Gould's own degree of bias is unusual in a work by a scientist. What is the source of this passion? Not mental testing itself, he makes it clear. Rather, his arguments against this testing are merely weapons for attacking the real enemy: what he calls ``biological determinism.''

As Gould correctly points out, early investigators who tried to measure intelligence were indeed determinists: They had the illusion that they were directly measuring a capacity determined by the genes. But while he continues to tar investigators of behavioral genetics with this brush, in fact they are now all interactionists. For while genetics necessarily began with the simplest relationships, in which a single gene determines a trait (such as the color of Mendel's peas, or a human blood type), the science eventually moved on to the quantitatively varying (metric) physical or behavioral traits, which socially are much more interesting. These were found to depend on multiple genes, and also on their cumulative interactions with the environment. This concept is now precisely formulated as the concept of heritability: a measure of what fraction of the total variance in a trait, in a particular population, is due to genetic differences between individuals--the other fraction coming from environmental influences.

Since Gould would prefer to combat the straw man of naïve, ``pure'' determinism, he fails to note that the science of genetics has altogether replaced this concept with interactionism. But since he is too familiar with biology to deny this conceptual shift, he appropriates it for his own ideological argument: ``The difference between strict hereditarians and their opponents is not, as some caricatures suggest, the belief that a child's performance is all inborn or all a function of environment and learning. I doubt that the most committed antihereditarians have ever denied the existence of innate variation among children.'' Curiously, ``hereditarians'' (Gould's misnomer for interactionists) are not credited with a similar appreciation of both factors. Instead, they are neatly skewered by being called ``strict.''

What, then, is the quarrel about? According to Gould, ``the differences [between the camps] are more a matter of social policy and educational practice. Hereditarians view their measures of intelligence as measures of permanent inborn limits. Children, so labeled, should be sorted, trained according to their inheritance and channeled into professions appropriate for their biology.'' But good investigators, such as Binet, did not want mental testing to become a theory of limits. For them, Gould argues, ``Mental testing becomes a theory for enhancing potential through proper education [emphasis added].''³

This is a deliberate effort to blur the issue. With one hand Gould concedes innate differences, and with the other he takes them away. If the two camps really differ mostly about social policy and not about the importance of hereditary factors, why does he struggle so to deny the latter? Similarly, whether the hereditary component is large or small, is it not a fact that individuals differ widely in their phenotypic, developed ability to absorb various kinds of education and to perform various kinds of jobs? Yet the book has not one word about the possible value of mental tests for educational and vocational placement or for comparing educational programs. (However, consistent with Gould's admiration for Binet's circumscribed aim, he does note the value of mental tests in guiding the therapy of his own child.) Finally, in describing the incredibly crude use of the Army's ``Alpha'' tests in 1917, Gould ignores the current use of sophisticated tests to help the armed forces select candidates for expensive training programs.

It is sad that Gould, preoccupied with the destructive social consequences of earlier biological misconceptions, is convinced that any modern studies on human behavioral genetics must have similar consequences. For to the contrary, modern evolutionary biology has had an opposite effect--by providing a powerful argument against racism. In the past, a widely-accepted justification for race discrimination stemmed from a Platonic doctrine that prevailed for over two millennia: the belief that we can best understand groups of entities (including species and races) in typological (essentialist) terms, i.e., characterizing all the individuals in a group in terms of a hypothetical ideal type or essence, and dismissing differences from the ideal as trivial. Today, however, population genetics has shown that all species are genetically diverse, and that the differences are not trivial but rather are the source of evolution. With this shift from an essentialist to a populationist view, the genetic differences between races (except for some superficial physical traits) are now seen to be statistical rather than essentially uniform. And since the statistical distributions overlap extensively from one group to another, one cannot infer an individuals potential from his race [emphasis mine -AMPP Ed.].

If the pre-genetic, typological misconceptions still prevailed, the modern revolt against race discrimination would surely have encountered much greater resistance, and it might even have been impossible. Unfortunately, biology has received little credit for this major social contribution, and none at all from Stephen Jay Gould.

The concept of general intelligence

The historical chapters, constituting most of The Mismeasure of Man, serve to convince the reader that the measurement of intelligence is immoral. But after this build-up, Gould, shifting from historian to scientist, offers an even sharper objection: The measurement is also unscientific.

The problem arises because these tests were developed for teachers who often have trouble deciding whether a pupil's poor performance is primarily due to limitations in motivation or to limitations in ability. The original purpose of intelligence tests, as we have noted, was to provide a more objective and reliable supplement to the teacher's subjective impression, in order to help pupils who are doing badly. But this early use of testing inevitably led to the development of additional possibilities. For example, by ranking the whole class, the tests also detected students who could move faster than the average. In addition, more specialized tests have evolved, especially for advanced students and for purposes of job placement. But as practical tools in public education, the most widely used tests are still composite ones designed, like Binet's test, to cover a range of abilities pertinent to the whole curriculum.

Psychologists generally agree that the greatest success of their field has been in intelligence testing--both practical, in estimating individual abilities, and theoretical, in exploring the cognitive functions of the human brain. For it might have turned out that the determinants of different cognitive abilities were uncorrelated: that is, that the levels of abilities might be distributed independently. But in fact, tests for different kinds of intelligence--the ability to assimilate, retain, process, and express different kinds of complex information--show a remarkably high correlation in their results. The rank-ordering of most individuals is similar--but not identical--on a verbal test, an arithmetic test, or a nonverbal test involving spatial patterns. These results confirm an impression that we all tacitly build on in our daily lives: Some people are generally brighter than others, but people also differ in their special aptitudes. Both sets of differences are partly inborn and partly due to factors affecting the development of the inborn potentials.

The common factor shared in different cognitive abilities, as determined by statistical analysis of their correlations, was named g by Charles Spearman. In the ordinary IQ tests it contributes well over half the variance within a population, the rest representing uncorrelated differences in special abilities. Someday, the basis for both kinds of variation will no doubt be better understood in cellular and biochemical terms. Indeed, it is encouraging that studies of the brain are rapidly progressing from its simpler integrative functions, such as the processing of visual stimuli, to more complex cognitive activities. Meanwhile, though, it is fruitful for psychologists to examine intelligence at the level of performance, and to compare ways of improving that performance, just as geneticists could usefully deal with genes as formal units long before discovering their molecular structure and mode of action.

Examined at this level, such tests have unquestionably helped innumerable teachers to identify pupils whose brightness was concealed by shyness, cultural barriers, or rebelliousness. On the other hand, there is also no doubt that the tests have often been interpreted or applied badly. If teachers focus excessively on general intelligence, measured on a one-dimensional scale, they may fail to encourage the development of each individual's particular strengths. Moreover, the assumption that g is entirely innate may persist in some quarters even though the concept of heritability (fractionation into genetic and environmental components) has now completely replaced that early view among scientists. But perhaps the greatest danger is that the test results may tend to be regarded as some kind of index of social worth, instead of recognizing that they measure only a limited set of behavioral traits. For while these are key traits for certain educational and vocational purposes, the tests ignore many other traits that also have great social value: for example, physical attractiveness, motor skills, creativity, artistic talent, social sensitivity, and features of character and temperament. The concept of any single scale of social worth has no meaning. Gould, however, keeps the reader's indignation alive by regularly defining the objective of the tests as the measurement of ``worth''--sometimes qualified as ``intellectual worth,'' but often unqualified, or even denoted as ``innate worth.''

Gould is clearly not interested in evaluating the past uses of intelligence tests fairly, or in improving their use. To him the tests must be extirpated because--and here we get back to the real villain--in using them to compare individuals one inevitably runs into consistent differences in the mean values for various racial and socioeconomic groups. ``This book ... is about the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity .. invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups--races, classes, or sexes--are innately inferior and deserve their status.''<sup>4</sup> This statement, for all its hyperbole, captures what the book is about: Concerned with group differences, Gould has decided not to add to the polemics on their causes, but to attack the problem at another level. For if he can demonstrate that the very concept of measurable intelligence is meaningless, then it follows that all those disturbing data on group differences are meaningless as well. His weapon is his ``discovery,'' first announced in the New York Review of Books, of two alleged ``deep fallacies'' underlying the concept of general intelligence: reification and the factoring of intelligence.

The ``deep fallacies'' of reification and factoring?

Gould's argument on reification purports to get at the philosophical foundation of the field. He claims that general intelligence, defined as the factor common to different cognitive abilities, is merely a mathematical abstraction; hence if we consider it a measurable attribute we are reifying it, falsely converting an abstraction into an ``entity'' or a ``thing''--variously referred to as ``a hard, quantifiable thing,'' ``a quantifiable fundamental particle,'' ``a thing in the most direct, material sense.'' Here he has dug himself a deep hole. If this implication of localization is a fallacy for general intelligence, why is it not also a fallacy for specialized forms of intelligence, which Gould professes to accept? Going even further, he seems to abandon materialism altogether: ``Once intelligence becomes an entity, standard procedures of science virtually dictate that a location and physical substrate be sought for it. Since the brain is the seat of mentality, intelligence must reside there.'' But we must ask what reasonable scientific alternative there is. A Cartesian dualism, in which mental processes exist apart from a material base?

Indeed, this whole argument is fantastic. The scientist does not measure ``material things'': He measures properties (such as length or mass), sometimes of a single ``thing'' (however defined), and sometimes of an organized collection of things, such as a machine, a biological organ, or an organism. In a particularly complex collection, the brain, some properties (i.e., specific functions) have been traced to narrowly-localized regions (such as the sensory or motor nuclei connected to particular parts of the body). Others, however, depend on connections between widely-separated regions. Accordingly, the reality of generalized intelligence--or equally, of any specialized cognitive ability--does not require a ``quantifiable fundamental particle.'' Like information transfer in a telephone network or in a computer, cognition would be much the same whether the cells involved are grouped together in one region of the brain or are connected by fibers running between dispersed locations.

It is astonishing that a scientist with Gould's credentials, and with ready access to colleagues in the relevant fields, would present such a phony ``discovery'' as the fallacy of reification, and on the basis of truly antiquated views of neurobiology. He writes that the existence of general intelligence could have been proved correct ``if biochemists had ever found Spearman's cerebral energy.'' This phrase refers to a particularly thin speculation, in the 1920s, about the physical basis for differences in IQ. But neurobiologists today simply do not deal in such vague concepts. Instead, they measure variation in the richness of cells, and connections, and neurotransmitter molecules in different areas of the brain.

The molecular studies linking these features of the brain to genes have hardly begun. But it is clear that this molecular biology must build on the principle that genes code for specific molecular components in brain cells, as in all other cells, and that these genes, like other genes, will vary from one individual to another. Moreover, these gene products in the brain will give rise to variation not only in its wiring diagram but also in the switches (synapses) that transmit impulses between its nerve cells. We are unlikely to be able to correlate intelligence with the incredibly complex and subtle circuitry of the brain for a long time to come; but it is not hard to imagine correlation with molecular differences in a class of synapses in different brains, affecting the speed of processing information just like differences in the transistors of different computers.

Gould's second ``deep fallacy'', factoring, is statistical. Here he reconstructs an old controversy, which the field has long outgrown. In this dispute, Spearman calculated g (the measure of general intelligence) by running tests for different abilities and analyzing their correlations so as to extract their common component. Thurstone, whom Gould admires as ``the exterminating angel of Spearman's g,'' preferred to focus on the specialized differences in intelligence. He therefore analyzed the results in a way that did not extract the overall correlation, but dispersed it among the differentiated primary factors. But the correlation did not disappear: Another calculation could extract it from the primary factors as a ``second-order'' g. Gould, however, sets out to ``prove'' mathematically that the primary correlation is a statistical artifact and that the second-order one is negligible.

To analyze Gould's unconvincing argument would be irrelevant. For in the end, after claiming to have disproved the correlations, he casually accepts them as self-evident: ``The fact of pervasive positive correlation between mental tests must be one of the most unsurprising major discoveries in the history of science.'' This is itself a very curious judgment. In fact, the correlation is not inevitable or self-evident, for the brain might have been so constructed that a strong endowment of cells for verbal skills would have less room for cells concerned with numerical abilities, etc. Different cognitive abilities might then exhibit no correlation, or even a negative correlation, and psychologists would then have found no general intelligence to measure.

Gould's arguments about g are irrelevant for another reason as well: Though he believes they support his aim of slaying the dragon of the heritability of intelligence, the assumed link to that problem does not exist. ``The chimerical nature of g is the rotten core of Jensen's edifice, and of the entire hereditarian school. ... Spearman's g, and its attendant claim that intelligence is a single, measurable entity, provided the only theoretical justification that hereditarian theories of IQ have ever had.'' This assertion is utterly false. Whether an IQ test measures mostly general intelligence or mostly a collection of independent abilities, the heritability of whatever it measures will be precisely the same. IQ's factor structure simply does not enter the equations for calculating its heritability.

It is unfortunate that Gould contrasts general and special intelligence with such overkill, for the differences deserve serious consideration, and the advance of behavioral genetics, focusing on units of inheritance, will force psychologists to aim for a more refined dissection of cognitive functions. But the prospect of such advances does not require us to deny that a wider, overall measurement might have had historical value, and might still have practical value for educational purposes.

Objectivity in science

In addition to moral and technical objections to mental testing, Gould offers an epistemological argument that has much broader implications: ``I criticize the myth that science itself is an objective enterprise.... By what right, other than our own biases, can we identify Broca's prejudice and hold that science now operates independently of culture and class?'' On the other hand, he adds that ``As a practicing scientist, I share the credo of my colleagues: I believe that a factual reality exists and that science, though often in an obtuse and erratic manner, can learn about it.'' This is all very well--but throughout the rest of the book he proceeds as though objectivity is a myth and no factual reality can be discovered.

In fact, the key to the success of the scientific enterprise is its passionate dedication to objectivity: Its advance depends on accepting the conclusions dictated by verifiable observations and by logic, even when they conflict with common sense or with treasured preconceptions. To be sure, some years ago Marxist philosophers, generalizing from the influence of social and economic arrangements on many aspects of our behavior, initiated an attack on the objectivity of science. Moreover, this view has become rather widely accepted in the social sciences. But the study of the genetics of intelligence is a part of natural science, rather than of social science, even though its findings have relevance for social questions. If the science is well done it will tell us objectively what exists, without value judgments; these judgments will arise only in the social applications of that knowledge. For example, insights into the range and distribution of abilities do not tell us how much of our educational resources to devote to the gifted and how much to the intellectually handicapped; this knowledge simply improves our recognition of the reality with which we must cope.

The main source of confusion here is that the word ``science'' is used with three different meanings, in different contexts: science as a set of activities, as a methodology, and as a body of knowledge. The activities of a scientist certainly depend heavily on non-objective factors. These include the resources and the incentives that a society provides for pursuing particular projects, and also the personal choice of problems, hypotheses, and experimental design. The methodology of science is much more objective, but it is also influenced by fashions in the scientific community. The body of scientific knowledge, however, is a very different matter. Its observations and conclusions, after having been sufficiently verified and built upon, correspond to reality more objectively and reliably than any other form of knowledge achieved by man. To be sure, attachment to a cherished hypothesis may lead a scientist into error. Moreover, at the cutting edge of a science, contradictory results and interpretations are common. But the mistakes are eventually discarded, through a finely honed system of communal criticisms and verification. Thus Broca's name has been immortalized by its assignment to a structure in the brain that be recognized, whereas his premature efforts to correlate gross structural variations with intelligence have left no residue in the body of scientific knowledge.

Accordingly, however much the findings in some areas of science may be relevant to our social judgments, they are obtained by a method designed to separate objective analysis of nature from subjective value judgments. Long experience has shown that when these findings are well-verified, they have an exceedingly high probability of being universal, cumulative, and value-free. Gould, however, treats the history of science like political history, with which his readers are more familiar: a history in which human motives and errors from the past will inevitably recur. He thus skillfully promotes a doubt that the biological roots of human behavior can ever be explored scientifically.

Politicizing and publicizing science

A left-wing group called ``Science for the People,'' of which Gould is a member, has been particularly active in campaigning against such studies. Instead of focusing, in the earlier tradition of radical groups, on defects in our political and economic system that demand radical change, this group has aimed at politicizing science, attacking in particular any aspect of genetics that may have social implications. Their targets have included genetic engineering, research on the effects of an XYY set of chromosomes, sociobiology, and efforts to measure the heritability of intelligence. Several years ago Gould co-signed their intemperate attack on E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.⁵ Now, in The Mismeasure of Man, he has extended the attack to cognitive psychology and educational testing, because they may reveal genetic differences.

Gould has spelled out explicitly his ideological commitment, and also its influence on his science. As we shall see, his main scientific contribution has been the claim that evolution has occurred mainly through revolutionary jumps, rather than by small steps. Both in a ``Dialectics Workshop''<sup>6</sup> and in a scientific paper<sup>7</sup> he supports this claim with a citation from Marx: ``Darwin's gradualism was part of the cultural context, not of nature.'' He adds that ``alternate [sic] conceptions of change have respectable pedigrees in philosophy. Hegel's dialectical laws, translated into a materialist context ... are explicitly punctuational, as befits a theory of revolutionary transformation in human society.'' And, ``it may also not be irrelevant to our personal preferences [about evolutionary mechanisms] that one of us learned his Marxism, literally at his Daddy's knee.'' To most scientists (other than those tethered to a party line) such a claim of support from (or for) Hegel is silly, and such an insertion of an ideological preference, whether from the left or the right, is a corruption of science.

These quotations may help us to understand why The Mismeasure of Man ends up as a sophisticated piece of political propaganda, rather than as a balanced scientific analysis. Gould is entitled, of course, to whatever political views he wishes. But the reader is also entitled to be aware of his agenda.

It may also be pertinent to comment briefly on Gould's scientific writing. His claim to have disproved the widely-accepted, ``gradualist'' view of evolution has had great appeal for science reporters, but it has been subject to intense criticism by his professional colleagues. Of course, controversies in science are not rare, and it would not be appropriate here to try to judge Gould's stature as a scientist. It is pertinent, however, to note features of his professional writing remarkably similar to those that I have criticized in The Mismeasure of Man. In both contexts be focuses primarily on older approaches to problems in which genetics is now central; he picks his history; and he handles key concepts in an ambiguous manner. Moreover, he is fond of artificial dichotomies that oversimplify complex issues: evolution by leaps versus evolution by gradual steps; biological determinists versus environmentalists; general intelligence versus specialized intelligence. [This is Gould's application of Hegel's dialectical method. -AMPP Ed.]

While Gould has made a valuable scientific contribution in providing evidence that marked fluctuations in rate are common in evolution, the most general professional criticism is that in dramatizing this contribution he has set up a non-existent conflict with the prevailing gradualist view. For he proceeds as though gradualism implies a relatively constant rate as well as small steps. But even Darwin recognized that the rate of evolution might vary widely, and modern investigators have demonstrated many mechanisms that contribute to such fluctuation.

Neo-Lysenkoism

In The Mismeasure of Man Gould fails to live up to the trust engendered by his credentials. His historical account is highly selective; he asserts the non-objectivity of science so that he can test for scientific truth, flagrantly, by the standards of his own social and political convictions; and by linking his critique to the quest for fairness and justice, he exploits the generous instincts of his readers. Moreover, while he is admired as a clear writer, in the sense of effective communication, he is not clear in the deeper sense of analyzing ideas sharply and with logical rigor, as we have a right to expect of a disciplined scientist.

It has been uncomfortable to dissect a colleague's book and his background so critically. But I have felt obliged to do so because Gould's public influence, well-earned for his popular writing on less political questions, is being put to mischievous political use in this book. Moreover, its success undermines the ideal of objectivity in scientific expositions, and also reflects a chronic problem of literary publications. My task has been all the more unpleasant because I do not doubt Gould's sincerity in seeking a more just and generous world, and I thoroughly share his conviction that racism remains one of the greatest obstacles.

Unfortunately, the approach that Gould has used to combat racism has serious defects. Instead of recognizing the value of eliminating bias, his answer is to press for equal and opposite bias, in a virtuous direction--not recognizing the irony and the danger of thus subordinating science to fashions of the day. Moreover, as a student of evolution he might have been expected to build on a profound insight of modern genetics and evolutionary biology: that the human species, and each race within it, possesses a wide range of genetic diversity. But instead of emphasizing the importance of recognizing that diversity, Gould remains locked in combat with a prescientific typological view of heredity, and this position leads him to oppose studies of behavioral genetics altogether. As the reviewer for Nature stated, The Mismeasure of Man is ``a book which exemplifies its own thesis. It is a masterpiece of propaganda, researched in the service of a point of view rather than written from a fund of knowledge.''

In effect, we see here Lysenkoism risen again: an effort to outlaw a field of science because it conflicts with a political dogma. To be sure, the new version is more limited in scope, and it does not use the punitive powers of a totalitarian state, as Trofim Lysenko did in the Soviet Union to suppress all of genetics between 1935 and 1965. But that is not necessary in our system: A chilling atmosphere is quite sufficient to prevent funding agencies, investigators, and graduate students from exploring a taboo area. And such Neo-Lysenkoist politicization of science, from both the left and the right, is likely to grow, as biology increasingly affects our lives--probing the secrets of our genes and our brain, reshaping our image of our origins and our nature, and adding new dimensions to our understanding of social behavior. When ideologically committed scientists try to suppress this knowledge they jeopardize a great deal, for without the ideal of objectivity science loses its strength.

Because this feature of science is such a precious asset, the crucial lesson to be drawn from the case of Stephen Jay Gould is the danger of propagating political views under the guise of science. Moreover, this end was furthered, wittingly or not, by the many reviewers whose evaluations were virtually projective tests of their political convictions. For these reviews reflected enormous relief: A voice of scientific authority now assures us that biological diversity does not set serious limits to the goal of equality, and so we will not have to wrestle with the painful problem of refining what we mean by equality.

In scientific journals editors take pains to seek reviewers who can bring true expertise to the evaluation of a book. It is all the more important for editors of literary publications to do likewise, for when a book speaks with scientific authority on a controversial social issue, the innocent lay reader particularly needs protection from propaganda. Science can make a great contribution toward solving our social problems by helping us to base our policies and judgments upon reality, rather than upon wish or conjecture. Because this influence is so powerful it is essential for such contributions to be judged critically, by the standards of science.

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Footnotes

1 Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981).

2 H. H. Goddard, ``Mental Tests and the Immigrant,'' Journal of Delinquency 2 (1917): 243.

3 Gould's reference to ``enhancing potential'' is revealing, for it confuses genotype (an inborn range of potential) and phenotype (the actual ability developed within that range). He should have spoken instead of enhancing performance, or of enhancing the development of potential. This is not a trivial semantic distinction: It is essential for any clear analysis of the interaction of genes and environment. Gould's language suggests that he either does not fully understand, or feels compelled to ignore, this key concept of genetics.

4 Gould's broad generalization ignores the fact that the disadvantaged Chinese and Japanese in this country have consistently scored even higher than Caucasians. Moreover, in including sex discrimination in the IQ controversy, he is straying far from reality. In fact, females average the same as males on standard IQ tests: They perform slightly better on verbal tests, and slightly worse on spatial tests, but the tests are constructed to balance these differences.

5 E. Allen et al., Letter, New York Review of Books (November 13, 1975): 43. See also Sociobiology Study Group of Science for the People in Bioscience 26 (1976): 182. This article includes the remarkable statement that ``We know of no relevant constraint placed on social processes by human biology.''

6 S. J. Gould, ``The Episodic Nature of Change versus the Dogma of Gradualism,'' Science and Nature 2 (1979): 5.

7 S. J. Gould and N. Eldridge, ``Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered,'' Paleobiology 3 (1977): 115.

from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science's journal, Science, 1994-Feb-18, issue #263, p.922, by Constance Holden:

Times Corrects Scientist's Obit

Harvard molecular biologist Bernard Davis only died once, on 14 January, but has been accorded two obituaries in the New York Times. Why? The first obit managed to ignore almost all of Davis' career--igniting a storm of protest from former colleagues who badgered the newspaper until it agreed to do the story over.

from NewScientist.com, 2004-Nov-29, by Andy Coghlan:

Endurance running is in east Africans' genes

The long-distance running prowess of Ethiopia's elite male athletes is partly dictated by their genes.

Researchers have established that such athletes are more likely to have certain variants of four Y chromosome genes compared with other Ethiopians. No one knows what the genes do, or how influential they are, but they are the first to be linked to east Africans' outstanding ability for endurance events.

Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes have run 37 of the 40 fastest times recorded over 10,000 metres. Alongside dedication and training, there is no doubt that social and geographic factors, such as having to run long distances to school at high altitudes, contribute to their success.

To find out if genes also play a significant role, Yannis Pitsiladis of the International Centre for East African Running Science at the University of Glasgow in the UK and colleagues studied the Y chromosomes of elite athletes, city dwellers and other non-athletes from the Ethiopian region of Arsi, where many runners originate.

Four gene variants were clearly more common among the athletes, and one was less common. No mutation was unique to the athletes, however, suggesting that it is the combination of certain gene types that makes the difference.

“The athletes do show differences from the population as a whole,” says Pitsiladis. “But they are not so overwhelming to say that this is the reason for their success,” he says, and no single gene for endurance running emerged.

The team, whose results will be published in Human Genetics, are hoping to bolster their findings by analysing Kenyan endurance athletes in the same way.

from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency via the the Jerusalem Post, 2005-Jun-19, by Chanan Tigay:

Pride, prejudice and predispostition

A reported link between Ashkenazi intelligence genes and susceptibility to genetic disorders is clearly mixed news for the descendants of Eastern European Jews.

It may come as little surprise, then, that reactions to a new study linking the two are a mixed bag as well.

After all, if what the University of Utah researchers say is true, some Jewish mothers may just have had their dreams for brilliant children turned to nightmares.

Beyond that, it may also mean that Ashkenazim have, albeit unwillingly, "been part of an accidental experiment in eugenics," as The Economist magazine put it in a recent article. "It has brought them some advantages. But, like the deliberate eugenics experiments of the 20th century, it also has exacted a terrible price."

The mere mention of eugenics - which refers to a movement to improve humankind by controlling genetic factors through mating - is enough to ring bells that many Jews would rather not hear 60 years after the Allied defeat of the Nazis.

According to the study, slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science, Ashkenazim do better than average on IQ tests, scoring some 12-15 points above the test's mean value. But they also are more likely than any other ethnic groups to suffer from diseases such as Tay-Sachs, Gaucher's disease and Niemann-Pick - related conditions that can be debilitating and deadly.

The new study hypothesizes that the genetic disorders could be the unfortunate side effects of genes that facilitate intelligence.

But for some people, ascribing collective traits to entire ethnic groups - especially to European Jews - reminds them that the Nazis heaped a pile of supposed genetic characteristics on that continent's Jews and used the characteristics as a basis to exterminate them.

Indeed, the researchers say they had difficulty finding a journal that would publish their findings.

For other people, criticizing such research on this basis reeks of political correctness. This is real science, they say, with real potential to help save Jewish - and other - lives.

"When you study genetics in order to cure diseases, that's great," said James Young, a Jewish studies professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation. "But when genetics are studied as a way to characterize or essentialize a whole ethnic group or nation of people, then I think it's very problematic."

Still, he said, "I was kind of intrigued by this connection, and the dark irony of what it means to have your intelligence gene linked to a so-called genetic disease gene. It's kind of striking."

For Dr. Guinter Kahn, a Miami physician who lectures internationally on German doctors during the Holocaust, studies like this have real scientific merit.

"This stuff is being done with genes, and they're actually finding true results," he said. "The stuff they did in World War II was pure baloney motivated by the greatest geneticists of that time in Germany - but they all fell into the Hitler trap."

ALTHOUGH NO one is questioning the researchers' motivations, some observers worry that their findings may be misused.

"Will bigots use this? Bigots will use anything," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation league.

However, he said, their abuses should not block research that could benefit the Jewish community.

Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt agrees.

When it became clear that fewer Jews were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau than had originally been thought, some Jews worried that this information would be manipulated by Holocaust deniers to back their claims, said Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University.

I had people say to me, 'We shouldn't talk about these things,' " Lipstadt recalls, "I said, 'No, no, no. It's always good to talk about the truth.' We should never be afraid of the truth."

As to concerns about what it means to say that one group of people is genetically smarter than others, Henry Harpending, a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah and one of the study's three authors, said that such complaints boil down to political correctness.

"It's no secret," he said of the Ashkenazi IQ numbers. "Your grandmother told you this."

Indeed, the study notes that although Ashkenazi Jews made up just 3 percent of the US population during the last century, they won 27% of the country's Nobel Prizes in science and account for more than half of the world's chess champions.

However, Harpending added, this is "the kind of thing that you're not supposed to say these days."

He went on: "We regard this as an interesting hypothesis and are a little surprised at the attention. On the other hand, geneticists kind of know that variation between populations is almost certainly in the DNA and they kind of don't talk about that" for fear of losing federal funding for their research.

"What we've done is started out with an idea and followed it, so what we have is a pretty interesting and pretty good-looking hypothesis - and it ought to be tested."

But could this research actually end up helping anybody? Gregory Cochran, one of the study's authors, hopes so.

"I don't have the cure to any disease in my pocket. I wish I did," he said. But "if this all pans out, you learn something about how the brain works. Who knows? Maybe you can do something to help some people one day."

The study says that because European Jews in medieval times were restricted to jobs in finance, money-lending and long-distance trade - occupations that required greater mental gymnastics than fields such as farming, dominated by non-Jews - their genetic codes over the course of some generations selected genes for enhanced intellectual ability.

This process allowed these Jews to thrive in the limited scope of professions they were allowed to pursue. Further, in contrast to today, those who attained financial success in that period often tended to have more children than those who were less financially stable, and those children tended to live longer.

It is for this reason, the researchers said, that many Ashkenazi Jews today have high IQs - and it may also be the reason they suffer from the slew of genetic diseases.

According to the researchers, many individuals carrying the gene for one of these diseases also receive an "IQ boost."

Rabbi Moses Tendler, who holds a doctorate in biology and teaches biology at Yeshiva University, said there is "no doubt that genetic makeup determines intelligence and, indeed, predisposes as well as offers resistance to genetic diseases."

But he took issue with the study's findings. The fact that Jews did not intermarry until relatively recently, Tendler said, led to a concentration of various genes among their numbers, some good and some bad. "Wherever they were, Jews lived on an island," he said.

In scientific terms, arguments similar to Tendler's are known as a founder's effect. Rabbi Arthur Green, dean of the Rabbinical School at Boston's Hebrew College, wondered whether the findings took into account all relevant factors in the development of Jewish intelligence.

He noted that during the period in which the researchers believe the Jewish intelligence gene began to be selected, the majority Christian world was, in a sense, selecting against such a gene.

In that same period of 1,600 to 1,800 years, Christian Europe was systematically destroying its best genetic stock through celibacy" of priests and monks, he said.

"The Christian devotion to celibacy, particularly for the most learned and highest intellectual achievers, diminished the quality of genetic output and created a greater contrast with the Jewish minority," he said.

The Jewish devotion to study and learning, meanwhile, also probably worked in tandem with economic factors in the development of intelligence, Green surmised.

In some of the Ashkenazi disorders, individuals experience extra growth and branching of connectors linking their nerve cells. Too much of this growth may lead to disease; increased but limited growth, though, could breed heightened intelligence.

In an effort to determine the effect of Gaucher's on IQ, for example, the researchers contacted the Gaucher's Clinic at Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. Although the center did not have specific IQ numbers on patients at the clinic, the jobs they held were high-IQ professions: physicists, engineers, lawyers, physicians and scientists.

"It's obviously a population with enriched IQs - big time," Harpending said.

from the Toronto Globe and Mail, 2005-Jun-18, by Carolyn Abraham:

The new science of race

Henry Harpending is about to titillate the world's conspiracy theorists with one of the most politically incorrect academic papers of the new millennium.

Why, he and his colleagues at the University of Utah asked, have Jews of European descent won 27 per cent of the Nobel Prizes given to Americans in the past century, while making up only 3 per cent of the population? Why do they produce more than half the world's chess champions? And why do they have an average IQ higher than any other ethnic group for which there's reliable data, and nearly six times as many people scoring above 140 compared with Europeans?

Prof. Harpending suggests that the reason is in their bloodline — it's genetic.

The 61-year-old anthropologist's explanation is not easily dismissed, but it crosses into the territory scientists fear most.

His group's theory is that during 1,000 years of persecution, social isolation and employment restrictions in Europe that kept Ashkenazi Jews from farming, they were forced into (then disreputable) jobs such as trade and finance, which demanded mental agility. Success in these fields could lead to food, shelter and family. Under such pressures, the paper suggests, genetic traits related to intelligence became more prevalent among central and northern European Jews.

Two U.S. journals refused the paper, an unusual experience for this widely published scholar. “We finally had to send the paper to England, where they're not so obsessed with political correctness,” Prof. Harpending said.

The danger of bolstering bigots is what has scientists so nervous. If a complex trait such as intelligence can be inherited, for instance, and you say one ethnic or racial group tends to have more of it than others, does it follow that another group has less?

Ever since the eugenics movement a century ago, which led to forced sterilizations in Canada and the United States to improve the racial stock of the human species, and then the horrors of Nazi Germany, such questions have been taboo.

University of Western Ontario psychologist J. Philippe Rushton was internationally condemned 15 years ago for claiming to discover differences in brain size, intelligence, sexual habits and personality between whites, blacks and “Orientals.”

Yet the role of race in genetics is a subject scientists now believe they can't ignore. The future of medicine may depend on it.

In fact, a massive international effort, which includes many Canadian researchers, has been quietly under way for nearly four years to catalogue and compare the genetics of people with African, Asian and European ancestry.

It is called the Haplotype Project. You may not have heard a word about it before now. But by the end of this year, society may have to start facing its implications.

It was not supposed to be this way.

When the Human Genome Project was completed in 2000, its most touted result was that it showed no genetic basis for race. In fact, some scientists went so far as to dub race a “biological fiction.”

The project was a 13-year international drive to map all of the three billion chemical bits, or nucleotides, that make up human DNA. Particular nucleotide sequences (represented by the letters A, C, G and T) combine to form the estimated 25,000 genes whose proteins help to produce human traits, from the way your heart beats to the wave in your hair.

The map indicated that humans as a species are 99.9 per cent genetically identical — that, in fact, there are greater differences between two frogs in a pond than between any two people who find themselves waiting for a bus.

A teeny 0.1 per cent, a mere genetic sliver, helps to account for all the profound diversity within the human race, with its freckles, dimples, afros and crimson tresses, its shy and bombastic types, its Donald Trumps and Dalai Lamas, Madonnas and Mr. Dressups, Bill Gates, Billie Holidays, George W. Bushes and Osama bin Ladens.

It was a message of harmony: Hardly a hair of code separates us.

But five years later, one of scientists' main preoccupations has become to chart the genetic variations between and within racial groups — to parse that 0.1 per cent. These differences arise through mutations, which all begin as one-time flukes, but become more prevalent in a particular place if they offer a survival advantage, carriers have more children or they result in a trait a society finds desirable.

Now, teams are panning for gene types to help explain why West Africa produces the fastest runners in the world. A University of Toronto researcher is hunting the gene types that account for skin colours.

A Pennsylvania State University scientist is teasing out the biology behind other variable physical traits, such as height or hair texture.

More crucially, it has become obvious that the 0.1 per cent may add up to the difference between sickness and health.

In Canada, researchers from McMaster and McGill Universities are breaking down heart disease by nationality to understand the interplay of genes and environment. The answers may explain why South Asians suffer high rates of high blood pressure, why heart attacks hit Middle Eastern men 10 years earlier than Europeans, or why the Chinese seem to boast the trimmest waistlines in the world.

The genes discussed in Dr. Harpending's team's paper, meanwhile, are known to be the ones that account for the high Ashkenazi rates of breast cancer, the neurological disorder Tay-Sachs and other conditions. The mystery is why these traits have persisted at high rates over generations. The Utah group's conclusion (to be published in the Cambridge University Press Journal of Biosocial Science) is that the diseases are a tragic side effect of genes selected for their role in boosting brain function.

Given the explosion of research in race and genetics, Francis Collins, a former leader of the Human Genome Project, had to admit in the journal Nature Genetics last fall that “well-intentioned statements” about the biological insignificance of race may have left the wrong impression: “It is not strictly true that race or ethnicity has no biological connection. It must be emphasized, however, that the connection is generally quite blurry.”

Alan Bernstein had warned him. In the fall of 2000, the president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research heard Dr. Collins speak at Harvard about there being no significant differences between races. “That's going to come back at you,” he said.

According to Dr. Bernstein, 0.1 per cent is actually far from an insignificant difference in the genome's chemical sequence. In fact, he said, the genetic distance between humans and gorillas is not much greater. “It's silly to try and be politically correct about it.” What matters, Dr. Bernstein said, is to treat it scientifically.

The most organized effort to do that to date is the International Haplotype Project. Scientists in Canada, the United States, Britain, China, Japan and Nigeria are spending $185-million to chart the genomes of people from Tokyo, residents of Beijing, the Yoruba in Nigeria and Americans of Western and Northern European descent — 270 people in all.

Using these maps to find genetic differences between ethnic groups could lay the groundwork for new treatments and cures. It might help predict a person's response to a given drug, and allow for tailor-made medications with fewer side effects. It could bring the medical advances genetics has long promised.

On the other hand, the knowledge may raise more questions about the meaning of racial differences than anyone cares to answer.

The Quebec Genome Innovation Centre at McGill University is a cold, sleek structure that screams clinical precision, with its glass walls, concrete columns and lateral steel beams. The equipment inside is as expensive as the $30-million, 50,000-square-foot building that houses it.

Its three floors of labs and DNA sequencing technology crunch genetic data at a rate no one even imagined five years ago. In 2001, it took a year to run 50,000 genetic tests. Today, said the centre's director, Tom Hudson, they can shoot out the results of 20 million tests in a week.

This speed comes courtesy of such mind-boggling gadgets as the array centrix, a small board of 96 fibre-optic spikes, the tips of which can be coated in DNA and 1,500 genetic tests run on each tip — at the same time.

“From one drop of blood, you can do hundreds of thousands of tests,” Dr. Hudson enthused.

From one drop of blood you also can discern the ethnic background of the person being tested with fairly good certainty.

So it is here, where technology has shrunk costs to just pennies per test, that major sections of the Haplotype Project's “HapMap” are being generated.

The project was born in the summer before Sept. 11, 2001. At first, it seemed destined for obscurity. Scientists at the University of Toronto, McGill and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had been hunting gene mutations that increased the risk of Crohn's disease in 200 Toronto-area families of mostly European heritage — British, Polish, French and Greek.

In the process, they stumbled on a remarkable discovery. The genome's three billion chemical letters appear to be arranged in blocks — like paragraphs in a text. Some are longer, some shorter, but all have fairly clear beginnings and ends.

The pattern seemed to make sense. In the genetic mix and mingle of conception, the mother's and father's DNA are passed down to the next generation in these kinds of heritable chunks. Researchers estimate there are 100,000 such blocks in each person's genome.

What's more, gene mutations within those blocks seem to fall in the same places, even in different families. It's like a library in which every book contains a typo in the first paragraph on the second page, or the fourth paragraph on every fifth page. The misprints might be different, Dr. Hudson explained, but they occur in the same locations. For finding genetic mutations, the pattern seemed as good as an index: Instead of scanning the whole book, you could flip straight to page 2 or page 5.

The discovery seemed to cry out for a new map of the human genome, one that would show the haplotype blocks and highlight each paragraph in the book of life.

“Everyone knew this was important,” Dr. Hudson said. “But there was no big press release.” Coming out a month after Sept. 11, the discovery of haplotype blocks attracted little initial attention. But for scientists it couldn't have come at a better time.

Traditional methods to find mutated genes in family studies and remote populations had hit a wall. Yes, they could find the lone mutation that led to a rare disorder such as Huntington's disease or cystic fibrosis. But trying to find the dozens of mutations that increase the risk of common diseases like cancers or asthma would simply require too many patients and too much data crunching.

With a haplotype map, they would be able to search the genomes of huge numbers of people with a particular disease, in search of a common typo in a particular paragraph.

First, however, the HapMap researchers had to find out if their theory would apply to the genomes of people around the world. The maps provided by the Human Genome Project would offer little help, because they had been rough compilations based on various people, with little regard for ethnic background.

The next question was, whose genomes should they use?

When HapMap scientists met in Washington in 2002 to discuss the issue, Dr. Hudson — a 44-year-old, buttoned-down geneticist much more comfortable with technical issues than social ones — was taken aback at the incendiary debate that broke out. It was the kind of battle that seems bound to become more frequent as scientists continue to explore this sensitive area.

“As Canadians, we are not used to the high emotions around race, as they are in the U.S.,” he said. In that two-day meeting and others to come, African-American community leaders, ethicists and philosophers unleashed their fears and frustrations.

“There were two points of view,” Dr. Hudson recalled. “One of them is, ‘You're only going to be studying Caucasian chromosomes, clearly, because you only want to find tests for North Americans and U.S. people with money.' ”

But if Africans and other populations were included in the map, there was serious concern that any differences found in their genomes might leave them open to another tier of discrimination, perhaps from health-insurance companies.

In the United States, where the mortality rates for a range of diseases are higher among blacks than whites, such disputes are common. For example, scientists and sociologists continue to argue over whether African Americans' high rates of hypertension are due to genes or to environment.

One contentious theory suggests African Americans descend from those slaves who were able to survive the dry and hungry trip from Africa thanks to a genetic quirk that enabled them to retain moisture and salt — which also can contribute to high blood pressure.

But others say it is due to diet and stress. As New York University sociologist Troy Duster told The New York Times last fall, “If you follow me around Nordstrom's and put me in jail at nine times the rate of whites and refuse to give me a bank loan, I might get hypertensive.”

In the end, the HapMap team decided to include African chromosomes, along with those from Japan, China and the United States. It was a diverse enough sampling to tell them if the haplotype theory would hold up, but selective enough for their limited budget.

At the same time, ethicists joined the project to ensure that all DNA donors would be aware of the risks of participating — namely, that any dramatic genetic differences the project discovered could end up stigmatizing their communities.

“Certainly,” Dr. Hudson said, “there's enough examples already of racism in the world — before genetics, during genetics and after genetics — that there's no doubt someone would try to use the information for genetic discrimination.”

Despite the long and ugly social history of race, there is no clear-cut definition for the term. Is a person's race defined by skin colour, that most visible of markers? By language, country of birth, the food they eat or the religion they practice? Not even scientists can agree.

“If you have a [genetic] sample from Nigeria, can you really say that it represents Africans? Is that the same as African Americans? [In some studies], Jews are white, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're compared to Caucasians,” said Celeste Condit, a professor of speech communication at the University of Georgia who specializes in biomedical issues.

“The scientists have been irresponsible for not developing a language for this,” Prof. Condit said. “Usually scientists are very careful in developing their technical vocabulary. But it's hard to describe the geographic dispersion of people properly — and they have these easy [racial] terms in their heads.”

Of course, geneticists already know that since people have ancestors from all over the world, no one fits neatly into any one racial box. We are all of us mixed, even if our complexions suggest otherwise. There also can be greater genetic differences within racial groups than between them.

But since no one now has the resources to uncover the secrets in every patient's DNA, both science and medicine are using “race” as an easy, if dangerous, shortcut.

“Until we can scan the genome of every individual,” said Tim Caulfield, director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, “race has become this rough proxy.”

Yet HapMap researchers are indeed finding that the genetic lines between their groups are terribly blurry. In fact, the block structures are similar in all of them.

“Humans as a species are just so young there hasn't been enough time for the genome to alter that dramatically,” Dr. Hudson said. (Frogs, on the other hand, have a few more millennia behind them than people.)

As expected, they are finding the most variations in the DNA of donors from Africa, where modern humans are believed to have arisen 150,000 years ago. It is thought that the rest of the planet's populations are all descendents of a small group who only wandered out of Africa roughly 60,000 years ago, so there has been less time for those genes to mutate in the rest of the world.

What they do know, Dr. Hudson stressed, is that the mutations they are cataloguing — the 10 million or so most common ones — appear to exist in all populations. Just not at the same frequencies.

“Almost all the differences you see in people in North America are differences you see in Africa, are differences you see in Asia,” he said. “It's very rare to have something you only see in [one place].” And when you do, he said, it's uncommon even in that population.

One stunning example is a gene variant that makes 1 per cent of Caucasians (and an estimated 10 per cent of Ashkenazi Jews) immune to HIV infection. It blocks receptors on the surface of cells where the AIDS virus would otherwise enter. Scientists suspect the trait was passed down from Europeans who survived medieval smallpox plagues thanks to the same mutation.

Another variant known to be fairly exclusive to a particular people is the “Duffy null” mutation in people from sub-Saharan Africa. Penn State genetic anthropologist Mark Shriver explained that it likely became prevalent there because it offered protection against a particular type of malaria, “but it didn't spread widely outside of Africa.”

Yet Dr. Shriver, who by all outward appearances is a white man, happens to carry it. A scan of his genome suggests that while he is predominantly European, he is also about 11 per cent West African and 3 per cent native American.

“Race just doesn't exist in a critical line,” he said. “It's more of a gradient.”

Dr. Shriver applauds the information flowing in from the HapMap project (which is freely available on-line), calling it “a revolutionary tool” for science. But others are not so impressed.

“Basically, it is a total waste of money,” Columbia University geneticist Joseph Terwilliger said.

Dr. Terwilliger argued that by focusing on the most common genetic mutations, the project would overlook the most specific differences to be found in any group. It would make “populations look systematically more similar to one another than they really are.”

Medically important traits — such as the HIV-resisting gene type — could be missed if researchers do not deliberately hone in on the rarer quirks in each particular racial group.

“Different populations have enormous differences,” Dr. Terwilliger said. “If this were not true, then there is no way we can determine how we are related and how populations migrated historically.

“You cannot put people neatly in a small number of meaningful categories like black, white or Asian. That said, Koreans and Chinese are genetically vastly more similar than either are to Germans.”

The controversy around the scientific meaning of race is already spilling over from the lab to the medical clinic. Researchers continue to debate definitions, but the age of race-based medicine is upon us.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the world's first “ethnic” medication last fall, a heart-failure drug for African Americans known as BiDil. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is developing marketing plans for a lung-cancer drug that flopped in Caucasians but seems to work for Asians.

No one yet fully understands the actual genetic traits that make these drugs effective in these groups. And scientists have every reason to believe people other than blacks or Asians may carry these traits. But for now, prescriptions for such medications are to be based on little more than physical appearances and questions about a patient's heritage.

And this, Prof. Condit argued, could lead to significant risks. Doctors may end up denying a drug to Caucasians who might benefit from it, because it is touted to work only in South Asians. Or they might prescribe a pill to a black person who actually would benefit from some other treatment. (For example, research has found that as many as 30 per cent of African-American men have a white male ancestor, a fact attributed to the sexual politics of slavery.)

Prof. Condit has tried to bring the inherent dangers of race-based science to the attention of the researchers involved. She has published journal articles, held focus groups and arranged meetings that few scientists leave their labs to attend. Without careful consideration and communication, she warned, modern medicine could set race relations back decades.

She offered this scenario: Imagine a drug marketed only for blacks, a simple pain reliever, prescribed in the millions. Now imagine that, like a certain now-notorious pain medication, it turns out to have the horrible side effect of increasing the risk of heart attacks. Result: Tens of thousands of North American blacks — and only blacks — die.

“What happens if you get a Vioxx situation with one of these drugs? And the likelihood of this happening is very high,” she said. “But until there's a catastrophe, people don't want to deal with it. You are playing with fire.”

Those watching the field of modern racial genetics explode are already concerned.

“If genes predispose groups to certain diseases or health conditions, might we also find information that hints at more socially loaded conclusions?” the University of Alberta's Tim Caulfield wondered.

Last summer, Prof. Caulfield was surprised to read an article in the prestigious journal Science titled, “Peering Under the Hood of Africa's Runners.” It noted that all but six of the 500 fastest times for the 100-metre dash have come from sprinters of West African descent, which includes most U.S. blacks. Kenyans, meanwhile, dominate world records in long-distance races.

According to the report, Swedish physiologists trying to penetrate the “Kenyan mystique” compared runners from Africa and Scandinavia on treadmill times, lung capacity, heart rates and body weights. Limb measurements indicated that the Kenyans carried 400 grams less flesh on each calf. The report referred to their “birdlike legs,” explaining how Kenyan runners squeeze more power from their oxygen intake, since “they need less energy to swing their limbs.”

Research on West Africa's sprinters, meanwhile, revealed a body type of heavier “fast-twitch” muscles, versus the lighter “slow-twitch” muscles of endurance runners, as well as denser bones, narrower hips, thicker thighs, longer legs and lighter calves. Efforts are now under way to decode the genetics behind all these traits.

Like Prof. Harpending's paper on Ashkenazi Jews, the report on African runners presented a positive picture of its subjects, albeit a stereotypical one. Yet it seemed eerily reminiscent of ugly 19th-century efforts to gauge racial differences with calipers and cranial measurements.

Prof. Caulfield, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, was mostly concerned about where such research would lead. Already, he said, an Australian company is cashing in on the notion that some people are born to run, offering to test a child's genes for fast- or slow-twitch muscles — “so you know which sport to put your kid in.”

While he said he loathes the idea of restricting scientific research in a free, democratic society, Prof. Caulfield described the race-based search for disease genes as a Pandora's box.

Studies are sure to appear on genes linked to complex characteristics in racial groups, such as athletic or cognitive ability or even criminal behaviour. But these traits, he stressed, are anything but a simple story of genetics.

“It's like beauty,” he said. “Being beautiful will involve the interplay of thousands of genes and social factors that dictate at a given time what is beautiful. It's a very complex story, it involves culture, socio-economic class, experience. . . . So how do you handle that information?”

As Penn State's Mark Shriver put it, “It's not that genes for IQ, athletic ability and musical ability don't exist. But you just can't tease apart the affect of environment in shaping these abilities.”

If people are starting to overestimate the role genes play in shaping human health and behaviour — and underestimate the huge impact of experience, environment and social forces — Columbia's Joseph Terwilliger said that scientists must share the blame.

“In many ways, scientists over-hyped the information in the genome, or at least what we know about it, to the point where now people are getting unnecessarily nervous about societal implications,” he said.

“The fact is that to get the funding they sold genetic determinism, which of course is nothing close to reality. And now they are paying the price.”

This year, the journal American Psychologist devoted an entire issue to the impact race and genetics could have on its field, raising a list of the difficult questions ahead. It included three papers on the controversial issue of intelligence, including one commentary arguing that genes should get more attention in studies of racial intellectual differences.

For Dr. Harpending, who admitted he would never have “even muttered in public” his theories about Ashkenazi Jews and intelligence were he not a senior professor with tenure, this type of conversation cannot come soon enough.

“There is this massive disconnect between public and private discourse; between what's said in the public arena and what your neighbour tells you [about racial groups] over the fence,” he said. “Some of those things are wrong and bigoted, but some of those are right.”

Perhaps. But would Prof. Harpending dare match his Ashkenazi study with one of India's lowest Hindu caste, the so-called untouchables, who like European Jews have historically been an isolated society — except, in this case, relegated to centuries of cleaning latrines?

“One is the mirror image of the other, I suppose,” he admitted. “I would personally find that distasteful. But if I had a theory about it, I would hope that I would publish it.”

If the race debate in science seems sticky now, it's only going to get worse.

This summer, scientists from all over the world are gathering to discuss plans for yet another map of the human genome. This one is based again on a discovery involving Canadian research — and in scientific terms, it is hard to overstate its significance.

Geneticist Steve Scherer, a senior scientist at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, working with colleagues at Harvard University, discovered last August that the basic model of simple genetic inheritance science has clung to for 100 years is wrong: Mom and dad don't always make equal genetic contributions in the creation of a child's genome.

Instead, some people might end up with three, four or even more copies of a gene from one parent, instead of the single copy of each gene scientists thought each parent always contributed.

The implications could be huge. There might be greater genetic differences between individuals — and certain populations — than anyone imagined. Certainly, there are more than the HapMap is charting, Dr. Scherer said.

Might one ethnic group, for example, carry an overload or an underload of genes for a particular trait?

“I think it was premature to say that the difference between people might only be 0.1 per cent,” Dr. Scherer said. “Based on what we know now, it is probably in the 0.2 per cent range. And in the end it may even be as high as 1 per cent.”

Dr. Scherer spent two days last August fielding media calls when the news first broke. He did most of the interviews by phone, but in a few cases it was easiest to respond by e-mail.

Then came a call from his Harvard collaborators informing him that one of those e-mail interviews had been with a writer who worked for a neo-Nazi website. The writer spun the news as scientific proof of genetic differences between races — without even misquoting or twisting Dr. Scherer's words.

“As a geneticist,” the 41-year-old Dr. Scherer said, “it's your worst nightmare.”

The HapMap's Tom Hudson in Montreal has had the same one. A colleague recently referred him to an Internet hate site that declared the HapMap would finally prove the biological basis of race.

“It made me queasy, because they actually name the name of my friend, my colleague in Boston. And they actually say, ‘He's going to prove us right.'

“I didn't understand what I was reading when I first read it,” Dr. Hudson said. “I never read something that was so disgusting.”

It wasn't an isolated incident.

Morris Foster, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and one of the HapMap's leaders, said researchers are tracking racist sites for references to the HapMap, which logs 20,000 downloads a week from its public database. They have amassed quite a collection.

Not only do the hate sites keep abreast of what HapMap information has become available (such as recent data on Japanese and Nigerians), but they anxiously await findings that will help unveil genetic traits linked to such things as crime and cognitive ability by race.

“Once it is scientifically demonstrated,” one web contributor writes, “that will be the beginning of the end for the Marxist-egalitarian argument over race. Personally, I can't wait.”

Even Western Ontario's infamous J. Philippe Rushton has seized upon modern genetics as an opportunity to make his case again, in the company of Arthur Jensen, a University of California psychology professor who argues that race determines IQ.

This month, the unpopular scholars have the lead article in the journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law, presenting 60 pages of evidence arguing that genes explain 50 per cent of the IQ differences between races, in which Asians rank higher than whites and whites higher than blacks.

(The publisher, the American Psychological Association, invited scientists to rebut the paper in the same issue.)

And yet, despite all the social hazards of modern genetics, Dr. Scherer said scientists should not “have to fear discussing their results of their research, so long as they are open-minded and listen to criticisms and comments from others, including the public.

“I always wonder what Darwin would have done in today's world.”

The ultimate test, Dr. Harpending pointed out, lies not with researchers, but with the public.

He described projects under way involving genes potentially associated with controversial behaviours such as sexual promiscuity, adultery and family abandonment.

“A number of things are coming down the pipe,” he said, “that we are going to have to figure out how to cope with as a decent and moral society.”

Carolyn Abraham is The Globe and Mail's medical reporter.

from New York Magazine, 2005-Oct-24, by Jennifer Senior:

Are Jews Smarter?

Did Jewish intelligence evolve in tandem with Jewish diseases as a result of discrimination in the ghettos of medieval Europe? That’s the premise of a controversial new study that has some preening and others plotzing. What genetic science can tell us—and what it can’t.

What's Larry David's evidence for his exceptional brainpower? "To be paranoid, you need a very good imagination."

This story begins, as it inevitably must, in the Old Country.

At some point during the tenth century, a group of Jews abandoned the lush hills of Lucca, Italy, and—at the invitation of Charlemagne—headed for the severer climes of the Rhineland and Northern France. These Jews didn’t have a name for themselves, at first. They were tied together mostly by kinship. But ultimately, they became known as Ashkenazim, a variation on the Hebrew word for one of Noah’s grandsons.

In some ways, life was good for the Jews in this strange new place. They’d been lured there on favorable terms, with promises of physical protection, peaceful travel, and the ability to adjudicate their own quarrels. (The charter of Henry IV, dated 1090, includes this assurance: “If anyone shall wound a Jew, but not mortally, he shall pay one pound of gold . . . If he is unable to pay the prescribed amount . . . his eyes will be put out and his right hand cut off.”) But in other ways, life was difficult. The Ashkenazim couldn’t own land. They were banned from the guilds. They were heavily taxed.

Yet the Ashkenazim did very well, in spite of these constraints, because they found an ingenious way to adapt to their new environment that didn’t rely on physical labor. What they noticed, as they set up their towns, located mainly at the crossroads of trade routes, was that there was no one around to lend money.

So there it was: a demand and a new supplier. Because of the Christian prohibition against usury, Jews found themselves a financially indispensable place in their new home, extending loans to peasants, tradesmen, knights, courtiers, even the occasional monastery. The records from these days are scarce. But where they exist, they are often startling. In 1270, for example, 80 percent of the 228 adult Jewish males in Perpignan, France, made their living lending money to their Gentile neighbors, according to Marcus Arkin’s Aspects of Jewish Economic History. One of the most prolific was a rabbi. Two others were identified, in the notarial records, as “poets.”

Success at money-lending required a different set of skills than farming or any of the traditional trades. Some, surely, were social: cultivating connections, winning over trust (or maybe bullying your way there, Shylock’s awful pound of flesh). It probably required some aggression, because the field was competitive, with Jews suffering so few professional options. But it also required cognitive skills, or something my generation would call numeracy—a fluency in mathematics, a dexterity with numbers—and my grandmother’s generation would call “a head for figures.” If you were Jewish in Perpignan in 1270, and you didn’t have a head for figures, you didn’t stand much of a chance.

Numeracy, literacy, critical reasoning: For millennia, these have been the currency of Jewish culture, the stuff of Talmudic study, immigrant success, and Borscht Belt punch lines. Two Jews, three opinions . . . Keep practicing, you’ll thank me later . . . Q: When does a Jewish fetus become a human? A: When it graduates from medical school.

Of course, there’s another side to this shining coin. Jewish cleverness has also been an enduring feature of anti-Semitic paranoia. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther said Jewish doctors were so smart they could develop a poison that could kill Christians in a single day—or any other time period of their choosing (and four centuries later, Pravda suggested Jewish doctors were spies sent to kill Stalin). After the calamities of September 11, one of the creepier conspiracy theories to whip through the Muslim world was the idea that only Jews were cunning enough to have pulled off the hijackings.

Last summer, Henry Harpending, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Utah, and Gregory Cochran, an independent scholar with a flair for controversy, skipped cheerfully into the center of this minefield. The two shopped around a paper that tried to establish a genetic argument for the fabled intelligence of Jews. It contended that the diseases most commonly found in Ashkenazim—particularly the lysosomal storage diseases, like Tay-Sachs—were likely connected to and, indeed, in some sense responsible for outsize intellectual achievement in Ashkenazi Jews. The paper contained references, but no footnotes. It was not written in the genteel, dispassionate voice common to scientific inquiries but as a polemic. Its science was mainly conjecture. Most American academics expected the thing to drop like a stone.

It didn’t. The Journal of Biosocial Science, published by Cambridge University Press, posted it online and agreed to run it in its bi-monthly periodical sometime in 2006. The New York Times, The Economist, and several Jewish publications risked their reputations to legitimize it. Today, the paper has a lively presence on the Internet—type “Ashkenazi” into Google and the first hit is the Wikipedia entry, where the article gets pride of place.

Ascribing an ethnic or racial explanation to any trait more ambiguous than skin color is by definition a dangerous idea, the kind of notion that can seep into the political arena with disastrous consequences. Institutionalized racism has always found sanction in the scientific community, from eminent biologist Louis Agassiz’s racial typologies justifying slavery in the 1850s, to the Nazi scientists’ depraved use of calipers to establish Jewish inferiority, to psychologist Arthur Jensen’s call in the sixties to stop funding Head Start because most of its poor, black recipients were intrinsically uncoachable.

We may consider ourselves the products of a new, more enlightened age, and scientists may carry on with more sensitivity than they did in the past. Yet to invoke the genome as an explanation for anything more complicated than illness or the most superficial traits (like skin color) is still considered taboo, as Harvard president Larry Summers discovered when he suggested the reason for so few female math and science professors might lurk in scribbles of feminine DNA (rather than, say, the hostile climes of the classroom, the diminished expectations of women’s parents, or a curious cultural receptivity to Pamela Anderson’s charms).

For this reason, and the fact that it did not meet the standards of traditional scientific scholarship, Harpending and Cochran’s paper attracted a barrage of criticism from mainstream geneticists, historians, and social scientists.

“It’s bad science—not because it’s provocative, but because it’s bad genetics and bad epidemiology,” says Harry Ostrer, head of NYU’s human-genetics program.

“I see no positive impact from this,” says Neil Risch, one of the few geneticists who’s dipped his oar into the treacherous waters of race and genetics. “When the guys at the University of Utah said they’d discovered cold fusion, did that have a positive impact?”

“I’d actually call the study bullshit,” says Sander Gilman, a historian at Emory University, “if I didn’t feel its idea were so insulting.”

Cochran mirthfully bats their complaints away. “I don’t see what the big deal is here,” he says when I reach him at his New Mexico home. “I haven’t actually told people how to make a hydrogen bomb out of baking soda in their garages.”

But there’s no question that Cochran and Harpending knew what they were doing. They were advancing a theory with a patina of sexiness and political incorrectness, one that would generate a good deal of discussion. And that it did. Some of that discussion was positive, and some was not, as one might expect. That’s always the problem with theories that exploit stereotypes—they’re titillating, sure, but also handy refuges for the intellectually lazy. The trick is not to harden and grow cold as we turn backward, as sure as Lot’s wife.

“Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that ‘Things should be described as simply as possible, but no simpler,’ ” reads the first sentence of Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence. “The same principle must be invoked in explaining Einstein himself.” The authors, clearly, have no fear of getting personal. Einstein, they seem to be saying. Need we say more? The man whose very name is a shorthand for genius was an Ashkenazi Jew.

The world’s proliferation of Einsteins—well, maybe not Einsteins exactly, but distinguished Jewish thinkers, particularly in math and the sciences—form the stark, quantifiable basis for Cochran and Harpending’s hypothesis. Though Jews make up a mere 0.25 percent of the world’s population and a mere 3 percent of the United States’, they account, according to their paper, for 27 percent of all American Nobel Prize winners, 25 percent of all ACM Turing Award winners for computer science, and 50 percent of the globe’s chess champions. (What the paper doesn’t say is that these numbers seem to be tallied for optimum Jewishness, counting as Jews those who have as few as one Jewish grandparent to claim; it also wrongly assumes these winners are all Ashkenazim. But still.) Cochran and Harpending also cite studies claiming that Ashkenazim have the highest IQ of any ethnic group for which there’s reliable data, perhaps as much as a full standard deviation above the general European average, which means, at the far end of the spectrum, that 23 per thousand Ashkenazim have an IQ over 140, as opposed to 4 per thousand Northern Europeans.

Reading these numbers, I was reminded of a story a friend once told me about a peer of his at Cambridge who wearily dismissed the intellect of another student with a five-word declaration: “Just your average Jewish genius.”

Most social scientists—and biological scientists, for that matter—would argue that a complex combination of culture, history, and religious tradition has been responsible for the steady, metronomic production of average Jewish geniuses. Cochran and Harpending make a different case.

Their reasoning is straightforward enough: If the gene mutations responsible for diseases in Ashkenazim didn’t confer some evolutionary selective advantage, they wouldn’t persist. Cochran and Harpending liken these defective genes to the genes in Africans that often deform hemoglobin. Carrying one copy of the gene, most research suggests, helps ward off malaria—surely an adaptive advantage. Two copies, however, cause sickle-cell anemia.

Cochran and Harpending reasoned the same must be true of the genes that cause illness among Ashkenazi Jews, particularly the four that cause mutations in the enzymes responsible for breaking down fats: Tay-Sachs, Niemann-Pick, Gaucher disease, and mucolipidosis type IV. Two copies cause devastating illness, but one, they speculate, mutely aids the carrier.

How? By enhancing intelligence. Without this extra edge, they hypothesize, the Ashkenazim would never have survived. The Jews “experienced unusual selective pressures that were likely to have favored increased intelligence,” they say. “Their jobs were cognitively demanding, since they were essentially restricted to entrepreneurial and managerial roles as financiers, estate managers, tax farmers, and merchants. These are jobs that people with an IQ below 100 essentially cannot do.”

“I have a stack of books, like four feet high, on all metabolic diseases,” Cochran tells me. “And the four sphingolipid diseases affecting Ashkenazi Jews”—the ones he and Harpending believe enhance intelligence—“are all in the same chapter. That’s like one in 100,000 odds. People could say it’s chance, I suppose—in the same way it’s chance that 27 percent of all of those guys go to Stockholm every year.”

There’s scant physical evidence for this assumption. But what the authors found was intriguing. Among the papers they unearthed were studies by Steven Walkley, a neuroscientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, that showed growth of additional dendrites in the tissues of humans and cats with Tay-Sachs and Niemann-Pick. They also cite a 1995 study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry that shows increased neural growth in the brains of rats with Gaucher disease. The authors decided to contact Ari Zimran, the head of the Gaucher Clinic at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. It turns out that 81 of his 255 working-age patients have jobs that require, by the author’s estimates, an IQ of at least 120. Twenty-three are engineers, and fourteen are scientists—a number that, if it were consistent with the Israeli workforce, should be just six.

Yet there are many who’d find a very different way of explaining the intelligence of these patients. They wouldn’t invoke their extra dendrites. They’d invoke their mothers.

To say that the Jews have a history of emphasizing scholarship is not just the fantasy of ethnic chauvinists and Woody Allen fans. To look at a single page of the Talmud is to understand this, with its main text at the center, its generations of rabbis arguing around the rim. The dialectic and critical reasoning are at its core.

Growing up, most children in Jewish households are at least vaguely aware of their intellectual aristocracy—who do you think was counting all those Nobel Prize winners? The Swedes?—and if it’s not the intellectuals they’re aware of, it’s the high-achieving Jews, the ones who killed on Dick Cavett, played lead guitar, helmed the Starship Enterprise. (The one season I attended Sunday school, one of my first assignments was to find the name of a Jewish celebrity; when I returned the following week with the name of Beverly Sills, rather than Gene Simmons, my teacher didn’t find it the least bit strange.) All minorities have their private halls of fame, of course, but it was a Jew, Adam Sandler, who took this obsessive curatorial tendency and set it to music. “David Lee Roth lights the menorah / So do James Caan, Kirk Douglas, and the late Dinah Shore-ah . . . ”

It’s staggering what an emphasis on scholarship, both secular and religious, combined with a history of relentless displacement will do. One could argue it’s a near-certain recipe for achievement. Just last month, Sherwin Nuland, author of How We Die, wrote a meticulous, almost pointillist essay for The New Republic explaining why Jewish doctors have been held in high esteem for centuries. (The title of the article: “My Son, the Doctor.”) He notes that physical healing has always been privileged by Jewish scripture, and therefore became the province of learned rabbis, the apotheosis of whom was Maimonides. If the Jews were expelled from a particular country, as they so often were, they could take their profession with them—medicine was divinely portable.

From there, Nuland draws on the work of John Efron, a historian at the University of California at Berkeley, pointing out that once universities opened their doors to Jews, much of the Jewish emphasis on scholarship shifted from the religious to the secular, partly as a result of their tremendous desire for social respectability. At the fin de siècle, for example, Jews made up a mere 1 percent of the German population, but they made up 50 percent of all the doctors in Berlin and 60 percent of all the doctors in Vienna. “It had to do with emerging from the ghetto,” says Efron, author of Medicine and the German Jews: A History. “There were enormous social pressures to succeed—part of the emancipation process was to show that Jews were good Europeans, good Austrians, and medicine was a universal, non-parochial science, where the barriers to entry were low but the prestige was enormously high. It’s the same pattern you’re seeing in the United States today, if you have a look at medical-school acceptances: There are much larger numbers of Asian and Indian students.” Numbers from the American Association of Medical Colleges bear this out: Today, 18 percent of all med students are Asian, as opposed to 6 percent just a dozen years ago.

“I have always believed that the smartest people in the world are Asians,” declares Ed Koch, former mayor of New York (and, let’s face it, a pretty smart Ashkenazi Jew). “If you look at the special schools in New York City, they have so many. I think Stuyvesant’s 40 percent Asian now, and Bronx Science is 50”—actually, 53 and 49 percent—“so this paper is something I question.”

Jews have long debated the origin and nature of intelligence. In Kaddish, his beautiful book of aphorisms and ruminations about the rite of mourning, Leon Wieseltier notes that Rabbi Akiva postulated in the second century that sons inherit not just wealth, beauty, and strength from their fathers, but wisdom. Centuries later, Maimonides came to the opposite conclusion: It’s “great exertion” that makes us who we are. To attribute it to anything in our blood would trivialize our own agency, our hard work, our humanity. Wieseltier can’t even countenance another point of view. “The important question is, even if there is an Ashkenazi gene, what does it explain and what does it not explain?” he asks, when I reach him by phone. “The idea that it explains intellectuality seems empirically and philosophically spurious. The world is riddled—riddled!—with dumb Ashkenazi Jews, so it’s empirically false, and it’s philosophically spurious because it flies in the face of human freedom and the belief in human freedom.”

He thinks. “We’re living in a new golden age of scientism—the idea that there are scientific answers to all human questions,” he says. “People are so rattled by the speed and complexity of their lives that they need rock-solid certainty. They cannot bear to live inconclusively. Religion provides one definitive answer; science provides another. The important thing for most people is to feel that the way they live is an inevitable outcome.”

“I probably have a lot to say about this,” he concludes, “because I’m an Ashkenazi. So I must be really smart.”

Harpending and Cochran are hardly the first scientists to suggest that the diseases of the Ashkenazim are the product of genetic selection. Until fairly recently, many geneticists believed these mutations may have helped protect Jews from tuberculosis, because the disease so frequently surfaced in ghettos, though no one has been able to show how these mutations protected Jews—or why neighboring non-Jewish populations didn’t develop the same immunity.

If geneticists are disinclined to believe a trait is the result of natural selection, they attribute it instead to something called genetic drift, a process by which a mutation, for some random reason, evolves in one population but not in another. The smaller the population, the more glaring this mutation will seem. Geographic isolation, for instance, can explain radical genetic differences—if two groups evolve in separate places with little intermingling, different mutations are bound to pop up and spread in each. Natural disasters are another explanation—a rock slide could kill off a species of purple petunias, say. Or—in the case of Jews—one of the founders of a small settlement has a lot of children, and these children have lots of children. What the founder doesn’t know is that he or she has a gene mutation, like the one for Tay-Sachs. It takes hold and spreads, like an epidemic. (Geneticists call this “the founder effect.”)

The problem with this theory, as Cochran and Harpending rather forcefully argue using mathematical models and a long disquisition about medieval Jewish economic history (starting from the expulsion of the Jews by King Dagobert of the Franks in 629), is that Tay-Sachs is just one of four sphingolipid diseases common to Jews, which seems like a rather unlikely coincidence. It suggests they all evolved for a reason, a similar reason. How could random mutations account for such a closely related cluster of ailments?

“That’s one of the ways this paper is actually strong,” says Sheila Rothman, a Columbia professor of public health who specializes in questions about genetics and group identity. “Geneticists don’t have a great grasp of Jewish history. They often tend to cite each other. Sometimes they cite themselves.”

It’s not just social scientists who concede this part of the paper is strong. So, too, do many mainstream geneticists, who’ve never been entirely comfortable with the theory of genetic drift to explain so many interrelated diseases among Jews.

“If these genes were shuffling randomly,” says Gregory Pastores, director of the neurogenetics unit at NYU, “then why is it that we see the clustering of four diseases in Jews—Gaucher, Niemann-Pick, mucolipidosis type IV, and Tay-Sachs—when the genes are in different chromosomes entirely? They’re not even next to one another.”

But this doesn’t mean that Pastores buys the message of the paper, and neither do most of his colleagues. Ostrer, from NYU, points out what he believes is a major flaw: The authors assume Jews are selected for sphingolipid diseases, and not for some other gene that may happen to be passed along with these diseases. “Blocks of the genome are inherited together,” he explains. “They’re saying heterozygotes carrying these sphingolipid mutations are smarter. Fine. But who’s to say it’s that gene and not the gene next door? Or down the street?”

Furthermore, the authors’ hypothesis that what’s being selected for is intelligence is a sexy guess, but it’s based on almost nothing concrete—just a handful of smart Gaucher patients, some extra dendrites in cats, and a rat. “Jews have been accused of being frugal, cheap, aggressive,” says Neil Risch. “There’s a clear survival advantage to those traits too. Why not pick on those?”

Risch is a big believer in genetic drift. He thinks the large number of mutations in Jews is random, coincidental, and has no causal relationship with the number of children they’ve had or why they’ve survived. He points out Ashkenazim are prone to other illnesses besides lysosomal storage diseases (such as clotting disorders and breast cancer). Anyway, what’s so unique about Jews? Finns are prone to at least twenty diseases, as are French Canadians, Costa Ricans, Louisiana Acadians, the Amish, and European Gypsies. The Gypsies have interrelated diseases too, just like the Jews have interrelated sphingolipid disorders.

Risch is underwhelmed. “This is like saying, ‘Because Europeans have a high rate of cystic fibrosis, hemochromatosis, and Crohn’s disease, the genes for those disorders must cause great ability to play tennis,’ ” he says. “And then the authors would come up with some elaborate theory about how those particular mutations are involved in hand-eye coordination, which allows for better retrieval of volleys.”

Yet here’s the irony: During the past year, the taboos surrounding the genetics of race and ethnicity have been significantly eroded, in no small part because of the efforts of Risch. A population geneticist at the University of California at San Francisco, a fiercely independent thinker, a fun gossip, and a liberal Jew, he published a paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics in February that rather boldly claimed that the races we claimed to be almost always corresponded with our continents of ancestry. It seemed to represent the consensus view that’s slowly emerging among geneticists. Many have now stopped quarreling with the same vigor about whether race is or is not a genetic fact.

“I am not sure that most geneticists have agreed to ‘races’ per se,” says Ostrer. “But continental groups or clusters, yes.” To deny these clusters, he says, would be folly; it tells us to willfully ignore what all of us can see—that people look different all over the world. He quotes me a line from Jews: A Study in Race and Environment, written by his NYU predecessor, Maurice Fishberg: “One can pick out a Jew from among a thousand non-Jews without difficulty.” Ostrer is now writing a book himself, about genetics and Jewish history. He has decided to call the first chapter “Looking Jewish.”

“There’s no doubt their paper is polemical,” says David Goldstein, director of the Center for Population Genomics and Pharmacogenetics at Duke University. “But just because it’s polemical doesn’t mean I’d be dismissive of everything they had to say. I think their paper’s interesting.”

Goldstein, in fact, seems to rather appreciate its Zeitgeist. “Until recently, most human geneticists almost . . . disalloweddiscussion about genetic differences among racial and ethnic groups,” he says. “Really. So many awful things had been done with genetic research in this last century that they developed a policy of ‘Just say no.’ But there’s actually a lot of difference between groups, when you consider there are 10 million polymorphic sites on the genome. So it’s not scientifically sound to rule out the possibility of differences corresponding to our geographic and ethnic heritages. It overlooks the basic point: The genome is just a huge place.”

“If I had to choose between Jewish genes and Jewish mothers,” Goldstein hastens to add, “I’d choose Jewish mothers.” (He has both.) “But I would like us to carry out research in a way that doesn’t imply that we have anything to be afraid of. That’s what upsets me about the way this work has been approached in the past.”

Using the notion of race, for example, has proved highly useful in medicine. Today, if you’re an ambitious young geneticist, the world’s awash in money to study racial difference and disease. It’s even encouraged by statute, thanks to the Minority Health Disparities Act of 2000. This summer, the National Institutes of Health announced it was exploring links between African-Americans and elevated rates of prostate cancer; this spring, NitroMed introduced BiDil to reduce heart disease in African-Americans.

“Historically, in medicine, white males have been the subjects of study,” says Risch. “But you can’t always apply to women and minorities [lessons] from them. You need to be inclusive. So while I’m always afraid people will misuse information about genetic differences, this is a positive development.”

Just because pharmaceutical companies are developing race-specific drugs, however, doesn’t mean race is the most useful way to parse genetic differences. The fact remains that there’s more diversity within racial groups than between them. What does “black” mean when discussing the 11,700,000-square-mile expanse of Africa? There are Pygmies and Nigerians, Zulus and Ethiopians. What, precisely, is a Mexican? Or—for that matter—a Semite?

“BiDil is more effective for some, rather than all, African-American hypertensives,” says Ostrer. “Race, in this context, should always be used as an interim measure to see us through a period of ignorance,” agrees Goldstein. “Once we know the underlying genetic or environmental factors that influence individual responses, you consider those directly and ignore race.”

Talk to most geneticists, and they’ll say that it’s a combination of genetics and environment that inevitably makes us who we are—attempts to link specific behaviors, aptitudes, and weaknesses to genes and genes alone almost always come up short. Lynn Jorde, professor of genetics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, gives but one example: For a while, it was assumed that a particular variant of monoamine oxidase caused antisocial behavior. Then several thousand children in New Zealand with this variant were followed for a period of more than twenty years. Researchers found that their subjects misbehaved only if they’d been abused as children—if they hadn’t, there was none. “We’ll probably find that there are genes that influence behavior,” says Jorde. “But I’m quite certain we won’t find genes that determine behavior.”

Risch noted something similar in Nature Genetics last year: Until recently, a famous study seemed to suggest that Asian children were more likely than Europeans to have absolute pitch. Then along came another study, this time showing that absolute pitch is most likely to manifest itself only if children take music lessons before the age of 6. No one in the first study had bothered to ask whether their Asian subjects were exposed earlier to music than their European counterparts.

And that’s just absolute pitch, easily measurable. Intelligence isn’t even possible to define, except maybe in the sense that Justice Potter Stewart famously said of porn: He knew it when he saw it. Intelligence is almost impossible to model in animals. How do you create a brainy Jewish mouse? (Replicate Michael Eisner?) There’s book-smart and street-smart; numbers-smart and letters-smart. Matisse dreamed in paint, and Nabokov did magic tricks with words, but could either of them do multivariable calculus? How about calculate the tip on a bar bill?

“The problem is with phenotype,” says David Rothman, a Columbia historian (and Sheila’s husband). “Take schizophrenia. There’s four kinds listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Or take alcoholism. The phenotypes are also varied—there’s weekend bingers, hard drinkers, occasional bingers. Depression comes in many phenotypes. I don’t know where to begin with shyness. So intelligence? I’m baffled.”

“More important,” he adds, “I don’t know where they get the idea that mercantile life and high IQs go together. I wouldn’t mind IQ-testing the bulls of Wall Street to find this out.”

In the 1860s, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and father of eugenics, argued that Protestants were smarter than Catholics because they let their smart offspring reproduce, rather than shipping them off to monasteries. The idea didn’t hold up too well over time. In the early part of the twentieth century, the mathematician Norbert Wiener suggested Jews were smarter because the daughters of wealthy Jewish men were married off to scholarly rabbis, who went on to have more children. Then Lewis S. Feuer, a sociologist, came along and showed that wealthy Jews married other wealthy Jews. “These were Fiddler on the Roof fantasies, a myth created by people in New York who romanticized the shtetl,” says Sander Gilman. “The shtetls were horrible places. Do you think the man who wrote Tevye’s story did it from a crummy little shtetl? No! He was sitting in the south of France on the Riviera. He’s no fool.”

“This study is putting forward one of these arguments you hear regularly but with new window dressing,” Gilman says. “Today, that dressing is genetics. A hundred years ago, it was vitamins—as soon as they were discovered, everything was explained by a vitamin deficiency. Cancer. Schizophrenia. Hair loss.” He pauses. “Okay, not hair loss. I made that up. But you see my point.”

So who, exactly, are these people who’ve caused such a fuss? Harpending is certainly the more conventional of the two: a tenured professor, a respected population geneticist, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, an organization to which few slouches are accidentally admitted. When I speak to him on the phone, he sounds good-humored, cheerfully indifferent to academic niceties, and slightly bored. “I wouldn’t think of letting a grad student work on this,” he says. “I’m very senior. I don’t live off grants. If I were running a lab, dependent on funding from the NIH, this would be the kiss of death.”

What do his colleagues think of his work?

“They think it’s probably right,” he says. “But in public, their only reaction is a primate fear grimace.”

But is that really the case? I ask Jorde what his colleagues in the Utah genetics lab thought of Harpending’s study. He answers with extreme tact. “Most of us work on very different kinds of things,” he says. “It’s really peripheral to our kinds of interests.”

Cochran, however, is another matter. He’s a bit of a wild card, a fellow who has developed a knack for pushing unorthodox notions under the aegis of more mainstream intellectual patrons. In the late nineties, he teamed up with a biologist at Amherst, Paul Ewald, to explore the possibility that many of the diseases we consider intractable are mere germs, which ultimately made them the subjects of a cover story in The Atlantic Monthly in 1999. (Their idea is less crazy than one might think; for years, surgeons removed stomachs to get rid of ulcers, only to discover they were caused by . . . a germ.)

Cochran’s latest kick, though, is population genetics. Although Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence is written with a modicum of academic restraint, his independent essays, posted online, are much more freewheeling, and they betray a much more unsettling agenda: “[I]f this is what I think it is,” he writes, in an essay called “Overclocking,” the term programmers use to describe supercharging a computer’s brain capacity by weakening it, “all these Ashkenazi neurological diseases are hints of ways in which one could supercharge intelligence . . . so it seems likely that we could—if we wanted to—develop pharmaceutical agents that had similar effects.”

To Cochran, in other words, Jews are the smart mice of history.

The Times, The Economist, and every other media outlet somehow missed this when they first reported that Cochran and Harpending’s paper had been accepted for publication. Or at least they chose not to report it. Nor did they choose to report another interesting fact: The Journal of Biosocial Science, though part of a family of Cambridge University Press publications, went by the name The Eugenics Review until 1968.

“This guy is not some proto-Zionist,” says David Rothman. It was Rothman’s researcher, Nate Drummond, who shrewdly unearthed this information about Cochran. “What’s driving him, as you read this, is bioengineering, not philo-Semitism.”

So the plot thickens. At one point, I ask Cochran if he’s serious about studying Jews in order to create “pharmaceutical agents” for mankind’s general intellectual enhancement. Has he thought about taking this idea to pharmaceutical companies?

“I’ve thought about it halfway seriously,” he says, hesitating a bit. “I’m probably not supposed to say. Because let’s say it happens. Come patent time, I’ll have told people.”

So. Is this study good for the Jews? I talk to Abe Foxman, legendary head of the Anti-Defamation League, whose life’s mission is the pristine upkeep of the Jewish reputation. His answer surprises me. “If it’s a genetic condition,” he says, “it’s not for us to embrace or reject. It is what it is, and that’s the way the genetic cookie crumbles.” I detect a note of pride in his voice.

Of course, I recognize that tone. I’ve heard it in my own voice from time to time. When the site existed, I used to love poking around Jewhoo, a catalogue of prominent Jews in Western life. Then, in the middle of a Google search one day, I stumbled across jewwatch.com and discovered that under one if its many rubrics—Jewish Controlled Entertainment—was a nearly identical list.

Freud and Marx, Einstein and Bohr, Mendelssohn and Mahler. The brothers Gershwin. The brothers Marx. Woody Allen. Bob Dylan. Franz Kafka. Claude Lévi-Strauss. Bobby Fischer. Jews may take tremendous pride in their aristocracy, but we fetishize it at our own peril; to suggest that we’re chosen, rather than that we make our own choices, curdles quickly into a useful argument for anti-Semites who’d love to claim that the objects of their derision are immutable vermin. It can’t be an accident that the most aggressive debunkers of Jewish essentialism, including the participants in this story, are generally Jews themselves. The arguments come in handy when the ugly stuff is trotted out, too.

Personally, I’m always struck by how many Jews confess to a certain ambivalence about the volume and visibility of their accomplishments, as if there were something slightly vulgar or shameful about them. The friend who introduced me to Jewhoo confided that a friend of his, also Jewish, kept a list of Jews he wished were not. I realized I kept the same mental list. (Andy Fastow, the crook from Enron, is currently No. 1.)

A few years ago, I myself lunged for the easy joke when a non-Jewish friend asked what I did the summer I attended—for one miserable season only, I’d like to stress—Jewish summer camp. Oh, I told him. More or less what you’d expect. Banking lessons rather than canoeing, moot court rather than color wars. Recently, I also found myself quoting—with relish—Sarah Silverman’s reaction to being taken to task by a watchdog group for using the word chink in her stand-up: “As a Jew, I’m really, really nervous we’re losing control of the media.” Perhaps one of the most subtle, insidious things about Cochran and Harpending’s study is how it plays off a bias privately held by many Jews themselves—that the Ashkenazim are in fact intellectual superiors, and the Sephardim, originally from the Iberian Peninsula, are the handlers, the shylocks, the merchants of 47th Street.

Q: How do you tell the difference between an Ashkenazi and a Sephardi?

A: Show him a chessboard. This, even though Maimonides, arguably the most influential Jewish thinker to ever live, was a Sephardi, and the Sephardim have a perfectly dazzling intellectual history of their own. From the eighth to the eleventh centuries, Spanish Jews served in the courts, served as doctors to the caliphs, and translated all manner of texts, converting Greek and Hebrew into Arabic, and Arabic into Romance languages.

Yet in America, that sense of otherness, which for so long has served as a kind of incentive to strive and achieve, may be dissipating. “I’m no demographer, but I think what’s happened in the U.S. is the normalization of the Jew,” says Leon Botstein, who, as the president of Bard College, has seen all sorts of students cross his field of vision. “They’ve become as complacent and culturally undistinguished as the average, suburban, white middle-class American.”

And maybe that’s the price we pay for our current freedoms. Not, as Seinfeld or Larry David might say, that there’s anything wrong with that.

from the New York Times, 2005-Jun-21, by Benedict Carey:

Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes

Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks left as an adult, unless derailed by some powerful life experience. One reared on tax protests and a hatred of Kennedys usually lists to the right.

But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes.

Environmental influences like upbringing, the study suggests, play a more central role in party affiliation as a Democrat or Republican, much as they do in affiliation with a sports team.

The report, which appears in the current issue of The American Political Science Review, the profession's premier journal, uses genetics to help answer several open questions in political science.

They include why some people defect from the party in which they were raised and why some political campaigns, like the 2004 presidential election, turn into verbal blood sport, though polls find little disparity in most Americans' views on specific issues like gun control and affirmative action.

The study is the first on genetics to appear in the journal. "I thought here's something new and different by respected political scholars that many political scientists never saw before in their lives," said Dr. Lee Sigelman, editor of the journal and a professor of political science at George Washington University.

Dr. Sigelman said that in many fields the findings "would create nothing more than a large yawn," but that "in ours, maybe people will storm the barricades."

Geneticists who study behavior and personality have known for 30 years that genes play a large role in people's instinctive emotional responses to certain issues, their social temperament.

It is not that opinions on specific issues are written into a person's DNA. Rather, genes prime people to respond cautiously or openly to the mores of a social group.

Only recently have researchers begun to examine how these predispositions, in combination with childhood and later life experiences, shape political behavior.

Dr. Lindon J. Eaves, a professor of human genetics and psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the new research did not add much to this. Dr. Eaves was not involved in the study but allowed the researchers to analyze data from a study of twins that he is leading.

Still, he said the findings were plausible, "and the real significance here is that this paper brings genetics to the attention to a whole new field and gives it a new way of thinking about social, cultural and political questions."

In the study, three political scientists - Dr. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska, Dr. John R. Alford of Rice University and Dr. Carolyn L. Funk of Virginia Commonwealth - combed survey data from two large continuing studies including more than 8,000 sets of twins.

From an extensive battery of surveys on personality traits, religious beliefs and other psychological factors, the researchers selected 28 questions most relevant to political behavior. The questions asked people "to please indicate whether or not you agree with each topic," or are uncertain on issues like property taxes, capitalism, unions and X-rated movies. Most of the twins had a mixture of conservative and progressive views. But over all, they leaned slightly one way or the other.

The researchers then compared dizygotic or fraternal twins, who, like any biological siblings, share 50 percent of their genes, with monozygotic, or identical, twins, who share 100 percent of their genes.

Calculating how often identical twins agree on an issue and subtracting the rate at which fraternal twins agree on the same item provides a rough measure of genes' influence on that attitude. A shared family environment for twins reared together is assumed.

On school prayer, for example, the identical twins' opinions correlated at a rate of 0.66, a measure of how often they agreed. The correlation rate for fraternal twins was 0.46. This translated into a 41 percent contribution from inheritance.

As found in previous studies, attitudes about issues like school prayer, property taxes and the draft were among the most influenced by inheritance, the researchers found. Others like modern art and divorce were less so. And in the twins' overall score, derived from 28 questions, genes accounted for 53 percent of the differences.

But after correcting for the tendency of politically like-minded men and women to marry each other, the researchers also found that the twins' self-identification as Republican or Democrat was far more dependent on environmental factors like upbringing and life experience than was their social orientation, which the researchers call ideology. Inheritance accounted for 14 percent of the difference in party, the researchers found.

"We are measuring two separate things here, ideology and party affiliation," Dr. Hibbing, the senior author, said.

He added that his research team found the large difference in heritability between the two "very hard to believe," but that it held up.

The implications of this difference may be far-reaching, the authors argue. For years, political scientists tried in vain to learn how family dynamics like closeness between parents and children or the importance of politics in a household influenced political ideology. But the study suggests that an inherited social orientation may overwhelm the more subtle effects of family dynamics.

A mismatch between an inherited social orientation and a given party may also explain why some people defect from a party. Many people who are genetically conservative may be brought up as Democrats, and some who are genetically more progressive may be raised as Republicans, the researchers say.

In tracking attitudes over the years, geneticists have found that social attitudes tend to stabilize in the late teens and early 20's, when young people begin to fend for themselves.

Some "mismatched" people remain loyal to their family's political party. But circumstances can override inherited bent. The draft may look like a good idea until your number is up. The death penalty may seem barbaric until a loved one is murdered.

Other people whose social orientations are out of line with their given parties may feel a discomfort that can turn them into opponents of their former party, Dr. Alford said.

"Zell Miller would be a good example of this," Dr. Alford said, referring to the former Democratic governor and senator from Georgia who gave an impassioned speech at the Republican National Convention last year against the Democrats' nominee, John Kerry.

Support for Democrats among white men has been eroding for years in the South, Dr. Alford said, and Mr. Miller is remarkable for remaining nominally a Democrat despite his divergence from the party line on many issues.

Reached by telephone, Mr. Miller said he did not see it quite that way. He said that his views had not changed much since his days as a marine, but that the Democratic Party had moved.

"And I'm not talking about inch by inch, like a glacier," said Mr. Miller, who makes the case in a new book, "A Deficit of Decency." "I'm saying the thing got up and flew away."

The idea that certain social issues produce immediate unthinking reactions comes through in other political research as well. In several recent studies, Dr. Milton Lodge of the State University of New York at Stony Brook has shown that certain names and political concepts - "taxes" or "Clinton," for example - produce almost instantaneous positive or negative reactions.

These intensely charged political reflexes are shaped partly by inheritance, Dr. Lodge said.

It may be the clash of visceral, genetically primed social orientations that gives political debate its current malice and fire, the study suggests.

Although the two broad genetic types, more conservative and more progressive, may find some common ground on specific issues, they represent fundamental differences that go deeper than many people assume, the new research suggests.

"When people talk about the political debate becoming increasingly ugly, they often blame talk radio or the people doing the debating, but they've got it backward," Dr. Alford said. "These genetically predisposed ideologies are polarized, and that's what makes the debate so nasty.

"You see it in people's eyes when they talk politics. You can hear it their voices. After about the third response, we all start sounding like talk radio on some issues."

The researchers are not optimistic about the future of bipartisan cooperation or national unity. Because men and women tend to seek mates with a similar ideology, they say, the two gene pools are becoming, if anything, more concentrated, not less.

from LM Magazine 1997-Jul/Aug, by Dr Stuart Derbyshire:

Do genes influence intelligence? Dr Stuart Derbyshire talked to top researcher Professor Robert Plomin about his search for genes which might influence variations in IQ.

The sense we were born with?

These are strange times for those researching into the mysteries of genetics. Genetic research now offers dazzling breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of diseases such as cancer, Aids and malaria. Yet at the same time, genetics researchers such as Robert Plomin of South London's Institute of Psychiatry are often treated more like neo-Nazis than potential Nobel Prize winners because they are interested in genetic influences upon human behaviour. Most controversial is Plomin's search for genes which might influence variations in intelligence.

David King, editor of GenEthics News, considers Plomin's research to be a 'very dangerous' step on the road towards 'downright eugenics'. King has organised a Campaign for Real Intelligence to try to prevent Plomin receiving further funding from the Medical Research Council. Mainstream clinical geneticists and ethicists are also concerned about Plomin's work on IQ. Two years ago Peter Harper, a leading British clinical geneticist, asked 'whether the research itself on genetic markers and IQ can be considered ethical' and purposively distanced himself from Plomin's work. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has set up a working party to consider the ethical, social and legal implications of research into the genetics of mental disorders. The wider implications are clear: if the working party decides that aspects of genetic research on mental disorders are ethically questionable, which they almost certainly will, then research into the normal variation in IQ will be considered even more problematic, as it cannot be presented as a medical investigation of a diseased state.

Significantly, unlike in the 1970s, critics of Plomin's work no longer dispute the scientific data. Instead they say that the research is 'unethical'. This is a dramatic shift in attitudes towards scientific research. Rather than opposing specific applications of knowledge, the argument is being put that it is wrong to do the work to gain the knowledge in the first place. At base the argument says we should be afraid to find the truth. Critics of contemporary genes and behaviour research often claim that the work carries with it anti-humanist assumptions - that we are governed by our genes - and indeed some of it does. They also, quite rightly in some cases, point to possible harmful applications. But the call for an 'ethical' limit on research is equally problematic, for it suggests that we can neither handle the truth nor foster useful applications of the knowledge while preventing un-toward ones.

Rather than let this kind of ethical angst guide attitudes to research into genes and IQ, two questions should be asked. What does science tell us about the real relationships at work? And what constructive, beneficial use could be made of any findings?

The starting point for investigation is to grasp that all knowledge is cultural and social, not natural or genetic, in origin. Without the accumulated knowledge of society, and the socialisation process undergone by each member of society after birth, there would be no such thing as purposive thinking and intelligence. Connected to this, average intelligence is rising generation by generation (a process hidden by the fact that the average IQ is always set at 100). In addition, social and educational differences among children do have an impact on their educational abilities. A study in 1989 demonstrated that children born of lower class parents but adopted into middle class homes scored an average of 12 IQ points higher than those adopted into lower class homes (C Capron and M Duyme, 'Assessment of effects of socio-economic status on IQ in a full cross-fostering study', Nature, 1989, 340: 552-554).

And yet, for all that we know intelligence is not 'natural', there is now a wealth of evidence to show that those researching into genetic influences on intelligence are on to something. While intelligence itself is not a simple product of the genes, at any moment in time the evidence is that genetic factors do impact upon individual variations within the normal range of intelligence.

Over the past 20 years a lot of research has been published on the degree of similarity between family members for general cognitive ability, usually summarised under the rubric of 'IQ'. The most powerful evidence comes from the study of identical or 'monozygotic' (MZ) twins separated at an early age. The degree of similarity between the adult twins is attributed to their shared genetic inheritance, and the degree of difference is attributed to their different environment and/or upbringing. This design is not perfect. Any similarity in the twins' upbringing incidental to their genetic inheritance, which results in similar performance, can be misattributed to genetic influence. This problem is particularly acute for MZ twins because they are always the same sex and age and always look very similar.

But these problems in experiment design can be overcome. One way is to compare the MZ twins with a group of fraternal or 'dizygotic' (DZ) twins. DZ twins only share an average of 50 per cent of their genetic inheritance and should, on average, only be half as alike as the MZ twins. Any deviation from this pattern is indicative of effects which are non-genetic in origin. So a simple way to assess genetic influence over any given trait is to subtract the measured similarity in DZ twins reared apart from the measured similarity in MZ twins reared apart and multiply by two. More powerful and sophisticated methods can further refine the measurements: additional data can be taken from parents; other siblings and adopted siblings can be used as controls to eliminate the effects of upbringing.

The table summarises the results of four studies examining the similarity between twins on a variety of measures of cognitive ability. Combined, the studies involved more than 10 000 twin pairs. The analysis outlined above suggests that 48 per cent of the observed variability in cognitive performance is associated with genetic factors.

Reviewing the evidence from adoption studies in the journal Science, Plomin took a cautious view: 'The error surrounding [an estimate of 50 per cent heritability] may be as high as 20 per cent, so we can only say with confidence that the heritability of IQ scores is between 30 and 70 per cent. Nonetheless, even if the heritability of IQ scores is at the bottom of this range, it is a remarkable finding. To account for 30 per cent of the variance of anything as complex as IQ scores is a remarkable achievement.' (Science, 1990, 248: 183-188). Plomin told me that, when he began this work eight years ago, the evidence for a genetic influence over intelligence was 'better than the evidence for anything else, better than the evidence of heritability for height or schizophrenia'.

The quantitative evidence for a genetic effect on variation in intelligence was enough to convince Plomin to set about trying to find the genes concerned. Plomin's approach is to take a sample of subjects representing the top and bottom five per cent of the IQ distribution and then to examine the portion of the subjects' DNA most likely to be involved in neural functioning. Differences between the two groups then become candidate genes for further investigation.

So this is the scientific story so far: family studies indicate that genes play a role in variation in intelligence, but we do not as yet know which genes, or how many, are involved. Finding these genes will immediately raise the question of what society or individuals should do with the knowledge. My view is that, far from being afraid to find the truth in this area, society should be prepared to act upon it, even though economic, educational and other forms of inequality are the biggest barrier to most people realising their potential. For if genes do account for about 50 per cent of the variability in IQ scores, and if we believe that general cognitive ability is useful in life, then manipulating genes or their effects to increase IQ should be investigated.

Plomin agrees that in principle this is possible, but points to practical difficulties and emphasises his aim of 'preventing IQ from being lowered rather than being heightened'. He does not like the idea of prenatal selection 'allowing yuppie parents to select their kids' and advises any would-be parents: 'if you want bright kids marry a bright person.' Plomin has the more modest aim of investigating how genes may interact with environment to impact upon IQ. He does not rule out the possibility of a pharmacological intervention, but thinks it is unlikely before we understand how genes work at the biochemical level, and this is 'still not understood even for Huntington's disease' where a single gene causes all the problems. 'To understand intelligence', Plomin told me, 'we will need to detect many genes, each of which accounts for less than one per cent of the variability'. Current techniques can only detect gene effects of five per cent or more.

Plomin's caveats are well made. But he is being a little naive. It seems clear that, in time, it will be possible to use the current research to mount a pharmacological intervention if we choose to. Unless scientists like Plomin are prepared to face up to this, and defend it if they think it is in principle a good idea, they will find it hard to win support for their work.

Plomin is rightly excited about the work: 'I could have chosen to study height but it is not interesting. In terms of societal importance you couldn't get better than intelligence, [and] it's really happening, there is a real change of tide.' He would like to believe that the ethical angst is a storm in a teacup produced by 'incredibly condescending' reporters who see themselves as 'protecting the public' against genetic determinism. He told me that he is trying to organise an epidemiological study to determine what people really think about genes and behaviour research. I hope it works out as I am sure the report will be interesting, but I doubt it will reveal everything in the garden to be as rosy as Plomin seems to expect. There is general unease today with all things scientific, and there is particular hostility towards aspects of genetic research.

'Sometimes', Plomin told me, 'I want to put my head down and do my work'. This is understandable. Plomin's work has the potential for greatly benefiting humanity, yet he is denounced as irresponsible for looking at the issue. Who would not get fed up and want to get away from the fuss? But the quiet life is not an option: scientists cannot afford to retreat in the face of professional or public hostility. Only through open dialogue and a public defence of this kind of work will any of us be able to deal with our critics. This is more than an exercise in assuaging public concern - it is a struggle for integrity and survival.

---

Study	Monozygotic (identical) twins reared apart		Dizygotic (non-identical) twins reared apart
Plomin et al, Behaviour Genetics, 1994, 24: 207-215		.84		.50
Bouchard et al, Science, 1990, 250: 223-228.		.72		­
Pedersen et al, Behaviour Genetics, 1985, 15: 407-419		­		.52
Bouchard and McGue, Science, 1981, 12: 1055-1059		.78		­

The table shows the results of four studies examining the inheritance of 'IQ' as measured by a battery of cognitive tests.

Zero represents no relationship between the two twins' scores; 1 represents exact concordance between the scores

from The Telegraph, 2000-Apr-7, by Roger Highfield, Science Editor:

Why science may bring curse of immortality

BETTER treatment of disease could lead to "generational cleansing" as people live longer, an ethical expert warns today.

The elderly could be condemned to death by suicide or euthanasia after an allotted lifespan as medical advances raise the maximum age beyond 120, according to Dr John Harris, professor of bioethics at Manchester University. Prof Harris said a side-effect of research to treat the diseases of old age, such as dementia, cancer and arthritis, could be to extend the maximum age to immortality.

He writes in the journal Science: "New research now allows a glimpse into a world in which ageing - and even death - may no longer be inevitable." The ability to grow replacement cells and tissues by therapeutic cloning could aid the process. This "creeping longevity" would have profound implications for what we mean by the sanctity of human life, a debate that has already started with technologies such as in-vitro fertilisation.

The benefits of extended life expectancy would mostly be felt in technologically advanced societies. There were many reasons why society would not want one everlasting generation, competing with the young for jobs, space and other resources. They included the desire to procreate, the pleasures of children and advantages of new people and new ideas.

But this could lead to a future in which people might be driven to a form of "generational cleansing", said Prof Harris, who is also a member of the Government's Human Genetics Commission. Society would have to make compromises, for instance by deciding that when individuals have had "a fair innings" they must die, either by suicide, euthanasia or even by reactivating the ageing process.

This would be difficult to envisage. He said: "How could a society resolve deliberately to curtail healthy life while maintaining a commitment to sanctity of life? The contemplation of making sure that people who wish to go on living cannot do so is terrible indeed." The consequence could be a society where people are offered the chance of a long life, if they have no children, or where people who reproduce might be required to forfeit their right to medical care.

He said: "However, reproductive liberty is a powerful right protected by international conventions." He said it was unlikely that we could stop the progression to longer lifespans and even immortality. "We should start thinking now about how we can live decently and creatively with the prospect of such lives."

Previous work has shown that even if cancer, heart disease and other life-threatening illnesses are cured, average expectancy is unlikely to exceed 85. However, work in a range of species has raised the possibility that genetic engineering could extend the lifespan by reducing the ageing rate.

from Scientific American, 1999-Dec, by Marguerite Holloway, from http://www.sciam.com/1999/1299issue/1299infocus.html:

THE ABORTED CRIME WAVE?
A controversial article links the recent drop in crime to the legalization of abortion two decades ago

Since the early 1990s crime has fallen annually in the U.S., last year by about 7 percent. Many explanations have been put forward for this drop: more police walk the beat, more people are in prison, the economy has improved, crack use has fallen, alarms and guards are now widespread. The emphasis given to any one of these rationales varies, of course, according to philosophical bent or political expediency. In New York City, for instance, plummeting crime has been attributed to improved policing. Yet the decline exists even in cities that have not altered their approach, such as Los Angeles.

The above explanations are unsatisfactory to many researchers, among them two economists who have studied crime. Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago and John J. Donohue III, currently at Yale University, have proffered an alternative reason: the legalization of abortion in 1973 reduced the number of unwanted children--that is, children more likely to become criminals. In 1992, the first year crime began to fall, the first set of children born after 1973 turned 18. Because most crimes are committed by young adult males between the ages of 18 and 24, Levitt and Donohue argue that the absence of millions of unwanted children led to fewer crimes being done by that age group. In total, the researchers maintain, the advent of legal abortion may be responsible for up to 50 percent of the drop in crime.

Their hypothesis, presented in the as yet unpublished paper "Legalized Abortion and Crime," has triggered everything from admiration for its innovative thinking to outrage for its implications. Groups on both sides of the abortion divide remain wary: some right-to-life representatives describe the findings as strange, while pro-choice groups worry that the conclusions will make people view abortion as a vehicle for social cleansing. The response has shocked both academics. The work "is not proscriptive, but descriptive," Levitt maintains. "Neither of us has an agenda with regard to abortion."

Some economists, for their part, want questions answered about certain aspects of the methodology--and they want more evidence. "Most interesting is that they put forth an alternative explanation that is conceivably possible," says Phillip B. Levine, an economist at Wellesley College. "In terms of the evidence, I think it is somewhat suggestive. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is conclusive." Levine also points out that although the paper surprised the public, it actually follows logically from previous work in this area.

Indeed, Levitt and Donohue are not the first to connect crime and abortion. As they note in their paper, a former Minneapolis police chief made the same suggestion several years ago. But they are the first to examine data to determine whether there could be a correlation. They looked at how crime rates differed for states that legalized abortion before the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade: New York, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. In those states, crime began to drop a few years before it did in the rest of the country, and states with higher abortion rates have had steeper drops in crime. Fewer unwanted children, the two conclude, ultimately means fewer crimes.

Image: Sarah L. Donelson CRIME RATES dropped after 1991, just when children born after Roe v. Wade would be reaching 18.

The idea that unwantedness could adversely affect children is also not new. Levine and several colleagues explored the economic and social ramifications for children of the legalization of abortion in a paper published earlier this year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. They estimated that children who were aborted would have been from "40 to 60 percent more likely to live in a single-parent family, to live in poverty, to receive welfare, and to die as an infant."

Real-world evidence also links unwantedness to some poor outcomes for children. A 1995 Institute of Medicine report, The Best Intentions: Unintended Pregnancy and the Well-Being of Children and Families, reviewed studies on this topic, concluding that women who did not mean to get pregnant were more likely to expose their fetus to harmful substances and that these children were at higher risk for low birth weight and abuse.

And a few long-term studies have found an association between unwantedness and criminality. Levitt and Donohue cite a handful of European studies that have followed for several decades children born to women who were denied abortions they had requested--repeatedly, in some cases. These studies did find that unwanted children had somewhat higher rates of criminality and psychiatric troubles. "It is correct that there is more evidence of difficult behavior and criminal behavior," says Henry P. David, co-author of an ongoing 38-year study of unwanted kids in Prague and an editor of the 1988 review Born Unwanted: Developmental Effects of Denied Abortion. "But the numbers are small; it would be difficult to say that they became criminals because of unwantedness. Certainly that was a factor, but we don't know how much."

The "how much" seems the crux of the matter for some economists. Theodore J. Joyce of Baruch College argues that when Levitt and Donohue factor in regional variability, the strength of their correlation vanishes. In other words, one of their own charts seems to suggest that some underlying--and unspecified--differences ("omitted variables," as they write) between the regions explain the drop in crime, not the abortion rate, he says.

In addition, Joyce and other scholars note that relying on abortion occurrence data is problematic. Levitt and Donohue use figures for the number of abortions performed in a state--which do not specify whether the woman came from out of state. When Joyce recently reviewed estimates for abortions by state of origin that were made in the early 1970s by the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York City, he says he found that 30 percent of New York's abortions were performed on women from elsewhere. Such dramatic interstate movement was not accounted for in Levitt and Donohue's paper, Joyce states, and it suggests that their correlations could be off-kilter. "To say that legalization has some kind of effect is certainly plausible," he concludes. "But I think it should be questioned because the magnitude of the finding is so large: 50 percent seems way too large."

Despite these concerns, scholars generally agree that Levitt and Donohue are asking a reasonable question. And if the two are right, the association should show up in other realms as well: teenage pregnancy should be dropping, as should adolescent and young adult suicide, unemployment, and high school dropout rates, and education levels should be rising.

Levitt says that the 2000 census will allow researchers to investigate some of those other correlates but that for now he and Donohue are focusing on teen pregnancy. At first glance, at least, their expectation seems to be holding up. A 1998 article in Pediatrics notes that teen pregnancy has been declining steadily this decade--a total of 13 percent between 1991 and 1995--and the extent of the decline varies enormously by state and ethnicity.

In addition, teenage and young adult behavior is changing on many fronts. In 1994 and 1995, notes Laura D. Lindberg of the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., drug use, sexual activity and suicidal ideation began to decline in adolescents after what had seemed a never-ending increase. "But how you connect very recent declines with [Levitt and Donohue's] idea of a shock to the system is very unclear," Lindberg cautions. "Many things are changing over time." So the jury remains out. Researchers are waiting to see whether the paper withstands ongoing scrutiny and whether other evidence emerges. "It is a fascinating theory," David declares. "I suspect there is some kernel of truth, but how much is hard to say."

--Marguerite Holloway

from the American Psychological Association, 2000-Aug-7:

Preterm infants found to be at risk for cognitive, social and behavioral problems after ten years
Higher prevalence of learning disabilities, ADHD, poorer academic performance and social functioning

WASHINGTON -- Many pre-term and low birth weight infants who do not suffer from a physical debilitating condition are still at risk for subtle developmental delays that are more social, behavioral and cognitive in nature that are often undetected until a child reaches school age, say researchers.

According to a new study on consequences of early births, 61 percent of pre-term children experienced either low achievement or special needs in school compared with 23 percent of full-term children who had these problems. This study and its findings will be presented at the American Psychological Association's 108th Annual Convention in Washington, DC.

Researchers Jeremie R. Barlow, M.S., and Lawrence Lewandowski, Ph.D., of Syracuse University, in collaboration with researchers at Crouse-Irving Memorial Hospital, evaluated pre-term infants over ten years to determine what risks these infants faced compared to full-term infants. One hundred and eighteen pre-term infants (24-31 weeks) and 119 full-term infants (38-42 weeks) born in an upstate New York Hospital were compared on school-related cognitive functioning measures that included learning disabilities classification, academic achievement, placement and grade retention. The children were also compared on a number of social, behavioral and clinical measures that involved parent, teacher and psychologists' ratings. These measurements were collected on these children at birth, 15 months, 2, 4, 7 and 10 years of age.

Pre-term children scored lower on intelligence and achievement tests then full-term children, said the authors. Additionally, pre-term children received lower ratings from their parents and teachers on measures of social and behavioral functioning. Pre-term children also required more educational support, were held back from moving to the next grade and diagnosed with learning disabilities by their schools more frequently than full-term children. Furthermore, the pre-term children were much more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD (4-6 times higher than national estimates of 3-5% of general population), according to the authors.

"The prevalence of school problems with pre-term children is staggering," say the authors, "and warrants greater attention from school professionals. But our research also suggests that interventions should be implemented for all pre-terms as early as possible to halt or prevent future problems and closely monitor their social, behavioral and academic progress."

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Presentation: "Ten-Year Longitudinal Study of Preterm Infants: Outcomes and Predictors," Jeremie Rentas Barlow, M.S., and Lawrence Lewandowski, Ph.D., Syracuse University, Session 4115, Monday, August 7, 11:00 -- 11:50 AM, Washington Convention Center, Hall A

Jeremie Rentas Barlow, M.S., can be reached at jeremierentas@hotmail.com

from Scientific American, 1999-Dec, by Helen Fisher, from http://www.sciam.com/1999/1299issue/1299reviews1.html:

MOTHER NATURE IS AN OLD LADY WITH BAD HABITS

Review by Helen Fisher

Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection
BY SARAH BLAFFER HRDY
Pantheon Books, New York ($35)

I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon." Thomas Hardy was talking about our heredity--all those physical attributes and behavior patterns that distinguish us as human beings. But, as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy reminds us in her impressive new book, Mother Nature, the distinction between the human animal and other creatures is far from absolute. We share some 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees. We share basic bodily substances such as the endorphins, natural opiates that contribute to the "runner's high," with earthworms. In fact, only a mere 50 or so genes (as well as several regulatory genes that control the timing of gene expression) account for our humanness. Much of our "family face" stems from others who swam, crawled or brachiated in aeons past.

And our feminine forebears were busy. Be they beetles or rhinos, all creatures must adhere to a basic principle if they are to spread their genes into tomorrow. Either they bear young themselves and see that those infants live, or they help their relatives rear offspring--individuals who share some of their DNA. So under every rock, in every tree, in burrows, reefs and tenements, mothers have always worked to win the only game in town, reproduction. Passive, egg-making machines? Hardly. Ambitious? Absolutely. Hrdy has assimilated a cornucopia of data and ideas about the biology and behavior of mothers great and small to shed light on this venerable occupation: mothering.

Fundamental to her argument is the proposition that mothers are "flexible, manipulative opportunists." How much a mother--of any species, including our own--invests in her newborns depends on the number in her litter, the ratio of sons to daughters, her infants' health, their size and weight, and all the social conditions that will abet or deter her from parenting. Spiders, fish, birds, mice, wolves, lions, tigers, hippos: mothers of all varieties size up the perquisites and deficits of rearing babies. And when they sense that they cannot rear their offspring to maturity, they cull their litters or abandon or cannibalize their young. Mothers are "pro-choice"; family planning is much older than humanity.

Mother golden hamsters, for example, eat their runts when food is scarce. Mother gulls, eagles and herons lay their eggs about a day apart; the first-laid eggs hatch several days before the last ones. This way the mother keeps potentially lethal predators--her elder young--on hand in the nest. If food supplies begin to dwindle, she lets these stronger offspring dominate the less mature ones; with time her own infants trim her brood. When a strange, potentially infanticidal male wanders into the territory of a pregnant house mouse or lemming, the expectant mother reabsorbs her embryos. Pregnant female monkeys sometimes spontaneously abort when a new male usurps command of their troop. Maternal infanticide, abortion and infant abandonment--seen in human societies everywhere--are traditions in the natural world.

In fact, human babies have evolved strategies to win their mothers' hearts. Why, for example, are infants plump? Hrdy notes that no other primate infants are fat; hence, this peculiar trait must have appeared during human evolution. She then reviews four possibilities. Insulation cannot be the answer; other primates huddle to stay warm. The stored baby fat could be an insurance policy, a reserve for emergencies. But monkeys and apes have not employed this mechanism to counter the vicissitudes of infancy. This baby fat could have provided ancestral infants with larders to feed their rapidly expanding, fat-guzzling brains instead. But such provisions could have been stockpiled after birth so this lipid baggage would not jeopardize the infant as it squeezed through the treacherously narrow birth canal. Hrdy concludes that babies put on their fat before birth to advertise to mothers that they are, if I may use the term, "keepers," that they are healthy, that they can survive. Babies are plump in order to be loved.

Mother Knows Best

Once convinced that they should expend their precious parental energy, mothers go to great lengths to rear their young. Most impressive is the Australian social spider. As her spiderlings mature, she begins to turn into mush. As she liquefies, her children suck her up. Sated from this sacrificial meal of mother, they exercise better manners and forgo eating one another as well.

Mothers also engage other females to assist them in mothering. These helpers are known as allomothers. For example, female elephants share nursing duties with maternal kin. This strategy has been popular with women, too. From medieval times until recently, elite women of Europe, Asia and the Near East enlisted wet nurses. But our species has also acquired a singular kind of allomother: postmenopausal women. Many scientists now believe that menopause--a uniquely human biological attribute--probably evolved so that ancestral women could conserve their energy in middle age and help daughters rear young instead.

"The dark, uneasy world of family life--where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed," wrote poet Randall Jarrell. Everywhere mothers strive to win. But, as Hrdy reminds us, all must balance familial chores with another demand: the need to work, to provide for themselves.

Take Flo. Flo was a member of a chimp community at the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania when Jane Goodall arrived in the 1960s to study ape behavior. Hrdy reports that Flo was confident, gentle, intelligent--and popular with the males. She worked to build a powerful web of local connections and carved out a bountiful, safe personal territory in the heart of her homeland. When she died, she bequeathed to her daughter, Fifi, a strong network of local kin contacts that enabled her to remain in her natal home. (Some 50 percent of pubescent females must emigrate to another community to reproduce.) Flo's work paid off. Fifi thrives. Her two sons became the highest-ranking members of the group. And her daughter, Fanni, had the earliest anogenital swelling on record, at age 8.5 years, an indication that she will probably bear many young. Hrdy's point is that industrious mothers of many species are able to translate their hard work into reproductive payoffs. This may be one reason, conscious or otherwise, that many modern women work so hard to succeed in their careers.

Sarah Hrdy, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California at Davis and the author of The Woman That Never Evolved, has made important contributions to anthropology. She is well known for her work in southern India, where she began studying langur monkeys in 1971. She soon noticed that after male interlopers stole control of the troop, they seized and killed the infants. Curiously, the infantless mothers soon became sexually receptive again. Thus, by eliminating the young, triumphant males acquired the opportunity to spread their seed. Moreover, the mothers willingly mated with the conquerors, grabbing the chance to bear new young. After learning this, I noticed that this phenomenon is seen even in Shakespeare. In Richard III, soon after Richard slaughters the husband of Lady Anne, he begins to woo her. To his amazement, she succumbs. Richard muses, "Was ever woman in this humor woo'd? Was ever woman in this humor won?" Yes. Hrdy tells us that females in 35 species breed with their conquerors--even after their infants have been massacred.

"Studying infanticide in other primates turned out to be only the beginning of my quest to understand female nature and motherhood in particular," Hrdy writes. "This quest lured me to do research in seven countries over thirty years, drawing on extremely unlikely sources of information--last wills and testaments, documents from foundling homes, folktales, even the pages of phone books--in my effort to learn about parental attitudes in my own species. Along the way, I have come to understand just how flexible parental emotions in humans can be. Whatever maternal instincts are, they are not automatic in the sense that most people use that term. Most important, I have learned that even though the world has undergone immense change since our ancestors lived by foraging, many of the basic outlines of the dilemmas mothers confront remain remarkably constant."

Hrdy's book is thorough, thoughtful and clearly written. It is also a trove of factual treasures. Did you know that fresh mother's milk can kill a common form of dysentery-causing amoebas? This may be why the Swedish rub mother's milk on babies to curb diaper rash. Moreover, as mother mammals lick their babies, they ingest the pathogens residing on their young. Then they manufacture antibodies to these killers and secrete these antibodies in the teat milk they feed their offspring.

One comes away from this book with a vital message: we have much in common with other living creatures on earth. As Wendell Berry put it, we are part of "the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments." Hrdy has caught the beat--and elegantly exposed some of nature's secrets. As I look around during my morning jog at the earthworms that cross my trail and the pigeons that waddle through New York City's Central Park, I feel some sympathy for all creatures struggling to survive. At the throat of this timeless process are billions on billions of mothers who want their children to succeed.

---

HELEN FISHER, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, is the author of The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World (Random House, 1999) and Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce (W. W. Norton, 1992).

from The Observer, 2000-Apr-9, by Carol Sarler:

All rapes are not the same
By labelling many different types of crime as rape, the law often gives juries no choice but to acquit

There was much showing off last week, as a Home Office steering group revealed the results of two years of thinking about legislation and sex offences. In fact, they didn't come up with a lot that was new, save to recommend a bit of messing with the wording - switching from 'consent' to 'free agreement'. Long may we live to enjoy the courtroom wrangles over the difference between the two.

However, the thinking behind the proposed changes is straightforward: not enough men are going to jail because, as one of the steering group, Dame Helen Reeves, laments, there is 'the almost impossibility of proving rape under current law'.

There is an unfortunate irony in her statement coming in the same week when legal minds were concentrating on the opposite problem. Roy Burnett, a gardener, was released after serving 15 years of a life sentence for a rape that never happened; he was convicted on the malicious word of a liar, prompting Lord Justice Judge, in the Court of Appeal to remind us that allegations of rape are not necessarily true.

Nevertheless Dame Helen may have a point. What proportion of rapes are reported we'll never know; guessing-figures vary from one in four to one in 10. But we can measure conviction rates and they have dropped from 24 per cent in 1985 to the lowest ever, last year, of 6 per cent. Unless it is the case that only six women in 100 tell the truth, which it surely is not, then Dame Helen is right: there is too low a body count behind bars.

But she and her chums had on offer a far easier way to increase that count, and they rejected it out of hand: they completely ruled out the introduction of a lesser crime of 'date rape', which would, at a stroke, fill the cells. And in their refusal to budge on this issue, our Home Office advisors have shown themselves to be intractably out of step not only with basic commonsense but with the social evolution of the past few decades.

There have been great strides taken in the processing of rape charges. A woman reporting a rape these days is more likely than not to be treated with sympathy by the police, to be afforded the chance of immediate and experienced advice and to be examined by a specially trained doctor. Should her case come to court, she may no longer have her past sexual history brought up in evidence against her, contributory negligence ('She asked for it, wearing that skirt') cannot be suggested by even the most Neanderthal of justices, and only last week we saw a permanent end to the trauma of a woman being cross-examined by her attacker.

All this is excellent news. It makes it more likely that women will feel bold enough to make a complaint in the first place, which is why, while nobody is suggesting that rape itself is on the increase, the number of rapes being reported is currently increasing at the rate of 10 per cent, year on year, nearly trebling in a decade.

The obvious correlation, however, to an increase in the number of reported rapes is an increase in the variety of circumstances and conditions from which the allegations stem. In the harsher climate of 30 years ago, successfully reported rapes were generally limited to the extremes and the absolutes: to those that came complete with masked stranger, dark bushes and a convenient handful of witnesses.

Today, encouraged by the battier end of the sisterhood, rapes are being reported that are from the sublime to the ridiculous. To stand your hair on end, let's try this one: the Bristol woman who changed her mind during sexual intercourse. She was making love with her fiancé, in the middle of which she asked him to stop. He didn't. She lived with him for a further two months, then he (yes, he) broke off their engagement. She took a further three months to stew over this, then accused him of rape. He went to jail. And only because he opted to plead guilty did he get a reduced sentence, because in the eyes of the law his crime was on a par with our masked stranger above.

Five years, decreed Lord Lane in sentencing guidelines of 1986, should be taken as a starting point in a contested case for rape committed by an adult. But perhaps he was not being too unfair in his draconian minimum, for in 1986 the case of the fiancé would never have been brought to court to face sentencing in the first place.

There are women's groups that argue vociferously that it should have been. Who chant the mantra, No Means No - which of course, it does - and whose influence on, for example, the Home Office steering group is tangible. These women's groups have set the agenda and, in peculiar cahoots with the cumbersome legal system, they have fought for, and appear to be winning, the day: no change, no leniency, no flexibility, when it comes to the matter of banging up men.

Fine, for their purposes, strangely old-fashioned though such purposes may seem. They love the fact that rape is second only to murder in the criminal system, because they hark back to days when a woman was defined by her sexual organs. Deuteronomy days, when a man who raped a 'betrothed damsel' would be punished because he had reduced her marital value; Round Table days, when chastity was something to be owned; Seventies days, when the ownership changed hands 'from his to hers' but remained a matter of value: the most 'precious' part of a woman, 'worth' more than her eyes, her hands, her heart.

The fact is that these days only the very young or the very devout are likely to feel that way. Most other women, especially the cowards among us, when faced with the boyfriend we fancied last night but don't tonight, would far rather he pressed his ridiculous little willy upon us than broke a bottle in our faces. In truth, we're not entirely unused to it: I defy you to find an averagely heterosexually active woman who has not, at least once, had sex to which she has not properly consented - because she was fed up with arguing, because she was too tired to care, because she was blisteringly drunk or even because she was asleep.

It goes without saying that the man who thus forces himself is obviously doing something wrong, and the woman has to decide - it is her right to decide - whether to chalk it up to experience, whether to pack her bags and leave or whether to seek the help of M'Lud. But the feminist groups which say that the man has perpetrated exactly the same wrong as the stranger-in-the-bushes rapist simply do not know what they are talking about. (And, by the way, I do know: I was dragged into bushes and sexually assaulted at knifepoint at the age of 10. Believe me, I'll take the inebriated boyfriend first, any time.)

Of course, nothing I argue here is beyond the ken of contemporary British citizens; they have beaten us all to it. These are the people who make up our juries and, in the absence of fairness built into the judicial system, juries are taking it upon themselves to revolt. They may well think that the inebriated boyfriend deserves a good six months inside, perhaps a year, to cool his heels.

But they are not allowed to give this kind of slapping. If the charge is rape and they find him guilty, they know he faces those five years. So on thousands of occasions they have refused to take such a damaging chunk out of a man's life and have decided to acquit. This is why and where you get your 6 per cent conviction rate: from perfectly normal people, exercising perfectly sensible judgment, in the face of a judicial system gone bonkers.

Those who find the 6 per cent unacceptable - an alarm with which I concur - must think again. For a start, they could do well to look at Canada where, in 1983, the law was changed to abolish the crime of rape and to replace it with the less emotive, less fetishised charge of criminal sexual assault, on three levels, from the relatively minor to the utterly horrific, and with a breadth of sentencing to match. Their conviction rate? Across all three levels, in the past year - 40 per cent.

Lesser crimes, lesser sentences, but more miscreants brought to justice; not a bad deal, is it? But in order to achieve it, we must first neutralise both the venom and the influence of the sisterhood, who cannot bear to see a man in jail without also seeing the key thrown away.

from ABCNEWS.COM, 1999-Apr-22, by Claudine Chamberlain:

Where Did the Gay Gene Go? Study Finds No Evidence of Homsexuality in DNA

It's a seemingly endless debate: Why are some people attracted to the opposite sex, while others are drawn to their own gender? Thanks to new research published today, that question just got even harder to answer.

A team of researchers at the University of Western Ontario in Canada has found no evidence of the so-called ``gay gene,'' directly contradicting studies from 1993 and '95 that pinpointed a specific genetic marker on the X chromosome linked to homosexuality in men.

Whether genes play a part in sexual orientation has long been a hot button topic for people who support or oppose gay rights. If gays and lesbians are biologically predisposed to homosexuality - through their genes or some other way - that makes for a stronger case against discrimination.

That's why the gay community welcomed the 1993 study by biologist Dean Hamer of the National Cancer Institute. Hamer found that in 40 pairs of gay brothers, 33 had the same set of DNA sequences in a region of the chromosome called Xq28.

Dueling Studies

Attempting to replicate those findings, Ontario neurologist George Rice examined the DNA of 52 pairs of gay brothers, and found that their Xq28 sequences were no more similar than what might be expected from sheer chance.

Rice's results appear in today's edition of the journal Science.

``What we have here is a scientific controversy,'' says Michael Bailey, a Northwestern University psychologist who has studied homosexuality in twins. The latest research effort ``is a good study and it certainly raises questions about whether Hamer was right, but I don't think it proves him wrong either.''

That's because both studies were relatively small, and because specific genes are difficult to find. ``A definitive study,'' says Bailey, ``would entail substantially larger numbers of people.''

Maybe the Gene Is Elsewhere

Rice himself doesn't discount the idea of a genetic link to homosexuality. He just doesn't think Xq28 is the spot. ``The search for genetic factors in homosexuality should continue,'' he says, adding that he's currently searching for other genes that could be linked to sexuality.

But Hamer stands by his earlier findings, especially since two subsequent studies (one of which has not yet been published), found the same thing. ``All this proves is that not every case of homosexuality is because of Xq28,'' he asserts. ``I expect we'll find that many genes are involved. One of them will be on Xq28.''

Biological Links to Homosexuality

1991: Northwestern University's Michael Bailey and others find greater homosexual correlation among identical twins than fraternal.

1991: Salk Institute's Simon LeVay discovers that a tiny section of the hypothalamus in the brain is smaller in gay men than in straight men.

1992: Laura Allen and Richard Gorski of the University of California at Los Angeles discover that a section of the fibers connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain is one-third larger in gay men than straight men.

1993: National Cancer Institute's Dean Hamer study finds possible location of ``gay gene'' on the X chromosome, inherited from mothers.

1995: Geneticists Shang-Ding Zhang and Ward Odenwald of the National Institutes of Health discover that a single transplanted gene can cause fruit flies to display homosexual behavior.

1995: Hamer repeats his 1993 findings with a follow-up study.

Twin studies, like those done by Bailey, have fueled the search for such genes. In 1991, he studied the twin brothers of gay men and found that 52 percent of identical twins were also gay, while only 22 percent of fraternal twins were. Among women, 48 percent of identical twins were also lesbian, while the rate dropped to 16 percent for fraternal twins.

As with all twin studies, a greater similarity among identical twins usually indicates a genetic link. But because the connection wasn't 100 percent, researchers know that genes aren't the whole picture. Environment — family, friends, society — could also be an important influence.

Does It Really Matter?

Gene or no gene, gay rights groups maintain that what ``causes'' homosexuality isn't really important. ``The vast majority of gay people will tell you that same-sex orientation is an innate part of who you are and is not changeable,'' says David Smith, a spokesperson for Human Rights Campaign. ``But in the final analysis, is really shouldn't matter. Public policy should treat all people equally and fairly.''

Conservative groups, on the other hand, say Rice's study proves that homosexuality is a learned, chosen behavior that doesn't deserve legal protection.

``Dean Hamer's study has been used by gay activists for years,'' says Yvette Cantu, policy analyst for the Family Research Council. ``We're saying you can't grant someone special minority status for something that's just a sexual behavior, a choice.''

For now, though, the scientific debate is far from over. Sex, says Hamer, ``is one of the most interesting things we do. And biologically, it's the most important thing we do.'' That's why we'll always wonder why some people do it differently than others.

from EquityFeminism.com, 2002-Nov-26, by Brian Carnell, from http://www.equityfeminism.com/print/articles/2002/000110.html:

Mary Daly's Feminist Vision of Gendercide

In a post this month about a satirical essay by Martha Burk on controlling male fertility, weblogger Glenn Reynolds offered this parenthetical remark,

Though if you think that calling Burk's piece "satire" changes the face of feminism you're showing your ignorance. There are other writings by academic feminists calling for the elimination of men and similar absurdities in dead earnest, though at nearly midnight I'm not going to run them down. But as a guy who once edited Catharine MacKinnon, I know a bit about this stuff.

Reynolds was then challenged by Barry Deutsch as to whether there are really academic feminists who have called for the complete elimination of men. Reynolds turns up references in Mary Ann Warren's "Gendercide," which Deutsch says isn't good enough.

Well, there is one academic feminist who is both a fan of parthogenesis and advocates the elimination of men (and most women) -- Mary Daly. Until a few years ago, Daly was a professor at Boston College. She was finally forced out there because she refused to allow men to participate in her classroom.

Daly has long advocated for research into parthenogenesis to dispense with men. Her book, Quintessence is half-science fiction novel, half bizarre manifesto in which she explicitly lays out her views. Daly herself is a character in the book who visits a utopian continent where -- thanks to the influence of Daly's books -- a lesbian elite reproduce solely through parthogenesis.

And there is no doubt that Daly considers this both desirable and possible. Here's Daly from a 2001 interview with What Is Enlightenment magazine (emphasis added),

WIE: In your latest book, Quintessence, you describe a utopian society of the future, on a continent populated entirely by women, where procreation occurs through parthenogenesis, without participation of men. What is your vision for a postpatriarchal world? Is it similar to what you described in the book?

MD: You can read Quintessence and you can get a sense of it. It's a description of an alternative future. It's there partly as a device and partly because it's a dream. There could be many alternative futures, but some of the elements are constant: that it would be women only; that it would be women generating the energy throughout the universe; that much of the contamination, both physical and mental, has been dealt with.

WIE: Which brings us to another question I wanted to ask you. Sally Miller Gearhart, in her article, ?The Future?If There is One?Is Female,? writes: ?At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we were to create and preserve a less violent world. 1) Every culture must begin to affirm the female future. 2) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. 3) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race.? What do you think about this statement?

MD: I think it's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore.

Of course what Daly is advocating here is nothing short of gendercide, and yet Daly is taken seriously by radical feminists.

Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, for example, called Quintessence a "masterpiece." When the Boston College controversy erupted, Daly's supporters held a fundraiser called "A Celebration of the Work of Mary Daly" which included Diane Bell, Director of Women's Studies at the George Washington University; Mary Hunt, Co-Director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual; Frances Kissling, President of Catholics for a Free Choice, and others. Daly also counted Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem and other feminists outside of academia in her corner.

The press release announcing the celebration explicitly includes Quintessence as one of Daly's celebrated works. Can you imagine for a second the outrage if men in and outside of academia got together to celebrate the works of a misogynist who complained of female "contamination" and advocated "a drastic reduction of the population of females"?

And that in a nutshell is what is wrong with contemporary feminism -- that such nutcases are not only tolerated, but openly celebrated. And they still wonder why so few college-aged women want to self-identify themselves as "feminists."

Source

Mary Daly event in Washington, DC, Jan. 29, 2001. Mary Hunt, E-mail press release, Jan. 10, 2001.

The Thin Thread Of Conversation: An Interview With Mary Daly. Catherine Madsen, Cross Currents, Fall 2000.

Change Agents in the Church: Mary Daly. Rev. Joan Gelbein, Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Sunday, January 7, 2001.

from TownHall.com, 2000-Jun-21, by Linda Bowles:

Feminism's last shoe is dropping

The radical feminist movement in America is dead, although not yet buried. It is past its peak and in serious recession for the simple reason that it did not work out as promised. The promise was independence and personal fulfillment. The female utopia was to be found by liberating women from economic dependence through work and careers and by liberating them from the burdens of their own biology through abortion and pills.

Alas, many women have become disenchanted. They did not find satisfaction in the workplace; they found stress and drudgery. They did not find joy in an escape from motherhood; they found loneliness.

A New York tracking firm studied 3,000 women between the ages of 18 and 34. More than two out of three of them preferred to stay at home full time rather than stay in the workplace. Cosmopolitan magazine studied 800 women and got the same result: a strong majority of women want a full-time life at home with a husband and children.

It is undeniable that the world of sex and gender is in considerable disarray these days. The reason is simple: In the aftermath of years of rampant, anti-male, radical feminism, many men have been convinced it is OK, even manly, for them to weep, do dishes, and change diapers; and many women have been persuaded that it is OK, even feminine, for them to talk filthy, sleep around, and wear combat boots.

Women, particularly young women, are perhaps the most confused by all the conflicting signals. They certainly have the most to lose until they find their way. Therefore, in the interest of being helpful, I, as a compassionate and caring woman, offer the following sisterly advice:

1. Don't put on a tube top and shorty shorts and parade around in a New York park in front of a herd of hot-blooded, beer-guzzling, overheated Puerto Rican men carrying water pistols and expect to be treated like Mother Teresa.

2. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not the role of women to drive men crazy.

3. It's time to give men some room when they want to pal around with each other. As things now stand, if a bunch of men locked themselves in an airtight room, lit up their Monte Cristos, and set off tear-gas grenades, within minutes, a group of hostile females would be outside screaming "sexual discrimination!" and demanding entry.

4. Speaking of cigars, if you are an intern or a junior employee and the president of the company asks you into his office, closes the door, and offers you a Tiparillo, run for your life!

5. Don't scorn the man who steps aside and holds a door open for you. It is his way of showing you respect. Women should allow men to put them back on pedestals, where they belong. [This one is a crock. -AMPP Ed.]

6. Don't go for the "sensitive" man who encourages you in your victimhood, reinforces you in your delusions of oppression, helps you feel proud of your flaws, and joins you in hating his own sex. In other words, don't marry your problem.

7. Join the National Rifle Association. Meet some real men, and learn to defend yourself at the same time. I know both thoughts may frighten you, but such fear can and should be overcome. Malehood and weaponry are of value in a lonely and dangerous world.

8. Don't teach your son that his little sister is just like a boy except for unimportant differences. Clear your mind of your prejudices, and teach your son that he should be protective of his little sister, that it is manly to honor and defend the opposite sex. If you instruct him early in the right way to treat women, when he grows older, he will not depart from it.

9. Don't get in your husband's face during halftime when his beloved team is behind by four touchdowns.

10. Lesbianism is a silly misadventure down a dead-end street.

11. Throughout the centuries, women have been the primary guardians of morality and decency in society. It is not the job of women to be one of the boys. It is the job of every woman to demand that men behave with respect and decency around her and around the children.

12. Ignore all those feminists telling you how empty and valueless you are unless you get out of the home and into the workforce. Look at their angry and unhappy faces. They would give up everything they have for a husband who cherishes them and for precious children who call them "mama."

from TPDL 2000-Jul-29, from Scripps Howard News Service via Nando.net, by Diana West:

Hunting the great white male

(July 29, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Maybe it started with Shakespeare - the commissars of correctness's sweeping dismissals of men and events as being merely dead, merely white and merely male, rendering them antique, irrelevant and dust-heap ready.

Remember Stanford, Jesse Jackson, and "Western Civ has got to go"? The toxic fallout from the early days of the culture wars has by now drifted far from campus, taking shape as a corrosive vapor that invisibly poisons public discourse.

Take this week's big national story. When George W. Bush selected Dick Cheney as his running mate, the nation was casually apprised of the pros and cons of selecting, get this, a middle-aged, white, male running mate - as if Cheney's age, race and sex were three strikes against him.

Time magazine's Internet edition, for example, saw fit to deride the former White House chief of staff, House leader, and secretary of defense as "the classic middle-aged white guy with a paunch." Such a mocking description is not exactly likely to be tailored to fit a Madeleine Albright, for example, a Hillary Clinton, or even a Colin Powell, who as "a classic middle-aged (black) guy" is exempt from such ridicule.

Columnist Arianna Huffington, rather noxiously speculating on the veepstakes, wondered, "Do we really need this national guessing game about just which white, balding, middle-aged 'swing state,' but hardly swinging, male has been anointed...?"

The New York Times' Maureen Dowd, long vituperatively fluent in this language of targeted derision, piped up to dismiss Cheney as a "prosperous, well-fed, balding, bland, male Republican."

The Washington Post's Joel Achenbach decided to get really cute and deconstruct the name "Dick Cheney." "It signifies 'generic middle-aged white man,'" Achenbach wrote. "He's got gray hair, a round face, he's 59 years old, he's had three heart attacks - he looks like someone who could do endorsements for lawn fertilizer or weed eaters." (Har, har.)

Leaving Dick Cheney and his name aside for the moment - not to mention all those middle-aged white men from Thomas Edison to Mark Twain to Paul Newman that such "generic" descriptions fit - it is important to note that this kind of uninhibited baiting is uniquely sanctioned for use against one, still rather large sector of society: white men. And the older and more conservative the white man, the more derisive the language.

It is worth remembering, for example, the invective Dowd unleashed against the House managers when she called them "a bunch of out of touch old white guys trying to fathom truth in sex." (Jim Rogan? Lindsey Graham? Tim Hutchinson?) She went on to describe them as "a pack of gray-haired, gray-faced, gray-suited, and gray-spirited...self-appointed Torquemadas...who looked like gouty Florida retirees..." sputter, sputter. What seems to link such verbal assaults is an effort to undermine, if not delegitimize, white, sometimes old men for their race, age, and sex - à la Shakespeare, it would seem.

Such mocking attitudes are not unique to the ladies and gentlemen of the press. Consider a "Get Our the Vote 2000" television campaign currently airing across the country. Sponsored by the Federal Voting Assistance Program and the Department of Defense, the campaign targets non-voters with two public service announcements, one called "Fritz and John," and the other, "Clarence."

Fritz and John are two youngish, blond, punk rockers with heavy brows on the unevolved side and nonsensical revolutionary notions. "These guys vote," a narrator says. "Shouldn't you?"

It's almost cute, but taken together with "Clarence," it starts to look as if this voter registration campaign actually derives from a not so subtle and not so civil mode of white-man mockery. Clarence, natch, is a white man - and a particularly disgusting one at that. He is a slob in a soiled bathrobe who calls himself an intellectual "qualified to make public policy." He has "yet to find a woman who is my intellectual peer," he adds, while lounging on an old sofa in his underwear. We next see him in an undershirt jiggling his paunch on an exercise machine. Could he be any more vile in 25 seconds? Voice-over: "This guys votes. Shouldn't you?"

You have to wonder where such rampant, institutional ridicule leads. It is almost tempting to make a rather far-fetched analogy between white-man-baiting in America, circa 2000, and Jew-baiting in Germany in the early 1930s. The comparison is, of course, flawed, if only because of the disparate size, power and historic position of the two groups. Still, there is in both circumstances something of a similar effort to undermine and even demonize a certain segment of society.

According to enlightened media thinking, according even to the government itself, white, male and middle-aged is at least boring, if not ridiculous and misguided. Some combination of nonwhite, female, and young must therefore equal pure paradise.

Of course, you have to wonder where that leaves Al Gore.

from The Weekend Australia, 1993-May-22/23, by Bettina Arndt:

Men Under Siege

Can men do no right these days? Cowed by women critical of their behavior, they increasingly find themselves portrayed as insensitive, bad in bed, a danger to children, incapable of expressing emotion or intimacy and unable to contribute to family life. Concerned at the growing chasm between the sexes, Bettina Arndt urges more men to speak up for themselves....

What's happened to the reputation of men? Something's wrong. To be a man was once to be admired, envied. But not any more. Certainly not from the female perspective. As far as the fair sex is concerned, men have fallen from grace.

A recent episode of the American television series Roseanne makes the point rather nicely. Roseanne's husband, Dan, is shown making an insensitive remark to one of his daughters causing her to run off in tears. "Oh Dan, you're such a ... a man," exclaims Roseanne as she goes to comfort her daughter.

Dan Junior is puzzled. "Dad, why did Mom call you a man?" he asks. "Because she's mad at me," Dan replies. "I thought it was good to be a man," puzzles the boy. "Oh no son," comes the reply. "Not since the late 60s."

It is still good to be a man. Look around you and you'll see ample evidence that men are having no trouble retaining their power in the public domain. It's their private reputation which has taken a battering. Open the newspapers and every day there's further proof of men's poor showing. They are presented as incompetent lovers, inept, often irrelevant, family members incapable of expressing emotions or showing intimacy. Worse, they are seen as evil, violent and dangerous - a threat to women and children.

In part, it's a reflection of a very real change that has occurred in women's perception of men. Roseanne's husband had it right. It did stem from the late 60s when women began to flood into the workforce. Their new-found economic independence led to a dramatic increase in their expectations of men's behavior. Having gained the power to walk out of relationships which failed to please them, women began to judge men with a more critical eye.

Fueled by the women's movement, there was a historic shift in women's thinking away from the self-sacrifice required for the role of someone's wife and someone's mother towards a new sense of entitlement. Women embraced the 70s' quest for self-fulfillment and came to define relationships in their terms. They gained valuable allies in the female-dominated helping professions, who supported their push to normalize female expressiveness and emotionality and pathologize male reserve.

Women's critical view of men's private behavior now totally dominates the cultural dialogue. It is rare that a man publicly defends himself or supports masculine behavior without being accused of sexism, on the grounds that, by implication, he must be demeaning women. Any male promoting the role of fathers is seen as criticizing single mothers, the man who supports his wife's role as a full-time home-maker is suspected of thwarting her career ambitions.

Former editor of Punch magazine David Thomas has taken the brave step of challenging this new critique of men in his book, Not Guilty - In Defense of the Modern Man (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993) -a book which contains the telling Roseanne anecdote mentioned earlier.

Thomas does a particularly good job in examining evidence for that most damaging of all complaints about men, namely the image of men as violent and dangerous. Thomas takes issues with the boot-in-the face portrayal of men in recent times: the notion of all men as potential rapists, wife batterers, child molesters.

His concern is to put the record straight: "I just want to say that men do rather less harm than is currently believed and women do rather more," says Thomas. He shows, for instance that the group most at risk for homicide in the United Kingdom is that of children under the age of one. Their murderers? Generally women. Yet we don't even refer to this crime as murder, we call it "infanticide". The female perpetrators of this particular crime are rarely charged, let alone convicted. Women are the main physical abusers of children - as the Australian Institute of Criminology confirms. Statistics are usually only available on a State-by-State basis but as an example, NSW 1986 Youth and Community Services statistics on physical abuse of children show female offenders outnumbering males by 55 per cent to 45 percent. NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research figures show, between 1968 and 1986, that women committed 53.2 per cent of homicides involving victims under 10 years of age.

Yet female aggression towards children rarely rates a mention in the stream of propaganda depicting children at risk from men's violence. The knocks and bruises children receive from women are now discounted in the light of the heinous damage caused by that most fashionable of crimes - child sexual abuse. The headlines are all about male perversions, men peering under little girl's skirts, groping in their knickers, mutilating their tender psyches.

"Why are we so obsessed by that particular means of doing harm to a child? asks Thomas. "is a child who has been beaten, or starved or verbally humiliated any better off than one who has been sexually assaulted?" Such questions are no longer permissible.

Indeed, Thomas mentions a British researcher who was refused funding because she intended to investigate "harm done" issues in child abuse. He notes a research study for the German police conducted by Dr Michael Baurmann involving more than 8000 German children, research which suggests that in many cases of adult-child sexual activity, no harm was done - neither emotional nor physical.

Such a contention is regarded as heresy, as writer Blanche d'Alpuget discovered when her article was published in The Australian describing a sexual encounter she experienced as a 12-year-old, with a judge who was a family friend. "Neither good nor bad" was how d'Alpuget summed up the experience: "I always felt that my relationship with the judge continued according to my will not his, and that he was doing me a favour in initiating me into the world of sin I was so eager to know."

Her article met with a torrent of abuse. Her experience was quickly redefined as "rape" by angry letter writers who warned her that permanent emotional scars of her assault would resurface in 30, 40 years' time.

Back in the 70s, as a sex therapist and editor of Forum magazine, I talked to many people, who, as children, had experienced some sexual encounter with an adult which they saw as neither traumatic nor particularly eventful. Now, in the advice column I write for Cleo magazine, there's a steady stream of letters from women blaming all manner of current psychological problems on the mere suggestion of past sexual contact with an adult. Even if they can't remember any abuse, they'll write suggesting it must have taken place - what else could account for them feeling so lousy?

I am not denying the very real damage that is caused by serious abuse, and the tragic effect on victims' lives. There is also no question that sexual abuse of children is far more widespread than previously suspected. We do need to be vigilant and to find ways of protecting children from adults intent on harming them.

But this protection needs to be balanced by the risks of damage to children by over-reacting to events which, in the absence of parental hysteria, would have passed relatively unnoticed, the risks of exposing children to over-zealous, child-abuse "experts" intent on furthering their professional reputations. Appalling damage has been inflicted on children in the search for evidence of male villainy - the Middlesborough hospital case involving the Australian-born pediatrician, Dr Marietta Higgs, is one such example.

My major concern is the damage we are doing to children, and to our society, by promoting a view of men as risky companions for children. The other day I was watching a man driving a children's train in a seaside park. He invited a neighborhood child for a free ride and pulled her up to sit between his knees. As I watched her settle in his lap, my instinctive reaction was "uh, oh!"

I am ashamed of myself. I am appalled that I have been so influenced by anti-male propaganda that my reaction to a man cuddling a child is one of distrust. I am ashamed to live in a society where male teachers are warned not to pick up and comfort a child who falls over, warned never to be alone in a room with a child. We plead with men to become more involved in children's daily lives, yet what hope is there, in today's distrustful climate, of furthering this cause, by introducing baby change-tables into men's public lavatories.

Why is it we take such a different view of the female perpetrators of crimes against children? We search for explanations for women who murder or batter their children - blaming post-partum depression, isolation, stress. We set up help lines, prevention services to save such women from themselves.

Yet I constantly hear from people working in the child abuse area of the resistance to conducting any research into the reasons why men abuse children. It is extremely difficult to obtain funding for any prevention or counselling services for men. Insight into the causes of male violence is seen as offering men excuses for their behavior. "No excuses, never ever!" is the slogan used to apply to men, while women are seen as eternal victims of their damaging environments.

And it is simply not true that male violence is as prevalent as modern mythology suggests. Ask John Walker about the survey on international crime rates he conducted for the Australian Institute for Criminology. Figures from the survey were used, in September 1992, to promote the AB rape documentary Without Consent, painting a picture of Australia as the most sexually violent country in the world.

Yet John Walker would be the first to tell you the figures were extremely suspect. The sample size was far too small to draw any real cross-cultural comparisons about violent behavior, the definition of sexual violence was extremely broad and the subject of widely varying cultural interpretation.

"A woman in NSW has a one-out-of-eight chance of being raped," said the television publicity. Built into the equation used to produce this alarming statistic was a purely hypothetical "guesstimate" of the ratio of real versus reported rape figures. According to John Walker, the risk of rape or attempted rape is around one in 200 women a year, which is one-fifth the chance of having one's car stolen.

To add to the confusion, victims' surveys based on self reported sexual assault - which can include any behavior the victim defines as offensive - are often promoted as if they represent actual crime figures. "Multiple rape very common!" was one such recent headline.

Remember the fuss in early 1992 when the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics released a report showing domestic violence was more common in lower socio-economic areas. Media reports of the research were inevitably accompanied by hostile quotes from spokeswomen for women's groups denying the validity of the statistics.

"We have been trying to get the message across that domestic violence is a serious crime that can happen to any woman, and that there are never any excuses for it. What this report does is create excuses," said Jane Stackpool from the Women's Advisory Council. So even if some women are more at risk, they don't want to know about it. At issue is the holy cow that domestic violence has its origins in universal patriarchy.

Contrary to Susan Faludi's assumption that the media conspires to promote a backlash against feminist views, in fact it is rare that the media makes any attempt to counter the constant stream of pro-women, anti-male propaganda. As we have just seen, women's groups are regularly given opportunity by the media to criticize reports that run counter to feminist arguments.

Extremist feminist views on men are regularly promoted, with no attempt at providing a counter-view - despite the fact that the majority of women, including many who see themselves as feminists, regard these views as offensive. When it comes to the defense of men, the silence is deafening.

But men are not just seen as violent and dangerous. As far as children are concerned, men, their fathers, are increasingly regarded as irrelevant. Anyone who promotes the importance of fathers in children's lives, who dares to suggest there is something wrong with women raising children on their own, is met by a howl of protest. Witness Dan Quayle.

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is author of a powerful recent article in the Atlantic Monthly - Dan Quayle Was Right - which traces the cultural shift that has occurred in the United States away from the traditional belief in the value of the intact families to promotion of diverse family structures, single parents, step-families, etc., as equally beneficial to children. Divorce is now heralded as a new beginning, with children benefiting from their parent's search for renewed happiness. The Murphy Browns are applauded for their courage and determination, single mothers seen as triumphant in adversity, step-families as opportunities for personal growth.

The reality, according to Whitehead, is different. She has gathered the growing American evidence that father absence means greater risk for children: of living in poverty, experiencing emotional and behavioral problems, dropping out of school, of lowered educational achievement. Of course, particularly in the US, the issue is complicated by the perilous economic situation faced by single mothers - largely due to fathers' withdrawal of financial support. In Australia, long-term effects are likely to be less severe, as Macquarie University research, released last week, shows.

But the fact remains that contrary to popular assumptions, the quest for adult fulfillment is often at the expense of children. And that quest is being led by women. There is an increasing trend for women to be the spouse seeking to end the marriage - 65 per cent of Australian marital separations are instigated by women. For all the men who willingly abandon their children, there are many others who are forced out of their families.

Australian Family Court research shows many fathers have difficulty maintaining regular contact with their children after divorce - women usually have custody and often impede fathers' access. The recent parliamentary joint committee on the Family Law Act noted how little legal action is ever taken to rectify the widespread access denial by women. Many men give up because access relationships are too difficult to maintain, because they are pressured by second wives to transfer emotional and financial support to second families, and because they buy the message that they are not important in the lives of their children.

Even in intact families, with fathers still on the scene, the men are not likely to be seen of much benefit. Open any women's magazine and you'll find abundant relationship "experts" lamenting men's pitiful inability to contribute to the emotional life of the family. With women proclaimed as the Intimacy Experts, men are portrayed as poor souls who can't love, don't express themselves, won't allow themselves to be intimate.

This puts men in a no-win position. Listen to this man, talking about his wife's emotional demands. "I honestly try to do what she says she wants. I really do. But I swear there must be some book of rules somewhere that only women read, which tells what's a feeling and what's not and how to show what you are feeling. According to her, I never get it right. I'm not really being 'honest', or get this, I'm not really being 'real'."

Men will never get it right if we continue to regard males as fifth wheel, poor substitutes for the communication skills so abundant in a woman. Yet recent American research on fathering suggests men's traditional way of relating to children offers a unique contribution to their development: that the rough-housing and wrestling so denigrated by women fosters children's sense of mastery; that men offer a different, but valuable form of intimacy through their more silent side-by-side relationships, based on shared activities, i.e., the fishing trip, rather than emotional exchange.

Men are constantly sneered at for showing their love by doing ... he fixes the toaster, he mows the lawn, he goes to work and through his actions, he believes he's showing he cares. He does the same job he's always done yet the credit isn't there any more. The female emphasis on the verbal expression of love has diminished the importance of these loving actions.

Listen to the debate on the second shift - the contributions men and women make to childcare and house-work. We constantly hear about how little men do to help at home and yet if you compare the combined total of men's paid and unpaid work, with that of women, the figures aren't so different. Research by sociologist Michael Bittman for the Office for the Status of Women finds that if paid work is taken into account, women in the workforce actually work less than an hour a day more than men on their dual shifts.

The pressure is on men, as it always was, to be successful, to be a good provider. Survey after survey continues to show a man's earning potential is the major factor in determining women's attraction to men. Knowing this, men believe they are doing the right thing, acting as providers for their family. What a sad world it is for men. To work hard to do what you thought was required of you - to be successful, to be a man. And then discover women have changed the rules and are now judging you by quite different standards - namely their own.

There's one final arena where men's reputation has suffered a perilous decline - and that's in the bedroom. When it comes to matters of the flesh, men know, as never before, that they are totally at the mercy of women's whim. They grovel for sexual favors, risking the indignity of rejection in the eternal hope of sweet smiled, open-thighed acquiescence. With women now firmly convinced of their right to say "no", men must struggle to please, to conform to the new female-lead standards required for "love-making", forsaking the ruttish piston mechanics they once preferred.

Irma Kurtz, the delightfully outspoken British agony aunt, has commented on this shift: "Naturally women think their own loving, languorous way of sex is better, and so it is ... for them. Recently, they have been trying to bully and shame men into thinking it would be better for them too, though the truth is it would be less demanding, enslaving, perplexing and strenuous for a healthy man to screw a thousand women in his lifetime than to try to please one, and the potential for failure would be less."

Trying to please women is the unenviable task facing men in so many aspects of their personal lives. Every day they are confronted with evidence of the growing gap between the way men are and the way women expect them to be. The business of helping men negotiate that distance is made infinitely more difficult by media-promoted lies and distortions which exaggerate men's deficiencies and play down their personal talents and achievements. The reality is that neither sex has a monopoly on vice or virtue but men have real work to do to restore their damaged reputation.

This article is based on a paper given by Bettina Arndt at the Sydney Institute.

from http://www.vix.com/pub/men/bash/quotes.html:

Collected Quotes from Feminist Man-Haters

Don't like the term 'feminist man-haters'? Well, read the quotes and come up with your own term, then.

---

Quotes from Robin Morgan

(current editor of MS magazine)

"I feel that 'man-hating' is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them."
-- Robin Morgan,

From her "The Demon Lover" (NY: Norton & Co., 1989 Morgan doesn't hide her bigotry ):

• p. 138-9: The phallic malady is epidemic and systemic... each individual male in the patriarchy is aware of his relative power in the scheme of things.... He knows that his actions are supported by the twin pillars of the State of man - the brotherhood ritual of political exigency and the brotherhood ritual of a sexual thrill in dominance. As a devotee of Thanatos, he is one with the practitioner of sado-masochistic "play" between "consenting adults," as he is one with the rapist.
• p. 224: My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others' agony.
• p. 229: Sex to this point in my life has been trivial, at best a gesture of tenderness, at worst a chore. I couldn't understand the furor about it.
• p. 316: Did she die of the disease called "family" or the disease called "rehabilitation", of poverty or drugs or pornography, of economics or sexual slavery or a broken body?

"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire." -- Robin Morgan, in 1974

...rape is the perfected act of male sexuality in a patriarchal culture-- it is the ultimate metaphor for domination, violence, subjugation, and possession. -- Robin Morgan

"I haven't the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white hetero- sexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary- vested-interest-power. But then, I have great difficulty examining what men in general could possibly do about all this. In addition to doing the shitwork that women have been doing for generations, possibly not exist? No, I really don't mean that. Yes, I really do." -- Robin Morgan

"And let's put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism--the lie that there can be such a thing as 'men's liberation groups.' Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group specifically because of a 'threatening' characteristic shared by the latter group--skin color or sex or age, etc. The oppressors are indeed FUCKED UP by being masters (racism hurts whites, sexual stereotypes are harmful to men) but those masters are not OPPRESSED. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism--the oppressed have no alternative--for they have no power--but to fight. In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men--but in the short run it's going to COST men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is NOT the fault of women--kill your fathers, not your mothers."
-- Robin Morgan

"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire."
- From Robin Morgan, "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" in "Going to Far," 1974.

---

From Marilyn French

[The quote below is from a novel by Marilyn French. Feminists often say "it is only a quote from a fictional character. Yet this notion is seen throughout feminist so called scholarship. -AG]

"All men are rapists and that's all they are" -- Marilyn French Author, "The Women's Room"

"My feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, I watch the handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet in his stomach and I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to shrug. I simply don't care. What he was, as a person, I mean, what his shames and yearnings were, simply don't matter." -- Marilyn French, in "The Women's Room"

From Andrea Dworkin

"Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies." -- Andrea Dworkin

"Rape is the primary heterosexual model for sexual relating.
Rape is the primary emblem of romantic love.
Rape is the means by which a woman is initiated into her womanhood
as it is defined by men.
...
Rape, then, is the logical consequence of a system of definitions of what is normative. Rape is no excess, no aberration, no accident, no mistake--it embodies sexuality as the culture defines it."
Andrea Dworkin
"The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door"
Our Blood

---

Susan Griffin

"And in the spectrum of male bahavior, rape, the perfect combination of sex and violence, is the penultimate (sic) act. Erotic pleasure cannot be separated from culture, and in our culture male eroticism is wedded to power."
Susan Griffin
Rape: The Politics of Consciousness

"And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual [male], it may be mainly a quantitative difference."
-- Susan Griffin "Rape: The All-American Crime"

Germain Greer

When asked: "You [Greer] were once quoted as saying your idea of the ideal man is a woman with a dick. Are you still that way inclined?"

Dr Greer (denying that she said it): "I have a great deal of difficulty with the idea of the ideal man. As far as I'm concerned, men are the product of a damanged gene. They pretend to be normal but what they're doing sitting there with benign smiles on their faces is they're manufacturing sperm. They do it all the time. They never stop.

"I mean, we women are more reasonable. We pop one follicle every 28 days, whereas they are producing 400 million sperm for each ejaculation, most of which don't take place anywhere near an ovum. I don't know that the ecosphere can tolerate it."

- Germaine Greer, at a Hilton Hotel literary lunch, promoting her book "The Change-- Women, Aging and the Menopause". From a newsreport dated 14/11/91.

Other Assorted Quotes

"The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist" -- Ti-Grace Atkinson "Amazon Odyssey" (p. 86)

"[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" -- Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will p. 6)

"When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression..." -- Sheila Jeffrys

Sharon Stone:

• On David Letterman presenting a top ten list of ways to keep your man.

  "Number 10: Regularly beat him on the head with your shoe."

• "The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men."

"Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated. You might think thats too broad. I'm not talking about sending all of you men to jail for that." -- Catherine MacKinnon "A Rally Against Rape" Feminism Unmodified

"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it." -- Former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

MALE: ... represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. 'The first males were mutants... the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.'
MAN: ... an obsolete life form... an ordinary creature who needs to be watched ... a contradictory baby-man ...
TESTOSTERONE POISONING: ... 'Until now it has been though that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from "testosterone poisoning."' -- from A Feminist Dictionary", ed. Kramarae and Treichler, Pandora Press, 1985

---

Letter to the Editor: "Women's Turn to Dominate"

"To Proud Feminist, (Herald-Sun, 7 February). Your last paragraph is shocking language from a feminist. You use the entrenched, revolting male stereotypes of women and rationalise your existence by saying you are neither "ugly" nor "manless", as though either of these male-oriented judgments matter.

"Clearly you are not yet a free-thinking feminist but rather one of those women who bounce off the male-dominated, male-controlled social structures.

"Who cares how men feel or what they do or whether they suffer? They have had over 2000 years to dominate and made a complete hash of it. Now it is our turn. My only comment to men is, if you don't like it, bad luck - and if you get in my way I'll run you down."

Signed: Liberated Women, Boronia
Herald-Sun, Melbourne, Australia - 9 February 1996

---

Original collection by:
starbuck@galaxy.ucr.edu (aaron greewnood)
Additional quotes as scarfed off the net and from a few visits to the library.

[...]

HTML by David R Throop throop@vix.com

Language and Race

Because people who speak different languages can't easily interact with each other socially, they tend not to mate with each other either. Thus, when a population is isolated long enough for its language to lose mutual intelligibility with other populations, it tends to become a bounded genetic and phenotypic pool. Though this process is essentially irrelevant to the world of 1999, with its planetary lingua franca, it has driven much of racial history. The genetic boundaries between groups with significantly divergent languages were violated only on rare occasions, or when campaigns of invasion were mounted, accompanied by the proverbial raping and pillaging, and more significantly, by lengthy proximal habitation, social interaction, and language acquisition and hybridization. At any rate, an examination of world language taxonomy is, to a very large degree, an examination of world racial and subracial taxonomy.

Language can be thought of as an analogy for race in some important ways: languages can be organized into ancestral taxonomies, they exhibit degrees of purity and hybridization, they can go extinct, they can be judged superior or inferior for various purposes (with languages, this is a strictly practical and legitimate classification, whereas with races it is errant and perilous), and for each there is an identifiable population that exhibits it. The most successful language in history is English, an extremely hybridized language: it has a Germanic base, a slight influence from Celtic, and a vast imported Italic lexicon. Its purity has not been monitored or preserved by an academy, or petrified in a rigid form to be conformed to in all official business.

The population of England, similarly, has Germanic, Italic, and Celtic ancestry, and a dash of ancient Sino-Caucasian substrate (Stonehenge was built by Sino-Caucasian people).

It is not clear whether the fact of linguistic and hereditary hybridization has contributed to the spirit of England, but the fact remains: the English people have been extraordinarily successful culturally. They assembled the largest empire in world history. To this day, their tiny island is a fountain of innovative music, literature, and science.

Correlations, with various imperfections, can be found between racial taxonomy and linguistic taxonomy. For example, much of the Caucasoid population speaks Indo-European languages (a family which, before the term became associated with Nazi ideology, was called Aryan).

Here, from Mark Rosenfelder's web site, is a fantastic language map. Click on the map to bring up a window with the numbers one through ten in the languages of the corresponding family.

The Indo-European language family is divided into Celtic (Irish, Welsh, Gaelic, and a great variety of lost languages spoken in mainland Europe in a bygone era), Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian, Old Prussian), Italic (Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian), Slavic (Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbian, Ukrainian), Germanic (English, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, German), Hellenic (Greek), Indo-Iranian (Indic (Sanskrit, Hindi, Nepali), Iranian (Persian, Kurdish)), Albanian, Armenian, Ossete, and a sprinkling of additional small branches. Each of these sub-families corresponds to one or more racial groupings. Significant dead branches or ancestral protolanguages of Indo-European include Hittite, spoken in part of present-day Turkey (Anatolia), and Tocharian, spoken by an Indo-European population in the first millennium C.E. in central Asia (Xinjiang).

The Nostratic superfamily, united in a single common parent language perhaps 15K years ago, roughly equals the Caucasoid population with a small Mongoloid component, and consists of Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic (also called Afrasian; includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Phoenecian, ancient Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, Chadic), Ural-Altaic (consisting of Uralic-Yukaghir (consisting of Uralic (consting of a Samoyed grouping and a Finno-Ugric grouping, which includes Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Laplander, and indigenous languages of NW Russia) and Yukaghir), Altaic (Turkish, Mongol, Azerbaijani, Karachai-Balkar, Uzbek, Tartar, Japanese, Korean, and posited kinship with old Mesopotamian Elamite)), Elamo-Dravidian (Elamite, and the myriad non-Indo-European languages of India and Sri Lanka (Tamil, Telugu, etc.)), and South Caucasian (Kartvelian: Georgian, Svan, Laz, Mingrelian). Recent speculative additions are Chukchi-Kamchatkan (the Kamchatka peninsula is northeast of Korea, and is Russian territory) and Eskimo-Aleut.

from http://www.muw.edu/~rmccalli/NostraticFAQs.html:

WHAT DOES NOSTRATIC MEAN?
Nostratic was coined in 1903 by the Danish scholar Holger Pedersen and comes from the Latin word nostras "our countrymen."

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE FOR NOSTRATIC?
By using the traditional comparative method, Nostraticists have proposed over 600 roots common to the Nostratic group of language. Aharon Dolgolpolsky has claimed to have found over 2,000 common roots but has published very few as of yet.

Eurasianists, such as Joseph Greenberg, have used the more controversial method of mass comparison among all the languages in the hypothesized super family. Many linguists reject mass comparison because it does not address internal relationships, identify sound correspondances nor provide reconstructions (Kaiser & Sheveroshkin 1988).

The basic idea of both methods is to compare the most stable vocabulary among proposed members of a language family, super-family or phyla in order to develop a list of common roots, a phonology and rules of sound changes among the daughter languages. According to Nostraticists, their work has demonstrated a large common vocabulary, regular sound correspondances and many common grammatical forms--including pronominal roots.

WHERE DID THE IDEA OF NOSTRATIC COME FROM?
From the early 19th century, when Indo-European comparative linguistics was in its infancy, linguists speculated about its possible genetic relationship to other language families. Though many striking similarities were noted between Indo-European, Uralic-Yukaghir and Afroasiatic, much early work was not of high quality. One exception was Holger Pedersen, who not only coined the term Nostratic but who also expanded the definition to include Indo-European, Semitic, Samoyed and Finno-Ugrian, Turkish, Mongolian, Manchu, Yukaghir, and Eskimo. In the 1960s, Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky revived Pedersen's term and proposed over 350 roots common to Afro-Asiatic, Altaic, Dravidian, Indo-European, Kartvelian and Uralic-Yukaghir. Dolgopolsky added Chukchi-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut to this grouping. This list has been increased to over proposed 600 roots thanks to the work of later Nostraticists such as Alexis Manaster Ramer, Allan Bomhard and others. Bomhard's views of Nostratic phonology, morphology, and internal relationships differ from those of Illich-Svitych and to some extent resemble those of Greenberg.

In an irony of terminology, Caucasian languages (besides South Caucasian, i.e. Kartvelian) are very strange compared to Nostratic languages, and seem about as different from the European languages as one can get without flying to another star system. The Caucasian language family is not a family the way Indo-European is: it is a geographic grouping, almost as though Navajo and English were grouped together in Arizona, and no genetic hypothesis (posited common ancestral language) has been convincingly supported (though it is nonetheless a surety that it shares an ancestor with Nostratic). In fact, nary a convincing start has been made. The exceptional Caucasian groupings (from http://www.armazi.demon.co.uk/georgian/grammar1.html) are North West Caucasian (NWC), whose main members are Kabardian and Adyghe; North Central Caucasian (NCC) or Nakh (which includes Chechen and Ingush, and which is viewed by some as part of the NEC group); and North Eastern Caucasian (NEC) or Daghestanian (includes Avar, Lezgi and Dargva).

A language known as Basque, spoken by a people of the same name in a region around the border of France and Spain in the Pyrenées mountains, is also almost extraterrestrial in its oddness (the word "bizarre" is borrowed from Basque), and separated from the ancestral line that would become Nostratic 55K-60K years BCE. Basque is perhaps the sole surviving language of the people who migrated from Sumer to Iberia and modern-day Britain by way of north Africa, establishing the megalithic culture that produced Stonehenge. Or perhaps not. No one knows.

A theoretical superfamily has been posited, known as Sino-Caucasian, Dene-Caucasian, or Sino-Dene-Caucasian, which spans these non-Nostratic languages, linking them with some other important living and dead languages and families. The languages and families integrated in this theory are North Caucasian (North Central Caucasian and NW Caucasian), NE Caucasian (including Hurrian-Urartian (dead Mesopotamian languages) and Etruscan (pre-Italic language and culture of central Italy)), Abkhazo-Adyghian (West Caucasian, spoken on the SE coast of the Black Sea; includes Hattic, another dead Mesopotamian language), Sino-Tibetan (languages of China, Tibet, Bhutan, Burma, minority languages of Nepal, Bangladesh/India/Pakistan, Laos, Thailand, Viet Nam), Burushaski (spoken in the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan), Yeniseian (sole surviving representative is Ket, spoken by just 500 people in remote Siberia, with established similarities to Burushaski and to Na-Dene), Na-Dene (includes Tlingit and Eyak, in western Canada and Alaska, and Navajo and Apache, in southwest US), Pelasgian (pre-Hellenic language and culture of Greece and some eastern Mediterranean islands), Iberian (above-mentioned pre-Indo-European culture in what is today Spain and Portugal), Basque (as mentioned above, Basque is one language in a full pre-IE Iberian family), Sumerian (posited parent of Iberian), Nahali (eastern India), Chukchi-Kamchatkan, and some other Native American languages. These final three are more speculative than the others. All the superfamily theories are actually academically fringy to varying degrees.

Superfamilies posited in addition to Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian include the weakly attested Amerind (Native American languages excluding Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut, to include Uto-Aztec (Nahuatl, Hopi, Comanche)), Congo-Saharan (Niger-Congo, Kordofanian, and Nilo-Saharan), and the strongly attested Austric (Austro-Asiatic (Mon-Khmer (Khmer (Cambodia), Mon (Myanmar and Thailand), Ba-na, and Muong (Vietnam), Munda (spoken in eastern India, includes Mundari, Santali, and the odd Nahali), and Nicobarese, with a few thousand speakers in the Nicobar Islands (Indian Ocean, between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea))), Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian (Tagalog in the Philipines, Indonesian indigenous languages, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Maori)) and Miao-Yao ("The Hilltribe People of Thailand," Karen, Mien, Hmong, Lahu, Akha and Lisu)).

As an aside, the family of African click languages is called Khoisan, and Australian is an isolate family (or, conservatively, set of families) whose extraction from some ancestor of Nostratic, Sino-Caucasian, or Austric occured perhaps somewhat more than 30,000 years ago. For the curious, see The Australian Language Family by Kirstin Michener (Brigham Young University).

by Loren Petrich, from http://www.webcom.com/~petrich/writings/NostraticRefs.txt:

[...]

The hypothesis of Punctuated Equilibrium and the "Out of Africa" hypothesis both suggest that humanity originated in some relatively small population somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Punc-Eq, the genetic innovations that define our species can most easily spread in some relatively small population. However, language is a human universal and this initial group of people would have had language. Since it would have been fairly small, and successfully interbreeding, it would very likely have been linguistically homogeneous or nearly so. Thus, one can conclude that Proto-World almost certainly existed. Whether or not any of it is recoverable is another question entirely, since this initial group lived somewhere around 100,000 -- 200,000 years ago, and most mainstream linguists think that there is too much opportunity for Proto-World to have become garbled beyond recognition in all of its descendants.

Incidentally, a lower limit to this initial group's size is provided by the diversity of Human Leukocyte Antigen molecules, which provide an Identification, Friend or Foe system for immune-system cells. They are selected for diversity; if a bug escapes one host's immune system by looking like one version, it will not escape the immune system of another host with a different version. This diversity suggests a minimum population-bottleneck size significantly greater than two (I forget the precise number).

from Diplomatic Language Services, Inc., from http://www.dls-inc.com/fall95/art2.html:

Language Classification and Cross Training

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INTRODUCTION

As the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible demonstrates, since ancient times people have recognized relationships between the different languages and believed that at one time all humans spoke essentially the same language. In recent years, scholars in comparative linguistics have attempted to rebuild some of this language tree; some even claim that they can rebuild a ``world'' language by determining root words common in all languages. While most of this work still remains theory and conjecture, research in comparative linguistics has yielded concrete results in classifying and reconstructing major language stocks. Interestingly enough, this work in comparative linguistics has found support from geneticists rebuilding the human family tree by examining relationships within mitochondria DNA. The conclusions of the geneticist's work corresponds to the linguistic relationships proposed by some linguists. Besides the obvious academic interest, this comparative linguistic approach has practical applications in the world of language training, especially in the area of cross-training. For language program managers and supervisors, this comparative approach can result in substantial savings in both training dollars and man-hours.

EXISTING LANGUAGE STOCKS

According to Merritt Ruhlen, a linguist at Stanford University, there are currently sixteen language phyla, or language stocks, in the world today. In addition , there are several language isolates which have no clear genetic affiliation with any another languages. Languages like Basque and Burushaski are contemporary examples of language isolates. Each of these stocks represents languages that have a common relationship dating back thousands of years, and which still maintain some lexical and grammatical similarities. Obviously, the similarities vary and are dictated by a multitude of factors (i.e., the dispersal date of the stock, and cultural and geographic proximity) . Of these sixteen stocks, only eight are of practical interest due to the large number of speakers ( over 4 billion). The other eight stocks and language isolates together represent less than 100 million speakers. The following is a list of the eight major phyla arranged by number of speakers. The languages in parenthesis represents the best known languages or the languages with the largest number of speakers:

1. Indo-European: 2 billion speakers; Europe, North America, South America; Eurasia; South Asia (English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi)

2. Sino-Tibetan: 1 billion speakers; East Asia (Chinese)

3. Austric: 293 million speakers; Southeast Asia (Indonesian; Vietnamese)

4. Altaic: 250 million speakers; Central Asia; Northeast Asia (Japanese; Korean; Turkish)

5. Niger-Kordofanian: 181 million speakers; sub-Saharan Africa (Swahili)

6. Afro-Asiatic: 175 million speakers; Middle East and North Africa; (Arabic)

7. Elamo-Dravidian: 140 million speakers: Southeast India (Tamil)

8. Uralic-Yukagir: 22 million; Eastern Europe; Eurasia (Hungarian)

INDO-EUROPEAN

With well over 2 billion speakers, the Indo-European stock has the largest number of speakers and is the most geographically diverse of all the language stocks. Although its place of origin and date of dispersal is still disputed, the conventional theory places proto-Indo-European speakers in South Russia and Ukraine more than six thousand years ago. Armed with weapons made from iron ore in the Caucasus and carried by horses, the Indo-European speakers spread out into Western Europe, Iran, and India in a series of migrations that lasted over two thousand years. The settled, agricultural populations that resided in the areas outside of the Indo-European homeland were subjugated and eventually assimilated by the semi-nomadic Indo-European speakers. The substrate of the non-Indo-European speakers made substantial linguistic contributions to the emerging language families of the Indo-European stock. (In fact, a full one-third of vocabulary in Germanic languages is of non-Indo-European origin, such as words concerning nautical, hunting, and farming. The principal language families within the Indo-European language stock is as follows: Indo-Iranian (700 million speakers); Romance (500 million speakers); Germanic (450 million speakers); Balto-Slavic (300 million speakers); Greek (10 million); Armenian (5 million); and Celtic (2.5 million).

SINO-TIBETAN

Although its speakers number over one billion, the Sino-Tibetan stock is largely concentrated in East and Southeast Asia and is dominated mainly by one language - Mandarin Chinese - with 750 million speakers. Other languages in the Sino-Tibetan stock include Wu Chinese (77 million), Burmese (22 million), Tibetan (4 million), and Karen (2 million). The Sino-Tibetan stock appears to originate in Central China whence it spread into Northern China, Southern China, Southwest China, and Southeast Asia. In some areas like Burma, languages of the Sino-Tibetan stock predominated; in others, like Vietnam, they exerted a strong linguistic influence but did not subsume the languages spoken by the native inhabitants.

AUSTRIC

The Austric stock of languages is spoken by over 293 million people who have inhabited Southeast Asia since prehistoric times. However, the racial composition and language stock was greatly affected by migrations of speakers of the Sinitic stock (i.e., the Chinese and Burmese) and Eastward moving Indian speakers during historic times. Historic migrations to the Pacific Islands by seafaring speakers of Austric languages brought settlers to most of the Pacific Islands, to include Hawaii. Currently, the Austric stock is divided into three groups: Miao-Yao, which is spoken by some 7 million people in South China and Southeast Asia; Austro-Asiatic, which is spoken by at least 56 million people and is further divided into Munda and Mon-Khmer (Vietnamese and Cambodian); Daic, which is spoken by 50 million people in Thailand (Thai), Laos (Lao), and China (Shang); and Austronesian, which is spoken by 180 million people in Malaysia and Indonesia (Malaysian and Javanese), the Philippines (Tagalog, Ilokano, and Cebuano), and the Pacific Islands (Tahitian, Fijian, Hawaiian). The most numerically important language in this group is Malaysian, whose northern dialect is spoken in Malaysia and the southern dialect (known as Bahasa Indonesia) is widely spoken in Indonesia. Vietnamese (over 50 million), Javanese (70 million), Thai (35 million), and Tagalog are also important languages within the Austric stock.

ALTAIC

The classification of the Altaic stock is one of the most contentious among linguists, especially the inclusion of Japanese and Korean into this group. However, if accepted, five groups emerge: Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus, Korean, and Japanese. The homeland of the proto-Altaic speakers appears to be in Northern Asia, between the Altai mountains and Korea. There appears to be an ancient split between the Turkic and Mongolian languages and the Korean and Japanese languages. Subsequent substrate influence in Korean and Japanese in pre-historic and cultural affiliation with Chinese in historic times have differentiated Korean and Japanese substantially from each other and from other members of the Altaic stock. The Turkic languages split much more recently and dispersed during the Middle Ages throughout Central Asia and into modern-day Turkey. The principal language families within the Altaic stock is as follows: Japanese-Ryukyuan (115 million); Turkic (80 million); Korean (55 million); and Mongolian (3 million). The Turkic language family includes Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh, Tatar, Kirghiz, and Uighur as the major languages.

NIGER-KORDOFANIAN

With over 181 million speakers, the Niger-Kordofanian stock is the primary language group spoken in Central and South Africa. The early speakers of Niger-Kordofanian originated in West-Central Africa where they appear to have resided since pre-historic times. This stock is subdivided into two groups: Niger-Congo (180 million speakers) and Kordofanian (200,000 speakers). The Niger-Congo group has four branches or subgroups: West Atlantic, Mande, Adamawa-Ubangian, and Bantu. Of the Niger-Congo group, the Bantu subgroup with some 500 languages and 100 million speakers is the largest and most geographical dispersed. The early Bantu speakers appear to have originated in what is now Nigeria and Cameroon whence they began migrating as early as 1000 B.C. into Central and Southern Africa. The principal languages in this family include: Swahili (the lingua franca in East Africa), Shona, Tswana, Xhosa, Lingala, and Zulu, to name a few.

AFRO-ASIATIC

Although ranked sixth according to the number of speakers (175 million), the importance of the Afro-Asiatic phylum is much greater due to geographical and cultural reasons. The early speakers of Afro-Asiatic seem to have originated in North Africa or in the Middle East, particularly in the Levant. The speakers seem to have spread from their original homeland into new areas in North Africa and the Middle East as early as 6000 B.C. The Afro-Asiatic stock is divided into five groups: Berber (11 million), spoken in North Africa, includes Tuareg; Chadic (30 million), spoken in Chad, includes Hausa (12 million) which is spoken in Nigeria; Omotic (1 million), spoken in Ethiopia and Kenya; Cushitic (12 million), spoken in East Africa, includes Somali and Oromo; and Semitic (121 million), spoken in North Africa and Southwest Asia, includes Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and Tigrinya. Clearly for cultural and demographic reasons, the Semitic group is the most important of the Afro-Asiatic phylum. Arabic, which accompanied the rise of Islam during the Middle Ages from Arabia into North Africa and the Middle East, is numerically the most significant of the Semitic languages.

ELAMO-DRAVIDIAN

Languages belonging to the Elamo-Dravidian stock are spoken by some 145 million people in South and East India and South Pakistan. The people who spoke the Elamo-Dravidian languages originated in Southwest Iran/Southern Iraq and spread into Pakistan and India more than 8000 years ago with the rise of agriculture. The early Indus Harrapan civilization was probably populated by Elamo-Dravidian speakers. The Elamo-Dravidian languages are divided into two groups: Elamite, an extinct language, and Dravidian. The Dravidian speakers were either driven southward and eastward or assimilated during the Indic migration into Pakistan and India over the last 3000 years. Today, there are some 145 million Dravidian speakers. The most important languages are Tamil (50 million) and Telugu (50 million). The speakers of these two languages reside in Sri Lanka and Southeast India.

URALIC-YUKAGIR

With only 22 million speakers, the Uralic-Yukagir is one the smaller phyla. As the name indicates, the speakers of these languages originated in the Ural Mountain region of Russia from where they migrated during historic times. The major languages of this phylum are Hungarian (14 million), Finnish (5 million), and Estonian (1 million).

Still haven't had your fill of details? Check out Mark Rosenfelder's site: http://www.zompist.com/sources.htm, "Language Family Information for the Numbers List," wherein the number of speakers of pretty much any living language is given (organized taxonomically), along with some background on the important dead languages. Also, see the centerpiece of his site, the numbers 1-10 in over 3800 languages (wow!).

For those who hadn't guessed it, my interest in historical and comparative linguistics is more than casual. I became fascinated with the field many years ago.

from Commentary's Contentions blog, 2010-Jan-21, by Jonathan Tobin:

Muslims Attack Christians and the Church Blames the Jews

Israel's worsening relationship with the Vatican took another hit earlier this week with the release of a church report that in large measure blames the perilous situation of Christians in the Middle East on Israel and the Middle East conflict.

The report, issued two days after the pope's visit to a Rome synagogue, which sought to better relations between Catholics and Jews, was prepared in advance of a planned church conference of Middle East Christians to take place later this year. It claims that the Iraq war and Israel's presence in the West Bank have worsened conditions for minority Christians in the Muslim-dominated region. Written by Arab bishops, the document takes the point of view that Israel's occupation fuels Islamic radicalism, which in turn makes it hard for Christians to live.

Even worse than that, the report states: “The solution to conflicts rests in the hands of the stronger country in its occupying and inflicting wars on another country.” Thus, it apparently takes the point of view that the solution to the conflict lies principally with Israel, not its Arab antagonists. It goes on to claim that “violence is in the hands of the strong and weak alike, the latter resorting to whatever violence is within reach in order to be free,” which seems to justify anti-Israel terrorism by groups such as Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbollah.

The fallacious nature of this document is more than apparent to anyone who has been paying attention to the actual situation on the ground for Christians in Arab lands. The pressure on Christians to leave their traditional homes has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the spirit of Islamist jihadism, which views all non-Muslim minorities as threats to their hegemony. The plight of Christians in Bethlehem since it came under the rule of the Palestinian Authority illustrates this process. Once the town was in the hands of Yasser Arafat and Fatah, the once large Christian community there dwindled as a result of the coercion practiced by the ruling Muslims. But rather than blame the Muslims, Christian Arabs have spent the last century trying to prove their loyalty to the Arab world by blaming their troubles on the Jews and Israel, in effect becoming some of the most strident advocates of Arab nationalist causes.

The church's role in this sorry syndrome is compounded by the Vatican's worry that any statements on its part that would properly place the blame for discrimination and violence against Christians by Muslim populations would only make the situation worse. Thus, for decades the church has acquiesced in this effort to deflect the blame for Christian suffering in Arab countries away from the true culprits and on to the always convenient scapegoat of the Jews. There can be little doubt that this document and the conference that will follow will help fuel anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda. Unmentioned in the document is the fact that the one country in the Middle East where true religious freedom is enjoyed by all faiths is the State of Israel.

from the Wall Street Journal Europe, 2010-Jan-20, by Andrew Apostolou:

The Shame of Modern Greece
The country suffers from a lack of moral leadership denouncing the embarrassment of anti-Semitism.

The repeat arson attacks on a synagogue in Greece demonstrate that Turkey is not the only Mediterranean democracy cursed with anti-Semitism. Arsonists have attacked the Etz Hayyim synagogue in Chania, on the Greek island of Crete, twice this year. The fires on Jan. 5 and 17 have inflicted substantial damage on a structure that was only restored in 1999 after lying derelict since the Holocaust. The attempts to destroy Crete's only synagogue follow a spate of vandalism of Jewish graves in Ioannina in northwestern Greece.

Compounding these acts of violence is Greek society's shameful indifference to anti-Semitism. This was amply demonstrated during the arson incidents in Crete. Non-Greeks played an admirable role in saving the synagogue. An Albanian immigrant was the first to spot the fire in the early hours of Jan. 5. The Albanian caretaker of the synagogue and a Moroccan also rendered vital assistance. Nikos Stavroulakis, the director of the synagogue and the man behind its restoration, has written about the "the lack of 'locals'" on the scene after the first attack—all the more shocking given that these 'locals' would have lost their homes and businesses had the fire spread.

Those who sleep through the night while a synagogue burns in their own town are a metaphor for Greece's attitude to anti-Semitism. The fundamental problem with Greek anti-Semitism is not that it is rampant. It is that in a country of 11 million with just 5,000 Jews, few Greeks care to resist it. Greece suffers from a lack of moral, religious and social leadership denouncing the embarrassment of anti-Semitism, be it vandalism or the now banal comparison of Israel with the Nazis in the national media.

The indifference of many Greeks is unsurprising. The official version of the history ensures that few know of the Jewish component of Greece's past. Many Greeks do not know that their second largest city, Salonika, had a Jewish majority for most of its modern history. Instead of the Holocaust being treated as a moment for moral and historical reflection, it is portrayed as an opportunity for national self-congratulation because of the rescue of a small number of Greek Jews. The genuine heroism of Greek Christians who saved Greek Jews from the Nazis in such places as Zakynthos and Athens is used to obscure the collaboration and indifference that helped condemn tens of thousands of Greek Jews to death in Salonika and northern Greece.

This ignorance has been reinforced by historians, Greek and foreign alike, who have largely skated over collaboration during the Holocaust. Like the Greek government, historians prefer to emphasize the rescue of Jews rather than prompt an examination of the often shameful and ambiguous stance that too many Greeks took during the Second World War. The leaders of Greece's barely 5,000 strong Jewish community take a similar historical approach for obvious political reasons. Over sixty years after the Holocaust, myths prevail over scholarship.

Most Greek politicians are complicit, failing to take anti-Semitism seriously as a local problem. With the admirable exception of former conservative prime minister Constantine Mitsotakis, who has vigorously condemned the arson attacks, Greek politicians have responded lethargically to the latest incidents. This is despite the tremendous and commendable efforts of such organizations of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which has sought to educate Greek opinion leaders. The AJC's efforts have convinced some Greek politicians that their country is diminished by ignoring anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, too many still regard anti-Semitism as a public relations issue that affects Greece's image abroad, rather a moral question bearing upon its social sanity at home.

Very occasionally, some principled citizens express their disgust, but national figures generally do not bother to support these small local initiatives. In December 2009 hundreds of non-Jews in Ionnina formed a human chain around the Jewish cemetery there to protest its repeated desecration. In Salonika a few young historians have begun to ask questions about the massive theft of Jewish property during the war.

What these handfuls of activists have understood is that anti-Semitism can be as harmful to non-Jews as to Jews. Only a handful of Jews remain in Chania and Ioannina. These are places more of Jewish memory than of community—over 90% of Chania and Ioannina's Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The non-Jews in these towns now have to live with the lingering hate and immoral ambivalence that over sixty years ago allowed so many Greek Jews to be taken away to their deaths.

Mr. Apostolou is writing a history of collaboration during the Holocaust in Greece.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-29, by Evan R. Goldstein:

Where Do Jews Come From?

This much is known: In the mid-eighth century, the ruling elite of the Khazars, a Turkic tribe in Eurasia, converted to Judaism. Their impetus was political, not spiritual. By embracing Judaism, the Khazars were able to maintain their independence from rival monotheistic states, the Muslim caliphate and the Christian Byzantine empire. Governed by a version of rabbinical law, the Khazar Jewish kingdom flourished along the Volga basin until the beginning of the second millennium, at which point it dissolved, leaving behind a mystery: Did the Khazar converts to Judaism remain Jews, and, if so, what became of them?

Enter Shlomo Sand. In a new book, "The Invention of the Jewish People," the Tel Aviv University professor of history argues that large numbers of Khazar Jews migrated westward into Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, where they played a decisive role in the establishment of Eastern European Jewry. The implications are far-reaching: If the bulk of Eastern European Jews are the descendents of Khazars—not the ancient Israelites—then most Jews have no ancestral links to Palestine. Put differently: If most Jews are not Semites, then what justification is there for a Jewish state in the Middle East? By attempting to demonstrate the Khazar origins of Eastern European Jewry, Mr. Sand—a self-described post-Zionist who believes that Israel needs to shed its Jewish identity to become a democracy—aims to undermine the idea of a Jewish state.

Published in Hebrew last year, "The Invention of the Jewish People" was a best seller in Israel. In March, the French translation, also a best seller, received the prestigious Aujourd'hui Award, which honors the year's best nonfiction book. Past winners include such intellectual titans as Raymond Aron, Milan Kundera and George Steiner. "The Invention of the Jewish People" is being translated into a dozen languages. Mr. Sand is delivering lectures this month in Los Angeles, Berkeley, New York and elsewhere.

What should we make of Mr. Sand's radical revisionist history? There is reason to be very skeptical. After all, we have been here before. In 1976, Arthur Koestler published "The Thirteenth Tribe," which argued that Diaspora Jews were a "pseudo-nation" bound by "a system of traditional beliefs based on racial and historical premises which turn out to be illusory." The genetic influence of the Khazars on modern Jews is, he wrote, "substantial, and in all likelihood dominant." Koestler's speculations were not novel. The connection between the Khazars and the Jews of Eastern Europe had been debated by both scholars and conspiracists (the two are not mutually exclusive) for centuries.

"The Thirteenth Tribe" was savaged by critics, and Mr. Sand's repackaging of its central argument has not fared much better. "A few Jews in Eastern Europe presumably came from the Khazar kingdom, but nobody can responsibly claim that most of them are the descendents of Khazars," says Israel Bartal, a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We simply don't know enough about the demographics of Eastern European Jews before the 13th century to make such an assertion, Mr. Bartal says, adding, "Sand has not proven anything." According to Peter B. Golden, a professor of history at Rutgers University, the Khazars are likely one of a number of strains that shaped the Jewish population in Eastern Europe. But, he stresses, DNA studies have confirmed that the Middle Eastern strain is predominant.

In "The Invention of the Jewish People," Mr. Sand suggests that those who attacked Koestler's book did so not because it lacked merit, but because the critics were cowards and ideologues. "No one wants to go looking under stones when venomous scorpions might be lurking beneath them, waiting to attack the self-image of the existing ethnos and its territorial ambitions." But Koestler was himself uneasy about scorpions. The Khazar theory, he knew, was an article of faith among anti-Semites and anti-Israel Arab politicians. Just a few months before "The Thirteenth Tribe" was published, the Saudi Arabian delegation to the United Nations declared Zionism illegitimate because it was conceived by "non-Semitic Jews" rather than "our own Arab Jews who are the real Semites." (An Israeli ambassador, wrongly, countered that Koestler's book had been secretly subsidized by the Palestinians.) Perhaps more disconcerting, the neo-Nazi National States Rights Party in the U.S. declared "The Thirteenth Tribe" to be "the political bombshell of the century" because "it destroys all claims of the present-day Jew-Khazars to any historic right to occupy Palestine." Members of Stormfront, a self-described "white nationalist" Internet community, have predictably reacted to Mr. Sand's book with glee.

I recently called Mr. Sand in Paris, where he is on sabbatical, to ask if he is concerned that "The Invention of the Jewish People" will be exploited for pernicious ends. "I don't care if crazy anti-Semites in the United States use my book," he said in Israeli-accented English. "Anti-Semitism in the West, for the moment, is not a problem." Still, he is worried about how the forthcoming Arabic translation might be received in the Muslim world, where, he says, anti-Semitism is growing. I ask if the confident tenor of his book might exacerbate the problem. He falls quiet for a moment. "Maybe my tone was too affirmative on the question of the Khazars," he reluctantly concedes. "If I were to write it today I would be much more careful." Such an admission, however, is unlikely to sway the sinister conspiracists who find the Khazar theory a useful invention.

—Mr. Goldstein is a staff editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

from the Wall Street Journal Europe, 2009-Oct-26, by Amr Bargisi and Samuel Tadros:

Why Are Egypt's Liberals Anti-Semitic?
Western delegates to the Cairo congress should know about the country's Judeophobia.

Cairo

Later this week, Egypt will play host to the 56th Congress of Liberal International, which bills itself as the world federation of liberal and progressive democratic parties. Among the nearly 70 parties represented by LI are Britain's Liberal Democrats, Germany's Free Democrats, and the Liberal Party of Canada. In the U.S., LI's Web site cites the National Democratic Institute as a cooperating organization since 1986.

In Cairo, the visiting delegates will be hosted by the Al-Gabha, or Democratic Front Party. Western liberals (in the old-fashioned sense of that word) are always delighted to discover like-minded people in the Third World, and perhaps nowhere more so than in Arab countries. Yet, at least in Egypt, there's a dirty little secret about these self-described liberal parties: They are, for the most part, virulently anti-Semitic, sometimes opportunistically but just as often out of deeply-held rancorous convictions.

Consider the case of Sekina Fouad, a well-known journalist who also serves as the DFP's vice president. In an article published earlier this year, Ms. Fouad dismisses any distinction between Jews and Israelis, the reason for which is "the extremity of the doctrine of arrogance, distinctiveness and condescension [the Jews] set out from and seek to achieve by all means, and on top of which blood, killing, terrorizing and frightening." She corroborates this argument with an alleged statement by "President" Benjamin Franklin, asking Americans to expel Jews since they are "like locusts, never to get on a green land without leaving it deserted and barren."

Needless to say, Franklin never made any such statement, not that a journalist like Ms. Fouad would bother to check. She also asks the question "Are Zionists Human?" which offers backhanded credit to Jews for having "helped [her] understand a history full of examples of their expulsion, getting rid of them and their unethical and inhuman methods." In earlier writings, Ms. Fouad has written about what she calls "Talmudic teachings that determine types of purity unachievable by the Jew unless by using Christian human sacrifice" for the making of "blood pies." Not surprisingly, she also dismisses the Holocaust as part of an "arsenal of Jewish myths."

Nor is Ms. Fouad some kind of outlier in the Egyptian liberal movement. Take Ayman Nour, who contested the 2005 presidential election under the banner of his own party and was subsequently jailed for nearly four years, becoming something of a cause célèbre among Western officials, journalists and human-rights activists.

Immediately after his release earlier this year, he attended a celebration organized by opposition groups—including the Muslim Brotherhood—in the northern city of Port Said, commemorating "the first battalion of volunteers from the Egyptian People setting off to fight the Jews in 1948." The word "Jews" was stressed in bolded black lettering on the otherwise blue and red banner hanging above the conference panel. Yet far from trying to distance himself from that message, Mr. Nour got into the spirit of the conference, talking not only about his solidarity with Palestinians but also "the value of standing up to this enemy, behind which lies all evils, conspiracies, and threats that are spawned against Egypt."

Then there is the case of Egypt's oldest "liberal" party, Al-Wafd, whose eponymous daily newspaper is one of Egypt's most active platforms for anti-Semitism. Following President Obama's conciliatory Cairo speech to the Muslim world, columnist Ahmed Ezz El-Arab faulted Mr. Obama for insisting that the Holocaust was an actual historical event and gave nine historical "proofs" that it had never happened. He concluded that "the evil Jewish lies succeeded in creating an atmosphere of hatred for Germans that resulted in the death of millions."

These examples are, sadly, just the tip of an iceberg. What makes them all the more remarkable is that, contrary to stereotype, they do not have particularly ancient roots in Egypt. Until Egypt's Jews were expelled by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and '60s, Egypt had a millennia-old, thriving Jewish community. As late as the 1930s, Jewish politicians occupied ministerial posts in Egyptian governments and participated in nationalist politics.

But all that changed with the rise of totalitarian and fascist movements in Europe, which found more than their share of imitators in the Arab world, both among Islamists and secularists. When Egypt's monarchy was overthrown in 1952 by a military coup, anti-Semitism became an ideological pillar of the new totalitarian dispensation.

Since then, Egypt has evolved, coming to terms (of a sort) with Israel and adopting at least some elements of market-based economic principle. But anti-Semitism remains the political glue holding Egypt's disparate political forces together. Paradoxically, this is especially true of the so-called liberals, who think they can traffic on their anti-Semitism to gain favor in quarters where they would otherwise be suspect or unpopular. They have taken to demonizing Jews with the proverbial zeal of a convert.

Westerners, who tend to treat Arabs with a condescension masked as "understanding," may be quick to dismiss all this as a function of anger at Israeli policies and therefore irrelevant to the development of liberal politics in the Arab world. Yet a liberal movement that winds up espousing the kind of anti-Semitism that would have done the Nazis proud is, quite simply, not liberal. That's something the visiting delegates should know before they come to Cairo. More importantly, it's something the Arab world's genuine liberals need to understand before they once again commit moral suicide.

Messrs. Bargisi and Tadros are senior partners with the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth.

from Commentary, 2009-May, by Mark Steyn:

Israel Today, the West Tomorrow

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, a group of just under 100 people—Londoners and a few visitors —took a guided tour of the old Jewish East End. They visited, among other sites of interest, the birthplace of my old chum Lionel Bart, the author of Oliver! Three generations of schoolchildren have grown up singing Bart’s lyric:

Consider yourself

At ’ome!

Consider yourself

One of the family!

Those few dozen London Jews considered themselves at ’ome. But they weren’t. Not any more. The tour was abruptly terminated when the group was pelted with stones, thrown by “youths”—or to be slightly less evasive, in the current euphemism of Fleet Street, “Asian” youths. “If you go any further, you’ll die,” they shouted, in between the flying rubble.

A New Yorker who had just moved to Britain to start a job at the Metropolitan University had her head cut open and had to be taken to the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel, causing her to miss the Holocaust Day “interfaith memorial service” at the East London Central Synagogue. Her friend, Eric Litwack from Canada, was also struck but did not require stitches. But if you hadn’t recently landed at Heathrow, it wasn’t that big a deal, not these days: Nobody was killed or permanently disfigured. And given the number of Jewish community events that now require security, perhaps Her Majesty’s Constabulary was right and these Londoners walking the streets of their own city would have been better advised to do so behind a police escort.

_____________

A European Holocaust Memorial Day on which Jews are stoned sounds like a parody of the old joke that the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. According to a 2005 poll by the University of Bielefeld, 62 percent of Germans “are sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews”—which is a cheerfully straightforward way of putting it. Nevertheless, when it comes to “harping on,” these days it’s the Jews who are mostly on the receiving end. While we’re reprising old gags, here’s one a reader reminded me of a couple of years ago, during Israel’s famously “disproportionate” incursion into Lebanon: One day the U.N. Secretary General proposes that, in the interest of global peace and harmony, the world’s soccer players should come together and form one United Nations global soccer team.

“Great idea,” says his deputy. “Er, but who would we play?”

“Israel, of course.”

Ha-ha. It always had a grain of truth, now it’s the whole loaf.

“Israel is unfashionable,” a Continental foreign minister said to me a decade back. “But maybe Israel will change, and then fashions will change.” Fashions do change. But however Israel changes, this fashion won’t. The shift of most (non-American) Western opinion against the Jewish state that began in the 1970s was, as my Continental politician had it, simply a reflection of casting: Israel was no longer the underdog but the overdog, and why would that appeal to a post-war polytechnic Euro Left unburdened by Holocaust guilt?

Fair enough. Fashions change. But the new Judenhass is not a fashion, simply a stark reality that will metastasize in the years ahead and leave Israel isolated in the international “community” in ways that will make the first decade of this century seem like the good old days.

A few months after the curtailed Holocaust Day tour, I found myself in that particular corner of Tower Hamlets for the first time in years. Specifically, on Cable Street—the scene of a famous battle in 1936, when Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, in a crude exercise of political muscle, determined to march through the heart of Jewish East London. They were turned back by a mob of local Jews, Irish Catholic dockers, and Communist agitators, all standing under the Spanish Civil War slogan: “No Pasaran.” They shall not pass.

From “No Pasaran” to “If you go any further, you’ll die” is a story not primarily of anti-Semitism but of unprecedented demographic transformation. Beyond the fashionable “anti-Zionism” of the Euro Left is a starker reality: The demographic energy not just in Lionel Bart’s East End but in almost every Western European country is “Asian.” Which is to say, Muslim. A recent government statistical survey reported that the United Kingdom’s Muslim population is increasing ten times faster than the general population. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and many other Continental cities from Scandinavia to the Côte d’Azur will reach majority Muslim status in the next few years.

Brussels has a Socialist mayor, which isn’t that surprising, but he presides over a caucus a majority of whose members are Muslim, which might yet surprise those who think we’re dealing with some slow, gradual, way-off-in-the-future process here. But so goes Christendom at the dawn of the third millennium: the ruling party of the capital city of the European Union is mostly Muslim.

There are generally two responses to this trend: The first is that it’s like a cast change in Cats or, perhaps more precisely, David Merrick’s all-black production of Hello, Dolly! Carol Channing and her pasty prancing waiters are replaced by Pearl Bailey and her ebony chorus, but otherwise the show is unchanged. Same set, same words, same arrangements: France will still be France, Germany Germany, Belgium Belgium.

The second response is that the Islamicization of Europe entails certain consequences, and it might be worth exploring what these might be. There are already many points of cultural friction—from British banks’ abolition of children’s “piggy banks” to the enjoining of public doughnut consumption by Brussels police during Ramadan. And yet on one issue there is remarkable comity between the aging ethnic Europeans and their young surging Muslim populations: A famous poll a couple of years back found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace.

Fifty-nine percent? What the hell’s wrong with the rest of you? Hey, relax: In Germany, it was 65 percent; Austria, 69 percent; the Netherlands, 74 percent. For purposes of comparison, in a recent poll of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—i.e., the “moderate” Arab world—79 percent of respondents regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. As far as I know, in the last year or two, they haven’t re-tested that question in Europe, possibly in case Israel now scores as a higher threat level in the Netherlands than in Yemen.

To be sure, there are occasional arcane points of dispute: one recalls, in the wake of the July 7 bombings, the then London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s somewhat tortured attempts to explain why blowing up buses in Tel Aviv is entirely legitimate whereas blowing up buses in Bloomsbury is not. Yet these are minimal bumps on a smooth glide path: The more Europe’s Muslim population grows, the more restive and disassimilated it becomes, the more enthusiastically the establishment embraces “anti-Zionism,” as if the sinister Jewess is the last virgin left to toss in the volcano—which, given the 13-year old “chavs” and “slappers” face down in pools of their own vomit in most British shopping centers of a Friday afternoon, may indeed be the case. For today’s Jews, unlike on Cable Street in 1936, there are no Catholic dockworkers or Communist agitators to stand shoulder to shoulder. In post-Christian Europe, there aren’t a lot of the former (practicing Catholics or practicing dockers), and as for the intellectual Left, it’s more enthusiastic in its support of Hamas than many Gazans.

To which there are many Israelis who would brusquely reply: So what? Pity the poor Jew who has ever relied on European “friends.” Yet there is a difference of scale between the well-established faculty-lounge disdain for “Israeli apartheid” and a mass psychosis so universal it’s part of the air you breathe. For a glimpse of the future, consider the (for the moment) bizarre circumstances of the recent Davis Cup First Round matches in Sweden. They had been scheduled long ago to be played in the Baltiska Hallen stadium in Malmo. Who knew which team the Swedes would draw? Could have been Chile, could have been Serbia. Alas, it was Israel.

Malmo is Sweden’s most Muslim city, and citing security concerns, the local council ordered the three days of tennis to be played behind closed doors. Imagine being Amir Hadad and Andy Ram, the Israeli doubles players, or Simon Aspelin and Robert Lindstedt, the Swedes. This was supposed to be their big day. But the vast stadium is empty, except for a few sports reporters and team officials. And just outside the perimeter up to 10,000 demonstrators are chanting, “Stop the match!” and maybe, a little deeper into the throng, they’re shouting, “We want to kill all Jews worldwide” (as demonstrators in Copenhagen, just across the water, declared just a few weeks earlier). Did Aspelin and Lindstedt wonder why they couldn’t have drawn some less controversial team, like Zimbabwe or Sudan? By all accounts, it was a fine match, thrilling and graceful, with good sportsmanship on both sides. Surely, such splendid tennis could have won over the mob, and newspapers would have reported that by the end of the match the Israeli players had the crowd with them all the way. But they shook ’em off at Helsingborg.

Do you remember the “road map” summit held in Jordan just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq? It seemed a big deal at the time: The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the U.S. president, all the A-list dictators of the Arab League. Inside the swank resort, it was all very collegial, smiles and handshakes. Outside, flags fluttered—Jordan’s, America’s, Saudi Arabia’s, Egypt’s, Palestine’s. But not Israel’s. King Abdullah of Jordan had concluded it would be too provocative to advertise the Zionist Entity’s presence on Jordanian soil even at a summit supposedly boasting they were all on the same page. Malmo’s tennis match observed the same conventions: I’m sure the Swedish tennis wallahs were very gracious hosts behind the walls of the stockade, and the unmarked car to the airport was top of the line. How smoothly the furtive maneuvers of the Middle East transfer to the wider world.

_____________

When Western governments are as reluctant as King Abdullah to fly the Star of David, those among the citizenry who choose to do so have a hard time. In Britain in January, while “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators were permitted to dress up as hook-nosed Jews drinking the blood of Arab babies, the police ordered counter-protesters to put away their Israeli flags. In Alberta, in the heart of Calgary’s Jewish neighborhood, the flag of Hizballah (supposedly a proscribed terrorist organization) was proudly waved by demonstrators, but one solitary Israeli flag was deemed a threat to the Queen’s peace and officers told the brave fellow holding it to put it away or be arrested for “inciting public disorder.” In Germany, a student in Duisburg put the Star of David in the window of an upstairs apartment on the day of a march by the Islamist group Milli Görüs, only to have the cops smash his door down and remove the flag. He’s now trying to get the police to pay for a new door. Ah, those Jews. It’s always about money, isn’t it?

Peter, the student in Duisberg, says he likes to display the Israeli flag because anti-Semitism in Europe is worse than at any other time since the Second World War. Which is true. But, if you look at it from the authorities’ point of view, it’s not about Jew-hatred; it’s a simple numbers game. If a statistically insignificant Jewish population gets upset, big deal. If the far larger Muslim population—and, in some French cities, the youth population (i.e., the demographic that riots) is already pushing 50 percent—you have a serious public-order threat on your hands. We’re beyond the anti-Semitic and into the ad hoc utilitarian: The King Abdullah approach will seem like the sensible way to avoid trouble. To modify the UN joke: Whom won’t we play? Israel, of course. Not in public.

One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, a group wearing “BOYCOTT ISRAEL” T-shirts entered a French branch of Carrefour, the world’s largest supermarket chain, and announced themselves. They then systematically advanced down every aisle examining every product, seizing all the items made in Israel and piling them into carts to take away and destroy. Judging from the video they made, the protesters were mostly Muslim immigrants and a few French leftists. But more relevant was the passivity of everyone else in the store, both staff and shoppers, all of whom stood idly by as private property was ransacked and smashed, and many of whom when invited to comment expressed support for the destruction. “South Africa started to shake once all countries started to boycott their products,” one elderly lady customer said. “So what you’re doing, I find it good.”

Others may find Germany in the ‘30s the more instructive comparison. “It isn’t silent majorities that drive things, but vocal minorities,” the Canadian public intellectual George Jonas recently wrote. “Don’t count heads; count decibels. All entities—the United States, the Western world, the Arab street—have prevailing moods, and it’s prevailing moods that define aggregates at any given time.” Last December, in a well-planned attack on iconic Bombay landmarks symbolizing power and wealth, Pakistani terrorists nevertheless found time to divert one-fifth of their manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the city’s poor in a nondescript building. If this was a territorial dispute over Kashmir, why kill the only rabbi in Bombay? Because Pakistani Islam has been in effect Arabized. Demographically, in Europe and elsewhere, Islam has the numbers. But ideologically, radical Islam has the decibels—in Turkey, in the Balkans, in Western Europe.

And the prevailing mood in much of the world makes Israel an easy sacrifice. Long before Muslims are a statistical majority, there will be three permanent members of the Security Council—Britain, France, Russia—for whom the accommodation of Islam is a domestic political imperative.

_____________

On the heels of his call for the incorporation of Sharia within British law, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an interview to the Muslim News praising Islam for making “a very significant contribution to getting a debate about religion into public life.” Well, that’s one way of putting it. The urge to look on the bright side of its own remorseless cultural retreat will intensify: Once Europeans have accepted a not entirely voluntary biculturalism, they will see no reason why Israel should not do the same, and they will embrace a one-state, one-man, one-vote solution for the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

The Muslim world has spent decades peddling the notion that the reason a vast oil-rich region stretching thousands of miles is politically deformed and mired in grim psychoses is all because of a tiny strip of turf barely wider than my New Hampshire township. It will make an ever more convenient scapegoat for the problems of a far vaster territory from the mountains of Morne to the Urals. There was a fair bit of this in the days after 9/11. As Richard Ingrams wrote on the following weekend in the London Observer: “Who will dare to damn Israel?”

Well, take a number and get in line. The dust had barely settled on the London Tube bombings before a reader named Derrick Green sent me a congratulatory e-mail: “I bet you Jewish supremacists think it is Christmas come early, don’t you? Incredibly, you are now going to get your own way even more than you did before, and the British people are going to be dragged into more wars for Israel.”

So it will go. British, European, and even American troops will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a bomb will go off in Madrid or Hamburg or Manchester, and there will be nothing left to blame except Israeli “disproportion.” For the remnants of European Jewry, the already discernible migration of French Jews to Quebec, Florida, and elsewhere will accelerate. There are about 150,000 Jews in London today—it’s the thirteenth biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately one million Muslims. The highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category. By 2025, there will be Jews in Israel, and Jews in America, but not in many other places. Even as the legitimacy of a Jewish state is rejected, the Jewish diaspora—the Jewish presence in the wider world—will shrivel.

And then, to modify Richard Ingrams, who will dare not to damn Israel? There’ll still be a Holocaust Memorial Day, mainly for the pleasures it affords to chastise the new Nazis. As Anthony Lipmann, the Anglican son of an Auschwitz survivor, wrote in 2005: “When on 27 January I take my mother’s arm—tattoo number A-25466—I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah.” Jenin?

You can see why they’ll keep Holocaust Day on the calendar: In an age when politicians are indifferent or downright hostile to Israel’s “right to exist,” it’s useful to be able to say, “But some of my best photo-ops are Jewish.”

The joke about Mandatory Palestine was that it was the twice-promised land. But isn’t that Europe, too? And perhaps Russia and maybe Canada, a little ways down the line? Two cultures jostling within the same piece of real estate. Not long ago, I found myself watching the video of another “pro-Palestinian” protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, “Run, run, you cowards!” and “Allahu akbar!” You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would understand: In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.