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Dysgenics is a term describing a system of breeding where selection is for deleterious traits. Similarly, it is also described as "the study of factors relating to or causing a decrease in the survival of the genetically well-adapted members of a line of descent." Dysgenic mutations have been studied in a variety of animals such as the mouse and the fruit fly . Dysgenics is used by eugenicists to mean the opposite of eugenics and has been used by researchers to refer to a decrease in human intelligence due to differential fertility. Although the hypothetical existence of a dysgenic trend in humans is not a topic of significant scientific endeavor, the concept appears occasionally in fiction and film.

History of the term

The term first came into use as an opposite of eugenics, a social philosophy advocating improvement of human hereditary qualities, often by social programs or government intervention.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "dysgenic" was first used as an adjective as early as 1915 by David Starr Jordan to describe the "dysgenic effect" of World War I. He believed that fit men were as likely to die from modern warfare as anyone else, and war was seen as killing off only the physically fit male members of the population while the disabled stayed safely at home.

In the 1930s, Julian Huxley, who later became the first director of UNESCO, was concerned by dysgenics and described eugenics as "of all outlets for altruism, that which is most comprehensive, and of longest range".

In 1965 Colum Gillfallen argued that lead used by Romans in plumbing and cooking utensils poisoned the water and food of the Roman elite, causing the decline of the Roman Empire. In 1985, this was refuted by Needleman and Needleman who showed that measurements of lead from bones of Romans and other peoples provide no evidence that the fertility of the Roman elite was adversely affected.

William Shockley (a Nobel laureate in Physics) used the term in his controversial advocacy of eugenics from the mid 1960s through the 1980s. Shockley argued that "the future of the population was threatened because people with low IQs had more children than those with high IQs."

Robert K. Graham in 1998 argued that genocide and class warfare, in cases ranging from the French Revolution to the present, have had a dysgenic effect through the killing of the more intelligent by the less intelligent, and "might well incline humanity toward a more primitive, more brutish level of evolutionary achievement."

Research on differential fertility

In 1969, the "dysgenic effects of birth control" are first referenced, but " the true genetic implications of family planning" are said to be "difficult to evaluate".

In a 1982 study on the fertility of over 10,000 individuals throughout the United States, the average fertility of women was correlated at -0.86 with IQ for white women and -0.96 for black women, which was claimed to indicate a drop in the genotypic average IQ of 1.6 points per generation for the white population, and 2.4 points per generation for the black population. In a follow-up study to address the concern that the fertility of this sample could not be considered complete, it was reported "the same negative relationship is found between IQ and fertility," although "the overall decline in mean IQ implied by these data is less".

In 2004 Richard Lynn and Marian Van Court's study returned similar results, with the genotypic decline measuring at 0.9 IQ points per generation for the total sample and 0.75 IQ points for whites only.

Richard Lynn and Van Court are controversial figures; Van Court has written for Occidental Quarterly, "a magazine that espouses white nationalism" and Lynn has been criticized by other scholars for distorting and misrepresenting data on previous occasions although other scholars have favorably reviewed Lynn's work on dysgenics. Richard Lynn (along with Daniel R. Vining and William Shockley) is a major recipient of grants from the Pioneer Fund. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights advocacy organization which has been described as "a controversial, liberal organization" , has characterized the Pioneer Fund as a hate group. An award-winning author and geneticist, Steve Jones, said that Lynn's 1996 book "misunderstood modern ideas of genetics". "A flaw in his argument of genetic deterioration in intelligence", Jones said, "was the widely accepted fact that intelligence as measured by IQ tests has actually increased over the past 50 years".

The Flynn Effect

The most important contraindication to dysgenic declines in IQ has been that IQ scores themselves have not been falling, but rising, in a trend known as the Flynn Effect. As noted by Steve Connor in his refutation of the existence of a dysgenic trend: "intelligence as measured by IQ tests has actually increased over the past 50 years."

If it is true that the genes underlying IQ have been shifting, it is reasonable to expect that IQ throughout the population should also shift in the same direction, yet the reverse has clearly occurred. However, genotypic IQ may fall even while phenotypic IQ rises throughout the population due to environmental effects (e.g. better schooling, nutrition, television, and so on). The Flynn Effect has increased IQ scores as much as 15 points throughout the first world, but some researchers claim that this trend now shows signs of reversal. See the section on the possible end of the Flynn Effect for further information.

Dysgenic fallacy

It is well-established that a negative correlation between fertility and IQ has existed in many parts of the world at various times. It has even been argued that this was true of Ancient Rome. While it may seem obvious that differential fertility would result in a progressive change in IQ, it is a fallacy that applies only to closed subpopulations. As long as child IQ can be higher or lower that that of the parents, an equilibrium is established. Subsequently, the mean IQ will not change, in the absence of a change in the differential fertility. The steady-state IQ distribution will be lower for negative differential fertility and for positive, but these differences are small. Even for the extreme, and unrealistic assumption, of endogamous mating in IQ subgroups, a differential fertility change of 2.5/1.5 to 1.5/2.5 (high IQ/low IQ), causes as shift of only 4 IQ points. For random mating, the shift is less than 1 IQ point.

In music, film and literature

• H. G. Wells' 1895 novel, The Time Machine, describes a future world where humanity has degenerated into two distinct branches who have their roots in the class distinctions of Wells' day. Both have sub-human intelligence and other putative dysgenic traits.
• Cyril M. Kornbluth's short story "The Marching Morons" is an example of dysgenic fiction.
• T. J. Bass's novels Half Past Human and The Godwhale describe humanity becoming cooperative and "low-maintenance" to the detriment of all other traits.
• The 1998 song "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger finds lighthearted humor in dysgenics with the lines "Been around the world and found/That only stupid people are breeding/The cretins cloning and feeding/And I don't even own a tv"
• The 2003 song "The Idiots Are Taking Over" by NOFX suggests that the effects of dysgenics are already evident.
• Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy is a comedy about a future where dysgenics has contributed to mass stupidity.
• The 2007 music video of Korn's song "Evolution" discusses the topic of dysgenics.

See also

• Breeder (slang)
• Devolution (biological fallacy)
• Degeneration
• Human vestigiality
• Idiocracy
• Societal collapse
• Social Darwinism

References

Cited

1. Definition of dysgenic from "The CancerWEB Project", Newcastle University.
2. Encarta definition of dysgenics
3. Restoration of excitation—contraction coupling and slow calcium current in dysgenic muscle by dihydropyridine receptor complementary DNA
4. Evolution of hybri dysgenesis determinants in Drosophila melanogaster
5. GONADAL HYBRID DYSGENESIS IN DROSOPHILA STURTEVANTI (DIPTERA, DROSOPHILIDAE)
6. Vining, Daniel (1982). "On the possibility of the reemergence of a dysgenic trend with respect to intelligence in American fertility differentials". Intelligence. 6 (3): 241–264.
7. Steve Sailer - The Morons Shall Inherit the Earth
8. Jordan, David Starr (2003 (Reprint)). War and the Breed: The Relation of War to the Downfall of Nations. Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of the Pacific. ISBN 1-4102-0900-8. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. McNish, Ian "David Starr Jordan on the Dysgenic effects of dysfunctional culture," Mankind Quarterly. Washington: Fall 2002.Vol.43, Iss. 1; pg. 81
10. Huxley, Julian (1936). "Eugenics and Society". Eugenics Review. 28 (1): 24. Retrieved 2007-09-25.
11. Huxley, Julian (1936). "Eugenics and Society". Eugenics Review. 28 (1): 11. Retrieved 2007-09-25.
12. Gillfallen, S. Colum (1965, Jan-Mar). "Roman Culture and Dysgenic Lead Poisoning". The Mankind Quarterly. 5 (3): pp. 131-148. ISSN 0025-2344. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
13. ^ Needleman, Lionel (1985). "Lead Poisoning and the Decline of the Roman Aristocracy". Classical Views. 4 (1): pp. 63-94. ISSN 0012-9356. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
14. Grout (October 10 2006). "Lead Poisoning and Rome". Encyclopaedia Romana. James. Retrieved 2006-04-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
15. "William Shockley 1910 - 1989". A Science Odyssey People and Discoveries. PBS online. 1998. Retrieved 2006-11-13.
16. Graham, Robert K. "Devolution by revolution: Selective genocide ensuing from the French and Russian revolutions," Mankind Quarterly. Washington: Fall 1998.Vol.39, Iss. 1; pg. 71
17. Kirk, Dudley (1969). "The genetic implications of family planning". Journal of Medical Education. 44 (supplement 2): 80–83.
18. Vining, Daniel (1982). "On the possibility of the reemergence of a dysgenic trend with respect to intelligence in American fertility differentials". Intelligence. 6 (3): 241–264.
19. Vining, Daniel (1995). "On the possibility of the reemergence of a dysgenic trend with respect to intelligence in American fertility differentials: an update". Personality and Individual Differences. 19 (2): 259–263.
20. Lynn, Richard (2004). "New evidence of dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States". Intelligence. 32 (2). Ablex Pub.: p. 193. ISSN 0160-2896. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
21. Andrew Murr. Dating the White Way. Newsweek, August 9, 2004.
22. Kamin, Leon (1995). "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life". Scientific American. 272. Lynn's distortions and misrepresentations of the data constitute a truly venomous racism, combined with scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
23. ACADEMIC NAZISM Steve Rosenthal, Department of Sociology, Hampton University, Hampton VA
24. Black Intellectual Genocide: An Essay Review of IQ of Wealth of Nations by Girma Berhanu, Gotberg University, Sweden
25. Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, reviewed by John C. Loehlin. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1999.
26. Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, reviewed by Daniel R. Vining, Jr. Population Studies, 1998.
27. Edsall, Thomas (December 19, 1998). "Conservative Group Accused Of Ties to White Supremacists". Washington Post. Retrieved 2006-11-18. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
28. Southern Poverty Law Center Race and 'Reason'; Academic ideas a pillar of racist thought. Retrieved April 15, 2008.
29. Southern Poverty Law Center Into the Mainstream; An array of right-wing foundations and think tanks support efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable. Retrieved April 15, 2008.
30. ^ Connor, Steve (December 22 1996). "Stalking the Wild Taboo; Professor predicts genetic decline and fall of man". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 2008-04-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
31. Retherford, R. D., & Sewell, W. H. (1988). "Intelligence and family size reconsidered." Social Biology, 35, 1−40.
32. Teasdale, Thomas (2008). "Secular declines in cognitive test scores: A reversal of the Flynn Effect". Intelligence. 36 (2). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
33. Lynn, Richard (2008). "The decline of the world's IQ". Intelligence. 36 (2). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
34. Preston, Samuel H. (Mar., 1993). "Differential Fertility and the Distribution of Traits: The Case of IQ". The American Journal of Sociology. 98 (5). The University of Chicago Press: pp. 997-1019. Retrieved 2008-04-22. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
35. Lam, David (Mar., 1993). "Comment on Preston and Campbell's "Differential Fertility and the Distribution of Traits"". The American Journal of Sociology. 98 (5). The University of Chicago Press: pp. 1033-1039. Retrieved 2008-04-22. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

General

• Galor, Oded and Omer Moav: Natural selection and the origin of economic growth. Quarterly Review of Economics 117 (2002) 1133-1191.
• Hamilton, W. D. (2000) A review of Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations. Annals of Human Genetics 64 (4), 363-374. doi: 10.1046/ j.1469-1809.2000.6440363.
• Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems Scott-Townsend, 1992

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