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Dysgenics is a term applied by some researchers to describe a hypothetical evolutionary weakening of a population of organisms relative to their environment, often due to relaxation of natural selection or the occurrence of negative selection. It is not a topic of significant scientific research; it appears more often in fiction and the popular media. While discussed in biology for other species, dysgenics remains unproven and theoretical when applied to humans.

Dysgenics is a controversial term, especially when applied to humans, and is generally considered a theory that is neither proven or disproven.

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 whilst the disabled stayed safely at home.

Colum Gillfallen in 1965 argued that lead used by Romans in plumbing and cooking utensils poisoned the water and food of the Roman elite. He concluded, "It follows ... that whatever qualities enabled Roman individuals to make money, or to marry or mate with money, were rigorously bred out of the race and culture by lead and other forces" and caused the decline of the Roman Empire. In 1985, the Gillfallen paper was refuted by Needleman and Needleman. They found that "the lead employed in the main water-supply system was almost certainly harmless". Calcium deposits from hard water prevented contact with the lead. Where the water was soft (rare in the most populated areas), continuous flow of water caused dissolved lead concentration to be small. They agree that lead poisoning from cooking utensils was potentially hazardous. However, 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 1960's until the early 1990's; he and his theories were unfavorably portrayed in the press. Shockley argued that "the future of the population was threatened because people with low IQs had more children than those with high IQs" and his theories "became increasingly controversial and race-based".

In his controversial 1996 book, Dysgenics: Genetic deterioration in modern populations, psychologist Richard Lynn argued that intelligence in Western nations had been decreasing due to dysgenics. In addition to other concepts he mentioned, Lynn also concluded that China may overtake the West due to continued deterioration of intelligence in the Western nations, especially the USA.

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."

Dysgenics and IQ testing

Most of the focus on dysgenics in human populations in recent years has investigated the change in genotypic intelligence. Demographic studies generally indicate that the more intelligent and better educated women in affluent nations have much lower reproductive rates than the less educated, which has led to concern regarding the future of intelligence in these nations. The most cited work is Vining's 1982 study on the fertility of 2,539 U.S. women aged 25 to 34; the average fertility is correlated at -0.86 in IQ for white women and -0.96 for black women, and indicated a drop in the genotypic average IQ of 1.6 per generation for the white population and 2.4 points per generation for the black population. A 2004 study by Richard Lynn and Marian Van Court 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 suggests in Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, that the isolated effect of dysgenics may have been masked by the countervailing Flynn effect, the steady increase of IQ in Asian and Western nations during the 20th century, thought to be related to better diets and other environmental factors. Current research shows that the Flynn effect might have already ended around 1990 in several European nations. Teasdale & Owen (2005) "report intelligence test results from over 500,000 young Danish men, tested between 1959 and 2004, showing that performance peaked in the late 1990s, and has since declined moderately to pre-1991 levels." They speculate that "a contributing factor in this recent fall could be a simultaneous decline in proportions of students entering 3-year advanced-level school programs for 16–18 year olds."

Another recent study done by Professor of Education Philip Adey and psychology professor Michael Shayer also show that the Flynn effect may have ended in the United Kingdom. According to Professor Adey, "The intelligence of 11-year-olds has fallen by three years' worth in the past two decades." The study compared results of IQ tests taken by eleven-year-old children in 2005, the mid 1990s, and 1976, showing a precipitous drop in average IQ.

In fiction

Cyril M. Kornbluth's short story The Marching Morons is a good example of dysgenic fiction.

Mike Judge's film Idiocracy is a comedy about the decline of intelligence in the future.

See also

Devolution (fallacy)

Degeneration

References cited

1. 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 1410209008. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. McNish, Ian "David Starr Jordan on the Dysgenic effects of dysfunctional culture," Mankind Quarterly. Washington: Fall 2002.Vol.43, Iss. 1; pg. 81
3. 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)
4. 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)
5. Grout (October 10 2006). "Lead Poisoning and Rome". Encyclopaedia Romana. James. Retrieved 2006-04-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
6. "William Shockley 1910 - 1989". A Science Odyssey People and Discoveries. PBS online. 1998. Retrieved 2006-11-13.
7. Lynn, Richard (1996). Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0275949176.
8. 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
9. Lynn, Richard and Van Court, Marilyn, "New evidence of dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States," Intelligence. Norwood: 2004.Vol.32, Iss. 2; pg. 193

External links

• Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, a review by Marian Van Court
• Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, a review by Chris Brand
• Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, a review by John R. Wilmoth
• Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, a review by W.D. Hamilton
• Some Ethical Issues at the Population Level Raised by 'Soft' Eugenics, Euphenics, and Isogenics

References

• Vining, D.R., 1982. On the possibility of a re-emergence of a dysgenic trend with respect to intelligence in American fertility differentials. Intelligence 6, pp. 241—264.

• Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems Scott-Townsend, 1992

• 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.x

• Thomas W. Teasdale and David R. Owen (2005). "A long-term rise and recent decline in intelligence test performance: The Flynn Effect in reverse." Personality and Individual Differences 39(4), pp 837–843.

• Eugenics
• Evolution