A troublesome inheritance : genes, race and human history by Nicholas Wade.

 In some ways, this is a troublesome book to read and review. My evangelical friends may strongly oppose some of the ideas conveyed within it, while my more progressive friends may oppose those same ideas, for diametrically opposed reasons. Evolution and the influence of genetics upon human lives are often found to be inflammatory topics, though I have found them both fascinating and enlightening, and find in those subjects, as well as astrophysics and cosmology, more evidence of a glorious and ingenious Author and Creator, and less of blind probabilities.

I agree with Wade to a certain extent when he says,

"...despite the personal failing of some scientist, science as a knowledge-generating system does tend to correct itself, though often only after considerable delay. It is during these delay periods that great harm can be caused by those who use uncorrected scientific findings to propagate injurious policies. Scientists' attempts to classify human races and to understand the proper scope of eugenics were both hijacked before the two fields could be fully corrected."

although my concern for the politicization of scientific theories may take a slightly different tack.

Interesting to note that many of the ideas that Hitler used to justify his extermination of "lesser" races and "defective" human beings had some quite respectable proponents around the world in the preceding decades.

"The fact that antecedents for the ideas that led to the Holocaust can be found in the American and English eugenics movements of the 1920s and 1930s does not mean that others share responsibility for the crimes of the national Socialist regime. It does mean that ideas about race are dangerous when linked to political agendas. It puts responsibility on scientists to test rigorously the scientific ideas that are placed before the public."

At the root of scientific humanism and current evolutionary theory, of course, is the idea that Man is simply a more highly evolved ape, and not a special divine project, so the study of human evolution needs to start in the "cradle of life."

"A fierce drought gripped Africa from 6.5 to 5 million years ago, and the forests shrank, giving way to open woodland or savannah. This was perhaps the event that forced the (chimplike) population into two groups, one of which led to chimps and the other to humans."

I found the following bit an interesting supposition:

"Follow an institution all the way down, and beneath thick layers of culture, it is built on instinctual human behaviors. The rule of law would not exist if people didn't have innate tendencies to follow norms and punish violators. Soldiers could not be made to follow orders were not army discipline able to invoke innate behaviors of conformity, obedience and willingness to kill for one's own group."

Perhaps...though Calvinist doctrine supposes that people are innately law-breakers, rather than followers, although there is a deep need for belonging to a group within us. Also, creating obedient and effective soldiers is a far more complex task than what Wade imagines, especially for elite forces, who must have their learned behaviors completely broken down and stripped away before they can be molded (some might say brainwashed) into warriors willing to sacrifice their lives for their brothers and for a cause.

"A hunter-gatherer society consists of small, egalitarian bands without leaders or headmen. This was the standard human social structure until 15,000 years ago."

How do we know that? Is there archaeological evidence that proves that all hunter gatherers were leaderless? It's been my experience that in any group of people, leaders and dominance arises. If evolutionary theory is to be believed, the chimps from whom we descend have hierarchies, why would hunter-gatherers suddenly be egalitarian? I just don't buy that hypothesis.

"(after the invention of agriculture) ...people skilled in farming and in operating in larger communities prospered and left more children; those whose only skill was in hunting did less well and placed fewer of their children and genes in the next generation."

Ok, that makes a certain amount of sense. My son-in-law, however, has a theory about Black Friday shopping satisfying a deep seated urge in a nation of farmers and merchants to "hunt" in packs.

Where Wade becomes controversial, I suppose, is when he shows evidence of evolution not being quite the slow, eons long process which we all expect, but first, much more recent, and second, much more rapid, than accepted theory.

"The process of organizing people in larger and larger social structures, with accompanying changes in social behavior, has most probably been molded by evolution, though the underlying genetic changes have yet to be identified. This social evolution has proceeded roughly in parallel in the world's principal populations or races, those of Africans, East Asians and Caucasians."

"In the case of both ants and people, societies evolve over time as natural selection modifies the social behavior of their members. With ants, evolution has had time to generate thousands of different species, each with a society adapted to survival in its particular environment. With people, who have only recently dispersed from their ancestral homeland, evolution has so far generated only races within a single species, but with several major forms of society, each a response to different environments and historical circumstances."

The key idea being that,

"Races develop within species and easily merge back into it. All human races, so far as is known, have the same set of genes. But each gene comes in a set of different flavors or alternative forms, known to geneticists as alleles. One might suppose that races differ in having different alleles of various genes. But, though a handful of such racially defining alleles do exist, the basis of race rests largely on something even slighter, a difference in the relative commonness, or frequency, of alleles..."

I wondered, briefly, about the concept of "race" as it might apply to other types of animals than humans. How would you define a "race" of sparrows, or iguanas, or gazelles. Can we even go there?

"Once the human population had spread out across the globe, it was subject to a variety of strong evolutionary stresses in the form of a radical makeover of human social organization and population movements that swept over the original settlement pattern. These population shifts were caused by climate change, the spread of agriculture and warfare."

So, there's a note of Social Darwinism in all of this, based on the idea that the people who survive and thrive within a particular type of culture or society actually have a different set of dominant...allele distribution? And if they thrive, then they are more likely to reproduce, as are their progeny. While those who don't have the genetic makeup to thrive will fail to reproduce?

In that case, why do eugenicists always have to start by sterilizing or aborting those human groups whom they have determined to be society's failures?

It is, perhaps, revealing that Wade has no axe to grind (nor funding to obtain) as regards Global Warming, so he doesn't censor his historical data. Climate change has been going on for thousands, nay millions, of years, folks. The anthropogenic hypothesis is a recent aberration.

"When our distant ancestors lost their fur, probably because bare skin allowed better sweating and heat control, they developed dark skin to protect a vital chemical known as folic acid from being destroyed by the strong ultraviolet light around the equator. The first modern humans who migrated to the northern latitudes of Europe and Asia were exposed to much less ultraviolet light - too little, in fact, to synthesize enough vitamin D, for which ultraviolet light is required. Natural selection therefore favored the development of pale skin among people living in high northern latitudes."

In researching a gene which may be responsible for some of the differences between Caucasian and Asian populations characteristics, such as thicker hair and smaller breasts:

"The mice also had smaller breasts than usual"

Which summer intern got to say, "I spent the summer measuring mouse breasts."?

"...the two sets of chromosomes that a person has inherited, one from their mother and one from their father, are lined up side by side, and the cell then forces them to exchange large sections of DNA...
The swapped sections, or blocks, may be 500,000 DNA units in length, long enough to carry several genes. So a gene with a beneficial tendency will be inherited along with the whole block of DNA in which is is embedded...Generation by generation, the block of DNA with the favored version of a gene gets to be carried by more and more people. Eventually, the new allele may sweep through the entire population...the favored blocks of DNA eventually get whittled down ...because the cuts that generate them are not always made in the same places...After just 30,000 years or so, according to one calculation, the blocks get too short to be detectable. This means that most genome wide scans for selection are looking at events that occurred just a few thousand years ago, very recently in human history."

So, the concepts above were definitely new to me, and if the calculation mentioned in the paragraph are true, then it would mean that we are still evolving today in response to our environment, which should give some of us hope. Of course, if the primary end result of evolution is merely survival, it might be that the traits selected for might not be ones we'd wish to see, if we were in charge. Think about it.

"People have an intuitive morality, which is the source of instinctive knowledge that certain actions are right or wrong."

Very interesting. C.S. Lewis mentions this in Mere Christianity, as evidence of our Creator's plan.

Explained away by the evolutionist, of course,

"A major function of religion is to provide social cohesion, a matter of particular importance among early societies. If the more cohesive societies regularly prevailed over the less cohesive, as would be likely in any military dispute, an instinct for religious behavior would have been strongly favored by natural selection."

Religious behavior, perhaps...right and wrong so strongly correlated across all human cultures...maybe not so much.

My favorite quote of all really has nothing to do with Wade's theories,

"Turning up punctually for work and enduring eight hours or more of repetitive labor is far from being a natural human behavior."

"...the principal drivers of the civilizing process were the increasing monopoly of force by the state, which reduced the need for interpersonal violence, and the greater levels of interaction with others that were brought about by urbanization and commerce."

Dangerous visions here.

"many researchers...make accusations of racism against anyone who suggests that cognitive capacities might differ between human population groups. All these positions are shaped by leftist and Marxist political dogma, not by science."

It can so easily be observed by anyone paying attention, that it seems to me to be insane to deny the facts or call it racist.

"The Utah researchers note first that Askenazi IQ, besides being high, has an unusual structure. Of the components of IQ tests, Askenazim do well on verbal and mathematical questions but score lower than average on visuo-spatial questions. In most people, these two kinds of ability are highly correlated."

I must have some Askenazi Jew blood in me. I've always been good with readin', writin' and 'rithmetic, but I can't fold a piece of paper into a swan to save my life.

All in all, a very very interesting read, without being so deeply technical as to make it impenetrable.

The Bell Curve, by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray

I seem to recall a while back that a president of Harvard University got into some trouble by quoting from this book, but I could be mistaken. The ideas presented by its authors would certainly be regarded as controversial, if not downright inflammatory in some circles. Hernnstein and Murray performed a statistical analysis of a long term study following thousands of young people through their lives, called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, NLSY, trying to determine the effects of IQ, or cognitive ability, on life outcomes.

Intelligence among the general population when placed on a graph, forms a statistical distribution called a bell curve, with the bulk of people in the middle, and a very small percentage at both the lowest and highest ends, hence the title of the book. When the authors talk of "low" or "high" intelligence, they're talking about the ends of the bell curve, not the great mass of "average" people in the middle.

The authors claim that in nearly all measures of success or failure in society, cognitive ability has an influence. It's obvious that those who test higher in intelligence have a better chance at getting a good education, and also rising to higher levels of education. But it's perhaps little known that students at the top end of the bell curve have been increasingly skimmed off the top to attend ten of the most elite universities in the country, and the people who graduate from those universities go on to run our industries and government, mostly.
Job performance in nearly all fields is affected by intelligence, as well. "It may be said conservatively that for most jobs, based on most measures of productivity, the difference in productivity associated with differences in intelligence diminishes only slowly...The cost of hiring less intelligent workings may last as long as they stay on the job."

While the authors make the point that "you cannot determine what a given person will do from his IQ score", they also say that high cognitive ability is "generally associated with socially desirable behaviors, low cognitive ability with socially undesirable ones." and "...the brighter young people in the NLSY are also the ones whose lives most resemble a sometimes disdained stereotype: They stick with school, are plugging away in the workforce, and are loyal to their spouse."

By the way, for the first half of the book, in order to take away the subject of race from the discussion, the authors used only the data from the white youths studied. So all of the results of low intelligence they discuss are with respect to caucasians.

Poverty is also strongly correlated with intelligence. They say it's actually better to be born smart than to be born rich. Interestingly, in 1939, half of the US population lived below the poverty line, but increases in productivity after WWII began to lower that rate, up until the mid 60s, when it leveled off around 10% and has remained ever since. Poverty actually began to be systematically studied in the mid 1800s, and it was believe that the poor fell into two categories, "deserving" and "undeserving". Some were poor because of circumstances beyond their control, and others were poor as a result of their own behavior. Whatever happened to that line of thought?

Hernnstein and Murray also link criminal behavior with intelligence. In contrast to theorists who offer a sociological explanation of crime's causes, such as poverty and unemployment, they say that more serious or chronic offenders generally have lower IQ scores than casual offenders, and that high IQ scores provide some protection against lapsing into criminality for people who have lived in environments regarded as risk factors for criminal behavior. One good quote, "Many people tend to think of criminals as coming from the wrong side of the tracsk. They are correct, insofar as that is where people of low cognitive ability disproportionally live."

In the second half of the book, the authors begin to look at the issue of race or ethnicity and intelligence. I believe this is where that Harvard president got into trouble. Although it's extremely unpopular to say it these days, there are - in the aggregate - differences between ethnic groups. The authors talk a bit about the whole issue of  cultural bias that is assumed to make it nearly impossible to test a person's IQ accurately if they've come from a different cultural background than the population the IQ test is allegedly written for.

It turns out that there are some tests available that have a strong correlation with cognitive ability scores, which appear to have no way to be culturally biased. One of these, called digit span, involves repeating a string of numbers spoken to you, either forwards or backwards. Whites, blacks, and asians perform differently on these tests. Another one involves placing your hand on a button, depressing it. Lights of different colors are arranged around the button in a wheel. When certain lights turn on, certain actions are required, such as touching the light to turn it off, or perhaps a more complex action with multiple lights. Again, different ethnic groups score differently. It's difficult to imagine that either numeric values or flashing lights can be culturally biased.

One standard test that's been used for many years to test cognitive abilities is the ASVAB. It's taken by all people who enter any of our armed forces. Strangely, scores on the ASVAB actually do a very good job of predicting success within various MOS's. Even more strangely, given assumptions of cultural bias implicit in intelligence testing, the ASVAB does a good job on predicting outcomes for whites, blacks and asians alike.

The authors go on to make some predictions about what the future may hold, and offer some ideas for helping to solve today's pressing social problems, based on their understanding of the underlying causes. I think they're on a lot more shaky ground with predictions than on their data-based conclusions about IQ and outcomes, but this is really an interesting and thought-provoking read.

The Language of God, by Francis Collins

Having enjoyed Francis Collins' other book, The Language of Life, so much, I thought this one was sure to be quite good, as well. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite what I was expecting. Collins borrows quite frequently from the apologetics of C.S. Lewis, which I happen to have read and possess copies of in my library, so if I wanted to listen to the "usual suspects", I'd just go to the source.


Collins came to faith a bit late in life, and had some issues reconciling contemporary Christian doctrine, especially that of the Young Earth creationists and the Intelligent Design proponents, with his background in science and genetics. Much of the book describes his personal quest to do this. If you're a scientist trying to figure out spiritual principals, or a christian fundamentalist struggling with scientific dogma, this book may help a bit.

One of the key things to bear in mind is that the Bible was never intended to be a science textbook. Its authority is supreme in spiritual matters, but it really doesn't address things like atomic structure or the universal gravitic constant. Interestingly enough, in Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, he mentions that certain prominent scientists in history, such as Newton and Bacon, believed that the bible contained a wealth of scientific knowledge, if only it could be decoded. Brown dances around this point cleverly by expounding on Noetic science in his novel, wherein humans are able to affect changes on the world around them soleley by the power of their minds. But, I digress.

Some quotes from Collins:

"...I found it difficult to imagine that there could be a real conflict between scientific truth and spiritual truth. Truth is truth. Truth cannot disprove truth."

"The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful - and it cannot be at war with itself."

"...If God is truly Almighty, He will hardly be threatened by our puny efforts to understand the workings of His natural world. And as seekers, we may well discover from science many interesting answers to the question 'How does life work?'. What we cannot discover, through science alone, are the answers to the questions, 'Why is there life anyway?' and 'Why am I here?'".

He quotes Lewis frequently, as in this bit of his views on Man and evolution, "...in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say 'I' and 'me,' which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgements of truth, beauty and goodness."

Whatever your position, this book should make you scratch your head and think a bit.

The Language of Life, by Francis S. Collins

I was just browsing the New Books section at the library and saw this book, decided it sounded interesting. I wasn't wrong. Collins is the former head of the Human Genome Project, so he's seen the field of genetics explode over the last few decades, providing him with unrivaled insights into the past, present and future of the intersection of genetics and medicine. Given some of his discussions of hemophilia in the book, one could rightfully say he's on the bleeding edge of this technology.


Mundanely enough, Collins says that the single most important source of information about your future health is to be found...in your family health history! "Family health history turns out to be the strongest of all currently measurable risk factors for many common conditions..."

Collins mentions the science fiction film, GATTACA, when he's discussing the potential of newborn genetic screening. Strangely enough, I've never watched that film, and it suddenly dawned on me as I was reading The Language of Life that the title of the film is a genetic code, containing the letters for the four DNA bases, Guanine, Adenine, Cytosine and Thymine. Insert forehead smack here. Interestingly, he says it's estimated that 60 to 70 percent of one's adult body weight is determined by genes, so if a child is born with a predisposition to obesity, parents could adjust the child's diet so as to avoid the all too commonly seen childhood obesity later on.

It's even possible to do a genetic scan earlier than at birth, with a process called PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis). This isn't practical for naturally conceived children, but for parents undergoing IVF (in-vitro fertilization) procedures. At the eight-cell stage of division, it's possible to remove one cell without affection future development of the embryo, and to then perform a genetic scan. Of course, there are ethical questions raised about what we do with this information, but if it was used to inform the parents or the child, itself, of possible future medical issues, rather than as a go/no go decision point to abort the fetus, I don't think most people would have an ethical problem with it, any more than performing an amniocentesis is done today.

There are actually several readily available commercial genetic screening tests at this time, which can scan for some of the most common genetic risk factors. They're a little spendy, but what's it worth to know that you're at a higher risk for a specific disease than the general population and to be able to take preventative steps? Some of the more common diseases for which genetic risk factors are well-identified are heart disease, breast cancer, colon cancer, sickle cell anemia, and diabetes.

Collins describes the three types of genes that have a role in preventing cancer; any of which can pose a cancer risk when they're defective. There are the oncogenes, which code for proteins that normally promote cell growth. The oncogenes' growth signals are ordinarily tightly regulated, occuring only in the right conditions. A mutation in this type of gene, however, can remove the restraints from the growth signal, causing cell growth to go out of control, like a Toyota on the highway. There are also cancer genes called tumor suppressors, whose function, as you might suspect, is to act as a brake on cell growth when it's time for cells to stop growing. One of these genes, called p53, actually stops the process of cell replication if it determines that the DNA in those cells has been damaged. A third type of cancer gene is one that performs like a DNA spell-checker. If there are defects in the genetic code, it will create repair enzymes to fix the code.

Collins says that most of the mutations in a cancer cell are not hereditary, but are acquired during a person's lifetime. Just the error rate in copying 6 billion base pairs of DNA in the 400 trillion cells within the human body causes most of these mutations, without taking into account any envirommental effects. That most of us go through life without being afflicted with cancer is the result of the work of the cancer-preventing genes.

Knowing how these and other genes do their work has proven key in the treatment of a number of diseases. This knowledge has helped doctors and pharmaceutical companies develop drugs that treat the causes of some diseases at a genetic level, or by stimulating production or suppression of proteins that are lacking or in too much abundance. It has helped avoid some adverse drug reactions - what was the figure he used? - there are 100,000 deaths a year in the U.S. alone from adverse drug reactions!

The areas where genetics is a little less sure are that of personality, spirituality, intelligence, and sexuality. In his section on researching the causes of male infidelity, Collins mentions one fun fact you can use to astonish your friends. Among North American voles, "Prairie voles make lifelong monogamous pair bonds, while their close relatives, the montane and meadow voles, do not, indulging instead in a series of one-night stands." So Tiger does have an excuse; he wasn't under his own vole-ition.

In total, this book is fascinating reading for the layperson. Collins does a great job of explaining a horrendously complex subject in simple words and sentences.