Gateway To Ideas; Will Man Be Modified

twenty two ideas gateway to ideas a new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in addition to reading today's program we'll mandy modified is moderated by earl you bro science editor of the new york herald tribune in the two million years in which living matter has come to this earth few periods of time of match the last hundred years even the last fifty four the rapidity with which environment has changed for at least one species homo sapiens and i own country we have only to look as far as the automobile in others to the control really for the first time of infectious diseases new diets the introduction of new chemicals the atom bomb extreme urbanization and industrialization all have contributed to this our new environment looking at men as a

biological creature and downed by yawns of evolution with typically human characteristics of high intelligence speech and the capacity for culture one wonders whether the new environment may not change his essential human character one wonders further of new discoveries in biology translated into medicine might not modify man's go for it perhaps our descendants will look at us as we now received our ancestral apes or it may be the other way around dr myra who has a distinguished in the revolution has pointed out in his book animal species and evolution that forman up to now there was no evidence of biological improvement at least the last thirty thousand years and he goes on to quote julian huxley book evolution in action the fact that manned genetic nature has degenerated and it's still doing so these are portentous questions today we examine the possibilities lying ahead for the

human species and his new environment i have this problem too leaving students with a general question sager a geneticist at columbia university an arm around shine though who is an author of the recently published book your heredity an environment which incidentally succeeded his well known book human heredity but the shutdown is also a member of the columbia university seminar in genetics and the evolution of man a look ahead really can start without a look behind at the past and obviously we're discussing in some sense what the genetics of the human race is going to be like ten twenty a hundred years from now there was some old ideas about this where there has been shined felt about the eugenics of the race so to speak of would prove it the change has been

that in the past human beings were considered stratified into upper and lower groups into plus and minus groups and disappear an inferior groups and the distinctions were considered quite clear cut and were based on relative achievements what a person and his family was at a given time was supposed to be an indication of what his genetic makeup that today we're realize much more than we ever did before that what a man is or was in terms of genetics the year in a kind of an individual may not necessarily be related to what he can be and this is applied not merely now to work individuals individual families ngo groups upper and lower level groups but also to rest his soul for the first time we are being fair a much fairer in our appraisal of human beings and what

they can be and all around us we are seeing the changes that are taking place in the makeup and the capacity and the expression of the capacity of the individual work assignment is that the quintessence of the human being is not we'll also the campus of the past but perhaps every man this is the true what might save the democracy of dramatic for talking about yes the whole concept i think has shifted from what the individual is at any given time there what we are believing his capacities maybe a matter of fact the year the very concept of fitness from the eugenics standpoint is not the same with the concept of fitness in the population genetics which actually refers to the perpetuation of the group the extent the reproduction of a group that is to say that the group that we could go through the most genetically would therefore be used which is in contradiction to the

old jamaica also but that i quoted from julian huxley earlier he made the point that it seemed to be true whether the soviet union or any other camp was six it capitalistic society and i use the word wisely that those of a high intelligence seem to be reproducing at a much slower rate than those of lower intelligence and this is what he based his whole point on concerning the possible new generation of human human race when i see new flip side or togetherness well i think that there's one very important problem which should be clarified at the outset there have been arguments and debates and misunderstandings for a long time about the relative influence of genes and the environment and the final final appearance and ability of the of any individual and this is still an unanswered question what we know is that the genetic constitution of every individual sets the

limits for achievement but we have never found out what in fact those limits maybe and i think that as mr schonfeld hands and said the most impressive thing that we're finding out now is that those limits are perhaps limitless and that there are far greater possibilities and potentialities from amman have yet been appreciated urban experience but that does not mean that the genetic component is not an important point because it still provides the physical on the physiological basis and an important extent the psychological basis but the way in which environment interaction with that with those genes is so complex and affords so many possibilities that we really cannot so i and i think here is the danger of eugenics because who is to say what are the good genes because when you look at an individual you are

really not except for extreme examples of of the obvious genetically control diseases as far as such factors as overall intelligence iq many personality factors we know that there are genetic factors but how those genetic factors have been influenced by the environmental history of the individual is so unclear that i think that any kind of serious eugenic programs is very questionable you know there is some evidence for what you say in very specific way dr ben pass a manic who is a professor of psychiatry at ohio state university made some very careful measurements on the iq their young children scared which you could make it at that age a lot of problems and robert many case the major point of this finding is that the iq whatever that means as he measured it it was the same police children over a very

narrow range now they began to diverge only subsequently that is as baby i became older and older guys changes these divergences were mainly tied to their environmental conditions he found that it may be that that this finding is related quite specifically to the way in which he made his measurements but nevertheless there is an indication than that as far as the human race is concerned that genetically we are fairly uniform would you say that so well i don't believe that there is the uniformity can be a of the term uniformity or a normal abnormally relative term i would go on longer with doctors say you're on the idea that we should not be minimizing the hereditary factor actually when people are talking about her energy and environment in human beings and the difference is that the environment can make bring to a very very much a small almost the minute our range of

differences compared with the difference between one species and another for example they forget the fact that that when a baby is born it's not an elephant granted that this will be a human being which down the evolutionary stadium is so vastly apart from any other species and that this is due entirely to hereditary to remedy when you're talking you use the term a promise interchangeably of many people do it when intelligence is an enormous debt oh i do i was a manifestation and intelligence is the potentiality now leah there's no reason to assume their two children in a given family the potentiality for intelligence that they have gone to the same potentiality for eichler for stature for any other treat each individual is actually a complex of many genetic put ten she and it is unknown to individual legislation yet the point that were trying to drive out is that the range of variation in the

human species with respect to intelligence and an important is rather small when measured against other species that is right this range of intelligence can be the difference between a nobel prize winner and at a and m or actually the difference between an iq of ad and then i'll say that this is a dumb an iq of eighty and an iq of a hundred and sixty is minute compared to the difference between an iq of ad and an eight iq or amount of it so what you're really believing you're the very very fine gael this is at the end that say of a graph that could extend from here to worship call and what you're dealing with is the last few yards now in the last few yards calibrated in a very very small tern then it makes a very big difference between whether you get into harvard or don't give them but you've got to do a lot lately on the us but in any case you cannot be different at all about the

rarity which goes beyond that preceded this will range and this is what we are dealing with now is a little of this a little defensive becoming so very important today and i'd competitive society well let's get back to the simple idea mainly the possibility of modification a man julian huxley took up this business of intelligence and his book and made the point for good or evil that somehow those individuals in our society of war intelligence have a a high reproductive rights i know that there's a big question in terms of certain areas and therefore he sees it that modern society is selecting out or increasing the hereditary predisposition for low and politics are very eerie interject that gets to the question of whether you're talking about intelligence their iq because the tension intelligence is an extremely difficult thing to define and it was a very poor measurements which is attempting

to do it all then they can be doing here is talking about manifest intelligence in terms of achievement and in terms of social class and in terms of occupations this is are we talking about when you talk about a lower level than the problem well i believe in the new deal i think that that actually the argument here really misses the point because i don't think that that concern is oddly yeah relative numbers of children being born to our people and to track the patients i think the problem is that the potentialities of the people who were said to have low iq they are in fact so much greater than i have at any opportunity to express that what we really have on our hands is for the first time and then civilization the possibility of giving everybody an opportunity to become i had to move led astray from an iq i don't even like the word it because no one going on how to measure intelligence the two names but

to move from alt alt poor opportunities for self development and creativity to much higher possibilities than ever has been in the world before him he's not this is not only do two developments in modern biology but have two developments in all areas of modern finance but this opens up a new world and i think that to consider how to deal with that give them much more basic consideration than to worry about improving the breeding behavior man well nobody is at the moment discussing seriously i don't think we used to discuss it seriously in the last century but not this century about improving the breeding behavior man well i mean i did talk about improving the breeding behavior man but the absurdly been talking about this gratification of human beings into groups it immigration laws for example that are still on the books it immigration laws are based on the assumption that groups of individuals from some countries in your

eyes the period in the potentialities for being good industrious law abiding citizens their books from other from other countries in europe and certainly ways that large areas of the country the day where the assumption is that groups of individuals from one race haven't gotten charity for developing the groups of individuals from other races so that they see these dynamic factors are still very much in force i've seen a real saviors quickly found a section of a book what book well the book of matt and it's you cure it was a symposium society published in nineteen sixty three i am with some very very provocative and interesting article is by about twenty biologists and judge union hopefully in his introduction of the law he i'm

tryin so very much in favor of eugenics as of and now the effects of merely encouraging potentially land that individuals to have more children and vice versa that would be much too slow for modern evolution eugenics will eventually have to have recourse to methods like multiple artificial insemination i preferred donors and hides inequality as professor amar emphasize a quarter of a century ago and i re emphasize my recent column lecture another war he says that ups run banks felt that women can go and say well i want to i have a friend who looks like my own brand of rum you discuss your book not only sperm banks borrow from banks that is why is our work on retirement age current proposals but the fire out and i when i say fire out i don't mean to be impossible are based interceptor possibilities as i mentioned here saving the yeah the eighties or the sound that will

produce eggs from a year outstanding woman and then having this burns of an outstanding man which have been preserved from for a decade after his death and then realizing he's in a test tube and then putting the old woman into a lettuce site conceivably the granddaughter of this famous woman will be burying her child her grandmother's try these things are i think they are so you would concede are not scientifically impossible to some extent they are being done with the experimental animals we are transplanting old from one dog to another over from one dog to another dog we are using bullets lehman of the world has been dead for years for all of these possibilities about the other main point however is the question of whether the improvement of the human species to day demands anything to borrow things and whether we do not already have the materials the genetic materials which we can utilize the far better

advantage and far more easily eventually maybe we'll come around to the eve of the thing but for the moment there they're too far that i think honestly and i'm a lawyer who first proposed frozen sperm are someone minority here that is the very few geneticist would go along with his proposals having any practical meaning for today and even possibly himself says that this might be a proposal for the future and i wonder what he anticipates would make this necessarily well we may for example there's a very practical principles you got a man going into space a young husband today today is being done to preserve his arm freedom and heavy his wife and three children by her husband after he is no longer there is a possibility that can be done amr on the science fiction voice for us out a

long time ago but there's another angle to have we are today having an artificial insemination on a very large scale of the babies being born in the united states every day and they isolate biggest firms mostly in both cases for better or worse they are young interns are young medical student has already indicated a selection whereby they go by certain eugenic their principal rejected by twelve than they help them and so this is only another step if you're gonna have an artificial insemination why not have a summer expanding by einstein and we're not sure which reminds me a little story or a nacho on the famous actors which i mentioned did you mention a mandatory life is that i don't consider duncan i can remember him and she was a dancer actually in which he suggested that she'd shaw have a child together because the child wouldn't have her looks insurers brains which sure why but madam suppose we have my looks in your brine which is impossible well this law not lead me to forget that we look at the problem from a different

kind of deal because this is a very serious the difficulty there is the phenomenon of genetically nomination so that you can't always be here which are going to come out with art but i feel that there are other reasons why ai in answer to most of your last question it in the future we may have to have recourse to that sort of operation and and that is that many of the activities in the social and political arena at the present time are so irrational and are so many hundreds of years behind law are scientific and you're standing on one of the world that we may be getting into so much trouble that are some recourse to explain that that may be necessary and i refer not only to the possibility of war war is totally out of date from not only technological twenty eleven and my view of their no object it's nobody needs to plunder another country in order to raise its own standard of winning anymore and so that the whole concept of

war is out of date but our politicians something to have become aware of that some of them and rather ineffective but i am at a more modest level let's look at what we're doing to our own lives for example what's happening to urban society were becoming and some people think over over urbanize but in fact the world is becoming an increasingly important place in which to live oddly an end in many respects in that seems extremely unnecessary there's one organization which is now established to try to deal with this and this is the friday for the study was called it can stick a lot acoustics in the middle of the political fight ej i f t i c s and appropriately enough it has been founded in athens

well you see lee the greeks after all with a first line and then i'd just come from greece right now have trouble getting up there topic but this is an extremely important development founded by buying greek debt has now become essentially international organization devoted to suburban planning better urban planning and a much more expensive sense of the ever been really visualize before bringing to bear in understanding from biology and and and from genetics as well as for a mile from architecture and an american firm public health and self worth to try to build new cities rationally and to try to help in the reconstruction of the biggest thing at least to make them until habitable places to live again you know roof i have to disagree with you if you would go to a long trend of history

and i think our world is becoming a better place to live than not a not a worse place it's certainly cleaner by a long shot that you don't have to worry about going into a restaurant and anne and buying a meal as you once did and coming out something unhappy more people are living to older ages now it may be true that the price of this might have been the kind of bucolic scene which the ancient greeks looked upon that is the that is we've given this up to some extent and it may be true that our cities can be better than they are certainly new york can certainly some other cities can but looking over the wide range of history i don't think you could draw the conclusion that our lives are getting more terrible what you should say i think is that with respect to the environment which we're building for ourselves it can be much better i like to modify their i think that when

people say the world is getting better and that the world as we're getting worse they may be referring to their own group and that means that i think there isn't any question whatsoever that for the overwhelming mass of people in the world the world is getting much better they're having education the children are having education which they quoted infant mortality rate is probably down life expectancy has gone way up and i think this will bring us back to this whole question that the potentialities of human beings the day i certainly being allowed to develop and being exploited to a far greater extent even within the last year than ever happened before and as far as i see it the most important development that does happen it's not the explosion of the atomic bomb but the explosion of the potentialities of human beings as individuals and as groups in the underdeveloped countries in every country in the social level that perform formally depressed and this is really what we're talking about the question about to want greater ease and can read about the

potentialities of human beings and by what means you know it just occurred to things just occurred to me one is that the people who long for the good old days were usually those who have a good male that's the other thing is that what you're saying tom and i think that you sang roof is that what we're doing is we're modifying them by modifying his environment such a way so as to realize the genetic potential which the success and perhaps this is the somewhat broader question to which we address our cells rather than asking ourselves are we going to end up a thousand years from now with a psych lobby him beheaded individual with a small leg says the science fiction buffs would have us believe maybe that will come to some modification of the human biology but i don't know how that is going to lie i believe that they admired that there's any any genetics is her any anthropologist any scientist would agree that modification

of the human species has always gone up we think of the concept of the refugee debate genetics is one of an interaction always between heredity an environment that means that the environment is not static the basis of selection adaptation and human beings loss of the change it will be changing the only difference between us and the caveman of the crow monumental and ben any one was that it has what would agree is in the difference in the environment which enabled the potentiality which with they are thirty thousand years ago to assert itself today i would like to sum up since we're coming to the end of our discussion some other things which we which we covered and some of things which we haven't covered in this half hour i like to say that first of all it seems quite obvious to me that in discussing the impact of them environment and on the genetic material that is on our biology that our human species is being constantly modified as we see it

namely that what's happened is is that we are for the first time perhaps in history able to realize the genetic potential each individual of having a what might be called not necessarily a race of geniuses but a race of competent human beings operating out the highest level of potentiality we haven't really covered and maybe we shouldn't be possible impact of preserving in our society those deleterious genetic materials that is the people who have diabetes the people who have other diseases which i passed on and from generation to generation and we're keeping them alive today where in past times they would have died and not reproduce maybe this is only a small pena nieto picture man as a species and maybe it's something that we're building into the species which we may pay for later you've been listening to the gateway to ideas a new series of

conversations in which ideas are discussed in relation to reading today's program we'll mend be modified as presented dr ruth faden research geneticist at columbia university and an and schonfeld author of you and heredity and more recently your heredity and environment the moderator with a new balance science editor of the new york herald tribune to extend dimensions of today's program for you and left of the books mentioned in the discussion as well as others relevant to the subject has been prepared you can obtain a copy of your local library or by writing to gateway to it is a post office box six four one time square station in new york and keating chose stamps focused on the ads once again balk sticks for one time square station new york gateway to ideas is produced for national educational radio underground from the national home library

foundation's programs are prepared by the national book committee and the american library association in cooperation with the national association of educational broadcasters technical production by riverside radio's wypr in new york city this is the national educational radio network