“Eugenics” (“good birth.”) is the science of improving inherited traits. The word “improving” in the definition implies that someone is doing something to change those traits and that that person has made a judgment as to which traits constitute an “improvement.” Eugenics does not occur when a race or breed evolves of its own accord, even if it becomes more complex, beautiful, intelligent, healthy, or reproductively successful. Eugenics requires a goal and evolution by itself has no purpose or goal; ¹ ultimately, it is just chemicals reacting. Thus, if humans simply let evolution take its natural course, humans will still evolve, but we may not like the results. Eugenics implies overruling nature and altering the purposeless course it would otherwise follow in order to achieve a desired collection of traits.
    When it comes to choosing a goal for eugenics, what can be said is that failing to choose the minimum amount of those traits that are necessary for reproductive success is maladaptive. ² Now, what about traits above and beyond those minimum amounts of necessary traits?
    Complexity, beauty, intelligence, and even health are not “free” in nature. They cost resources and if “spending” resources on those traits does not bring more reproductive success than other ways they could be “spent,” those traits are less adaptive. To support eugenics means that you must value certain traits above other traits and must be willing to sacrifice a bit of some of the other traits you also desire in order to obtain proportionally more of those traits that are more important to you. ³ Eugenics says nothing about what those more important traits are. For some people, they may include beauty, for others, height or strength. Everyone may favor “health” but, as noted, more “health” is not free, as it requires a better immune system, more DNA repair mechanisms, and so on, so some amount of another trait or traits must be sacrificed to increase it, and that may reduce reproductive success more than the additional health increases it. Similarly, almost everyone favors more intelligence, but a more intelligent brain is a heavier and more resource-costly brain. In the end, people will differ in which traits they desire and which other traits, and how much of them, they are willing to sacrifice in order to obtain the traits they want.
    Because the environment may change, making a valuable trait worthless, most people will select a mixture of traits (beyond the necessary traits), rather than maximizing just one single trait. Nevertheless, because man has been so successful primarily because of his intelligence, not his robustness, speed, agility, or some other trait, and we are even more likely to need intelligence to continue surviving, most people will put intelligence near or at the top of their list. ⁴ However, like other traits, there are diminishing returns for intelligence. That is, for each additional unit (e.g., an IQ point) increase in intelligence, an ever-increasing greater amount of other traits must be sacrificed to achieve it. Not only that, but each additional unit increase in intelligence will have less value to you than the preceding unit increase, e.g., once you have an IQ of about 120, success depends more on other factors, such as persistence, open-mindedness, etc., than on more intelligence. You would not want a child with a brain so huge that he had trouble walking, but who is only slightly more intelligent than another child with a brain half his size.
    But since we know that intelligence (high IQ) correlates positively with increased living standards, less crime, and many other desirable qualities, ⁵ selecting for more intelligence, at least until those correlations no longer hold, offers the best chance of avoiding an unpleasant future. There is certainly no other trait that has any chance of affecting our future in a positive way as much as intelligence. Yet, our government decision makers (“I am the Decider,” G.W. Bush), at the urging of the egalitarians, continue to promote a dysgenic, low IQ future for our country.
    A minimum birthrate of 2.1 children per woman is required to maintain a population. Based on 2004 fertility rates, non-Hispanic white women will have 1.847 children; non-Hispanic black women, 2.02 children; and Hispanic women, 2.82 children. Almost half the children in the U.S. under age 5 are non-white. ⁶ As those numbers show, whites are going extinct ⁷ and there will be fewer and fewer people with red and blond hair ⁸ and blue and green eyes.⁹
    Given that the average IQs of the increasing ethnic groups is lower (except for East Asians), the average IQ in the U.S. will fall, the standard of living will decrease, crime will increase (Schuster, 1982), the U.S. will no longer be competitive in highly technical industries, and it will no longer be a world military power. ¹⁰ As IQ drops, so does productivity, because high IQ people are more productive than low IQ people – that is why their income is higher. (Herrnstein, 1994). And, since one cannot consume what is not first produced (“If you don’t work, you don’t eat.”), consumption (Gross Domestic Product per person), which correlates 0.73 with IQ (Lynn, 2002a), will also fall, until the country reaches Third World levels. ¹¹

Figure 32-1	Figure 32-2

    Immigration of non-East Asian non-whites into (formerly) white nations lowers the average IQ in those nations. Figure 32-1 shows who immigrated into the United States in 1960, prior to the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, and Figure 32-2 shows who the immigrants were in 2000. ¹²
    Using a British average IQ set at 100, the average IQ in the U.S. in 1960 would have been about 98. (Lynn, 2006a, p. 174). The average IQ in Mexico, where most of the Latin Americans are from, is 87. ¹³
    Average IQ also falls because more intelligent people have fewer children. ¹⁴ Table 32-1 shows that 22% of the white children had a mother whose IQ was over 110, but only 2% of the children of blacks and Latinos did. ¹⁵ On the other hand, 69% of the black children and 64% of Latino children had a mother whose IQ was less than 90, but only 19% of the white children did. As Table 32-1 shows, whites are slightly raising their IQ, while blacks and Latinos are drastically lowering theirs.

Table 32-1

Table 32-2 East Asia Europe S. America S. Asia Africa IQ +0.33 0.00 -0.66 -0.93 -2.00 Attainment +0.44 0.00 -2.27 -1.30 -2.44

    Even without the ethnic and racial lowering of IQ shown in Table 32-1, women in the bottom 5% of intelligence have their first baby more than seven years earlier than women in the top 5%, and they have more children, thereby directly lowering national intelligence. ¹⁶ Fully one-third of women in their late 30's with graduate degrees have no children (Lynn, 1996), and that is also true of blacks. ¹⁷ The U.S. abortion rate for women 20 yrs of age and older was 44.3 for women with a high school education but only 3.2 for those who had less than eight years of schooling, further lowering national IQ. (Henshaw, 1983, p. 10). As the average IQ in the U.S. falls, so will achievements. This is, of course, expected as intelligence correlates with achievement.
    Table 32-2 (Lynn, 2006a, p. 177) gives attainments in math and science. The results are given in units of standard deviation (“SD”; 1 SD = 15 IQ points) and Europe is taken as the norm (IQ= 100). Attainment falls sharply with even a small drop in IQ. ¹⁸ Eugenics has been practiced with domesticated animals and plants since they were first domesticated, thousands of years ago, and it is practiced today even more rigorously using our knowledge of genetics. We would not have all the protean breeds of dogs, cats, horses, chickens, pigeons, corn, rice, other grains, and so on were it not for selective breeding, i.e., eugenics.
    It is only when eugenics is practiced on humans that people are repelled. The reason is that selective breeding of humans requires making a judgment as to which humans have alleles that are worthy of propagating and which do not, and that contradicts egalitarianism, the ideology that all people are genetically equal. Even when a person is genetically severely handicapped or mentally retarded, propagation is considered a basic human right and many people are reluctant to discourage it. ¹⁹
    Nevertheless, humans practice eugenics on other humans every day all over the planet, and it is highly likely that the reader himself has done so. Every time a person selects or rejects a person for a sexual relationship, he or she is practicing eugenics. ²⁰ A person’s appearance, personality, and success in life all have strong genetic components. Even a prostitute is reluctant to have sex with a person she (or he) considers repulsive. And today, in the West, genetic screening is not uncommon. People who know they are a carrier for a genetic disease may decide not to have children or to abort a fetus that has one or two alleles for the disease. ²¹ They, too, are practicing eugenics.
    If no one practiced eugenics and mates were chosen randomly, so that couples had sex without regard for any of the heritable traits of their partner, behavior that would win high praise from the egalitarians, the results would not be pretty. Those who are best at increasing their numbers will do so and, once the earth can no longer support any more humans (and after it is thoroughly polluted and many other species have been driven extinct), those who are best at surviving in those overcrowded and desperate conditions will increase their numbers; when there are too many people, many of them starving, a modern civilization will no longer be possible. Just as fish trapped in a dark cave for millions of years become blind because sight is no longer needed for reproductive success, so humans would lose the alleles for the traits needed for reproductive success in a modern civilization, such as abstract thinking, impulse control, long term planning, altruism, and cooperativeness. ²² At some point, they would be “human,” only in the loosest sense of the word. Eugenics, influencing the heritable qualities of the next generation, is not only desirable, but necessary if we are to remain “human.”
    The reason eugenics is feared, even by biologists who ought to know better, can be answered in a single word, “government.” When those who control the government make eugenic decisions for everyone else, the decisions are made on the basis of which traits are most desired by the people who control the government, not on the basis of what traits you want your child to have. And what traits do those who control the government want those who do not control the government to have? Well, like the New Soviet Man, they should be compliant and ready to sacrifice themselves for the good of the state or, more accurately, for the benefit of those who control the state. ²³ Ugh! If we take government out of the picture, we are left with individuals making their own eugenic decisions, selecting all sorts of different traits that they personally find desirable, based on their own experiences.
    In 1980, Robert Graham started a sperm bank that made the sperm of Nobel Prize winners (“geniuses” ²⁴) available to women who wanted to become pregnant. It closed in 1999. Sperm banks have discovered that women do not choose sperm just on the basis of the intelligence or success of the donor. They pick the physical characteristics they want in their child, usually selecting characteristics similar to themselves. They certainly want a healthy good-looking child of above-average intelligence but, after that, they select on the basis of all sorts of quirky things, such as does the sperm donor like cats, was he born on a farm, is he a good swimmer, etc.?
    If people make their own eugenic decisions, and the technology is available to implement those decisions, they will generally select for traits that will improve the health, intelligence, attractiveness, and fitness of the next generation. If government bureaucrats do the selecting, a quite different result is likely. Western countries, for example, by paying more welfare for more children ("You feed, we breed"), provide a perverse incentive ²⁵ that encourages people who are incapable of caring even for themselves to have children, passing on to their children the very alleles that made their parents incompetent, which is surely dysgenic. (“The rich get richer and the poor get children.”)
    If welfare is to be provided then, at the very least, it should be eugenic and not dysgenic. This can be done by making welfare conditioned on not having children, at least while one is on welfare. “Welfare” is nothing but a transfer of wealth from those who created it, the taxpayers, to those who did not, the tax consumers. In other words, the competent are penalized to benefit the incompetent, which is certainly maladaptive. Surely, it is not unreasonable to say that this coerced transfer of wealth will be tolerated only so long as the recipient does not make the situation worse by having more dependents. ²⁶ A person would still be free to have children, but then he or she would not receive welfare. For women, the condition of not having children could be fulfilled in a variety of ways, such as by proof of the use of a contraceptive patch or other verifiable birth control, infertility (the person is infertile or too old to have children), or sterilization. For men, a reversible or irreversible vasectomy would suffice.
    Given evidence that high testosterone levels and low serotonin levels are heritable and correlate with violence, another policy that could be instituted without coercion would be to provide incentives to violent felons (who will eventually be let out of prison) if they agree to be sterilized. These incentives could include better prison facilities or privileges, or a slightly lower sentence.
    Before we leave the subject of eugenics, let’s consider one other issue: Could eugenics itself be maladaptive? That is, by selecting the traits we want in our children could we be making it less likely that they will be able to survive and reproduce? Surely very few parents would intentionally do that but, since we cannot know the future, it is always possible to make a poor decision. ²⁷ On the other hand, if the selection is voluntary, people can always avoid making any decision at all and let nature take its course, perhaps thereby having more successful children.

1. See (Fuerle, 1986) for a discussion of purposeful, goal-directed behavior and its implications. Back

2.  The term “maladaptive” is applied to behavior that lessens an individual’s fitness, his likelihood of successfully passing on his genes to the next generation. The term is not applied to every mistake an individual makes, nor to behavior that seems to be adaptive at the time, but turns out to be maladaptive later – perfection is not required. But if there is particular persistent behavior in at least a portion of the population that lowers the reproductive success of those who practice it, that behavior is maladaptive. Most maladaptive behavior was adaptive in the past, but the environment changed so that it is no longer adaptive. Back

3. Ignore the programming difficulties for the moment and think of eugenics as a thought (“gedenken”) experiment, simulated on a computer. The computer sets the minimum amount of traits required to live and reproduce, and you select traits from the remaining resources, trading off some traits for others until you achieve the mix you want; every trait is obtained in the most efficient manner possible. The computer assumes no initial genetic defects, though some may occur later if you don’t select enough DNA repair mechanisms. You compete against other players and the computer (i.e., no eugenics). Whoever is left wins. Back

4. Even our scientific name, Homo sapiens sapiens (man the very wise) denotes high intelligence as our defining trait. Back

5. Even for corruption, the correlation with intelligence is -0.708. (Lynn, 2002a). Back

6.  (AFP, Oct. 1, 2006). In 1990, children ranked third in importance for a successful marriage; by 2007, they ranked eighth. By nearly 3:1, Americans say that the main purpose of marriage is the "mutual happiness and fulfillment" of adults rather than the "bearing and raising of children." (“As Marriage and Parenthood Drift Apart, Public Is Concerned About Social Impact,” Pew Research Center, July 1, 2007). "In terms of intergenerational solidarity, the importance of the child as an investment for material support in old age has been limited by the social security and pension insurance system, which has eliminated people's immediate dependence on children…" (“The National Report on Family,” Czech Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Aug., 2004, quoted in "Where Have All the Children Gone?" Ziggi's Corner)."Today, children no longer represent investments; instead, they have become pets ... many young couples ... have consciously decided to have a dog instead of a baby.” (Id.) Back

7. Whites are already a minority in 1 in 10 counties in the U.S. (Pollard, K., "10% of U.S. Counties Now 'MajorityMinority"," Population Reference Bureau, Aug., 2008), but motherhood could, in theory, make a comeback. Women who don’t have alleles for desiring children do not pass on those alleles, but women who have those alleles do. Thus, after a few generations the alleles in the gene pool should be mostly those that induce a desire for motherhood. (Aarssen, 2007). (However, one could fairly ask, “Why, then, it is not already so?”) Back

8. "As the amount of migration, inter-marriage and mixing increases we will see them [various shades of red and blond hair] all but disappear." Dr. Desmond Tobin, researcher in hair cell biology at Bradford University. Red and blond hair and blue and green eyes are recessive, so the alleles for them will not disappear, but they will be so widely dispersed that only very infrequently will they be expressed. Back

9. "About half of Americans born at the turn of the 20th century had blue eyes, according to a 2002 Loyola University study in Chicago. By mid-century that number had dropped to a third. Today only about one 1 of every 6 Americans has blue eyes, said Mark Grant, the epidemiologist who conducted the study." (Belkin, D., "Don't it make my blue eyes brown," The Boston Globe, Oct. 17, 2006). Back

10. (Sailer, 2006). Three distinguished American scholars compared massive evidence of national I.Q. score averages worldwide and warned against the decline of any nation whose population reflects declining intelligence. Taking into consideration the differential birthrates of American ethnic stocks, they concluded that American ability is declining rapidly. (Lerner, 1984). Because the black IQ in the U.S. averages 85 and the U.S. military will not accept people with an IQ of less than about 80, U.S. wars kill a disproportionate number of white US soldiers, further lowering IQ. Back

11.  Currently, the US finances current consumption by borrowing the money to pay for it, i.e., the U.S. is already bankrupt. China produces for our consumption, expecting us to repay them with even more goods at a later date. Fat chance. "The U.S. annual trade deficit, now running at a rate of more than three-quarters of a trillion annually, or 6.3 percent of GDP, is ….” (Anthony Fell, formerly vice-chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada. Jan. 18, 2007). Back

12. Figures from (MacDonald, K. “MidEast Policy—Immigration Policy: Is The Other Boot About To Drop?” VDARE.com, Jan. 31, 2007). In the 10 yrs between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of Europeans in the US population decreased 18.3%. (US Census, 1990 and 2000). In 2000, there were 881,300 U.S. residents from Africa, but only 5 years later there were 1.25 million. (Crary, D., "Diverse influx of African immigrants search for niche," Oakland Tribune, June 17, 2007, quoting Wilson, J., of the Brookings Institution, based on the U.S. Census). According to the Wright Island Model (Wright, 1931), an established theorem of population genetics, one-way immigration causes the complete genetic extinction of the target population. (Wright, 1931). Back

13. (Lynn, 2002a). The average IQ of Mexicans coming to the U.S. is likely to be lower than 87 because most are peasants. The average IQ of Africans coming to the U.S. is likely to be a higher than 67 because, while those coming as refugees may have an average of 67, the IQ of those coming on other programs is likely to be higher. By importing the more intelligent (and therefore more productive) people from Africa, both the U.S. and Africa become poorer. To paraphrase a quote attributed to Will Rogers, “When the Africans left Africa and went to the U.S.A., the average intelligence of both places went down." Back

14. (Van Court, 1985; Lynn, 2004; Vining, 1984). This is called “dysgenic fertility.” There is a correlation of − 0.73 between IQ and fertility; dysgenic fertility has been estimated to have caused a decline in the world's genotypic IQ of 0.86 IQ points for the years 1950–2000. An additional decline of 1.28 IQ points in the world's genotypic IQ is projected for the years 2000–2050. (Lynn, 2007; Shatz, 2008). To put this another way, more intelligent people, who have fewer children but expend more care on each one, are more “K” orientated. (Chap. 11; Gillespie, 2008). And criminals, who have lower IQ’s, (ave. = 92; Herrnstein, 1994, p. 242), have more children than non-criminals. (Lynn, 1995). Back

15.  (Herrnstein, 1994, p. 354). “NLSY” is the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth; “National population” is the U.S. average. Back

16. (Herrnstein, 1994, p. 351). The correlation between IQ and fecundity is -0.81. (“Intelligence and Latitude in the U.S.," The Audacious Epigone, Apr. 13, 2007). Radical feminism, which glorifies a career over motherhood, must bear some of the responsibility for the failure of Caucasians, particularly above-average women, to replace themselves. Ironically, there is some evidence that it is not even healthy for a woman to forego having children. (Grundy, 2006). Back

17. Although Negro slaves were encouraged to produce more slaves, “Even then birth control was secretly exercised by the more intelligent slaves, as we know from many reminiscences.” “On the other hand, the mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously…” (DuBois, 1932). Back

18. ‘ … a ‘mere’ 2 point drop of a population's average I.Q. will cut the percentage of geniuses (anyone having an I.Q. over 150) to less than half! And by the time our [U.S.] actual amalgamation [with lower IQ people] is almost complete, our American I.Q. will be about 92, meaning that the percentage of geniuses will decrease to less than 1/30th the WWII percentage. And the percentage of supergeniuses (anyone over 180) will decrease to less than 1/500th!” (Falconi, O., “Where’s America’s Gene Pool Heading?”). Back

19.  Some deaf couples want to have deaf children and will abort non-deaf fetuses until they do. (Cooley, 2006). Back

20. The high intelligence of European Jews (average IQ =107 to 115) is sometime attributed to betrothing the brightest boy to the daughter of the richest man. Back

21. In preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), embryos fertilized in vitro are tested and discarded it they carry a gene that causes a predisposition to a disease, such as cancer. (Harmon, A., 2006). For a good discussion of the issues, see (Whelan, J., “Reproduction revolution: Sex for fun, IVF for children,” New Scientist, Issue 2574, Oct. 20, 2006, pp. 42-45). Back

22. “… slightly deleterious mutations arise in each generation. They are normally removed by selection, but if selection is experimentally prevented then deleterious mutations accumulate and the fitness of the average member of the population declines over time.” (Ridley, 1996, p. 289). Back

23. “Adherence to Marxism-Leninism, and individual behaviour consistent with that philosophy's prescriptions, were among the crucial traits expected of the New Soviet man.” (Wikipedia, “New Soviet Man”). Back

24. (Plotz, D., The Genius Factory, 2005). Back

25. A “perverse” incentive can be defined as an incentive that produces a result that is the opposite of the stated desired result. Back

26. In the United States in the 1960s children became a cash crop for the poor. Mothers on welfare (AFDC) had an average of 2.6 children each; non-AFDC mothers averaged 2.1. (Wright, 1997, p. 64). The IQs of mothers of illegitimate children is ten points lower than mothers of legitimate children. (Wright, 1997, p. 131; Herrnstein, 1994, pp. 191-201). Social Security may also lower the number of children productive people have by increasing their taxes during child-bearing years and making adults less dependent upon their children in their old age. (Juurikkala, 2007). Back

27. Culturally required or encouraged behavior can certainly be maladaptive (Barkow, 1991, p. 293-322), so choosing a child’s traits can be expected to sometimes be maladaptive as well. We are physically generalized apes who have specialized in thinking. In our current environment, this has paid off big time, but future environments may be very different, and we may find ourselves selected for surviving on little energy, where a big brain is a liability, and assets are a cast iron stomach and the immune system of a Komodo Dragon. Back