HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27203, 21 November 1953, Page 3

HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

implications of discoveries

The IjUe - By c - D - Darlington. Allen and Unwin. 467 pp The modern science of genetics has discovered the truth about what are commonly called “the facts of life”— that is, the processes of reproduction and hefedity. But the general public nas not yet become aware of the farreaching and vitally important implications of these discoveries, which have only taken place within the last 30 years. C. D. Darlington, Sherardiar. Professor of biology in the University of Oxford, demonstrates in this inari U and ,h°°? wha ‘ these implications are, and the tremendous influence they hlstorv d h i iVe on all theories of d slS’ r=!. dueat i on ’, inf ection and , ce and class relations, and the development of society. He is the new thinkm? 1 '’ 1 ? 81 , 1 to und «tak e the °. ut . our social, moral, and intellectual ideas which the disanri h? h Of n ?° dern . biology demand, and ? e u has , * he Wl de-ranging public outlnok lt t I n ra rt I ’?! ereate and breadth of outlook to do it. He is not the kind ?hink C 1 m ntlflC specialis t who cannot sublet « y - p ' Jrpos ? outside his own ls ln fact magnificently h?“? ped . to survey the whole of tiS? m ft oug ht and activity in relation to his own subject both in cast centuries and the present. of s learin 6 the ground, Darib'ndk t devo J? s , the first part of his u h ,‘l tory 01 ‘ho ideas that herL?X en i e d aboUt repr °duction and * from Aristotle onwards, demonstrating m the course of it how h3S a Of R OU * derive from false th? about biology. He shows how , micr oscope and the theory of evolution removed ancient Study of the facts of life, but introduced new ones. It was ™ hen att v em Pts to explain evolution were abandoned and the dismenTortl reEU ia lr M- trom microscopic methods could be combined with those that had been made independently by the practical breeders, the followers of Mendel, and by the scientific statisticians that the great probcoVJm ’h heredity and development b V out and reduced to demr r mims h tic° rder thUS reVealed was

The new understanding of genetic determinism enables us to see all human problems in a new light. We have been accustomed by the anthroRf-°, gls A the soci al scientist to think that the mental differences between cultures or between the classes of society are the result of accident or environment and without genetic foundation. But these ideas must now go by the board.' The study of twins I ?u d x ei £ geneticists has demonstrated that the following list of properties—sufficiently surprising to the layman to be quoted in full—is genetically controlled and determined; we inherit through our genes.

1. The rate and duration of our growth; and hence our ultimate size, structure and quality in bone, flesh, brain, blood, etc. 2. Our hormone systems and hence our temperaments, whether sanguine, melancholy or' choleric; timid or courageous; observant, reflective, or Impulsive. Hence our social habits, whether solitary or gregarious; affectionate or morose; useful, deranged, or criminal; hence also the company we keep, and our capacities and directions of love and hatred. 3. Our perception and appreciation of taste, touch and smell, sound and colour, harmony and pattern. Our capacities and qualities for

memory, whether for sound, sight, number or form. Our kinds and degrees of imagination, visualisation and reason. Hence our understanding of truth sn A beauty. Hence also our educability in all these respects, or lack of it, and our capacity and & olce in work and leisure. 4. The structures producing our voice; hence the pitch, timbre and strength in which we produce it, its educability, and the range and defects of our speech. 5. The times and patterns by which we gam and lose our hair and teeth, our deposits of fat, and our perceptual, intellectual, and reproductive powers. 6. Our requirements of water, salts, sugars, fats, proteins and specific vitamins, of sleep, of sunlight, and of exercise. And likewise the advantages and disadvantages we derive from drugs of various kinds and amounts, whether nicotine or alcohol, strychnine or cocaine. 7. Our susceptionability of every disease, infectious or non-infectious that flesh is heir to. Our abilities to receive, or coagulate, or reject, an infusion of blood or a graft of skin: these all depending on the types and varieties of our cell proteins. 8. And above all, or beneath all, our sex, whether male or female, our sexual capadity and interest, our fertility or sterility.

Thus it seems that our whole moral and intellectual nature is largely determined, even what have usually been thought of as acquired characteristics. And it may be seen from this list that our ideas of treating the sick, reforming the delinquent, teaching the young, or governing a society will have to owe much in the future to the epoch-making discoveries of modern geneticists. Darlington is surely right in his insistence that it behoves us to pay as prompt attention to the teachings of the biologist of today as we do to those of the physicist. His exposition in the absorbing final section of his book of what the principle of genetic determinism, combined with the principle of natural selection means for mankind cannot fail to interest very reader. It does not necessarily constitute a sentence of predestination, he says; it is also “the charter of individuality.” The individual can now better understand both his own limitations and his own capacities; he has his own unique genetic characteristics, as have all races, all classes, all mating groups, and all social units composed of mating groups. Uncertainty does of course remain, in the environment and in the processes of genetic mutation and recombination. The lafge genetic component in the success of failure of a marriage is one of the many subjects which Darlington examines. Divorce, homosexuality, and celibacy are also discussed in the light of genetic determinism. The problem of the over-population of the less highly developed countries of the world and the dangers inherent in the encouragement of this situation by the advance of medicine are realistically faced from a biological point of view. In our period opportunity has been given to the technically backward classes and societies. These classes and societies, says Darlington, “are technically backward largely for genetic reasons.” The result of assisting races, classes and individuals of technically backward types, which would not be capable of surviving without assistance, has been to. make them multiply out of proportion to those races, classes and individuals to whose initiative and intelligence they owe their multiplication; and this to cause a shift to a lower point on the normal curve of intelligence and of heritable educability of mankind as a The consequences to the doctrines of Freud and Marx in repudiating heredity are clearly revealed by Darlington. He also has a tragi-comic excursion on Lysenko and his taken view that environment can he used to change the genetic character of plants; and on the elevation of scientific fraud to the position of a state monopoly in Soviet Russia. And, throughout the book, his inquiry reveals a great deal about scientific method and the unity of knowledge. Some of his book is of technical interest, particularly valuable to the reader who already has some background in biology, but the greater nart of it is of general interest, laying bare as it does the immense possibilities that await the application of the principles of heredity to the dilemmas of modern society.