RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 39, Issue 28, 27 October 1945, Page 6

RANDOM NOTES

(By

Kickshaws.)

The cost of living in Britain, it is declared, is to be pegged. Folk in New . Zealand think a little whittling would be better.i * .• • The problems of the Pacific, it is claimed, are the white man's duty. He just adds .it to that-other burden. » * ♦ Australian expert® declare that, their country is in for a period of the greatest prosperity for the next 10 years.Even the times are striking. » » « “Please accept my congratulations and thanks on your excellent column on scientists and politicians,” says “W.G. N.” “It was both timely and needed and says so many things which I and many of my friends would have liked to have said. As a sidelight on the article, I would like to mention the recent legislation in this , country requiring all practising engineer’s to register—for a fee—only those having the necessaryacademic qualifications being acceptable, in order ‘to safeguard the public.’ Reflection will show that effective national planning cau.be carried out only on the accumulated, co-ordinated knowledge of scientists, geologists, researchers,: engineers and such like having years of study behind them. But politicians today are not going to surrender their powers to these rightful owners easily, nor will they readily institute a political ‘diploma’ for themselves.” • v » • It has been proposed that an artificially inseminated race of perfect men be created to guard the secrets of the atomic bomb. The idea appears to be to make use of the best, stock available in the hope that a perfect rltce would result. Only women of the finest eugenic value would be used, and they would-be artificially mated from a selected list of United Nations leaders. In spite of this laudable effort to produce a perfect race there are two snags. Who is going to decide which are the women of the finest eugenic value, and it is very doubtful if breeding, even artificially, ' with United Nations leaders would produce anything but very ordinary results. The

truth is that the human race is so hopelessly mixed up, bad, good and indifferent being contained in the heredity genes of nearly everybody, it would take centuries to sort out the good strains from the bad with any certainty of results. The process could only be speeded up by a careful examination of the genes of likely mates. The difficulty is that these genes are so small that at present only the faintest outline of them is obtainable. What they contain or what they are is more conjecture than /act.

For untold generations those gentlemen who preferred blondes have been allowed to mate with them. From these centuries of haphazard matings there has arisen a hopelessly involved racial probblem. Individuals who display outstanding Or unusually dominant characteristics do affpet subsequent generations. The effect, however, may be for better or for worse. If half the care which has been taken over the mating of farm animals had been taken oyer the human race, maybe by now we would bo in a position to produce an artificially inseminated perfect race. All we can say is that if any person has some dominant characteristic half the offspring will also probably have this characteristic. After a few centimes it would however, be a hopeless task to discover just where the characteristics had got, The happy blend of good, bad and indifferent is further complicated by unexpected “sports,” which inexplicably throw back many generations; and thus stir up the mud of the past which it had hoped was comfortably settled.

* Unfortunately a couple who marry may have no signs of any dominant failings or otherwise. Yet two undetectable carriers can produce, say, au albino child. No amount of hunting up family trees can prevent these occurrences. Unless unsuitable stock had been ruthlessly exterminated for a dozen centuries it would be impossible suddenly to start to breed a super race. Love unfortunately laughs at eugenics as well as locksmiths. Our knowledge today is sueh that we can predict with more or less accuracy what the result will be of consanguineous matings, provided fairly complete details are known of the two cousins who marry. Normally these details are only haif known, if known at all. : As things are about 15 per cent, of the parents of congential idiots are first cousins. In normal communities the percentages of marriages between first cousins is about oue per cent. For those who are not first cousins the chance of anybody marrying an unrelated individual who has some dominant feature is about 1 in 70. lu the case of cousins the pair will have received characteristics from a common grandparent. The chance of their having the same dominant feature is therefore one in eight. It would thus seem that if a race of supermen is to be bred for atomic bomb work it would be better to select eugenically sound first cousins and breed from them.. Maybe in the course of several centuries something really super-duper might then eventuate.

Washington idealists for the production of a super-race may Inrinterested in the facts as already known. For example, if no albinos were allowed to mate from now onward it would take several centuries to reduce the incidence of albinism by even one-half. Iu theory it would take millions of years nearly to eradicate it. This is only one imperfection, if indeed it should be so called. There are hundreds of other imperfections which would have to be eradicated. Artificial insemination might narrow the field of imperfections, but it could not speed up the results. Nature must be allowed to take her course. If some way were found for mothers to bear children once a week, instead of in nine months and they grew up by five years, perhaps a speed-up could be effected. It is, however, just possible that mothers would object, if in fact they survived the ordeal. There are imperfections which affect the male only. Each of these special imperfections would have to be eradicated one by one. Moreover, the stock which carried them could no longer be used for breeding. For example, the sterilization of all royalty suffering from haemophilia would only halve the proportion iu every % nivation, but it would never stamp out the failing completely. Thus the sqper-race might suddenly have to be eliminated and a new slart made. Meanwhile just you and the rest of us would be left, imperfect as we are, to deal with the many problems of the atomic bomb; till this super-race had got going in, say, two thousand years. '** a ■

It is only fair to say that despite our imperfect eugenics, our lack of knowledge and the haphazard methods of mating in the human race, there are families “it runs in.” The first Duke of Marlborough was one of the descendants of George Villiers, the father of the Duke of Buckingham, who was the favourite of James I and Charles I. Another descendant of Villiers was the Duke of Berwick, James H's natural son and Marlborough’s nephew; and the only man who could dispute with him for the' title of the greatest commander of the ago. Ar a later dale two other mon with the Villiers strain in their blood became prominent—-Chatham and the younger Pitt. It would take too long to enumerate all the other famous people who numbered George Villiers among their ancestors, but it is significant that Winston Churchill is one of them. How-

ever. fathers do not usually pass on to their children anything but their debts, and good looks. Mental brilliance seems to follow a capricious rule, which only becomes manifest in later generations. T’he elder and the younger Pitt are one of the few exceptions. Napoleon was unable to father a son who was a brilliant general. Milton had only daughters and none came up to his brilliance. Dickens produced no offspring of literary ability. Thackeray hud two ordinary daughters. In politics the Chamberlains have certainly carried on a tradi-

tion. but one destined to crash. Gladstone’s sons were mediocrities. Yet David Pollock, a Strand saddler, founded one of the ablest families in Europe. Even his sons became great, men. one a Chief Justice, another a Baron of the Exchequer, ami a third a field marshal. Moreover, the strain of genius persisted into the third and subsequent generations. Tlie job is to spot the winner, however. before, not after, the results. Many experts say it can’t be done.