Human Biology and Politics

[Goswin_van_Eyck]

JBS Haldane

Human Biology and Politics

Source: Being the Tenth Annual Norman Lockyer Lecture, Delivered on
November 28th, 1934, AT 4-30 p.m., In the Hall of the Goldsmiths'
Company, London;
Published: The British Science Guild, 193?;
Transcribed: for marxists.org in May, 2002.
Orig. source:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/hald...0s/biology.htm

Sir Norman Lockyer, whose name is commemorated by this lecture, was
fortunate in certain respects. His work on the chemistry and physics
of the sun, revolutionary as it was from the point of view of pure
science, did not bring him into conflict with established interests
either in religion or politics. This was, in a way, accidental. The
scriptures might well have contained misleading passages concerning
the composition of the sun, as they do about its motion. And had the
persons with a vested interest in nineteenth century methods of
illumination been sufficiently farsighted, they would have realised
that a study of line spectra was likely to render obsolete all
lighting methods based on the emission of a continuous spectrum, and
have done their best to discourage this study.

The student of human biology can hardly hope for such immunity from
worldly contacts. He may discover facts which go far to disprove the
theories by which current politics, economics, hygiene, religion, and
morality are supported. And he will not even have the satisfaction of
whole-heartedly taking sides in a controversy. At one moment he may
find himself attacking a religious dogma, at the next supporting the
Pope against people who regard themselves as progressive. If he
defends the medical profession against some of its opponents, he will
be bound to admit that the Pharmacopeia embodies many practices which
have absolutely no scientific foundation. In most human controversies
truth resembles the Mexican god Yaotl, familiar to readers of
Cabell's "The Silver Stallion." It is the enemy on both sides.

I shall naturally be dealing with aspects of human biology which are
controversial to-day. It is worth remembering that a good deal which
is common-sense in Britain to-day was once a novel and revolutionary
hypothesis, and still is so in some primitive communities. It is said
that certain peoples recognize no relation between sexual intercourse
and the birth of children, hut regard conception as solely due to the
entry of a spirit into the mother. Others refuse to admit any causes
of death except human agency, ascribing what we call natural death to
sorcery. In each case we now accept the materialistic explanation
without question. (Perhaps I should except "Christian Scientists" who
attribute disease to error on the part of the diseased or malicious
animal magnetism employed by others!). Nevertheless the fact that we
rarely give children a perfectly straightforward account either of
birth or death shows that very deep psychological resistances to
clear thinking on either subject still exist in our society. Neither
I nor my hearers can hope to avoid emotional prejudices when we take
up these subjects.

These fundamental facts of human biology are as much part of the
common stock of ideas on which we all act as are certain fundamental
facts of chemistry or physics. For example, everyone knows that the
rapid oxidation of cellulose is an autocatalytic process, in other
words, that one, can light one piece of wood from another, a very
fundamental and revolutionary discovery in its time. Other chemical
and physical facts, not so generally known, are applied in industry,
others again await application. What are the facts of human biology
analogous to these two latter classes?

The most important group of data applied by specialists are these
which constitute the medical sciences. Those which are not applied in
medicine are, to a very large extent, not applied at all. Either they
have no obvious application, or they form the basis of arts such as
Eugenics, which, like inter-planetary navigation, are not yet
practiced, at any rate in this country, even if their principles are
partly understood.

Before I come to my main theme, I must crave your indulgence while I
say a few words about the medical profession. The application of
science to other branches of life has led to increase in
organization. Some of these organizations are capitalistic like the
railways or the great industrial combines, others socialistic like
the Post Office or Woolwich Arsenal. But though we do not go to an
individual artisan for our car or to an individual water-carrier for
our water, we still go to an individual doctor for our healing. The
largest organizations for medical and surgical treatment are the
hospitals, which are neither capitalistic nor in this country
socialistic, but survivals or imitations of mediaeval foundations. A
few large clinics and nursing homes are run as business concerns.

The result is most unfortunate. The patient consults a, doctor who is
supposed to understand the whole gamut of human ailments, from broken
bones to madness. If poor, he or she may ultimately be admitted to a
hospital, but too often after a considerable delay. The middle class
patient is treated in his own home or in a nursing home, where
conditions are generally far worse than in a hospital. There are
generally fewer specialists available, less adequate apparatus and
laboratory facilities, and less constant attendance by nurses. Only
the very rich secure as satisfactory treatment as the hospital
patient. I speak from experience of both. I have been in a really
good nursing home. I have also been in one where the conditions were
inferior to those of the better hospitals in Mesopotamia in 1917.

The system is obviously unsatisfactory. Though I should prefer to see
a state medical service, I am sure that the middle class patient
would be very much better off with a capitalist type of medical
organization than at present. He could go to an institution where he
would find a team of competent specialists including a radiologist
and a bacteriologist, and would very probably be able to avoid the
very heavy occasional costs of illness by paying a fixed annual fee.

As medicine becomes more and more a matter of prevention as well as
cure, the defects of the existing system show up more clearly. The
preventive and prophylactic side of medicine is represented by the
medical officers of health, the school medical officers, and a few
voluntary institutions such as the Peckham health centre, which are
models of what should be; but under a system of individual medical
attendance adequate disease prevention is almost impossible, if only
because it is far harder to detect latent disease in an apparently
healthy person, than to determine the nature of a disease already
existing.

If the existing knowledge of human biology and that which is likely
to come into existence in the near future were adequately applied,
there would, as we shall see, be an enormous demand for experts. It
is a very serious question whether they should be members of the
medical profession. Again it has been suggested that sufferers from
certain incurable diseases should be killed, that persons with
hereditary defects should be sterilized and that abortion should be
permitted in certain cases where the mother's life is not in danger.
If any of these practices are legalized I sincerely hope that they
will not be entrusted to the medical profession. The relation of the
physician to his patient should always be that of a healer, never of
killer, and the whole psychology of that relation would be profoundly
altered for the worse if this ever ceased to be the case. This fact
was realized by the wise man or men who framed the Hippocratic Oath.
If public opinion demands the application of medical technique to
such ends as I have suggested, the profession will be well advised to
surrender some of their rather jealous guardianship of this
technique; rather than extend their functions unduly.

For the same reason I believe that it is desirable that the experts
who in the future will be concerned, as I believe they will, with the
enforcement of standards of diet, housing, reproduction, and so on,
should not be medical men, though they will have to learn much of the
science which is now taught only to the medical profession. The
alternative would be an hypertrophy of the medical profession such as
occurred in the middle ages when the church concerned itself not only
with spiritual affairs but with government, education, and
handicraft. Such an hypertrophy could only end in disaster. An expert
on human biology need not be a doctor, and in many cases should not
be, any more than every clerk should be in holy orders.

For as soon as human biology ceases to deal with the individual, it
becomes inevitably mixed up with politics. In this lecture I propose
to examine some of these repercussions. I shall deal chiefly with the
questions connected with human reproduction, the questions of the
quantity and quality of our future population. Here I have the
advantage that the subject has already been treated by Dean Inge, who
preceded me in this lecturership. It is always interesting to study
the reactions of an intelligent outsider to scientific thought. But
such an outsider is apt to label as scientific, ideas which have but
a meagre claim to that title.

Let us begin with the question of numbers. Dean Inge believes that a
happy and healthy England would be more sparsely populated than at
present, by a population largely engaged in agriculture. This is only
true if it is impossible to keep an industrial population healthy and
happy. It will be time to conclude that this is impossible when the
attempt has been made on scientific lines, and not till then. An
urban population living in unplanned houses, and eating an unplanned
diet, is bound to be less healthy than a rural population. An urban
population which was adequately fed, and had opportunities for sport
and country travel might be healthy enough. When I climb Snowdon, as
I have done at least once, without meeting anyone else, I cannot
resist the conclusion that our population is ill distributed rather
than too large.

Whether I am right or not, it is certain that our population is going
to diminish very greatly in the near future. This prediction is based
on the statistical methods introduced by Dublin and Lotka in the
United States, and by Kuczynski in Europe. Their work has recently
been popularized by Charles in "The Twilight of Parenthood." If we
have a table of deaths at different ages and children born by mothers
of different ages, we can readily make the following calculation. If
1,000 girl babies are subject to these death rates and birth rates,
how many daughters will they produce in the course of their lives? In
England to-day this figure is about 750. The figure 0.75 is called
the net reproduction rate. The population is still increasing because
there are a large number of women of child-bearing age, but it will
begin to fall within the next ten years. Wherever the net
reproduction rate is less than 1, the population is bound to fall. In
our own country at least no improvements in hygiene can possibly
counteract the tendency. If we take 1,000 girl babies and suppose
that none of them dies before the age of 50, while their fertility in
each year is unchanged, we get a figure called the gross reproduction
rate. This is, of course, higher than the net rate, but in England
and Wales it fell below unity in 1927.

Similar figures are available for a number of other countries. The
net rate is below unity throughout North-Western Europe, including
France and Germany. It is near unity in central Europe, and rapidly
dropping towards that figure in Italy and the Balkans. For example,
the net reproduction rate in Bulgaria fell from 1.9 in 1903 to 1.3 in
1929, and is probably now very little above unity. In the United
States it probably fell below unity in 1927. In the British self-
governing dominions it is still slightly above unity, but approaching
that figure. The position in the U.S.S.R. and Japan is, entirely
different. In 1926-7 the net reproduction rate of the former country
was 1.7; that of Japan is also very high, though really adequate
figures are lacking. It is of course probable that in both these,
countries industrialization will ultimately lower fertility, but
there are as yet no clear signs of this tendency.

The political consequences of these facts are interesting. Dean Inge
disapproves strongly of Communism, and thinks that England should
play an important part in combatting it. But he approves of a trend
in population which is rapidly rendering England, and all other
capitalist countries save Japan, less and less capable of effective
action against the Soviet Union, should such action be desired by
those who regard our civilization as superior to that of the Soviets.

Though I do not share all the Dean's views on international politics,
I think that a great diminution of our population, while that of
other countries is increasing, would intensify the present
instability of the international equilibrium. If the population of
Australia does not increase much more, while that of Japan does so,
it will become increasingly difficult either morally or physically to
resist the Japanese claim to immigrate into that continent. I think
that it will be generally agreed that, even if a slight diminution in
our population is desirable, the catastrophic fall which will occur
if the fertility of Englishwomen is still further diminished, is
undesirable. I shall consider later what steps should be taken to
check this fall.

We next come to the question of quality of population, by which I
mean innate quality. Dean Inge makes the surprising remark that "any
progress which is not based on an intrinsic advance in human
intelligence is very precarious." Of course all progress is
precarious, but I have yet to come across any evidence whatsoever
that there has been any advance in the intrinsic factors making for
intelligence in Europeans during the last 50,000 years. We have no
reason to suppose that a hundred babies gathered from Solutrean caves
and transported by a time machine into the year1934 would grow up, on
the whole, stupider than the rest of us. Progress as far as I can see
has been due to the substitution of one type of production by
another, and in so far as the new social organization has been
stable, the progress has been of a fairly permanent character.
Progress and evolution are different processes with different time
scales. We are surprised if we can detect evolutionary change in a
section of the geological record covering as little as 20,000 years.
But the whole of human progress since the old stone age is comprised
in less than this period. It is no doubt desirable that man should
evolve in certain directions, but such evolution is a quite different
thing from social progress. It may be that there is a limit to the
social progress possible without further evolution, but before such a
conclusion is proved a good many experiments will have to be made;
and the statement that the limit of progress has now been reached
need not be taken seriously except as an expression of conservatism
in the speaker.

As regards innate human quality three ideals are held up. Certain
relatively rare types should be eliminated, certain classes within a
given community should be encouraged to perpetuate themselves while
others should not. And certain races should be prevented from
immigrating into given areas or expelled from them. Curiously enough
eugenic organizations rarely include a demand for peace in their
programmes, in spite of the fact that modern war leads to the
destruction of the fittest members of both sides engaged in it.

Let us first consider the undesirable innate characters which we want
to eliminate. Many of them are due to the substitution of one gene
for another. That is to say they are inherited in accordance with
Mendel's laws. For example "lobster claw," a rare condition in which
the hand and foot are reduced to a single pair of digits, is handed
down by affected persons to about half their offspring, and never
skips a generation. It is due to the substitution of an abnormal gene
for one of the genes concerned in limb development. Affected persons
have one normal and one abnormal gene of this pair, and hand down
each to half their progeny. A gene like this which produces effects
when heterozygous, i.e. associated with a normal allelomorph, is said
to be dominant. If all affected persons were prevented from breeding,
the condition would be wiped out in a generation, save for the very
rare cases, probably less than one in a hundred million, where the
abnormal gene arises anew by the process called mutation. In this
case we should be sacrificing one normal child for each abnormal
whose birth was prevented.

Some other dominant characters would not be so easily extinguished.
Thus one cause of congenital mental defect is epiloia, or tuberous
sclerosis. This is a dominant, but is rarely handed down for more
than two generations, as it causes early death as well as mental
defect. Unfortunately this adverse natural selection is balanced by
mutation. Penrose showed that at least 20% of a series of cases arose
in this way. So here sterilization would only reduce the incidence by
about 80% even if every case were diagnosed, which is unlikely, and
does not always cause mental defect. In only 22% of Penrose's cases
had the disease been actually diagnosed in a parent, so probably
sterilization would only give a reduction of this order.

Again Huntingdon's chorea is a dominant. This terrible disease begins
with involuntary muscular movements, which are the first symptoms of
a nervous disease culminating in madness and death. The average age
of onset is about 35. By this age most people have already begotten
the majority of their children. The sterilization of subjects of this
disease under the recent German law, even if carried out very
thoroughly, will therefore not abolish it within a measurable time,
though it will slightly diminish its incidence. It could only be
wiped out by preventing all children of affected persons from
breeding, a sacrifice of 3 normal children for each abnormal.

Another group of diseases are sex-linked recessives such as
haemophilia. This condition is due to a gene carried in the X
chromosome, of which women possess two and men only one. A woman
carrying one gene for haemophilia is normal but transmits the
condition to half her sons. An affected male does not transmit it to
his daughters, but it reappears in half their sons. However, it is so
fatal that haemophilics rarely marry, and Bulloch and Fildes even
doubted whether it was ever transmitted by a male, though I think the
evidence for this is very strong. Haemophilics certainly should not
beget children, though as they rarely do so, a prohibition would have
little eugenic value. They could not be sterilized by operation, as
this would often be fatal. X-rays might be used. The only measure
which would appreciably diminish the frequency of haemophilia would
be the prevention of further child-bearing by healthy women who have
had a haemophilic son, and by the sisters of haemophilics. The
sterilization of mothers would sacrifice three normal children for
each abnormal, that of sisters seven normals for each abnormal. Such
measures would perhaps be justifiabre were the population increasing
rapidly. I doubt if they would be so at present.

Finally we come to recessive abnormalities. These include many forms
of blindness and deafness, and at least two forms of idiocy. The case
of juvenile amaurotic idiocy is typical. This is due to the
compresence in an idiot of two abnormal recessive genes, one
contributed by each of two normal but heterozygous parents. When such
parents marry, on the average one quarter of their children are
affected. No case is recorded in Europe (though there is one in
Japan) where an amaurotic idiot has lived long enough to have
children. If two grandchildren of the same heterozygous carrier
marry, the chance that both will be heterozygous is one sixteenth,
whereas the chance that two unrelated persons will carry it is (in
the population of Sweden) about one in 15,000. Hence it is not
surprising that the condition is very much more frequent among the
children of cousins than in the general population. Sjogren found
that 15% of the Swedish cases were the children of first cousins, and
a further 10% of other relatives. Similarly Usher found that 24 of 79
English cases of retinitis pigmentosia, a disease which causes about
4% of all blindness, were the offspring of first cousins, and 4 more
of first cousins once removed.

It would be useless in such cases to sterilize the affected. Very
often they do not breed, and when they do their children are
generally normal. There is also no prospect of eliminating the
recessive genes. Nearly 1% of Swedes are heterozygous for amaurotic
idiocy, and probably most normal people carry some deleterious
recessive gene.

At present only two eugenic measures are available. One is to
discourage the marriage of cousins. The only body that does this is
the Roman Catholic church, which is however hostile to other forms of
eugenics. The other would be to allow or enforce the sterilization of
one partner in a marriage which had produced a recessive at certain
time, or to sanction or even compel the dissolution of such marriages.

Deaf mutes present a special problem. Deaf mutism may be congenital
or due to infantile ear disease. Congenital deaf mutism is largely
due to recessive genes, as appears from the fact that, in different
populations, from 21% to 40% of congenital deaf mutes are the
progency of consanguineous marriages. But deaf mutes very frequently
marry. Were all deaf mutism due to a single recessive gene the
progeny of two congenital deaf mutes would always resemble their
parents. Actually several genes are concerned. So most marriages of
congenital deaf mutes give normal children. Nevertheless Dahlberg
finds that 29% of the children of two congenital deaf mutes are deaf
mutes. I think there is a good case for sterilizing the husband in
such a case, more especially as it is clear that normal children
brought up by two mute parents must be considerably handicapped.

The scope of negative eugenics, as applied to physical defects, seems
then to be severely limited. The possible methods include not only
prevention of procreation by affected persons, but also by their
relatives, besides the discouragement of inbreeding and the
dissolution of certain marriages. Actually the prospects are far
brighter than this. We know so little of human genetics that only
such rough and ready methods are at present available. But if we
possessed the same knowledge of human genetics as we do of the
genetics of Drosophila or maize, we should be able to say, with very
high probability, that such and such children of a sufferer from
Huntingdon's chorea has received the gene for it, and should not
marry; that some of the brothers of an amaurotic idiot carried the
gene for that disease, and others did not. Possibly we could detect
the gene for haemophilia in heterozygous women, and so on.

This sort of thing is possible in Drosophila because harmful genes,
e.g., for short wings or defective eyes, are carried in the same
chromosome with harmless ones such as those for slight abnormalities
in bristles or wing veins, which are quite common in wild
populations. Such genes are linked, that is to say are handed down
together, and the harmless variations thus serve as indices of
dangerous recessives.

Quite a number of human differences, for--example those between
members of the different blood groups, and between those who can and
cannot taste phenyl-thio-urea, are due to very common gene
substitutions. It would be perfectly practicable to discover a large
number more of such genes. Indeed they were being discovered at a
considerable rate by a German worker until political events put an
end to his research. I should estimate the cost of an investigation
which would give us a sufficient background of normal genes for
linkage work at between L3,000 and L5,000 provided the right men were
chosen for the work, and a number of families were available through
co-operation with some hospital or authority.

Except with such aid I see little chance of investigating the problem
of congenital defect. We already know that mental deficiency is due
to very many causes, and naturally enough. There are some hundreds of
causes of blindness; and the cerebral cortex is a more complicated
organ than the eye, and therefore likely to work badly for a greater
variety of reasons.

Of so-called congenital cases of defect some are due to injury at
birth, some to infection, especially syphilitic. Here it is worth
noting that chemists are only permitted to sell antiseptics for the
prevention of that disease if no instructions as to their use are
sold with them! This curious example of censorship doubtless accounts
for some mental defect. Other types of defect,
particularly "mongolism," are caused by prenatal environment rather
than heredity. Of the truly innate types of mental defect some are
due to dominant genes, as shown by their transmission to the
offspring, some to recessive genes, as shown by the frequency of
inbreeding among their parents. In most cases we have no definite
information, and shall not until we can distinguish the different
causes by clinical or genetical research. Quite recently Folling
found, that 10 out of 430 defectives, and no normals, excreted phenyl-
pyruvic acid. Here the mental defect was probably due to a metabolic
error, and this latter very possibly to a recessive gene.

Now a proportion of mental defectives which different authors place
between 5% and over 50%, are derived from defective parents. Thus if
all defectives were prevented from breeding the number of defectives
in the next generation would be reduced by a proportion which I do
not personally think would exceed 20%. The dominant genes concerned
would be abolished, but the recessives would remain. This result
would be worth while, but would not abolish mental defect, and would
be slight compared with other equally practicable results, such as
the abolition of venereal diseases, which would also involve some
restrictions on liberty.

There are several objections to the policy of wholesale sterilization
which has been suggested. The operation is trivial for men, but for
women it is about as serious as that for appendicitis, and there
would inevitably be occasional fatalities. Any attempt to make this
operation compulsory or even alternative to seclusion in an
institution would be a violation of the principal of the sanctity of
human life, which underlies so much of our legal practice. Except as
a punishment for murder or treason the law does not permit that
people should be killed, though it permits an operation risking their
lives in order to eliminate a graver risk. If a government once
violates this principle it is opening the door to very serious
Consequences. Our more intelligent politicians realize very well that
if the government starts killing people, people will sooner or later
start killing the government. Hence it is to be hoped that they will
not legalize such operations as salpingectomy on imbecile women, even
if it is done with her consent. The consent of a mental defective is
not worth very much.

Another objection is that we have no adequate criterion of mental
defect. The late Professor Trouton did not learn to read until the
age of 12. If he had been an elementary school child he would have
been sent to a special school for defectives. He was so far from
being defective that at the age of 17 he discovered the law which
bears his name.

Sterilization would not be carried out without class discrimination.
Idiocy and imbecility are about equally common in all classes.
Certified feeble-mindedness is commoner among the very poor. While
genuine mental defect may be rarer, it is obvious that it is often
not certified among the rich, although a glance at the press will
convince anyone that they include a number of persons who satisfy the
legal criterion of imbecility in that "they are incapable of managing
themselves or their affairs."

It is worth pointing out that where mental deficients are sterilized
this is done from economic as well as from biological motives. Judge
Holden of Yakima, Washington, U.S.A. sentenced John Hill to a
sentence of from 6 months to 15 years imprisonment for stealing hams,
the sentence being suspended during his good behaviour. He also
suggested that Hill should be vasectomized, to which he consented.
What follows are the judge's own words:

"Hill, his wife, and five children, are all mentally subnormal, even
for their situation in life. For many months the children have been
half starved and half clothed ... The case was brought to the
attention of the public authorities through the discovery of the
theft of the hams, since which time he and his family are partly
dependent on public charity, and without the addition of more
children to the family, will undoubtedly continue to be more or less
of a public charge; with more children the extent of demand on public
charity will, be increased."

It did not occur to the judge either that there might be any
connection between the starvation of children and their mental
dullness, or that there was anything wrong with conditions under
which a beet sugar labourer could not earn enough to support five
children.

It may be necessary that the richest country in the world should
sterilize its citizens as a measure of economy. But at least it is to
be hoped that if Britain follows the example of Washington the
suggestion will not be made that such action is taken in response to
the demands of biologists. Biologists may legitimately demand that a
proportion of mental defectives should be prevented from breeding.
The demand that they should be sterilized comes from those who
consider such a measure to be cheaper than segregation, and to whom
this consideration is paramount. But there is I think a real case for
legalizing the sterilization of those who desire it, if they carry a
sufficiently harmful dominant gene, such as those for some forms of
cataract, blue sclerotics with brittle bones, epiloia or lobster
claw. Such a measure seems desirable as an addition to our liberties
whose effects would be biologically advantageous.

Besides demanding sterilization and similar measures for defectives,
many eugenists hold a doctrine which may be stated as follows: "Men
and women born into one economic class are constantly passing into a
richer one if they possess more innate intelligence than the average
of their class, into a poorer one if they possess less. But the poor
breed faster than the rich. Hence the innately Stupid breed faster
than the innately clever, and the mean innate ability of the
population is falling. Before examining the proposed remedies for
this situation I must consider whether the fundamental proposition is
true:

At first sight it appears obvious, but there are two good reasons to
doubt it. In the first place it is clearly flattering to the self-
esteem of those who hold it, and therefore suspect. Secondly, if it
were true, a system which allotted a number of wives to people who
made money would clearly tend to produce a race of great ability, at
least in commercial matters. Now this system has been tried, and what
is more, tried with an adequate control. In Mohammedan countries
during the last twelve centuries followers of the Prophet who have
acquired wealth have practiced polygamy, while their poorer co-
religionists have had one wife or none. On the other hand Christians
and Jews in Mohammedan countries have been on the whole monogamous,
even if the rich had some illegitimate children. Hence we should
expect that Mohammedans would have acquired greater commercial
ability than members of other religions, in fact that a Turk would
generally beat a Jew or an Armenian in a commercial deal. This is not
the case. Hence I do not regard it as certain that if in England the
rich bred faster than the poor our race would acquire greater innate
ability, even of that particular kind which leads to a rise in the
economic scale.

I wish to suggest that the phrase "innate ability" is meaningless. We
cannot say that in all environments A will prove abler than B by any
particular test, save in exceptional cases, as when B is a
microcephalic idiot. An analogy from agriculture will make my case
clear. Put a Jersey cow and a South Africa scrub cow in an English
meadow. The Jersey will give far more milk. Put them on the veldt,
and the Jersey will give less milk. Indeed she will probably die. The
Jersey has been selected, not for high milk yield in all
environments, but for a yield which varies more than that of the
primitive cow in response to environment.

A number of writers on eugenics have dealt with the so-called "social
problem group," men and women who are petty criminals, unemployed
even in times of prosperity, more fertile than the average, and on
the whole endogamous. There is evidence that their behaviour is
partly due to inherited dispositions, and it is assumed that they
would be socially inadequate in other environments, as they are in
the slums. I think this far from certain. They include some real
defectives, but the rest, for all that anyone knows, may be like the
Jersey cows, on the veldt, yielding little of value in their actual
environment, but possibly capable of better things if they got out of
it than men and women who are more contented with social conditions
as they exist in the slums. It is only when people have failed in a
favourable environment such as we may hope to see throughout Britain
in the future that they can be regarded as probably unsuitable
parents of future generations. Differences within a social class are
far more likely to be heritable than differences between members of
distinct classes.

I know that most writers on eugenics disagree with me, and I will
briefly examine the consequences to be drawn from the theory that as
regards human achievement the effects of nature and nurture are
additive, even though they are not so as regards the yield of cattle
or wheat.

If the well-to-do are innately abler than the poor it is desirable
that they should breed quicker. They appear to breed more slowly for
several reasons. They are more cautious, have greater knowledge of,
and opportunity for, birth control, and carry more genes making for
low fertility. This last characteristic is due to the fact that low
fertility is inherited, and makes for economic success, as is obvious
if we compare the possibilities either of saving money open to a man
with two children, and a man with ten. In this country it has been
specially stressed by R. A. Fisher. In view of our already inadequate
birth rate no proposal tending to reduce the existing fertility of
any classes not definitely defective can be seriously entertained. A
new system of family allowances would have in Fisher's view three
distinct advantages.

In the first place it would check the coming fall in our population.
In the second it would act most sharply on the fertility of those who
now limit their families on economic grounds, and are regarded by
most eugenists as possessed of better innate endowments than those
who breed more freely. And thirdly, by checking the social promotion
of infertility as such, it would end the present sterilization of
ability. For, according to Fisher's argument, infertility and ability
equally lead to a social rise, and hence, as people generally marry
within their own social class, genes making for ability and
infertility are associated in the same families, and thus the genes
making for ability tend to disappear.

There is, however, an argument for family allowances which appears to
me very much more cogent. In the last twenty years we have, for the
first time, arrived at definite criteria of a satisfactory diet for
human beings. We know that a very great deal of our existing physical
defects are due to qualitative as well as quantitative under-
nourishment.

Qualitative under-nourishment is not confined to the poor, But it is
certainly far commoner among the poor than the rich, And in a family
with a sufficiently small income it is impossible to avoid it. There
is surprisingly little controversy as to the minimum cost of an
adequate diet for children under English urban conditions. The
British Medical Association's Committee find that this rises with age
from 2/8 to 5/5 per week. Professor Bowley' s standard including less
milk, rises from 1/10 to 4/8.

It is at any rate clear that the 2/- per week allowed for the child
of an unemployed man for all purposes is entirely inadequate, and
that if this sum were raised to 5/- the unemployed with a family of
four or five would receive a larger income than many employed men
with similar families.

It is not for a biologist to suggest how this situation should be
remedied. But if it is not remedied then the research of the last few
years on dietetics has been largely useless, and there appears to be
little point in continuing it. Clearly the action of the Government
in lowering the price of milk to school children is an example of one
possible method, which if properly carried out will tend to canalize
the demand for foodstuffs into channels approved by biochemists. It
is a compromise between allowances and rationing.

But though it is a great step forward it is very far from adequate. A
definite standard of diet is available, and no biologist should be
satisfied until it is reached. It is worth noting, by contrast, that
no similar standards can be given as regards housing or clothing. A
biologist may demand the abolition of slums, but he cannot say what
constitutes a slum, while he can say what constitutes an inadequate
diet. In the future scientific standards of housing may be
attainable, but they are not as yet.

I have tried to show that three different arguments may be brought
forward for some form of family endowment. In the first place an
adequate diet is now as much part of preventive medicine as an
adequate water supply. Secondly, our population is likely to decline
rather rapidly unless the present economic incentives to family
limitation are removed. Thirdly, such a measure would check the
association of innate ability with infertility which is thought by
many eugenists to exist. For the last two purposes family allowances
would have to be roughly proportional to the family income. Fisher
regards 12% per child as adequate; other authors would give a higher
figure.

It is not for me to say whether adequate family endowment is present
economic system. There are good reasons to doubt it. If our rulers
tell us that it is impossible under capitalism, then we had better
try socialism. However, it can also be argued that an assured
effective demand for a certain minimum would tend to stabilize
capitalism, and that the existence of even our present biologically
inadequate minimum in Britain has stabilized it.

Whichever of these alternatives is true, I am certain that as
biologists begin to deal with human problems they will increasingly
demand a minimum dietary for the whole population, and a system of
family endowment which will counteract the existing trends in our
population.

I have not had time to deal with the racial question. A good case can
be made out for discouraging immigration of negroes into Europe, or
of Europeans into tropical Africa, since in each case the immigrants
are ill adapted. Unfortunately as the result of political factors
there are far greater difficulties in migration between England and
Denmark than between England and Nigeria. No such cases can be made
as between the different genetical types (I hesitate to use the
word "races") who have lived in Europe for many centuries.

There is, of course, a strong case against the admission of persons
of whatever race who are physically or mentally below the average. On
the other hand the opportunity has arisen, as the result of recent
political disturbances in Europe; of admitting to British citizenship
exiles of proved intellectual ability. Every eugenist should be
prepared to recommend the admission to British citizenship of such
exiles, provided that they attain a sufficiently high standard.

I fear that I have said little that is novel, nor have I offered any
particular panacea. The application of the data of human biology to
politics and ethics will probably be more complex than that of the
data of physics to industry. It is very important, if the whole
science is not to be discredited, that premature steps should not be
made, and that biology should not be harnessed to the car of any
political party. For the latter reason I have here suppressed many of
my own views, for example the opinion that our existing society is
biologically unstable, and have tried rather to stress those opinions
which enjoy a sufficiently general support to render them worthy of
consideration not only by biologists, but by politicians of whatever
outlook.