Philosophy of Genetics

Tackling racism

Many have been forced to grapple with the issue of race and genetics after James Watson – the co-discoverer of DNA's double helix – recently made some racist remarks.

The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

William Saletan (writing in Slate) is to be congratulated for tackling this issue head-on, bravely and correctly.  Most commentators (including the shameful New York Times) prefer to be inoffensive and politically correct, rather than accurate.

I would go further than Saletan, and argue that any racial classification is wrong.  Any demographic questionnaire asking whether you're White, Black or Hispanic should be outlawed.  By identifying yourself with a racial group, you're simply asking to be stereotyped.

According to Nature Genetics:

the use of race as a proxy is inhibiting scientists from doing their job of separating and identifying the real environmental and genetic causes of disease

Every racial group has a slightly different distribution of gene variants (i.e. genes for white skin, genes for intelligence, etc).  By saying "I am White" you're really saying "I'm assuming I have the gene variants that are most representative of my race".  You're setting yourself apart.  The problem is, you may or may not have those specific genes.

Everyone has the same rights, regardless of race.  Everyone is morally equal.  By identifying with a race – by discriminating based on "group genes" – we muddy and degrade our moral equality.

The Gay Gene

A recent article on the CNN website repeats the same old false dichotomy in the Nature vs. Nurture debate:

A growing number of psychologists and geneticists are working on the "nature versus nurture" question -- a question that's set off a highly charged political debate about whether people choose their sexuality, or whether gayness is determined by their DNA.

Why does it have to be either/or -- free choice or DNA?  When I choose something, my choice must come from somewhere, right?  It must come from my desires in certain situations.  Whether straight or gay, when we experience a situation (seeing a girl or guy) we react with an emotion or desire, which leads us to make a choice based on our desire.

So where do our desires come from?  They come from our brain.  When our brain develops, specialized brain modules are established to trigger our desires and feelings in certain situations.  So it follows that our choices are genetic, because our genes are the blueprints for brain development.  And since we all have slightly different genes, it also follows that we have different desires as well.

In the same article, Douglas Abbott, a professor of child and family studies at the University of Nebraska, states that "if homosexuality was caused by genetic mechanisms" then children of gay parents "would be more likely to choose same-sex interaction ... but they aren't more likely, so therefore it can't be genetic."

This is not necessarily true.  Genetic traits can sometimes skip several generations, so we may end up with traits from our ancestors, instead of our parents.

According to Abbott, "the primary causes of same-sex behavior are environmental and personal choice and free agency".  And I agree, we are all free to choose what we want.  But if our wants come from our genes, we are not free in our wants themselves.

Google my genes

The wife of Google founder Sergey Brin recently founded a company called "23andMe" to help usher in the era of personalized medicine.  Someday, you'll be able to log into their website and compare your genome with other people's, and find drugs that work best for you, based on your genes.

It's an exciting development, and like all exciting developments it will lead off in many unexpected and messy directions.  But that's what it will take for society to finally end our denial, and grapple with the implications that not everyone is the same.  Some people have a higher likelihood of getting certain diseases.  Some have a brain that develops differently, making them smarter.  Some genes regulate our social behavior, making us followers instead of leaders.

The era of the Blank Slate, where everyone is considered equal in capacity, will soon be over.  Hopefully, we don't forget that everyone is still morally equal, regardless of the genes we possess.

GINA - Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act

The House of Representatives recently passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), and the bill is expected to pass the Senate and become law later in 2007, replacing a patchwork of state and federal regulations.

According to the Genetics & Public Policy Center,

Ninety-two percent of Americans are concerned that results of a genetic test that tells a patient whether he or she is at increased risk for a disease like cancer could be used in ways that are harmful to the person, and most believe that employers and health insurers should not have access to this information.

The threat of genetic discrimination has hindered both genetic research and clinical practice. Linking gene variants to health outcomes often requires studies involving large numbers of people, but scientists report that many potential subjects are deterred by the fear that their information could be used against them by employers or insurers. Thus research is impeded that would help to bring about the much-heralded era of personalized medicine. Meanwhile, individual patients who could benefit from genetic testing have sometimes foregone it out of concern over possible repercussions. When people opt not to be tested, they lose the opportunity to seek monitoring and preventive care to avoid conditions for which they are at higher risk.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Free Will

For about 5 minutes, I was excited to see the new “Politically Incorrect Guide to…” series at my local bookstore.  Until, that is, I realized the series is little more than a right-wing political screed, attacking things like Darwinism, etc (although I must admit, I sometimes do that too!).

Too bad.  For those few moments, I imagined myself as the author of the next title in the series – “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Free Will”.  But if that series is edited by conservatives, I don’t think they would appreciate my perspective.

Actually, I’m fairly disappointed with both Conservatives and Liberals these days, in their approach to free will.

Conservatives will cynically tell folks that everyone is born a "blank slate" (the John Locke perspective), implying that any success in life is due to hard work.  But Conservatives secretly believe there’s a natural hierarchy in society.  Talent should be allowed to rise, they say, and mediocrity should be told to accept their lot in life.

Liberals, on the other hand, are less cynical (but equally wrong) in their perspective that “everyone can do anything” and any exception should be rectified by the government (since the inequity probably involves some invidious discrimination on someone’s part).

I say Conservatives are cynical because they secretly use the words of their Republican party founder, Abraham Lincoln, to undermine Liberalism.  Lincoln wrote that "I think the authors of [the Declaration of Independence] intended to include all men [as equal under the law], but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity". 

So conservatives have tried to show how innate differences among people (specifically intelligence) imply that Liberal government programs like Head Start don’t have any lasting effect after they end (and I agree, so why should they end?).  Conservatives want the government to stay out, so the natural leaders can rule and reap the benefits of lucrative business contracts.

Ah, what a mess!  The moral principle of “equal rights under the law” is valid, of course, whether or not people are different in their innate capabilities.  It’s an abstract right.  The main problem is that most people are not innately motivated to start a business, run for office, or publish their own newspaper.  Social resources are thus allocated on the basis of genetic variation among people. 

We all have the rights to life, liberty and property, but some people desire more property and have the superior means to acquire it (due to their greater innate motivation, leadership skills and charisma).  Society is thus divided into innate leaders and followers, which is anathema to what America should be all about.

What we need is a political party that can lay out its principles based on facts (as we currently know them).  Humans have genetic diversity.  Some genes will give you greater motivation, property and influence.  Thus, the government should provide free genetic tests to everyone who requests them, and free (government paid) genetic choice for everyone and their children.  After that, the government should stay out of it.

Your genes are not always your friends

According to a recent publication in the journal Cell, researchers have identified a gene that increases levels of a natural memory-blocking protein.  What? A natural memory-blocking protein!!  It turns out that:

When one protein in our brain (eIF2a) is chemically modified by a memory-blocking protein called Gcn2p, it halts production of genes required for the long-term storage of memories.

By modifying mice to carry instead a version of the eIF2a protein that can't be chemically modified, scientists created supersmart mice that could learn how to navigate mazes twice as fast as other mice!

A natural memory-blocking protein!!??  What's it doing inside my head?  Why would evolution give some people this variant of the gene, and not other people?  Why would scientists have to genetically modify mice to render them (what I would call) normal?

Because not all creatures are the same, even within the same species.  We humans evolved a distribution of traits (or specialization) across individuals.  Not everyone can be smart, because our genes actively prevent some of us from becoming smart!

Democracy and genetics

America was founded by a group of highly-motivated religious non-conformists.  These were Protestants, who believed that all people should have a personal and direct relationship with God, not through the intervening hierarchy and ritual of the Catholic Church in Europe.  And Protestants were willing to die for their beliefs.

Why did some people become Protestants, when others around them did not?  They could have safely avoided the European religious wars, by remaining neutral or unaffiliated.  What was it about Protestantism that motivated them to join, at great risk to their own lives?

I believe it was their innate temperament.  For some people, the Protestant ideas resonate and motivate, and for other people they don’t.  As Protestants fled religious persecution in Europe, they often settled in America.  This self-selected group of temperamentally similar people migrated from one place (Europe, where they were relatively rare) to become highly concentrated in another place, the shores of America.

If you could characterize the personality of America’s founders (especially the Protestants), it would be:

• Individualistic, belief in hard work
• Suspicious of authority and of other groups
• True believers
• Rigid in principles, rule-based, absolutist
• Abstract thinkers

Naturally, people with these character traits adopted a philosophy of rugged individualism, suspicion of authority, and moralistic rule of law.  Thus America acquired a national character (the right genetic mix) to become the “great experiment” in democracy, which had failed 2000 years earlier in ancient Greece.  Democracy and respect for individuals became the American religion, our core beliefs, our DNA.

Even with an influx of immigrants from all over the world, including Catholics (from Ireland and Italy and Spain and the Philippines) whom the Protestant founders had despised, America continues to thrive.  Jews and Muslims and Asians also joined the great American "melting pot", and Jews are now the great practitioners of democracy.  Once the seed was planted, the tree has proven resilient.

However, I wonder about other places on Earth, where the genetic seed does not seem to exist.  The collective disposition of many Asians, for example, is to accept what they are told by authority figures in the government, not to question authority.  And I don’t think it’s cultural.  Whereas there seems to be a practical desire to further one’s own happiness and wealth, there’s also a passive acquiescence toward authority.  The Chinese are transforming from collectivist communism to materialist capitalism, without stopping to identify their core beliefs and values as a society.  The collective (genetic) instinct of the people is to bend and flow around obstacles, not confront them directly, as the Protestants did.  There’s a lack of (innate) collective will, a lack of stubbornness to die for an abstract belief.  Will democracy take hold there?  Perhaps it will, if like-minded people are allowed to come together to form the seed.

In other parts of the world, the "special moment" that existed at the founding of American democracy has also not repeated itself.  The impulse of many Muslims seems to be continuing blood feuds and seeking raw power (instead of practicing forgiveness).  In Africa, as well, democracy has rarely taken hold.  In India, democracy merely hobbles along.

You can’t teach the ability to feel suspicion toward authority.  It has to come from within (i.e. part of your personality).  You can’t teach a love of abstract principles.  These things have to be in your blood.  There must be a "critical mass" of like-minded people around you -- for whom these ideas also innately resonate -- for democracy to take hold.

Success of Asian students: culture or genes?

Some commentators are bemoaning the fact that 46% of students at the University of California, Berkeley, are now Asian.  But I think it's great.  It proves that Americans are so certain in our principles, that we allow meritocracy to flourish, whatever the outcome.  If Asians have the highest scores, of course they should be the ones who are accepted.  If this leads to racial imbalances at the university level, so be it.

Are Asians innately smarter that other people?  I'm not so sure.  (Perhaps the new Asian Genome Study will tell us!)  In any case, I think the Western educational style of "thinking for yourself" puts a burden on many people, and slows us down at first, especially in our ability to identify patterns. 

Some Chinese students I know appreciated the fact that in China they were told what classes to take, and what to study, so they didn't need to worry or question anything.  They just studied what was put in front of them.  The Asian style is often one of rote memorization, accepting what you are told (whether it makes sense or not), and doing deeper analysis later.

Still, I believe there will be some short-term issues with the influx of Asians at American universities.  According to Stanford professor Hazel R. Markus (in a recent NYT article):

[S]tudies have found that Asian students do approach academics differently. Whether educated in the United States or abroad, she says, they see professors as authority figures to be listened to, not challenged in the back-and-forth Socratic tradition. “You hear some teachers say that the Asian kids get great grades but just sit there and don’t participate,” she says. “Talking and thinking are not the same thing. Being a student to some Asians means that it’s not your place to question, and that flapping your gums all day is not the best thing.”

One study ... looked at Asian-American students in lab courses, and found they did better solving problems alone and without conversations with other students. “This can make for some big problems,” [says Markus], like misunderstandings between classmates. “But people are afraid to talk about these differences."

For these reasons, I don't believe Daniel Golden when he says Asians have become the “new Jews" (in other words, the new academic superstars).  Jews have a culture and tradition of debate, law, and analysis.  Asians don't. 

This is rather alarming, because the American model is based on abstract principles and openness (which many Asians I know think are hopelessly naive):

• A free (and adversarial) press to investigate corruption
• Democracy (to replace corrupt leaders in a timely manner)
• Individual rights and moral equality
• Rule of law, not rule of man
• Openness and transparency in government and business
• Creativity based on individual opinion
• Dynamic capitalism, where wealth is created by new ideas and "creative destruction", not copies of old ideas

Still, as with any immigrant community, we always see difficulties at first.  Once immigrants become more assimilated, they nearly always transform the culture, and leave it better than it was before.  So, I say, welcome to the Asian invasion, and please bring your genes!

Anyway, back to genetics.  In my opinion, every selection activity (whether of students, or of leaders in a corporation) is always a form of genetic selection.  You can't have talent without genes, because talent emanates from motivation and desire, which is always innate.  And a recent scientific publication reports that 25% of genes studied differ in their level of activity between Europeans and Asians.

Are Asian students innately different from Western students, or are they molded by their Confucian culture, which teaches deference toward elders, consensus-building, and rote learning?  In my experience, even American Born Chinese (ABCs) have a greater respect for authority than non-Asians, and a more calm disposition, with a greater willingness to defer gratification and work hard.  Confucianism may reflect the genetic character of the people, instead of vice versa.  Still, native-born and American-born Chinese don't tend to hang out together, since the native-born Chinese find ABCs "too American" and noisy.

I think it's worthwhile looking at the representive aspects of Asian culture, and try to determine whether these could be genetic.  According the NYT article:

• “In Asian families, the No. 1 job of a child is to be a student. Being educated — that’s the most honorable thing you can do”
• “The bottom line message from the family is the same: work hard, defer gratification, share sacrifice and focus on the big goal.”
• Students are happy at Berkeley because “you really feel like you don’t stand out”

So what innate motivations are at work here, that separate Asians and other groups?  Let’s deconstruct this a bit (with the caveat that this is merely speculation for further research):

• The desire (or motivation) to be "honorable" and respect authority could be innately stronger in Chinese than in other people
• The ability to "defer gratification" (and spend long hours in lonely labs) could be greater as well
• Sensitivity to "social shame" is always relative, but Chinese could be innately more reserved on average.  Fear of "standing out" is clearly innate, since you can't teach a fear
• I know a number of Chinese couples who live apart, working in separate cities.  The need for daily intimacy could be less intense in Chinese
• Deference to authority is also innate, since how would you teach it?  It has to feel right.  It is amplified by the Confucian culture, but only because it resonates with people’s innate inclinations.
• It's possible that Chinese have brains that are more adept at memorizing and pattern recognition, but I have no proof of that.  I do remember a story about a guy from Thailand (not Chinese) who was an expert Scrabble player, because he memorized the entire English dictionary!

So my conclusion is:  Asians probably have some different innate temperaments (on average) from other groups in America.  And that's fine.  The culture of Confucianism will still take a few generations to die out (which is a good thing, because it's incompatible with American values).  But that's simply the normal process of assimilation.  Would you rather live in a culture where everyone is supersmart (because there are no fixed rules, and knowing the context is all-important), or less smart (but where the rules are well known to all)?

Is national character genetic?

Ever so meekly and tentatively, scientists are now exploring genetic differences between world cultures.  Nicholas Wade speculates in the New York Times that "the concept of national character could turn out to be not entirely baseless" due to differences in genetic evolution.  And according to recent article in Science "cultures differ somewhat in aggregate personality levels" due to different distributions of genetic variants across society.

So what could this mean?  Will scientists really be allowed to investigate the answers, or will their research be prematurely shut down due to political concerns?  One can see flashbacks to the time of Galileo and Copernicus, who were threatened with excommunication when they observed the Earth revolves around the Sun.  Sometimes, what you can plainly see will get you into trouble by people who refuse to consider your evidence.

Unfortunately (and this is why scientists are being so timid), humans are hardwired toward prejudice and discrimination, so what people hear and what they believe are two different things.  If scientists can prove that group X is more violent than group Y (on aggregate), many people will naturally jump to the conclusion that all X's are violent.  But the truth is that there's an uneven distribution of (genetic) violent tendencies across group X, with 20% of its members responsible for 80% of the violence.  (A violent tendency is the same thing as having a lowered threshold to respond violently when provoked.) 

Societies and cultures are often (rightly) defined by 20% of their members who are most outspoken. But if one society has 20% of its members with an innately low threshold for violence, and another society has only 10% of its members so pre-disposed, it's easy to see that the former society will be more violent (on average) than the latter.

Since humans are unreliable in explaining why they believe what they do, it's hard to investigate the true causes of national character.  Someone may say "my brother was killed by group X, and therefore it is my duty to avenge him".  But someone else in a similar situation in a more placid culture (think Canada) might say something like "my brother was killed by group X, and therefore we need increased spending on social welfare programs for group X".  Can we really trust the explanation people give, or would it be more accurate to attribute their opinion to their gene variants?

National conversations tend to reach a consensus, of sorts, which define their culture.  If most people in a society tend to have a high threshold before reacting violently, then their opinion will tend to overshadow a small minority of people who promote violence.  On the other hand, in societies where everyone believes they are (or ought to be) the leader, there is a constant blood struggle for supremacy, and their culture also tends to be more violent on aggregate.

Finding religion in genetics

By some strange miracle (or by accident), I ran into two of the human genome pioneers in the past two months – Francis Collins and Craig Venter.  On September 15, while attending a modern dance show at Duke University (Liz Lerman’s “Ferocious Beauty: Genome”), a kindly older couple standing in the aisle asked if we had taken their seats by mistake.  I looked up, and there was Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  We said “no”, and they quickly found another seat.

The dance performance was extremely well-done.  It’s hard to make a dry topic like genetics come alive, but they managed with some success.  The dancers were an exceedingly politically-correct combination of White, Black, old, young, Jewish, Christian, and even a dancer in a wheelchair.  The obvious lesson was that every person is morally important, and genetics is not to be feared, and people like Collins are not trying to create a "master race" through genetic enhancement.

It turned out that Collins was a guest of honor – part of a panel discussion after the dance, to explain and debunk genetics for the general public.  Collins is an evangelical Christian (not a godless scientist!) and his recent book “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” should win kudos within the Bush Administration, and extend Collins’ contract for at least a couple more years, even though organized religion is being attacked these days by everyone from Richard Dawkins (famous proponent of Darwinism) to Elton John, who recently said "I would ban religion completely".  Is Collins' religious posturing genuine, or a smokescreen to hide the political implications of genetic diversity?

A month later, I literally ran into Craig Venter by the swimming pool at the Hilton Head Marriot hotel, where he was sponsoring a conference on genetics.  Venter has been sailing the world for the last few years, collecting samples of new ocean species, to analyze their DNA the same way he (allegedly) analyzed his own DNA as part of the Human Genome Project (which is probably why we falsely believe that everyone has the same leadership genes that Craig Venter does).

Outside the hotel was parked Venter’s DISCOVER GENOMICS! bus, a “mobile laboratory program developed to work with local teachers and school administrators in the Washington, DC metro area to enhance science literacy and generate enthusiasm and awareness of genomics in underrepresented minority groups.”

Since the job of sequencing the human genome in all its variation is quite expensive, the government and privately funded programs require ongoing public support and outreach.  So it appears that both Venter and Collins are trying to appeal to the "hearts and minds" of America, or at least trying to defuse genetics as a possible political issue, especially with minorities and the disabled who have been suspicious that genetic tests could be used by neo-Nazis to weed society of “undesirables” (those with disabilities, violent temperaments or low IQ).

I think it's all a laudable goal.  Clearly everyone currently living should treated as morally equal.  Scientific knowledge about genetic variation should be used to cure human diseases.  But all the while, the same research dollars (public and private) are being used to enhance our knowledge of human genetic differences in things like motivation, leadership ability, intelligence, and temperament.  Once this knowledge becomes public and our cherished notions about "all men are created equal" are brought into question, there will be a political firestorm that no religious tonic can quench.