Book + Worm: On Genes, Equality, and Justice
“The problem is that we’re genetically unequal […] These humans have no chance of really competing with most other humans. So what do you do with the unfit? You can give them charity, you can try and cure their diseases, there are a variety of things you can do, or Hitler’s solution was just kill them.”
So says James Watson in a 2007 interview included in the new documentary, A Dangerous Idea, about the damaging impact of biological determinism. Anyone who has taken high school biology knows that Watson, along with collaborators Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, won the 1962 Nobel Prize for discovering the double-helix structure of DNA, and went on to lead the Human Genome Project.
What I didn’t know is that Watson has been shunned by the scientific community for his public statements that racial inequality is genetically based. In 2007, he was suspended from his position as Chairman of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory for claiming that black people are inherently less intelligent than whites. Other incendiary opinions include prejudice against overweight (“Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them” he said in 2000) and endorsement of genetic engineering (“People say it would be terrible if we made all the girls pretty,” he said in 2003. “I think it would be great”). In 2014, Watson decided to auction off his Nobel Prize, claiming that he needed the money.
Looking back to the era of eugenics, when influential men like Charles Davenport and Henry Laughlin insisted that science proved the fundamental inferiority of some groups and individuals, A Dangerous Idea explores the ebb and flow of blood thinking in America. Eugenics reached its nadir in the United States with the immigration quotas of the 1920s and the sterilization those thought to be unfit, including people of color, poor (and otherwise “wayward”) women, and people with disabilities. In Europe, there were the Nazi death camps of World War II.
With the defeat of the Nazis, biological determinism went into decline in favor of social and environmental explanations for inequality. Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty emphasized the social causes of economic insecurity, focusing on improved access to education and healthcare. But genetic essentialism resurfaced in the 1970s and 80s, when scientists in the new field of sociobiology like Charles Murray, E.O. Wilson, and Steven Pinker used discoveries in genetics to argue that inequality was innate rather than culturally or historically imposed. Showing footage of Neo-Nazis marching in Charleston last summer, A Dangerous Idea suggests a through-line from the eugenic thinkers of the early twentieth century and White Supremacists of our own time.
At the opposite end of this longstanding debate about inequality and social justice, the film positions Barak Obama, who championed an America where all people have access to education, healthcare, and work opportunities. Much as I was moved by the images of Obama advocating a more inclusive America, I also know his position on genetic science is significantly more complicated than the film suggests.
A Dangerous Idea doesn’t mention that Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address launched the Precision Medicine Initiative by pledging $215 million dollars to collect the genetic information of a million Americans, with the goal of advancing a more personalized, genetically based healthcare. While Precision Medicine is hardly eugenics, it does (at least in expenditure of research dollars) emphasize genes over the social determinants of health. Critics argue that, in siphoning funds away from well-known public health risks such as poverty, racism, and stress, Precision Medicine contributes to the very racial, gender, and economic disparities the Obama administration claimed to address. Moreover, imbalances in the available genetic databases skews research toward the healthcare concerns of already-privileged groups.
In the film, contemporary scientists like Evelyn Fox Keller, Ruth Hubbard, and Robert Pollack remind us that the gene is not a Rosetta Stone that unlocks an understanding of human health and development. Where the “century of the gene” inaugurated by Watson and Crick gave total priority to our DNA, today scientists understand genes as part of a complex system of regulatory interactions and epigenetic influences. By this account, DNA is not determining but, in the words of philosopher Nikolas Rose, dependent on “interactions between multiple events at different levels, involving the regulation of gene expression by factors in the cellular environment.”
By this account, genetic science can enhance the work of social justice by showing, for example and contra Watson, how little genetic data actually corresponds to social categories of race, and how important genetic diversity is to human health. However, it can also have the opposite effect. I’m part of a research group that has explored how genomic medicine contributes to health disparities by distracting funds from known public health hazards, underrepresenting minorities and women in its sample populations, pouring huge amounts of money into research on rare diseases, and focusing on long-term rather than immediate solutions.
When my son Henry was born with Down syndrome ten years ago, I prepared myself for a lifelong fight against anyone who thought his extra chromosome would determine his health and abilities. I imagined genetic science would be my nemesis. Experience has taught me that the interaction between genes and environment is far more complicated. Excellent healthcare, education, and social inclusion have allowed Henry to thrive, but those opportunities certainly don’t erase the impact of his extra chromosome. Henry’s chromosome isn’t determining, but it is an absolutely integral factor in shaping who he is.
Studying biology has taught me how complicated are the interactions between genes and environment. Where a disease like Cystic Fibrosis is caused by a single genetic error, Down syndrome, which involves an entire chromosome containing 200–300 protein coding genes multiplies the complexities to a staggering amount. At the same time that I lobby for lifting social prejudices that disadvantage people with disabilities, I also support research into the genetic dimensions of Alzheimer’s, sleep disorders, and leukemia, all of which are more pervasive among people with Down syndrome.
Last week, the debate about genetic determinism reared its head in the New York Times, where geneticist David Reich wrote an op-ed calling on researchers to acknowledge “the possibility of substantial biological differences among human populations.” A rejoinder signed by 67 scientists and researchers responded by insisting that there is no evidence that genetic differences correlate with socially defined racial categories.
My classmates in Intro to Biology are being well trained to understand the scientific message promoted by A Dangerous Idea, that genes are not destiny but nodes in complex regulatory systems cued by internal and external factors. But most of them don’t have the life experiences or historical knowledge to make the political connections between biological determinism and social discrimination prompted by the film. I’m increasingly aware of how important a socially-conscious biological literacy will be to the post-genomic century in which they will set the agendas for research, healthcare policy, and clinical practice. It is, indeed, a dangerous idea to believe in the determining power of the gene, but it is equally dangerous to discount its impact altogether. Putting genetic knowledge in the service of a more just and equitable biomedicine is the major task of our post-genomic age.
