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March 22, 2021 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
07:28
Let’s Break a Taboo
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Time Text
Genetic Improvement Through Breeding 00:02:59
Hello, I'm Jared Taylor with American Renaissance.
Today, let's break a taboo.
You believe in eugenics.
I know, the word sounds awful, but the principles of eugenics are so obviously true and useful that you could almost say it would be perverse not to think in eugenic terms.
The concept is simple.
Virtually every trait in a plant, animal, or human being is under genetic influence.
And at least to some degree.
So the idea is to encourage breeding that leads to improvement.
We have been improving crops and domestic animals that way probably all the way back to the dawn of agriculture.
And the results have been dramatic.
For example, the original ancestor of corn is a puny, low-yielding thing called teosinte.
It's the one on the left.
The early inhabitants of the Americas Carefully chose high-yielding variants that eventually became the corn plant.
And then modern breeding has produced huge improvements since then.
Now in agriculture, we can use DNA sequencing and computer technology to track plant genetic variation at a level unimaginable even just five years ago.
This means we can breed new varieties of plants that resist fungus and insect pests, give higher yields, or that can be grown with less water.
Or without fertilizer.
Domestic animals have also been vastly improved through breeding.
The ancestor of all cattle is the aurochs, which went extinct about 400 years ago.
It was a huge, bad-tempered thing that gave very little milk, and its meat was so tough you could break your teeth on it.
There were great improvements on the aurochs over time, but modern science has really speeded up the pace.
In just the last 50 years, the amount of milk a dairy cow can produce has doubled to nearly 2,500 gallons a year.
And as you know, breeding for racehorses is so important that when a famous stallion goes into retirement, it can make millions as a stud.
If you have a mare, and you want to breed racehorses, and you want Triple Crown winner American Pharaoh to be the father, do you know how much it will cost you?
$200,000.
That's because it has been known for thousands of years that fast horses produce other fast horses.
Although a few loonies pretend that the laws of animal breeding don't apply to human beings, they do.
And that's why pregnant women have amniocentesis.
It's a way to take some of the genetic material of the fetus and test it for possible defects.
Eugenic Choices 00:04:40
You can detect literally hundreds of genetic disorders.
The best known are Down syndrome, Turner syndrome, spina bifida, and anencephaly.
If a woman learns that the fetus has a major defect, she has the choice of having an abortion and starting over.
This is a form of eugenics, making choices depending on the results of different genetic combinations.
When a couple decides to have a baby, it's now common to get what's called genetic counseling.
The couple takes genetic tests, and a specialist studies the results to see what the child's chances are of getting such things as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs disease, dwarfism, thalassemia, and many,
many other conditions.
If the risks are high, a couple might decide to abort a child or have a baby.
Using donor sperm or donor eggs.
And when it comes to donor eggs or sperm, people follow the same eugenic principles.
If you want to buy sperm, you get not just a comprehensive report on the guy's genetic history.
You get his height, weight, hair and eye color, academic record, including grade point average, talents, hobbies, sports, and a personality assessment.
The California Creo Bank says it specializes in donors who attend Stanford, Harvard, and MIT.
It claims it can find a donor who looks like Hugh Jackman or Johnny Depp.
Some banks even record the voices of donors so you can hear how they talk.
Now, why all this detail?
Because genes influence just about everything.
If you are shopping for sperm, You don't just want to avoid Down syndrome or dwarfism.
You want good qualities, too.
Believe me, if you are a drunk or a criminal or have an IQ of 85, it doesn't make any difference if you have no genes for Tay-Sachs or cystic fibrosis.
No one wants your sperm.
Egg donors are screened just as carefully.
A fashion model can get up to $100,000 for her eggs.
As opposed to the usual $10,000.
Screening donors for brains or beauty is no different from breeding cows to give more milk.
This is eugenics.
Most people seem to be more comfortable taking measures to avoid defects than promoting good traits like intelligence or musical ability.
But they're really two sides of the same coin.
What really upsets people is coercion.
Telling people they can't have babies or even sterilizing them.
And I agree.
I'd be very leery of letting governments make decisions of that kind.
But what are we to make of extreme cases?
There are feeble-minded adults who can't take care of themselves.
The people who look after them just make sure that they don't have a chance to become parents.
Almost everyone would say that makes sense.
In Britain, The parents of a retarded woman have the right to have her sterilized.
Again, that's eugenics.
Let's take a more difficult case, though.
There was a report in 2012 about the three worst child support delinquents in the state of Tennessee.
Between the three of them, they had 78 children with 46 different women.
They weren't paying a penny in child support.
Tennessee taxpayers were supporting Every last one of them.
Now, what's your honest reaction to something like that?
Should there be a way to stop these men, and maybe the women too, from having any more children?
I don't like government coercion to stop them.
But I don't like the government coercing me to pay taxes to support those children either.
It's a dilemma.
But I bet...
There is something about that kind of irresponsible childbearing that really rubs you the wrong way.
So, go ahead.
Admit it.
You believe in eugenics.
But is there a moral, humane way to put it into practice?
In my next video, I'll talk about how eugenics got a bad name and about what could be accomplished in a society that believed in good breeding.
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