Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor - Let’s Break a Taboo
Aired: 2021-03-22
Duration: 07:28


=== Genetic Improvement Through Breeding (02:59) ===

[00:00:03]  Hello, I'm Jared Taylor with American Renaissance.
[00:00:08]  Today, let's break a taboo.
[00:00:10]  You believe in eugenics.
[00:00:12]  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.
[00:00:24]  The concept is simple.
[00:00:26]  Virtually every trait in a plant, animal, or human being is under genetic influence.
[00:00:32]  And at least to some degree.
[00:00:34]  So the idea is to encourage breeding that leads to improvement.
[00:00:38]  We have been improving crops and domestic animals that way probably all the way back to the dawn of agriculture.
[00:00:45]  And the results have been dramatic.
[00:00:47]  For example, the original ancestor of corn is a puny, low-yielding thing called teosinte.
[00:00:54]  It's the one on the left.
[00:00:56]  The early inhabitants of the Americas Carefully chose high-yielding variants that eventually became the corn plant.
[00:01:03]  And then modern breeding has produced huge improvements since then.
[00:01:08]  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.
[00:01:18]  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.
[00:01:28]  Or without fertilizer.
[00:01:29]  Domestic animals have also been vastly improved through breeding.
[00:01:34]  The ancestor of all cattle is the aurochs, which went extinct about 400 years ago.
[00:01:40]  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.
[00:01:49]  There were great improvements on the aurochs over time, but modern science has really speeded up the pace.
[00:01:56]  In just the last 50 years, the amount of milk a dairy cow can produce has doubled to nearly 2,500 gallons a year.
[00:02:05]  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.
[00:02:15]  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?
[00:02:26]  $200,000.
[00:02:28]  That's because it has been known for thousands of years that fast horses produce other fast horses.
[00:02:35]  Although a few loonies pretend that the laws of animal breeding don't apply to human beings, they do.
[00:02:42]  And that's why pregnant women have amniocentesis.
[00:02:46]  It's a way to take some of the genetic material of the fetus and test it for possible defects.

=== Eugenic Choices (04:40) ===

[00:02:52]  You can detect literally hundreds of genetic disorders.
[00:02:56]  The best known are Down syndrome, Turner syndrome, spina bifida, and anencephaly.
[00:03:03]  If a woman learns that the fetus has a major defect, she has the choice of having an abortion and starting over.
[00:03:10]  This is a form of eugenics, making choices depending on the results of different genetic combinations.
[00:03:19]  When a couple decides to have a baby, it's now common to get what's called genetic counseling.
[00:03:24]  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,
[00:03:40]  many other conditions.
[00:03:42]  If the risks are high, a couple might decide to abort a child or have a baby.
[00:03:48]  Using donor sperm or donor eggs.
[00:03:51]  And when it comes to donor eggs or sperm, people follow the same eugenic principles.
[00:03:57]  If you want to buy sperm, you get not just a comprehensive report on the guy's genetic history.
[00:04:04]  You get his height, weight, hair and eye color, academic record, including grade point average, talents, hobbies, sports, and a personality assessment.
[00:04:15]  The California Creo Bank says it specializes in donors who attend Stanford, Harvard, and MIT.
[00:04:22]  It claims it can find a donor who looks like Hugh Jackman or Johnny Depp.
[00:04:28]  Some banks even record the voices of donors so you can hear how they talk.
[00:04:33]  Now, why all this detail?
[00:04:36]  Because genes influence just about everything.
[00:04:40]  If you are shopping for sperm, You don't just want to avoid Down syndrome or dwarfism.
[00:04:46]  You want good qualities, too.
[00:04:49]  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.
[00:05:00]  No one wants your sperm.
[00:05:03]  Egg donors are screened just as carefully.
[00:05:06]  A fashion model can get up to $100,000 for her eggs.
[00:05:11]  As opposed to the usual $10,000.
[00:05:14]  Screening donors for brains or beauty is no different from breeding cows to give more milk.
[00:05:21]  This is eugenics.
[00:05:24]  Most people seem to be more comfortable taking measures to avoid defects than promoting good traits like intelligence or musical ability.
[00:05:33]  But they're really two sides of the same coin.
[00:05:36]  What really upsets people is coercion.
[00:05:40]  Telling people they can't have babies or even sterilizing them.
[00:05:43]  And I agree.
[00:05:45]  I'd be very leery of letting governments make decisions of that kind.
[00:05:50]  But what are we to make of extreme cases?
[00:05:54]  There are feeble-minded adults who can't take care of themselves.
[00:05:58]  The people who look after them just make sure that they don't have a chance to become parents.
[00:06:04]  Almost everyone would say that makes sense.
[00:06:07]  In Britain, The parents of a retarded woman have the right to have her sterilized.
[00:06:13]  Again, that's eugenics.
[00:06:15]  Let's take a more difficult case, though.
[00:06:17]  There was a report in 2012 about the three worst child support delinquents in the state of Tennessee.
[00:06:25]  Between the three of them, they had 78 children with 46 different women.
[00:06:32]  They weren't paying a penny in child support.
[00:06:35]  Tennessee taxpayers were supporting Every last one of them.
[00:06:40]  Now, what's your honest reaction to something like that?
[00:06:43]  Should there be a way to stop these men, and maybe the women too, from having any more children?
[00:06:50]  I don't like government coercion to stop them.
[00:06:54]  But I don't like the government coercing me to pay taxes to support those children either.
[00:07:00]  It's a dilemma.
[00:07:01]  But I bet...
[00:07:02]  There is something about that kind of irresponsible childbearing that really rubs you the wrong way.
[00:07:08]  So, go ahead.
[00:07:10]  Admit it.
[00:07:12]  You believe in eugenics.
[00:07:15]  But is there a moral, humane way to put it into practice?
[00:07:19]  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.