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发帖数: 38600 | 1 http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/05/19/science-an
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS MAKES RACE AND GENETICS TABOO IN THE WEST, WHICH IS
WHY CHINA IS WINNING
Most scientists will tell you that race has no biological basis—it is, in
academic-speak, a “social construct.” But a new book by distinguished
journalist Nicholas Wade challenges that assumption, concluding that race is
real and human social behaviour is subject to natural selection just like
everything else.
As the New York Review of Books put it, in its coverage of Wade’s A
Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, there is now a “
statistical sense” in which races are real. Scientists can tell, based on
genetic variance, which continent a DNA sample comes from. That might not
sound revolutionary to you, but it’s only recently that we’ve had the
computer processing power to do it.
Wade doesn’t shy away from the disquieting implications of his theories:
our genes, he says, could explain why some countries are wealthy while
others languish in penury. In fact, the more we discover about ourselves
from genomics, the more it becomes apparent that science and ideology are on
a collision course.
Why? Because it’s totally unacceptable to say in public these days that
different races might have different behavioural characteristics, and that
those characteristics might be genetically determined… even though that’s
the way the science seems to be pointing.
To be fair, it’s easy to understand why researchers get cagey. The all-
consuming cult of equality struggles with any suggestion that social
behaviours might be genetically determined: that habits and predilections
might have diverged along with skin colour. No scientist wants to be
responsible for research that justifies crude observations about white
sexual mores or black dietary preferences.
It’s one thing to say that tribal cultures have smaller trust circles;
quite another to say that science can explain why black people smoke menthol
cigarettes, or why Asians are good at maths. (Or, for that matter, why
people with ginger hair are less sexually attractive.)
For over a decade, it has been Chinese academics, unencumbered by political
correctness, who have embarked upon the race-based research enabled by
genomics. The Chinese particularly enjoy IQ-versus-race league tables,
because they invariably come out on top. That sort of research makes
Westerners squeamish, to put it mildly—which is why today, most research
into the genomics of race is still carried out at the Beijing Genomics
Institute. By and large, the subject is un-fundable in the West.
Assuming we were to discover biological and behavioural differences
attributable to race, does that mean we should start treating different
races differently? Could we develop better addiction treatment programs for
Native Americans, or more effective medication for Hispanic asthma sufferers?
Unsurprisingly, doctors have already been at this for decades. There are
medicines prescribed every day in America targeted at specific racial groups
, such as hypertension drug BiDil.
When BiDil was given the nod in 2005, the FDA’s Robert Temple stated
plainly: “The information presented to the FDA clearly showed that blacks
suffering from heart failure will now have an additional safe and effective
option for treating their condition.”
But the pills remain controversial, because they undermine the idea of race
as a purely social construct. One female doctor, appalled by the idea of
race-based medicine, said in 2005 that she wished BiDil had never been
approved, even though she knew it would save lives.
Responses like that are common even today. Nicholas Wade’s résumé is such
that critics who find his ideas uncomfortable cannot simply dismiss him as
a racist. Indeed, he told the Spectator podcast that only one review of A
Troublesome Inheritance so far had done so.
Nonetheless, entrenched hypersensitivities persist. Journalists are often
silent—or, worse, resort to name-calling—when they encounter research they
find uncomfortable. Ian Steadman, a science writer for the British New
Statesman, admitted he had not read Wade’s book when he referred on Twitter
to extracts from it as “pretending racism is science.”
“[I’ve] read enough reviews to know what it’s pushing,” he told me later
.
Steadman declined to answer further questions, but he did say he has since
read A Troublesome Inheritance and intends to review it at some point in the
future.
Jason Pontin, publisher of MIT’s Technology Review, wrote yesterday: “I
can’t imagine what compelled a science journalist of Nicholas Wade’s
stature to take on the subject of race. We don’t know much right now, and
while genomics will tell us much more, it can’t yet. For a journalist to go
wading speculatively into the subject is asking for career-ending trouble.”
Pontin almost certainly didn’t mean for “career-ending trouble” to sound
as sinister or threatening as it does. But his choice of words is
instructive: even though the jury is still out on whether race can be said
to have any meaningful biological basis, only the social construct side of
the argument is considered acceptable in public.
Meanwhile, prejudice may be costing lives: BiDil isn’t selling, even though
it works, partly because reporters have made it such a hot potato. And as
for attributing cultural habits to race, well. That’s the sort of thing
that can get you permanently ostracised from the profession.
These examples serve to illustrate what a touchy subject genomics is, even
for the scientists and science writers who in other circumstances—for
example, in their crusades against religion—demand that evidence should be
followed wherever it may lead.
In other words, although it shouldn’t take courage to write a book that
outlines what genetic discoveries might one day be able to tell us about
ourselves, in today’s heavily politicised scientific atmosphere, it most
certainly does. Which is reason enough, I think, to applaud Nicholas Wade.
Milo Yiannopoulos is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Kernel Magazine and
author of the forthcoming book The Sociopaths of Silicon Valley. He tweets
at @Nero |
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