GENETICS, NOT EUGENICS

I recently saw an article about sociological research claiming that 42% of convicted murderers in a Massachusetts study had seen someone killed in childhood. This was written about with the nuance of shocked surprise. "Really?" I thought. I reminded myself that I, unlike many bourgeois academics and readers of the New York Times, have actually known murderers as a nurse in psychiatric facilities. I have attended to their physical needs and taken the risk of setting limits upon them. 

One reaction to the article on Twitter suggested that we totally rearrange our justice system into a nanny system for somehow repairing the damage in these felons rather than removing them permanently from society. I will grant that our prison system is not stunningly rehabilitative. But holding hands with a murderer, especially a psychopath, will do nothing to heal that person of the deep traumatic conditioning and genetic predisposition to harm others. And, the current trends in non-brain-science 'helping disciplines' are so averse to behavior modification methods of a neuro-motor-chemical type that the actual tool kit for helping these people change will be vastly ineffectual. 

But we live in a culture where a ravaging pit bull breed is treated with more sympathy than the scores of people irrevocably damaged by it. It is a culture of childish obstinance in the face of statistical and scientific fact. This is particularly evident whenever the science of genetics is applied to human reproduction. 

One stunning example occurred during the height of the AIDS epidemic in urban America. AIDS service organizations were encouraging men and women with HIV to reproduce, even before the breakthroughs in HIV pharmaceutical treatments. It was known full well that the product of this reproduction would be HIV-infected. Yet, the AIDS gurus claimed that HIV-positive people had an unquestionable human right to reproduce. 

Many of us treating AIDS patients at the time were angered by this. We were nearly overwhelmed by AIDS deaths in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Now non-medical peer advocates for people with AIDS were going off the rails, we thought. But there was no outcry in the general medical community, ruled by heterosexual men and women. Just as there is no clearly audible outcry today against birth-parents mutilating their own children with sexual identity issues. 

When it comes to sexual reproduction, heterosexuals, and even some bisexuals and homosexuals,  are deaf and blind to the issue of genetic responsibility and genetic prevention. Nor are they much better with the concept of economic or social responsibility when it comes to 'having a baby'. 

It is not surprising at all that 42% of convicted murders were exposed to lethal violence as children. In fact, I would have expected that percentage to be higher. Are shocked researchers thinking that most murderers are born to generations of Quaker conscientious objectors? And I am not surprised that, as with climate change, the proposed 'cure' is some kind of  victim-based half measure to dealing with the problem. Seeing the murderer as a victim of genetics and environment is rational, I'll admit. Aren't we all in one way or another? But just dealing with the symptoms does not cure the disease. 

I am thrilled by Yuval Noah Harari's vision of a replacement species developed by homo sapiens through digital technology. That species will hopefully be able to rationally balance its rights with responsible outcomes for its societies. Homo sapiens cannot or will not, despite all the information currently available to begin that process. Narcissism rules some decisions to reproduce. Careless sex is still a predominant cause of reproduction worldwide. Rapists, murderers, pedophiles ... all will be born in ample numbers. And, as with climate change, well-meaning hand-wringing will do absolutely nothing to change this.