Guest

Alexandra Minna Stern, PhD, author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate talks about how the American far right views genetics, genetic technologies, eugenics, and science and the emerging political threat of 21st century eugenics ideology and policies.

Transcript

Susanna Smith

Hi everyone, I'm Susanna Smith.

This is Genetic Frontiers, a podcast about the promise, power, and perils of genetic information. Find us wherever podcasts are found and go to GeneticFrontiers.org to join the conversation about how genetic discoveries are propelling new, personalized medical treatments but also posing ethical dilemmas and emotional quandaries.

This season we're focusing on Genetics in American Politics & Culture. We talk with historians, journalists, technologists and philosophers about the alluring but dangerous pursuit of improving the human species through genetics. We discuss how ideas about people's genetic worth and worthiness are driving American politics and policy today.

On today's episode, I will be talking with Dr. Alexandra Mina Stern. Dr. Stern is a professor of English and History and works at the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA. Professor Stern has spent her career researching and writing about the dark history of eugenics in the United States and elsewhere. Her work digs deep into how eugenic ideologies, past and present seek to categorize people, and assign them value. based on false ideas about biological or genetic superiority. The aim of these dangerous ideologies is to improve the human race by controlling who can and cannot have children.

Professor Stern was a guest on an earlier episode of Genetic Frontiers, Episode 6 about the eugenic origins of the genetic counseling profession. But today, we're going to retread some ground that Professor Stern covers in her book, Proud Boys & the White Ethnostate, which explores the culture of the American far right, including far-right views about genetics and eugenics.

So thank you for coming back on Genetic Frontiers, Professor Stern.

Alexandra Minna Stern

Thank you for having me. So many of our listeners are genetic counselors or clinicians.

Susanna Smith

Can you talk a little bit about how the far right views genetics and genetic technologies?

Alexandra Minna Stern

First of all, there is really a concern with demography, and as you have seen in the news, with baby making and a panic over fertility in the United States or lack thereof. And far-right leaders have really been endorsing pronatalism and the use of, not all of them, some of the pronatalists reject genetic technologies because they view them as unnatural, but a good number are what we would call, kind of like techno-utopians. And they want to create a world using genetic technologies such as IVF, genetic selection from embryos, and potentially even using information from GWAS studies and other types of large-scale genetic data to make decisions about their offspring and perfecting their own offspring. And that is an idea that they want to expand more generally to kind of solve the supposed crisis of depressed fertility in America. These conversations are happening in other countries as well where there are low fertility rates, but they've really taken off in the United States. For example, with the recent conference that happened at UT Austin, which was all focused on pronatalism and on using different reproductive and genetic technologies in the service of bolstering birth rates.

I'd like to note that, you know, the language that was used in that conference and that you will often read about in the media is one that kind of sidesteps the issue of race and tries to paint a picture of this as kind of more racially inclusive. But if you scratch the surface of people like the Collins family that's promoting this, or others who were at that conference, what you will find is that they are often referencing some of the more suspect literature that focuses on race and IQ scores. So, for example, Charles Murray and his ideas about race and IQ, or others, demographers or psychologists who have been discredited for really pushing unconfirmable ideas about the relationship between race, ethnicity, gender, and IQ. So that's one way in which we're seeing this techno-utopianism merging with the far right to really push forward ideas of what the future of America should look like.

Another aspect of what's happening that really concerns me, when I think about the good work that so many genetic counselors are doing out there in the world and trying to be ethical and share the results of genetic tests with patients and clients, is that many of the products that are being used and have been created are becoming more and more unregulated. Now, in general, they have been less regulated in the United States than they have been in other countries, for example, you know, in Europe and so on. But what we're seeing now is, you know, with the push towards deregulation of so many aspects of health and environment under the Trump administration that it is more and more likely that it's going to become even a wilder west out there in terms of the deregulation and the ultra-commercialization of genetic tests and technologies. Such that it's just private individuals, so to speak, who are purchasing and using these technologies. Obviously, some individuals have the resources and the money to do so, and, you know, many others will not have that opportunity, which in and of itself creates a massive inequality in terms of access to more broadly, genetics as healthcare, genetics as kind of informing health decisions, and so on.

So that's another way in which I see this playing out, and it really concerns me because it means that genetic counselors or purveyors of genetic information, those who are working in, be it academic settings or, you know, public health settings, you know, potentially have less and less control over access to the services and the technologies that they're using. And I don't know what's going to happen with insurance and reimbursement, but that's a whole other area that I'm sure will be tested in the years to come.

Susanna Smith

Yeah, I just want to pause there and explore this a little bit, because there was, of course, the executive order sort of expanding access to IVF. If you don't sort of sit in the Collins' camp of maybe the most extreme pronatalist pursuit, but for a genetic counselor perhaps someone just shows up and says, 'Well, I want to select my embryos; I want the smartest babies.' Can you talk a little bit about the history in American culture of trying to choose smarter children, and then the flip side, the science of what we know about the relationship of heredity and intelligence?

Alexandra Minna Stern

It is not proven that there is an association between genetics and intelligence, so that's one thing. I mean, there's no, like, hard and fast proof. What's more interesting, in a way, is that there has been a quest to determine that and to prove that for the past 100 plus years. So if you go back to the early eugenics movement, you know, one of the initial concerns of eugenicists was really to identify through looking at family studies, looking at pedigree charts, that there was a kind of causal relationship, not even a correlation, but a causal relationship that you could see being passed down from generation to generation, or perhaps skipping a generation due to recessive genes for traits such as intelligence and criminality.

And if we think back to the eugenics movement, one of the most popular terms that, you know, was also one that induced a lot of anxiety was the idea of "feeble-mindedness." And that was really connected to IQ. So, someone who had an IQ of less than 100 was viewed as less than normal, someone who had an IQ of 140 was viewed as potentially a genius. Those who had IQs that were in the lower ranges, anything below 80, according to Lewis Terman, who developed these scales, a label would be attached to them, such as, you know, not only "feeble-minded," but broken down even more, with more precision to "idiot," "moron," "imbecile," and so on. So, this idea that disability or, you know, cognitive defectiveness could be measured through genetics or looking at heredity has a long, long history. Then, of course, that was attached to gender, it was attached to race, but that kind of disability or concern or, like, the ableism that was at the heart of the eugenics movement is still very much with us today. That's something that does get underplayed in some of the media stories. At the same time, what's underlying all of it is really a very strong ableism, which, to me, I see throughout, whether it is an individual going to a genetic counselor saying, 'Look, I want to take the most up-to-date tests and get the best results, to have the best baby possible,' or something like the pronatalist movement with the Collinses, who are using all the technologies at their disposal to have superior babies.

Ultimately, you know, the first criteria there is that the baby, the offspring will not be disabled...