On the Need for Eugenics

Eugenics is one of those ideas that has come to acquire a negative reputation for all the wrong reasons. Under pressure from mainstream academics and writers since World War Two, and largely due to its association with National Socialism, the very concept of eugenics has been derided and defamed for decades. Today it is widely seen as misguided, racist, or as some downright evil social-programming scheme; but in fact, as I will argue, it is vital for our collective survival.

Unsurprisingly, basic definitions are highly biased. The Cambridge Dictionary calls it:

the idea that it is possible to improve humans by allowing only particular people to produce children, which most people now do not accept or support because of the idea’s connection with racist and Nazi theories and actions.

Wikipedia tendentiously defines it as “a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population.” The slanted tone continues: “Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fertility of those considered inferior, or promoting that of those considered superior.” It sounds bad, wrong, malevolent…especially for those on the wrong end of the ‘superiority’ spectrum. But in fact, it is normal, natural, and necessary for human beings, especially in the modern technological era. The primary questions now are not whether or not we need it, but rather what form, and of what intensity, a eugenic program should be implemented.

But let me start with some fairly straightforward observations. I claim that everyone, already, is a eugenicist—they just don’t use the term. The word ‘eugenic’ comes from the Greek eu (good) + genos (birth), related to genea (race) and genesis (origin). Eugenic has the sense of ‘good birth,’ ‘good stock,’ or in more scientific terms, ‘good genes.’ For themselves, everyone naturally wants to be of good stock, to have good genes; good genes typically imply good looks, health, intelligence, strength, longevity, and a robust personality. We cannot affect our genes, but still, we somehow hope that we have good ones and that any personal problems or health issues will somehow be ultimately controlled or remedied by our ‘good stock.’

It is a similar case, I think, for any potential partners or spouses that we might seek out. I think it is safe to say that, when young, most of us want mates who are beautiful or handsome (however defined), strong (in men) or feminine (in women), intelligent (at least, comparable to ourselves), and healthy. This is not to say that other non-genetic factors do not matter: women may seek wealthy men, for example, who can serve as good providers. Men may seek a ‘trophy wife’ simply because she is desired by other men. And there are other pragmatic concerns: In real life, we typically cannot find a willing partner with all these desirable qualities, and so we all eventually make compromises; but still, the vast majority of us seek mates with good genes.

There are, of course, sound biological reasons for this. For most people, a mate is someone to have children with, and we all, surely, want children with good genes: beautiful, smart, strong, healthy. Such children are a blessing in their own right and they are a blessing to society and humanity. Children of good stock grow up and live long enough to have healthy children of their own, thus sustaining and strengthening the community. Conversely, sickly, weak, or malformed children are a terrible burden, both to their parents and to society—though few will admit it. Parents of defective children prattle on about how their child is a ‘miracle’ or a ‘gift,’ but this is simply making the best of a bad situation. No one wishes for defective children, either for themselves or for others. We all want children with good genes, and we take action to try to ensure this. We all are eugenicists.

A Bit of History

This is hardly new news; it has been understood for thousands of years that humans, like all creatures, need to attend to ‘good breeding’ if they want to thrive. The earliest detailed account comes from Plato’s Republic, circa 375 BC, where he analyzes the need to have the best possible leaders for the polis (city-state). “Is there anything better for a polis than having the best possible men and women as its citizens? There isn’t.”[1]

Marriage is an important and valuable institution, says Plato, and therefore it should be made as sacred as possible. A sacred marriage is beneficial to the society, and beneficial partnerships result from mating the best men with the best women. “The best men must have sex with the best women as often as possible” (459d), whereas the most inferior men and women should rarely have sex. Children resulting from the best matches will be fully supported by the state, whereas the others will be neglected and perhaps left to die: “the former’s offspring must be reared but not the latter.” For the elite, says Plato, this can be done by removing infants from their parents and having the state raise them—no member of the elite should know his own children; this way, he will fight for them all.

Sexual unions based on individual choice are precarious and arbitrary; therefore, Plato concludes, we need to make special arrangements to encourage the best mating with the best, and having as many children as possible:

Certain festivals and sacrifices will be established by law, at which we’ll bring the [prospective] brides and grooms together, and we’ll direct our poets to compose appropriate hymns for the marriages that take place. … Then there’ll have to be some sophisticated lotteries introduced, so that at each marriage, the inferior people we mentioned will blame luck rather than the rulers when they aren’t chosen.

In this scheme, the rulers hold a high responsibility to assess the youth and to ‘rig the game’ in favor of the best. Here, the end justifies the means.

And among other prizes and rewards, the young men who are good in war or other things must be given permission to have sex with the women more often, since this will also be a good pretext for having them father as many of the children as possible. (460b)

If the rulers are wise and their intentions are good, the polis will flourish. Granted, in the Republic, Plato’s system is extreme: the best women become primarily baby-making machines, turning out the best future guardians while in their reproductive prime (20 to 40 years of age, he says), with the state providing all possible assistance and support. Any future system need not be so intense, of course; elements of Plato’s scheme could be adopted as conditions allow.

It is widely believed that Plato drew many aspects of his ideal city-state from the real-life Sparta, which seems to have actually implemented a kind of eugenic system. Writing a few centuries later, Plutarch made this interesting recollection:

[A Spartan] offspring was not reared at the will of the father, but was taken and carried by him to a place called Lesche,⁠ where the elders of the tribes officially examined the infant, and if it was well-built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the 9,000 lots of land. But if it was ill-born and deformed, they sent it to the so‑called Apothetae, a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taÿgetus, in the conviction that the life of that which nature had not well equipped at the very beginning for health and strength, was of no advantage either to itself or the state.

On the same principle, the women used to bathe their new-born babes not with water, but with wine, thus making a sort of test of their constitutions. For it is said that epileptic and sickly infants are thrown into convulsions by the strong wine and lose their senses, while the healthy ones are rather tempered by it, like steel, and given a firm habit of body.[2]

The Romans, too, seem to have practiced a form of eugenics. In his treatise On Anger, circa 45 AD, Seneca writes:

We put down mad dogs; we kill the wild, untamed ox; we use the knife on sick sheep to stop their inflecting the flock; we destroy abnormal offspring at birth; children, too, if they are born weak or deformed, we drown. Yet this is not the work of anger, but of reason—to separate the sound from the worthless. (I.15.2)

Not anger, not cruelty, not maliciousness—but reason. If there is one lesson from these ancient sources, it is this: A wise society will not allow all children to grow to adulthood. The danger is too great. Eugenics is rational, and even in the pre-industrial age, it was seen as necessary. How much more so today, with the vast dysgenic pressures of modern life?

Nature is Eugenic, Technology is Dysgenic

Throughout the course of evolution, and for all lifeforms, nature has conducted a relentless sifting and selection process by which “the fittest” survive and flourish—where fitness is determined by the environmental conditions at hand and, ultimately, by the number of viable offspring left behind. In general, and to obviously simplify the story, stronger, faster, and more ‘clever’ organisms survive better than others of lesser qualities, reproduce more, and produce the healthiest and fittest offspring. By this process, Nature took around 2 billion years to produce higher lifeforms—those with a complex cellular structure—and another 2 billion to attain the so-called Cambrian explosion of complex life. Primates have been around for nearly 100 million years, and humans for about 3 million. Over this whole time, eugenic Nature sifted out the weak, sickly, and malformed, and allowed the strong and healthy to flourish, driving biological life onward and upward.

In all ancient human societies—which were small hunter-gatherer societies, until just a few thousand years ago—nature was ruthlessly eugenic. In rough terms, in ancient societies, about one quarter of all infants died before age one, and about half died before puberty, that is, before they could reproduce.[3] Therefore, simply to maintain a stable population, hunter-gatherer women had to have, on average, at least four children, so that at least two would survive to adulthood. Less than four meant inevitable social decline; more than four led to growth and relative social wellbeing.

But most importantly, the weakest 50% of humanity never lived to reproduce. Only the best half, the fittest, procreated. Over time, this allowed humanity to progress from Australopithecus to Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens. It allowed the appearance of an Akhenaten, a Homer, a Socrates, a Plato, and an Aristotle. Individually, of course, it was tragic; mothers routinely lost half their infants or children. But collectively, it was a godsend. It removed the weakest and the sickliest from the gene pool, allowing the species to flourish. It eliminated many of the imbeciles and dysfunctionals, and allowed the appearance of geniuses.

But things began to change with the Industrial Revolution, circa 1700. New energy sources, advances in medicine, and increased food production initiated a long-term process that resulted in a reduction of childhood death rates. Rates that had stubbornly held at 50% for millennia declined to around 40% for most Western nations by 1900—and then they plummeted: to around 4% by 1950, and then to about 0.4% today.[4] It is an astonishing story: a modern technological miracle.

This, of course, has been uniformly hailed as good news. Mothers everywhere no longer have to worry about the loss of half of their young children. Today, 99.6% of all babies in the industrial West live beyond age 15, and can look forward soon thereafter to children of their own. Volk and Atkinson (2013, p. 183) call it “one of the greatest of all human achievements…the 50-fold modern increase in child survival.” This, surely, is an unconditional good; what could be better than that?

Actually, while good news for individual mothers and families, it is an unmitigated disaster for the human race. In fact, a double-disaster: on the one hand, it allowed the global population to explode, from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 8.2 billion today. This growth in human numbers, accompanied by a growth in per capita consumption, is rapidly depleting the planetary ecosystem, diminishing or eliminating other species, and exhausting the Earth’s capacity to support higher lifeforms. On this count alone, we might well drive ourselves to extinction.[5]

But on the other hand, we also have the rapidly accumulating dysgenic effects of near-universal survival. When nature killed off half of all children, she was doing us a huge favor by removing disadvantageous genes (“deleterious mutations,” in the literature) from the human gene pool. Now, with virtually all children surviving to reproductive age, all genes, good and bad, reproduce. This will inevitably have disastrous consequences in the long run.

The point cannot be over-emphasized: For some 3 million years, half of all human children died before they could reproduce. It seems to have been a constant of human existence, something like a law of nature. But then, literally 100 years ago, in the lifespan of a single human being, the child death rate dropped to virtually zero. Now, virtually all children (99.6%, in the industrial West) survive to their child-bearing years, and most of them will have at least one child.[6] This fact cannot but have monumental effects on the human race.

The details of genetic mutation are, naturally, highly technical, but we can summarize the central mechanisms and effects. We can identify three categories of genetic mutation: somatic (bodily), germline, and de novo. Somatic mutations may occur in any reproducing cell throughout a person’s lifetime, and can result in a variety of diseases, including cancers and psychological disorders. Importantly, though, these are not heritable; they cannot be passed along to the next generation. Germline mutations, by contrast, occur in sperm and egg cells, and thus are passed along. Thirdly, de novo (‘new’) mutations occur spontaneously upon conception or in a newly-formed embryo; these are not inherited from either parent, but they are passed along eventually to that child’s children. Every newborn, it is estimated, has about 100 de novo genetic mutations, most of which are neutral in terms of health or fitness, but some (about 2%) are mildly negative, and in a few cases, are fatal.

Fatal mutations are not the problem: far worse are deleterious but non-fatal mutations that allow the holder to live to reproductive age, to have children, and to pass the defects along to the next generation—which of course adds its own de novo mutations. Over time, the mutational load increases and genetic fitness declines.

Worse, as the mutations tend to accumulate, they grow exponentially. Again, to over-simplify, if a given child has 100 de novo mutations and it grows up and mates with another person with 100 mutations, the resultant offspring will inherit 200 mutations—and then add another 100 de novo of its own, yielding 300 total. If that person mates with someone who also holds 300 mutations, the offspring will have 600, plus 100 new, and thus 700 total. The next generation would have 1500; and so on. This is an accelerating increase, and within only a few generations, the mutational load would yield significant effects.

It has been known for decades that an accumulation of deleterious mutations could, over time, be harmful to humanity. It has also been known that modern technological innovations (medicine, health care) have relaxed the usual selection criteria that operated for millennia, by allowing children with significant, though perhaps hidden, genetic defects to live to reproductive age. In 1950, the geneticist Hermann Muller published a paper, “Our load of mutations,” arguing that “advances in general technology” and the many “techniques of civilization” were relaxing selection pressure, thus causing humans in the industrialized world to accumulate defects that would normally be eliminated. Modern Americans, he said, suffer from “inborn disabilities” amounting to “at least a 20% natural disadvantage” in fitness, versus our primitive ancestors. If this trend continues, it will worsen to the point where we become almost completely disabled:

[I]nstead of people’s time and energy being mainly spent in the struggle with external enemies of a primitive kind such as famine, climatic difficulties, and wild beasts, they would be devoted chiefly to the effort to live carefully, to spare and to prop up their own feeblenesses, to soothe their inner disharmonies and, in general, to doctor themselves as effectively as possible. For everyone would be an invalid, with his own special familial twists.

“Everyone would be an invalid”—this is our future, if we take no action. And not our distant future; it is happening now.

Two Important Articles

More recent and more important writing on this topic comes from biologist Michael Lynch. In his strikingly blunt 2010 article “Rate, Molecular Spectrum, and Consequences of Human Mutation,” he notes at the outset that “the long-term consequences…of deleterious-mutation accumulation” will likely lead to “a substantial reduction in human fitness…over the next few centuries in industrialized societies”—unless “novel means of genetic intervention” are employed.

After several pages of technical analysis, Lynch offers a look at those long-term consequences:

Because most complex traits in humans have very high heritabilities [that is, are strongly genetically-determined], the concern then is that unique aspects of human culture, religion, and other social interactions with well-intentioned short-term benefits will eventually lead to the long-term genetic deterioration of the human gene pool. … [I]t is hard to escape the conclusion that we are progressively moving in this direction. (p. 966)

The build-up of genetic mutations must periodically be cleansed from the population if they are not to cause long-term damage, and this is precisely what nature does so effectively:

The fundamental requirement for the maintenance of a species’ genetic integrity and long-term viability is that the loss of mean fitness by the recurrent input of deleterious mutations each generation must be balanced by the removal of such mutations by natural selection. If the effectiveness of the latter is eliminated, normal viability and fertility can be maintained to a certain extent by modifying the environment to ameliorate the immediate effects of mutations, but this is ultimately an unsustainable situation, as buffering the effects of degenerative mutations would require a matching cumulative level of investment in pharmaceuticals, behavioral therapies, and other forms of medical intervention.

Given the relatively high human mutation rate and the fact that a relaxation of natural selection typically leads to 0.1% to 1.5% decline in fitness per generation in other animal species with lower mutation rates, this type of scenario has now gained a level of quantitative credence that was absent when Muller [see above] first raised the issue. (italics added)

Nature continually prunes away bad genes, but since, for the past century, this no longer happens, we can buy some time with a combination of drugs, therapy, etc. But this is not, and cannot be, a long-term solution, says Lynch; the mutations will keep accumulating, creating ever-greater problems. Eventually, our best remedies will fail.

Since our childhood death rate is now functionally zero, we in the West have effectively eliminated (“completely relaxed”) the natural selection process; as a result, “the expected decline in fitness associated with mutations in coding DNA alone appears to be on the order of 1% to 3% per generation.”

But this is the optimistic scenario. To this we must add “contributions from other forms of mutations” (outside of DNA coding regions). And then there is the effect of an increase in mutation rate due to environmental mutagens (chemicals, radiation, etc.), which could cause a doubling in the rate. In sum, we are looking at potentially a 10% decline in fitness per generation, and up to 60% over two centuries. Lynch closes with this:

The preceding observations paint a rather stark picture. At least in highly industrialized societies, the impact of deleterious mutations is accumulating on a time scale that is approximately the same as that for scenarios associated with global warming. … Without a reduction in the germline transmission of deleterious mutations, the mean phenotypes of the residents of industrialized nations are likely to be rather different in just two or three centuries, with significant incapacitation at the morphological, physiological, and neurobiological levels.

…recalling Muller’s prediction that “everyone would be an invalid.”

Six years later, Lynch wrote a less technical “perspectives” essay for the journal Genetics in which he elaborated on these themes.[7] After repeating the fact that “an average newborn contains ~100 de novo mutations,” he reflects on the all-important “deleterious germline mutations” that accumulate over time and over generations. Lynch acknowledges that although our medical industry has been brilliant at inventing new treatments, “the myriad of clinical procedures for mitigating the consequences of bad genes (e.g., surgical procedures, pharmaceuticals, nutritional supplements, and physical and psychiatric therapies) can only result in the [further] relaxation of natural selection against a broad class of deleterious mutations.” This is a hugely important point: the better that our medical treatments become, the worse the situation in the long run, because such treatments only allow more individuals to live, to reproduce, and to pass along bad genes. Putting it bluntly: Medical treatment provides short-term benefits with long-term costs; the better our treatments, the worse the long-term effects.

Worse, the mutations may cause the mutation rate itself to increase. The relaxation of selection pressure, thanks to modern technological life, likely will affect both somatic and germline mutation rates. “It is therefore plausible that the human mutation rate is destined to slowly increase toward exceptional levels.” This could lead, says Lynch, “to a sort of positive feedback loop” that would cause accelerating problems.

To recap the situation: After millions of years of evolution, Nature has figured out how to remove deleterious mutations roughly as fast as they are introduced. Now, though, Nature is removing none of them, even as the rate of mutation may be speeding up—a compound crisis. If humanity is to avoid a catastrophic future, artificial selection will be needed to remove deleterious mutations from the gene pool.

Lynch closes with some interesting comments in his “long-term prognosis”:

From the standpoint of individual survivorship, there is little question that natural selection has been substantially relaxed for the past century or so. …

The preceding arguments need not imply that human behavior by natural selection has come to a standstill, one key issue being that natural selection is a function of both survival and reproduction. Even if variance in survival were to be eliminated entirely, phenotypes that are associated with [higher] reproductive output will inevitably be promoted by the blind forces of selection.

However, another aspect of modern human behavior—the tendency toward families of similar size (the two-child syndrome in middle-class neighborhoods in westernized societies)—may thwart this aspect of selection as well. Notably, this very strategy (equilibration of family sizes) has been used to accumulate deleterious mutations in experimental populations of Drosophila [fruit flies], yielding a 0.2–2% decline in fitness per generation.

In other words, the mere fact that a two-child or three-child family is something of a norm in Western society today, by itself, seems to lead to a decline in genetic fitness. Nature seems to ‘want’ a variety of family sizes, small to large, which effectively offsets the natural accumulation of mutations. Lynch continues:

Sexual selection [i.e. individual choice of mate] presumably continues to play some role in human evolution, although cosmetic surgery, acquisition of wealth, and other factors may relax this as well. … Clearly, the issues here are highly complicated, and it is by no means even certain that traits that are beneficial in an absolute sense (e.g., exceptional physical or mental attributes) are the ones currently being promoted by natural or sexual selection.

Thus, without any compelling counterarguments at this time, it remains difficult to escape the conclusion that numerous physical and psychological attributes are likely to slowly deteriorate in technologically advanced societies, with notable changes in average preintervention phenotypes expected on a timescale of a few generations, i.e., 100 years, in societies where medical care is widely applied. In the United States, the incidences of a variety of afflictions including autism, male infertility, asthma, immune-system disorders, diabetes, etc., already exhibit increases exceeding the expected rate. Much of this change is almost certainly due to alterations in environmental factors. However, mitigating these effects by modifications in behavior and/or medical intervention will also simply exacerbate the issues noted above by relaxing selection on any underlying genetic factors. (p. 873)

“What will it take,” asks Lynch, “to promote serious discourse on the slowly emerging, long-term negative consequences” of genetic mutation? Doing nothing, he says, could lead to “a slow walk down the path to what Hamilton (2001) called ‘the great Planetary Hospital.’”[8]

For all this, it appears that only a handful of research articles, dating back to the mid-1990s, directly tackle this issue.[9] And to my knowledge, only one book seriously addresses it: Modernity and Cultural Decline (2019).[10] The authors bravely tackle, straight-on, the genetic degradation caused by technological society, adding the effects of so-called epigenetic changes which involve heritable changes outside of alterations in DNA. Epigenetics could be yet another accelerating factor.

The Evidence

So a relevant question: Is there any evidence today of genetic decline? Lynch (2016) suggested that there is, and the data are even stronger today. Decline in fitness is generally measured in terms of declining fertility and declining adaptability, such as via declines in health. Consider first fertility: it is well-known that Western nations have long experienced declining fertility, measured as number of children born to the average woman in her lifetime. In the U.S., the fertility rate was around 3.25 in 1900, dropped to about 2.25 during World War Two, jumped up to 3.6 by the mid-1950s, and then began a rapid decline to 1.74 in 1976 and around 1.6 today (anything below 2.1 will lead, in the long run, to population decline). Europe followed a similar trajectory, plummeting from a rate of 2.7 in 1950, to 1.4 in 1998, recovering a bit, and then dropping again to around 1.38.

There are, of course, many factors to this situation, and even for the experts, “the general reasons for the extended decline are not well understood.” But we clearly cannot rule out genetic factors, and specifically declines in genetic fitness. The research is mixed. On the one hand, a recent study argues that, based on mutations in mice and a correspondingly small decline in fertility, that, “when extrapolated to humans,” any small rate of fitness loss “should not be of concern in the foreseeable future”—at least in terms of fertility. On the other hand, Aitken (2024) argues that smaller family sizes (as found in technologically advanced societies) and the growing use of hi-tech artificial insemination procedures will “decrease selection pressure on high fertility genes, leading to a progressive loss of human fecundity.” The inevitable result of this reduced selection pressure “will be the progressive accumulation of poor fertility genotypes.” Worse, such factors create “several congenital, pathological conditions” unrelated to fertility. The social implications of all this, he adds, “are potentially devastating.”

Beyond the issue of fertility, we have evidence of a general decline in human health and wellbeing, at least in the industrial nations. There are a variety of warning signs: Parkinson’s disease, for example, was diagnosed in 0.12% of the US population in 1970, and today it is around 0.3%—nearly triple the rate. Alzheimer’s disease likewise increased from a rate of 1.3% in 1980 to about 2.1% of American adults today. Some forms of cancer are on a downward trend but others are rising, including breast, prostate, uterine, pancreatic, kidney, and skin cancer. In men, since 1975, prostate cancer is up around 15%; liver cancer, around 50%; and melanoma, around 100%. In women over the same period, breast cancer is up about 30%; melanoma, 50%; and lung cancer, around 60%. Especially revealing are rates in young people: those in their 40s are seeing rising rates of endocrine cancer; in their 30s, rising liver and ovary cancer, and lymphoma; and in their 20s, thyroid and soft tissue cancers are up.

The surge in childhood obesity is well known. In 1963, about 5% of American youth were obese, and today it is around 20%. This is related to a rise in diabetes: in 1958, the overall US rate was only 0.93%; in 2014, it was 9.3%; and today, around 15.7% of all Americans have some form of diabetes.

And then we are dealing with myriad psychological disorders. The explosion in childhood autism, for example, gets a lot of attention but hard figures are difficult to come by, owing to the constantly evolving classification scheme used by doctors. But some things are more concrete: Prescriptions for autism- and ADHD-related drugs increased by 70% since 2011. Suicides in the US are up by 36% since 2000. And depression is dramatically higher in recent years: The number of those diagnosed with depression at least once in their lives rose from 19% in 2015 to 29% in 2023. According to the CDC, depression is up around 60% in just the past 10 years. These are just a few of the negative trends, all of which have a strong genetic component. The extent to which such trends are due to mutation accumulation remains to be shown.

Finally, consider the quintessentially human quality: intelligence. Rather like autism, intelligence is hard to define; unlike autism, we have objective data in the form of various IQ tests. Furthermore, intelligence is highly heritable, and hence largely driven by genetics. Heritability is relatively low in young children, due to temporary effects of their environment, but becomes dominant by age 10 and eventually reaches 75–80% in adults.[11] In other words, genetics accounts for up to 80% of an adult’s intelligence. Therefore, if genetics are negatively affected by dysgenic trends and accumulated mutations, it ought to eventually result in lower IQ scores across given population groups.

In fact, there is some evidence that this is happening already. Well-known in intelligence studies is the so-called Flynn Effect: a general rise in IQ scores since about 1930, at a rate of roughly 3 points per decade. This is largely attributable to environmental factors: improved education, nutrition, and other health-related benefits in the twentieth century. And given that the relaxation of selection didn’t really begin until around 1900, it is not surprising that we see no immediate detrimental effects; in fact, we should expect it to take about three or four generations to become manifest (“on the timescale of a few generations, i.e., 100 years”—Lynch). And evidence exists that this is precisely what is happening. Some studies find that the Flynn Effect began to slow in the 1970s and 1980s, flatten out, and then reverse into the 1990s; that is, IQ scores actually started to decline beginning around 1990.

Perhaps the best evidence for this anti-Flynn Effect comes from the Norwegian military, which has administered identical IQ tests to all young men of conscription age since 1957. The combined scores show a steep, 5-point-per-decade gain from 1957 to 1977, then a slower, one-point-per-decade gain until 1993, and then roughly a 2.7-point-per-decade decline through 2008 (the year that Norway began to include women in the testing cohort, thus complicating the analysis).[12] This is significant, especially considering that the reverse effect also appears in other countries. Dutton et al (2016) identify six other industrial countries with anti-Flynn trends, yielding declines ranging from 1.35 to an astonishing 8.4 IQ points per decade. We can triple these figures to get generational estimates, suggesting that successive generations are losing potentially 4 to 25 (!) IQ points. Clearly this is not sustainable, but it indicates something of the potential magnitude of the problem. As further recent confirmation, Dworak et al (2023) found a decline on the order of two IQ points per decade (six points per generation) in American adults between 2006 and 2018, in 3 of 4 cognitive domains.

For perhaps obvious reasons, only a few scientists are willing to openly address the possible effects of genetic degradation on intelligence—among those, Michael Woodley of Menie, Matt Sarraf, and Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre. The papers Woodley (2015; “How fragile is our intellect?”) and Woodley et al (2017; “What causes the Anti-Flynn Effect?”) are of particular interest here; the former argues for “an overall dysgenic loss” in IQ of 1.23 points per decade, or 4.31 per generation—around the low end of the range given above by Dutton. The latter paper examines four proposed causes of IQ loss and tests five specific hypotheses.

As yet further evidence of genetic degradation, Dutton observes that “a series of studies have noted declines in proxies for intelligence” (p. 164). Specifically, over the twentieth century, human reaction times have slowed, color discrimination ability has declined, and facial asymmetry has increased—all strongly genetic factors that are linked, to some degree, to intelligence.

“So what?” says the critic. “Intelligence is overrated anyway. And there are lots of different kinds of intelligences that are never measured.” Unfortunately, intelligence is related to many social characteristics that most people consider important, like economic prosperity, social and political stability, and scientific achievement, and health. And as I have noted, declines in intelligence are almost certainly paralleled by many other declines in health and well-being. It is a matter of the greatest importance.

But there may be something of a silver lining as described in Woke Eugenics: How Social Justice is a Mask for Social Darwinism. by Ed Dutton and J.O.A. Rayner-Hilles:

Wokeness is, ultimately, a group level adaptation; a vital adaptation which ensures that the group is returned to genetic mental and physical health, and, associated with this, high religiosity and ethnocentrism. The group is, therefore, able to survive the battle of group selection and, indeed, survive the next catastrophe that nature throws at us. It does this by creating an environment in which all but the extremely genetically healthy are induced to not pass on their genes.  In that sense, this blue-haired Cultural Anthropology undergraduate is a nationalist hero: she is sacrificing her own genetic interests for the good of ethnic group and, ultimately, for the survival of humanity itself.

While important, the woke phenomenon will likely not be sufficient to reverse the various declines associated with our current, rather pervasive dysgenic situation.

Some Serious Discourse

Let me, then, offer some (in Lynch’s words) “serious discourse” on this topic. For at least 300 years, Western humanity has been relaxing the evolutionary selection pressures that kept our species healthy. For 100 years, selection pressure has vanished completely, as virtually all infants survive to reproductive age. Basic genetic theory tells us that this cannot but have disastrous consequences in the future, and that, indeed, we are likely feeling them already.

Therefore, we need to reintroduce selection: artificial selection, or some system of eugenics, by which we prevent deleterious mutations from accumulating and multiplying. Such action has traditionally been called “negative eugenics” because it halts the propagation of detrimental characteristics. By contrast, there also exist strategies for “positive eugenics” which aim to promote humanity’s best qualities: beauty, intelligence, strength, creativity, and so on. Given the preexisting and inevitable near-term future decline, both strategies are necessary.

Obviously, this is a huge topic of discussion, demanding extended analyses and vigorous debate. But instead of serious examination, we get only insipid hysterics whenever the topic is broached in the public.[13] Unfortunately, positive assessments of eugenics are virtually nonexistent, and even neutral studies are rare. Ruth Cowan’s Heredity and Hope (2008) offers support for highly restricted eugenic procedures for removing the worst of our heritable genetic diseases, but this is far short of a positive endorsement of the general principle. Furthermore, Cowan is Jewish, and given that Jews have more than their share of heritable genetic diseases, it is unsurprising that she defends such policies.

As a rough outline, though, what might a contemporary eugenic program look like? We must work from first principles here, and I find four to be of central importance. First: No one has a ‘right’ to bear children. In a dysgenic world, childbearing is a privilege, not a right. A eugenic society would grant this privilege, just as present society determines laws and morals, confers citizenship, and exerts power on behalf of the collective good. This is not to say that the state will directly control childbirth; rather, births that are in accord with established eugenic policy will earn the support and blessings of society, and any that are not in accord will exist outside the sphere of the formal social system—something like undocumented immigrants are today. They would have none of the social benefits.

A second core principle relates to the notion of human equality: In no meaningful sense are all humans equal. People differ in every conceivable way: abilities, skills, interests, capabilities, intelligences, creativities, appearance, etc. People are ‘equal’ only in the most trivial senses: all are alive, all are individuals, all have wants and needs, and so on. We have to face it: There are better people, and there are lesser people—period. We all know this instinctively but are loathe to say it out loud, thanks to an entrenched cult of equality in the West (owing ultimately to Judeo-Christianity).[14] Any eugenic society will have to abandon this long-promoted but highly damaging concept, replacing it with ideas of merit, value, and individual worth.[15]

Third: Eugenics works best in ethnically homogenous societies. Multicultural or multiracial societies have highly conflicting ideas about the higher human qualities, about what should be valued the most and what the least. This situation causes myriad problems in ordinary societies today, and the conflicts would be exacerbated by any attempt to minimize, or to promote, certain genetic features. Preliminary steps should be taken, therefore, to minimize ethnic diversity prior to instituting any eugenic program.

Fourth: The best individuals have the highest obligation to the community—and vice versa. Today in the West, the best and brightest often live for themselves, for money or material pleasures, and generally pursue hedonistic lifestyles, often without bearing children. A materialist mindset is actively promoted in media, entertainment, and academia, in large part because of the dominance of Judaic values and worldview.[16] This needs to change. The best need to elevate their obligation to society, and society in turn needs to respect, honor, and reward the best who dedicate themselves to family and community. A female celebrity in a eugenic society would be an outstanding young woman with four or five children by an equally-outstanding young man, not a social media darling who prostitutes herself for cash, or a career-driven corporate executive. A male hero would be a devoted father and community leader, not a professional athlete, rap singer, or some actor in appalling Hollywood cinema. The best men and women would be people of quality, of honor, and of virtue—people who recognize their fundamental obligation to society and the community.

Putting It into Practice

Identifying the concepts and theory is relatively easy; putting eugenics into practice is much harder, especially given our present humanitarian, egalitarian, and (broadly) liberal mindset. Nature imposed a harsh but beneficial system of eugenics on humanity for its entire existence, but now, thanks to industrial technology, we have acquired the means to circumvent Nature’s plan, and we are actively doing so. Now, it is a matter of will and choice to realign with Nature—and the choices are difficult. Below I offer a few initial thoughts on how to structure such a process.

One option would be to establish unique policies for each of three social groups: (1) newborns, infants, and children up to age 15, (2) people of reproductive age (16 to 40 for women, and to 50 for men), and (3) the elders (over 40 / over 50).

The elders, being generally beyond the age of reproduction, are the easiest to address; little needs to be done for them. The largest risk, from a eugenic standpoint, is older men who might wish to be fathers despite the accumulated genetic mutations in their sperm. Fatherhood over 50 should be discouraged, and over 60, strongly discouraged.

For those of reproductive age, there needs to be an essential understanding: not all are allowed to procreate. There must be a selection process of some sort, to evaluate and identify the healthiest and the fittest, and then to encourage them to start families. Thus, everyone of this age would need to be assessed for fitness, evaluating both positive and negative characteristics, and then rated or ranked in some way. It would be, in a sense, a modern caste system—one in which the best are encouraged to mate with the best. The least among this group would be discouraged, not from marrying, but only from having children; for them, sterilization might be an alternative.

Assessments of this reproductive group would likely take on several forms: genetic testing, medical inspection, ability testing (e.g., IQ), and personal review by a panel of skilled, racially aware elders. All data would be compiled by the panel and integrated into some metric that would determine eligibility for procreation. In the end, the best half, the top 50%, would be endorsed for childbearing, and the top 25% or 10% would be strongly incentivized to do so. The lower half would be disincentivized or, in the worst cases, prohibited from having children. Again, any children arising from this group would exist outside the official social benefit system and would not be recognized as legitimate citizens of the community. Finally, all rankings would need to be public knowledge, given the intense public interest in seeing such a system succeed.

For infants and children to age 15, actions would be very limited. Their very immaturity would preclude much in the way of evaluation. Genetic testing is one obvious exception, and this could be performed on all children with the goal of identifying genetic predispositions for certain diseases or disabilities. Otherwise, the main priority with this group would be to give all the best possible environmental conditions for growth, learning, and healthy development. Upon reaching the age of 16, all would then undergo the standard evaluation process.

Note that there is no need for brutal or harsh methods, such as infanticide. It is sufficient to give all of the young the best possible environment, and then to properly assess them at reproductive age. A strongly eugenic society might restrict care given to the most disabled, but this is technically unnecessary; all that is required is that the least fit not be allowed to reproduce—this is the one non-negotiable condition. If this is done carefully, then over time, the numbers of disabled and needy should naturally decline, average fitness will increase, and society will be on the road to a prosperous future.

Such, at least, is my outline of a eugenic solution. I believe it to be quite benign and effective, achieving the end goal of a healthy, flourishing populace with a minimum of intervention. If it sounds cruel or harsh or unrealistic, it is only because we have yet to grasp the magnitude of the crisis we are facing. Those who doubt me need only wait a few more years; I suspect that, sadly, the situation will become all too obvious in the not-too-distant future.

David Skrbina, PhD, is a retired professor of philosophy. For more on his work and writings, see www.davidskrbina.com

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[1] Book V, 456e. In the text, Plato discusses eugenics specifically for the “guardians”—those “best of the best” who will govern the ideal polis and defend it in battle. He does not say whether eugenics should apply to the bulk of the populace, but the principles are generic; there seems to be no reason why they cannot apply to all.

[2] Lives, “Lycurgus,” 16 (circa 100 AD).

[3] Roughly the age of 15. See “Infant and child death in the human environment of evolutionary adaptation,” A. Volk and J. Atkinson (2013), Evolution and Human Behavior 34: 182-192. In the literature, we differentiate between “infant mortality” (deaths before age 1) and “child mortality” (deaths before age 15); here, it is child mortality that is the relevant metric.

[4] The global average today is about 4.3%.

[5] Gaia theorist James Lovelock stated that humanity would be lucky to number 1 billion in the year 2100—nearly a 90% decline from current numbers. And the late Australian biologist Frank Fenner predicted that we had already passed the point of no return, and humanity would be extinct by the end of the century: global population zero.

[6] In the industrial nations today, about 75% of all men and about 80% of all women have at least one child in their lives. See A. Liu, et al (2024), “Evidence from Finland and Sweden on the relationship between early-life diseases and lifetime childlessness in men and women,” Nature Human Behaviour 8: 276–287.

[7] “Mutation and Human Exceptionalism: Our Future Genetic Load” (Genetics 202: 869-875).

[8] In less academic terms, one is reminded of the 2006 comedy satire film Idiocracy, which lampoons a future Earth ruled by imbeciles, thanks not to genetic mutation but to the less-intelligent outbreeding the more-intelligent. The mechanism is different but the outcome is comparable.

[9] See Chebib et al (2024) for a good reference list.

[10] By Matthew Sarraf, Michael Woodley of Menie, and Colin Feltham (Palgrave Macmillan).

[11] See Bouchard (2013): “The Wilson Effect: The Increase in Heritability of IQ With Age.”

[12] See Nordmo et al (2025): “Reevaluating the Flynn Effect and the Reversal” (Figure 3).

[13] Witness the recent uproar over actress Sydney Sweeney’s “good jeans/genes” ads, which were predictably blasted by the liberal media as “eugenic.”

[14] “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”—Paul, Gal 3:28.

[15] “That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent”—Aldous Huxley, Proper Studies, p. 1.

[16] Judaism and the Old Testament hold fundamentally materialist perspectives, in which success and ‘salvation’ occur in the worldly realm. For Jews, money and power are the guiding principles and highest values. All this is clearly spelled out in the Old Testament and in the Talmud. Via Jewish influence, these values are projected throughout contemporary Western society, with significant negative consequences.