Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Psychologists do not swear any oath to “Do no harm”

December 14, 2014

Theoretically Doctors follow the Hippocratic Oath though I am not certain that all Doctors all around the world actually swear to do so. Psychologists and other therapists are not required to hold to any oath. They do not swear as many believe to “Do no harm”. So the two psychologists who designed and ran the CIA’s torture program and managed to extract $81 million for their services did not break any oaths. (Of course, $81 million for 2 people for 12 years is only $3.375 million per psychologist per year).  In any case any obligations to a patient did not and do not apply. Those being tortured were certainly not their patients – they were just subjects to be wrung dry. Medical Doctors were also around as reported by the Washington Post:

But in most instances documented, medical personnel appear to be enablers — advising that shackles be loosened to avoid extreme edema while a detainee was subjected to prolonged standing or stress positions; covering a wound in plastic during water dousing; and administering “rectal feeding” and “rectal rehydration,” which one medical official described as an apparently effective way to “clear a person’s head” and get him to talk.

The psychologists used the techniques developed by Martin Seligman on dogs. Learned helplessness is a behaviour in which an organism forced to endure aversive, painful or otherwise unpleasant stimuli, becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters with those stimuli, even if they are escapable.

Martin Seligman’s painful animal experiments and theory of learned helplessness began at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. ….. In learned helplessness studies, an animal is repeatedly exposed to an aversive stimulus which it cannot escape. Eventually, the animal stops trying to avoid the stimulus and behaves as if it is helpless to change the situation. When opportunities to escape become available, learned helplessness means the animal does not take any action. ……. In CIA interrogation manuals learned helplessness is characterized as “apathy”

I suppose torture qualifies as painful and unpleasant stimuli.

BioEdge:

Two psychologists contracted by the CIA to create enhanced interrogation techniques for al-Qaeda detainees have come under fire for violating human rights and medical ethics. Although pseudonyms were used in the 480-page report published this week by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, it was clearly referring to Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, who were paid US$81 million for their work.

Both Jessen and Mitchell had worked on  the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program in which soldiers are trained to endure brutal mock interrogations, including waterboarding. After 9/11 they were asked to design an interrogation program. …… 

The strength of ten

 The techniques they designed were based on the notion of “learned helplessness”, which was developed in the 1960s with dogs by Martin Seligman (who is mortified by his indirect link with torture). People who face unending adversity eventually become depressed and give up attempts to improve their situation. The CIA’s psychologists thought that this state would encourage detainees to become cooperative and volunteer information.

Physicians for Human Rights was highly critical of the participation of health professionals in all stages of the CIA’s program. Their involvement in monitoring the torture techniques was central to providing legal protection to interrogators, said PHR, as torture could them be described as “safe, legal, and effective”.

About half – if not more – of the US believes that the CIA torture program was justified even if torture – at heart – is wrong. I observe that the debate in the UK is about under what conditions torture may be acceptable, not on whether torture is wrong. In India, torture in the service of the State or of religion is implicit and considered justifiable. In Sweden torture is absolutely wrong and only to be used by others – where it may be justifiable. The prevailing Value which applies to humans as a whole, it seems to me, is that in certain circumstances, torture is regrettable but acceptable.

Human Rights are whatever a society determines it to be. The UN or European Human Rights conventions are supposed to be well meaning goals but that is all they are. Countries sign up to these conventions only because it is the “politically correct” and expedient thing to do. But what they truly  believe in is something different. Actual values determine actual behaviour. The conventions may represent “values we would like to aspire to” but they are not values that we do have. When Obama proclaims “That is not who we are” he forgets that what we do – not what we say – is who we are.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Defense, Ethics | Comments Off on Psychologists do not swear any oath to “Do no harm”

“That is not who we are” – Barack Obama. Oh Yes it is!

December 10, 2014

I heard Barack Obama trying to make the best of the CIA torture report released by the Senate yesterday. “One of the things that sets us apart from other countries is that when we make mistakes, we admit them. ……… brutal, and as I’ve said before, constituted torture, in my mind. And that’s not who we are.“

But of course it is “who we are”. Certainly admitting a self-judged, wrong-doing – after the event – is also part of “who we are”. But the fact of the wrong-doing remains part of the behaviour which constitutes “who we are”. It does not vanish with a subsequent apology.

While behaviour includes what one says, what one does always overrides if the two are in conflict. So, while the US is certainly to be commended on admitting some wrong-doings after the event, it is also quite clear that that behaviour is – at times – quite acceptable. “American Values” clearly do allow torture under certain conditions. Abu Ghraib and My Lai are part of the reality of the behaviour of the US military. Such behaviour is what they are, notwithstanding that the behaviour was later declared to be “wrong”. Those values are ingrained and it is almost certain that some “torture”and some mistreatment of detainees is ongoing right now, to be apologised for later – if revealed. I conclude that torture itself is not against American Values. The Value could actually be formulated thus:

Torture is wrong but permitted, as a last resort, in special circumstances and must be apologised for if later revealed.

The map of all the countries who were complicit – actively or passively – with CIA’s torture program includes most of the countries who speak loudest and most sanctimoniously about human rights. Add to this all the other countries (Russia, China, India, South American countries, …. ) who also use torture in some form, and I come to the conclusion that there is not a single country today where some form of torture (physical as well as mental) is not at least tolerated under some specific conditions. Nobody claims that torture is a “good thing”, but every country also accepts that it can be justified. The concept of “absolute human rights” is fundamentally flawed. The “human rights” that any society is prepared to bestow upon those within or without that society is dynamic and variable.

Currently “what humans are”, all around the world, includes the use of torture – knowing that it is “wrong” – under certain conditions when deemed absolutely necessary.

There are no absolute values either, just as there are no absolute human rights. How should we judge the behaviour of an ISIS executioner with that of a CIA torturer? An ISIS executioner carries out his bloody beheadings in the belief that he is doing “right” in accordance with his values. A CIA torturer carries out his miserable activities knowing that it is “wrong” but that it is in a “good” cause and justified by his values.

I suppose they will both be gathered to the bosoms of their angry gods in their respective heavens.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics | 2 Comments »

No surprise – FIFA whitewashes itself and Qatar but their investigator dissents

November 13, 2014

UPDATE!!

It seems FIFA’s conclusions are not even shared by their own investigaor:

BBC: The findings of Fifa’s inquiry into allegations of corruption during bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups have been questioned – by the man who conducted the two-year investigation into the claims.

In an unexpected twist, lawyer Michael Garcia says the report “contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions”.

 

(more…)

Tags:, ,
Posted in Ethics, Football, Sport | Comments Off on No surprise – FIFA whitewashes itself and Qatar but their investigator dissents

Diederik Stapel markets himself (anonymously) on Retraction Watch

October 13, 2014

Diedrick Stapel

In June last year it disturbed me that the New York Times was complicit in helping Diedrik Stapel market his “diary” about his transgressions. There is something very unsatisfactory and distasteful when we allow wrong-doers to cash in on their wrong-doing or their notoriety. I had a similar sense of distaste when I read that the Fontys Academy for Creative Industries offered him a job to teach social psychology – almost as a reward for being a failed, but notorius, social psychologist.

Retraction Watch carried a post about the new job. And Diedrik Stapel was shameless enough to show up in the comments (first anonymously) but finally under his own name when he was exposed by Retraction Watch. The comments were all gratuitously self-serving. Perhaps he was carrying out a social experiment?

But this was noticed also by Professor Janet Stemwedel writing in the Scientific American:

You’re not rehabilitated if you keep deceiving

…… But I think a non-negotiable prerequisite for rehabilitation is demonstrating that you really understand how what you did was wrong. This understanding needs to be more than simply recognizing that what you did was technically against the rules. Rather, you need to grasp the harms that your actions did, the harms that may continue as a result of those actions, the harms that may not be quickly or easily repaired. You need to acknowledge those harms, not minimize them or make excuses for your actions that caused the harms. ….

….. Now, there’s no prima facie reason Diederik Stapel might not be able to make a productive contribution to a discussion about Diederik Stapel. However, Diederik Stapel was posting his comments not as Diederik Stapel but as “Paul”.

I hope it is obvious why posting comments that are supportive of yourself while making it appear that this support is coming from someone else is deceptive. Moreover, the comments seem to suggest that Stapel is not really fully responsible for the frauds he committed.

“Paul” writes:

Help! Let’s not change anything. Science is a flawless institution. Yes. And only the past two days I read about medical scientists who tampered with data to please the firm that sponsored their work and about the start of a new investigation into the work of a psychologist who produced data “too good to be true.” Mistakes abound. On a daily basis. Sure, there is nothing to reform here. Science works just fine. I think it is time for the “Men in Black” to move in to start an outside-invesigation of science and academia. The Stapel case and other, similar cases teach us that scientists themselves are able to clean-up their act.

Later, he writes (sic throughout):

Stapel was punished, he did his community service (as he writes in his latest book), he is not on welfare, he is trying to make money with being a writer, a cab driver, a motivational speaker, but not very successfully, and .. it is totally unclear whether he gets paid for his teaching (no research) an extra-curricular hobby course (2 hours a week, not more, not less) and if he gets paid, how much.

Moreover and more importantly, we do not know WHAT he teaches exactly, we have not seen his syllabus. How can people write things like “this will only inspire kids to not get caught”, without knowing what the guy is teaching his students? Will he reach his students how to become fraudsters? Really? When you have read the two books he wrote after his demise, you cannot be conclude that this is very unlikely? Will he teach his students about all the other fakes and frauds and terrible things that happen in science? Perhaps. Is that bad? Perhaps. I think it is better to postpone our judgment about the CONTENT of all this as long as we do not know WHAT he is actually teaching. That would be a Popper-like, open-minded, rationalistic, democratic, scientific attitude. Suppose a terrible criminal comes up with a great insight, an interesting analysis, a new perspective, an amazing discovery, suppose (think Genet, think Gramsci, think Feyerabend).

Is it smart to look away from potentially interesting information, because the messenger of that information stinks?

Perhaps, God forbid, Stapel is able to teach his students valuable lessons and insights no one else is willing to teach them for a 2-hour-a-week temporary, adjunct position that probably doesn’t pay much and perhaps doesn’t pay at all. The man is a failure, yes, but he is one of the few people out there who admitted to his fraud, who helped the investigation into his fraud (no computer crashes…., no questionnaires that suddenly disappeared, no data files that were “lost while moving office”, see Sanna, Smeesters, and …. Foerster). Nowhere it is written that failures cannot be great teachers. Perhaps he points his students to other frauds, failures, and ridiculous mistakes in psychological science we do not know of yet. That would be cool (and not unlikely).

Is it possible? Is it possible that Stapel has something interesting to say, to teach, to comment on?

To my eye, these comments read as saying that Stapel has paid his debt to society and thus ought not to be subject to heightened scrutiny. They seem to assert that Stapel is reformable. …. …… behind the scenes, the Retraction Watch editors accumulated clues that “Paul” was not an uninvolved party but rather Diederik Stapel portraying himself as an uninvolved party. After they contacted him to let him know that such behavior did not comport with their comment policy, Diederik Stapel posted under his real name:

Hello, my name is Diederik Stapel. I thought that in an internet environment where many people are writing about me (a real person) using nicknames it is okay to also write about me (a real person) using a nickname. ! have learned that apparently that was —in this particular case— a misjudgment. I think did not dare to use my real name (and I still wonder why). I feel that when it concerns person-to-person communication, the “in vivo” format is to be preferred over and above a blog where some people use their real name and some do not. In the future, I will use my real name. I have learned that and I understand that I –for one– am not somebody who can use a nickname where others can. Sincerely, Diederik Stapel.

He portrays this as a misunderstanding about how online communication works — other people are posting without using their real names, so I thought it was OK for me to do the same. However, to my eye it conveys that he also misunderstands how rebuilding trust works. Posting to support the person at the center of the discussion without first acknowledging that you are that person is deceptive. Arguing that that person ought to be granted more trust while dishonestly portraying yourself as someone other than that person is a really bad strategy. When you’re caught doing it, those arguments for more trust are undermined by the fact that they are themselves further instances of the deceptive behavior that broke trust in the first place.

Stapel will surely become a case study for future social psychologists. If he truly wishes rehabilitation he needs to move into a different field. Self-serving, anonymous comments in his own favour will not provide the new trust with his peers and his surroundings that he needs to build up. Just as his diary is “tainted goods”, anything he now does in the field of social psychology starts by being tainted with the onus of proof on him to show that it is not.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Ethics, Fraud, psychology | Comments Off on Diederik Stapel markets himself (anonymously) on Retraction Watch

Another Australian couple abandon an unwanted surrogate twin behind

October 10, 2014

Barbarism takes many forms and it is not only the beheading of innocent victims. It is also an Australian couple who had commissioned a surrogate birth in India, which resulted in twins, and who then abandoned one because it was the wrong gender. It was not so long ago that we learned of the Australian couple (where the father was a convicted sex-offender) who abandoned a surrogate twin in Thailand because it had Down’s syndrome.

Having an abortion because of the coming child’s gender is not unknown in India but it is illegal and there are efforts underway to try and curb the practice. Abandoning girl children is also not unknown in many parts of the world. But commissioning a birth and then abandoning an unwanted twin  of the wrong “gender” sinks to the level of barbarism. It makes it no better that the Australian High Commission permitted the parents to apply for citizenship of only one of the twins – knowing full well that the other twin existed.

Both surrogacy and abortion prioritise the desires of the would-be or would-not-be parents and any thoughts about what is best for the child are entirely subordinated to the convenience of the parents.

Given a choice I wonder if the child /foetus to be aborted or to be “acquired” or abandoned would have chosen to be born – or not? Would any surrogate child choose to have that particular commissioning couple as parents? Or would any surrogate child choose to have two mothers or two fathers? But no child – after all – has any choice in its parents

The Hindu:

An Australian couple, who had biological twins from an Indian surrogate mother two years ago, abandoned one of the children and returned home with the other. The case came to light on Wednesday after the Australian family court chief Justice Diana Bryant announced that she was informed by an Australian High Commission official in New Delhi that the couple had left one child behind.

Justice Bryant has reported that the High Commission in New Delhi had delayed giving the parents a visa and tried to convince them to take both children home, but the parents did not relent. The couple’s decision to leave the child behind was based on their preference for a specific gender.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on behalf of Australian government on Thursday admitted that the couple had left the baby behind and since this case; the Indian government has tightened controls on commercial surrogacy arrangements in India.

When asked whether the High Commission could have prevented the parents from leaving the child behind, the spokesperson told The Hindu: “The parents in this case decided to apply for citizenship for only one of the twins. The involvement of the Australian High Commission in New Delhi was limited to assessing the application by the Australian couple for citizenship, and subsequently a passport, for the one child. The High Commission had no grounds to refuse the citizenship application and a passport for the one twin for whom application was made — the child met the criteria for citizenship and an Australian passport”.

It was pointed out that India became responsible for the welfare of the other child and adoption arrangements became a matter for its legal system. “The Australian government does not regulate overseas surrogacy arrangements; this is a matter for the countries in which these arrangements are made. Within Australia, the regulation of surrogacy is a matter for states and territories,” the spokesperson added.

It seems some political /financial pressure was brought to bear on the Australian High Commission to accept the abandonment of one twin. There are reports that the boy-twin was abandoned.

SMH:

Chief Justice Bryant said the Australian High Commission in New Delhi delayed giving the Australian parents a visa to try and convince them to take both children home. 

The ABC investigation suggested that pressure had been applied to the High Commission to grant the visas by a senior political figure. 

“Yes, there definitely was some pressure being placed to expedite the process to ensure they could return to Australia,” said Chief Justice Bryant.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Australia, Behaviour, Ethics | Comments Off on Another Australian couple abandon an unwanted surrogate twin behind

Tony Blair as spin doctor for ISIS next?

August 25, 2014

Tony Blair’s venal opportunism in Kazakhstan is well established. After the massacre of 15 civilian protesters in 2011, he has had a lucrative business acting as spin doctor for President Nursultan Nazarbeyev by video interviews and personal advice and speech writing.

The Guardian: In a letter to Nursultan Nazarbeyev, Blair told the autocratic ruler that the December 2011 deaths, “tragic though they were, should not obscure the enormous progress that Kazakhstan has made”. Blair advised Nazarbeyev that when dealing with the western media, he should tackle the events in Zhanaozen, when police opened fire on protesters, including oil workers demanding higher wages, “head-on”. ……  he also suggested passages to be inserted into a speech the president was giving at the University of Cambridge aimed at counteracting any bad publicity. One read: “By all means make your points and I assure you we’re listening. But give us credit for the huge change of a positive nature we have brought about”.

The former Labour leader’s consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, set up in the capital, Astana, in October 2011, signing a multi- million pound deal to advise Kazakhstan’s leadership on good governance, just months after Nazarbeyev was controversially re-elected with 96% of the vote and weeks before the massacre.

Tony Blair is also – believe it or not – the EU’s Middle East Envoy!

While one could question the wisdom (folly?) of the EU in such a choice, there is no doubt that Blair will be able to, and will, leverage this appointment to win future consultancy contracts in the Middle East. He is gaining – based on his record – quite a reputation as being able to “spin” death and destruction to the media and to politicians as “regrettable but unavoidable and don’t forget all the good things”. He well knows how to “sex” up a dossier.

It is now reported that the gruesome and barbarous murder of James Foley by a British ISIS Jihadi also had publicity objectives.

News.com: THE beheading of American journalist, James Foley, at the hands of ISIS militants shocked the world but forensic experts have revealed the video was probably staged, with the murder happening off camera. ….. ……… an international forensic science company, which has worked for police forces across Britain, said there is no question Foley was beheaded but that camera trickery and post-production techniques look to have been used.

“I think it has been staged,” said one expert in visual forensics, after he was commissioned by The UK Times to examine the footage. “My feeling is that the execution may have happened after the camera was stopped.”

Aymenn al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum think-tank, said over the years ISIS militants have improved the production quality of their videos.

The analysis by experts has highlighted a number of inconsistencies that could suggest that the beheading of Foley, which was seen on the video, was not his actual death.

ISIS is not short of money. The Spanish, French and German governments have been reported to have paid large ransoms to ISIS to get their hostages released. The reports are of tens of millions of Euros paid. The demand for releasing James Foley was said to have been $132 million. But the UK and the US generally do not pay ransoms. In any event,  “ISIS has about $2 billion in its war chest”. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar are also apparently quite generous in their funding of ISIS.

So ISIS would seem to be able to afford the best in weapons. They would even have the funds sufficient and necessary to employ Tony Blair Associates. Blair should be able to come up with some helpful and creative suggestions for ISIS on how to get more positive coverage from the world media and improve upon the scripts to be used in their video executions?

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Extremism | Comments Off on Tony Blair as spin doctor for ISIS next?

Strange goings-on at Rajasthan University’s Physics Department

August 19, 2014

UPDATE!

The Rajasthan University website is suddenly “not available” – whatever that may imply.

A cached version of the page referred to below is here. (under the tab “Associate Professors”)

Update 2: The University website is up again and now updated. Presumably they went down to make the update.

=============================

The University of Rajasthan has a reputation of being very feudal (even if it is ranked 41 in a list of 511 Indian Universities). On anecdotal evidence they allow quite vicious ragging of first-year students and harassment of female students is quite common. Clearly all is not well at the University and specifically in the Department of Physics. Not just the academic misconduct evident from the manipulation and fabrication of data leading to multiple retractions, but also nasty charges of sexual misconduct and blackmail against the same professors.

1. Academic misconduct. Associate Professor RK Singhal has the dubious distinction of having achieved his own “category” at Retraction Watch as reward for his four (five?) retractions (so far). In his latest transgression Retraction Watch reports:

Here’s a physics retraction whose use of an exclamation point — the only one we’ve ever seen in a retraction notice! — makes the editors’ exasperation palpable.

It’s also the the fourth retraction for R. K. Singhal, of the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India. Behold the notice for “Magnetic behavior of functionally modified spinel Ni0.4Ca0.6Fe2O4 nanoferrite,” in the International Journal of Modern Physics B:

The editorial board discovered that the data points in several sections of the Moss-bauer spectra as given in Figs 3.(a) and 3(b) are exactly identical. This is impossible and nonphysical for the measurement of two different samples (or for that matter not even for the same sample!). The only conclusion we can draw from this figure is that some of the data is fabricated. As a result, the results and conclusions as described in the paper are unacceptable. This article is retracted from its publication in Int. J. Mod. Phys. B.

Prof. Singhal had to retract a 2010 paper and then he had to retract a correction to that retraction in 2013!!

Singhal and colleagues have another retraction — or two, depending how you look at it — in the Journal of Applied Physics. The journal has retracted a 2010 study, “Study of defect-induced ferromagnetism in hydrogenated anatase TiO2:Co,” but first they had to retract a 2013 correction of that study:

AIP Publishing LLC retracts this erratum because it was submitted and published without the knowledge of all the co-authors. Upon further investigation, it was found that the article that this erratum addressed warranted a retraction. Please also see the Retraction 1 associated with the original article.

Singhal’s colleague, Associate Professor SN Dolia of the same Department of Physics, was a co-author on the 4 Singhal papers retracted so far. They are both present as current faculty on Rajasthan University’s website. They have even had a physics paper retracted because their data was “unphysical”!!

2. Sexual Misconduct: But Singhal and Dolia have other problems to contend with. They are charged with extortion of sexual favours from a PhD student as a condition for being awarded her degree. They are said to have also fabricated obscene photographs to blackmail the student.

NDTV News: 30th June 2011.

In a huge embarrassment for teachers across the country, a professor at the Rajasthan University has been arrested for allegedly demanding sexual favours from his student.
The victim has alleged that her research guide Dr R K Singhal of the Physics department was harassing her for months.

The professor asked the girl to have sexual relations with him if she wanted to complete her PhD. Besides molesting her in February, Singhal and his colleague S N Dolia allegedly even blackmailed the student by morphing her face onto some obscene pictures. 
“While submitting her PhD thesis, the victim was asked for sexual favours by the teacher. Our preliminary investigation has found that the allegations are true and so we have arrested the Professor,” said BL Soni, Commissioner of Police, Jaipur. ….. Shockingly, despite the victim complaining about the teacher’s misconduct, the university authorities took no action initially. It was only after the girl lodged a police complaint that the accused teacher was arrested. Both Singhal and his colleague Dolia were later suspended from the university.
Besides suspending the two teachers, the university has also asked two retired Judges of the High Court to probe this shocking issue.

The legal mills in India grind on slowly and the case reached court in October 2013.

TOI: 16th October 2013.

JAIPUR: A court here on Tuesday framed charges against two assistant professors of University of Rajasthan (RU) who were accused of demanding sexual favours from a PhD student preparing thesis under their guidance.

The court of chief metropolitan magistrate (CMM) Bharat Bhushan Gupta, on Tuesday, framed charges against Dr Rishi Kumar Singhal and Dr S N Dolia under Sections 354, 341, 292 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 4/6 of the Indecent Representation of en (Prohibition) Act.

On June 27, 2011 a girl belonging to Bharatpur, registered an FIR against the two professors at the Gandhi Nagar police station. In her complaint, the girl alleged that her research guide, RK Singhal, from the Physics department was harassing her and forcing her to have sexual relations with him. He allegedly used to threaten the girl that if she did not do as she was told, he would not let her complete her PhD.

While charges have been framed, the court hearings have not yet – apparently – commenced.

But there is no news of any results from the University investigation or of any actions being taken by the University. Interestingly the supposed University investigation reported is about the sexual misconduct charges. Nothing is reported from the University about the academic misconduct.

My expectation is that the University will not have the courage to actually do anything or to take any kind of moral or ethical position themselves. They will merely slip-stream behind the legal proceedings to avoid having to do anything.

 

Tags:, ,
Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Ethics, India, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Strange goings-on at Rajasthan University’s Physics Department

Breeding for intelligence?

August 8, 2014

I take intelligence to be a capability – a potential. For every human it is – by my definition – genetic. Knowledge, not intelligence, is what is acquired. No matter how we define it, intelligence is a composite consequence of many genes. Epigenetics suggests that some of these genes may be switched on or not depending upon nurture but the existence of the relevant genes must surely be inherited (nature). The supremely idiotic goings-on in Iraq and Syria and Gaza and Africa and in all the instances of barbarism and mayhem around the world are all consequent to a lack of intelligence. They only convince me that human intelligence is not on the increase and- clearly – is not a trait that is being selected for.

But it should be.

Though intelligence does seem to be positively correlated with survival to reproduction age, it seems that it leads to a lower reproduction rate which more than negates the effects of the increased survival. Assuming that IQ is at least a partial measure of intelligence, fertility rate seems to reduce with increasing intelligence. If the lower reproductive rate is actually a consequence of the higher intelligence, then the human race – without intervention – is doomed to remaining where it is on the scale of intelligence and its proportion of idiots. The paradox is that there is nobody who does not want to be more intelligent – but it does not seem to be an evolutionary trait.

IQ and fertility: A cross-national study

Many studies have found a small to moderate negative correlation between IQ and fertility rates. However, these studies have been limited to the United States and some European countries. The present study was a between-nation study using national IQ scores and national fertility rates. There were strong negative correlations found between national IQ and three national indicators of fertility.

“Evolution” is actually just the result of the those who failed to reproduce. So while intelligence may be a survival trait it does not seem to result in increasing reproduction and is therefore not an evolutionary trait.

Demographically then the human race – without human intervention – is condemned to a  “dumbing down”.

Is human intelligence declining?

If “intelligence” is an inherited characteristic – as it seems at least partially to be –  then it is only a matter of simple arithmetic that unless the “more intelligent” reproduce at a higher rate than those of “less intelligence” then the “average intelligence” of the population will inevitably decrease.

There is little doubt that there is a connection between intelligence and brain size. But brain size alone is not a measure of intelligence. Intelligence was probably selected for (and therefore an evolutionary trait) during the period when the size of the human brain was increasing. Possibly at some point the collateral genetic cost of increasing intelligence led to a leveling off. There could well have been trade-offs during the period when – simultaneously – food supply was more secure, human brain size was increasing, intelligence increased, language was evolving and social interaction was increasing. Quite possibly there is an optimum combination of these (and possibly other) traits for any given set of prevailing environmental conditions.

Brain size does not seem to have increased for anatomically modern humans (AMH) and that means for around 100,000 years – perhaps 200,000. But during this time the physical differences between the various “races” of humans have evolved. Possibly these physical changes have occurred fastest during the last 20,000 years since the end of the last glacial period. But even coping with this massive change of environmental surroundings has not led to the further development of brain size and – apparently – intelligence. There is some suggestion that intelligence peaked with the hunter-gatherers. Intelligence has not been a decisive factor for survival and subsequent reproduction. Perhaps human intelligence cannot increase unless the conditions first exist which lead to an increase of brain size? Or perhaps brain size increases only as a consequence of intelligence being selected for?

The question is whether we should now explicitly be trying to increase the intelligence of humankind?

We are now within a paradigm where “natural selection” by the prevailing environment has been decoupled from survival and subsequent reproduction. Natural selection is apparently obsolete and of no great value for the further development of humankind.  Social factors rather than the surrounding environment control fertility. The welfare state has seen to it that physical disabilities after birth generally do not act as a de-selector. “Artificial selection” does not yet dominate but is of increasing importance in determining who survives to subsequently reproduce. Abortion (25 -30% of all conceptions) de-selects for some serious, detectable, physical disabilities but is also often for the social convenience of the mother.  Surrogacy and IVF are driven by social needs and are providing the possibility of selecting for specific characteristics – though the “selection” is still largely hit-and-miss. I am not sure that IQ is necessarily the best measure of intelligence, but it seems ridiculous that where we do use “artificial selection”, intelligence is not also a criterion for selection.

Humans have learned to overcome the limitations of the surrounding “natural” environment. We cannot predict – let alone control – earthquakes and volcanoes, but we do build houses which make the vagaries of most weather irrelevant. We breed other species to suit our needs. We overturn the natural order of things by protecting the weak and healing the sick and caring for the old.  Modern living is fundamentally “unnatural” in that it is dominated by human intervention to mitigate “natural” effects. The many deficiencies we still have – poverty and gratuitous violence and famine and rape and genocide and intolerance and religious insanities – can all be put down to insufficiency of intelligence.

There is nothing wrong with eugenics. It is the methods by which it is applied which can be ethical or unethical.It is inevitable that we try and achieve a growth of intelligence. And perhaps it has already started – in China.

iO9: Chinese parents will be able to engage in what’s called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in order to select the most “intelligent” babies. It’s not genetic engineering — instead, doctors look at the DNA of several zygotes and choose the most promising one for implantation. Put this reproductive technology in the hands of enough parents, and the next generation of Chinese citizens could start to exhibit rates of intelligence five to 15 IQ points higher than what’s typically seen today.

China passed its so-called “Eugenics Law” in 1994, what it formally calls the “Maternal and Infant Health Care Law”:

This law regulates support for maternal and child health and also requires physicians to recommend a postponement of marriage if either member of a couple has an infectious, contagious disease or an active mental disorder. If one member of a couple has a serious hereditary disease, the couple may only marry if they agree to use longterm contraception or to undergo sterilization. If prenatal tests reveal that a fetus has a serious hereditary disease or serious deformity, the physician must advise the pregnant woman to have an abortion, and the law states that the pregnant woman “should” follow this recommendation.

The introduction of novel biotechnologies could allow the communist government to take its eugenic-like policies to the next level (though it’s not clear at this time if China will insist that PGD be enforced in this way). But rather than just screen for a “serious deformity,” the Chinese may eventually designate any kind of “deleterious” trait — like low IQ — as something that can and should be eliminated from the gene pool (with “low” IQ being a potentially normative and scalable characteristic).

Put that together with the Chinese Genetic Program:

Vice: At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation’s intelligence by five to 15 IQ points. 

Related: On birth rates, abortions and “eugenics by default”

Tags:, ,
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Evolution, Humans | Comments Off on Breeding for intelligence?

Eugenics by surrogacy – Australian style

August 1, 2014

It was an Australian couple in this case but of course there are many who use surrogacy in Thailand and other poor countries to carry out procedures they cannot in their own countries. In nearly all cases of surrogacy the mother is required to abort if a serious medical problem is detected.

In the Sydney Morning Herald:

Gammy, a six-month-old baby abandoned by his Australian parents, could die because his impoverished Thai surrogate mother cannot pay for medical treatment for his congenital heart condition.

The child will never know his twin sister, who was born healthy with him in a Bangkok hospital and has been taken away by their parents, who are living anonymously in Australia.

The story of how 21-year-old Pattharamon Janbua was cheated by a surrogacy agent in Bangkok and left to try to save the life of her critically unwell baby has emerged as Thai authorities move to crack down on IVF clinics, …… 

Ms Pattharamon says three months after a doctor injected the Australian woman’s fertilised egg into her uterus, she discovered she was having twins. The agent promised her an additional $1673 to have the second baby.

The couple asked the Thai mother to abort the Downs syndrome twin which she was not prepared to do.

Four months into the pregnancy, doctors doing routine checks discovered one of the babies had Down syndrome. They told the Australian parents, who said they did not want to take the boy, according to a source familiar with the case.  

“They told me to have an abortion but I didn’t agree because I am afraid of sin,” Ms Pattharamon says, referring to her Buddhist beliefs. 

This couple probably should be barred from being parents but their genes are being carried forward.

How many surrogate conceptions are aborted is not known but they happen –  it is thought – mainly because a medical defect in the fetus has been detected.  However, it is known that many surrogate clinics do select for the sex of the child and babies of the undesired gender are also aborted. Many of the Thai surrogacies for Australians are for same-sex couples. I don’t believe that any child – if given and capable of an informed choice – would prefer to do without a father or a mother.

Currently around 25-30% of all “normal “human conceptions are aborted. But most of these are abortions for convenience rather than for defects in the fetus. If being a reluctant mother has a genetic component then every abortion is also a genetic deselection of reluctant mothers.

Related: On birth rates, abortions and “eugenics by default”

Tags:, ,
Posted in Australia, Behaviour, Ethics, Evolution | Comments Off on Eugenics by surrogacy – Australian style

“Euthanasia is both profitable and cost effective”

July 28, 2014

I think an individual should be able to choose, and be assisted, to die peacefully and painlessly – provided he is of sound mind and is suffering from a terminal and painful illness.

But I am afraid that part of the building momentum for euthanasia in Europe is cost driven and not driven by a concern for the individual. Countries with aging populations and with well developed public health programs are facing increasing costs for the care of the elderly. In Sweden and the UK for example this care is often “out-sourced” or privatised. Many of these establishments are owned by risk capital companies – which is a little strange – but not fundamentally wrong. But the “quality” requirements they are required to meet are set by the public institutions doing the out-sourcing. Inevitably these “quality” requirements are specified in such a way that the out-sourcing succeeds and contracts are let. To ensure this the requirements always allow the service provider sufficient room to make a profit. There is a clear incentive for the service provider to “increase the throughput” and reduce the cost per person they are tasked to care for. That – in turn – is leading to a deterioration in the care provided especially to the aged who are no longer competent or able to complain about the service received. It is clearly cheaper to allow a general reduction of service, and to only do more than the minimum if and when a complaint from a relative is received. Of course, relatives have only limited opportunities to notice any deterioration of service. The “out-sourcing” itself is driven by cost. There have been many “scandals” (such as this one) associated with the “quality” of service in “privatised” homes for the aged. But it is not by accident that the State and the municipalities and health authorities have pushed these scandals into the “privatised” sphere rather than to be found wanting themselves. Part of the reason for out-sourcing these services has clearly been to also out-source the scandals waiting to come as care of the elderly inexorably deteriorates. The more the care of the aged deteriorates the more attractive a voluntary euthanasia scheme becomes – for all parties involved.

I have a clear perception that in Sweden the quality of public medical and palliative care for the elderly is already driven by cost considerations. It is illegal in Sweden but age discrimination is endemic. We hear about procedures and expensive treatments being denied to the elderly for many ostensible reasons, but in reality because the patients are – in the judgement of the care-providers – just too old and too big a drain on costs. For public medical and palliative care, a form of unwritten age-discrimination is already in place. The aged patient has little recourse except to opt for private treatment and then euthanasia may be a much more cost effective solution..

The euthanasia debate is picking up steam in Europe but my fear is that though much of it is carried out under the guise of concern for an individual’s right to die, much of the debate is actually being driven by public health cost considerations. Many of the statements by politicians seem to me to be trial balloons or electoral posturing – but they have an underlying smell of preparing for curbing the costs of caring for the increasing number of the elderly.

It may be very cynical but I note that a healthy growth rate in voluntary euthanasia among the aged has many public and social and economic benefits. The cost of health care for the aged is both capped and reduced. The demographic of the ratio of elderly to working population is improved. Medical resources are freed for the more valuable, younger patients. And the aged patient gets what he or she wants.

A true win-win!

BioEdge: 

Euthanasia might be needed for poor people who cannot access palliative care, the new Lithuanian Health Minister has suggested. Rimantė Šalaševičiūtė was sworn earlier this month, but already she has made waves by backing an open discussion of the legalisation of euthanasia.

Without making any specific proposals, she told local media that Lithuania was not a welfare state with palliative care available for all and that euthanasia might be an option for people who did not want to torment relatives with the spectacle of their suffering.  

The minister has also raised the idea of euthanasia for children. She noted that this option had been approved for Belgian children after a long public debate. It was an option which might be appropriate in Lithuania as well after public debate.

Ms Šalaševičiūtė will face an uphill battle in her campaign to introduce Lithuanians to euthanasia. Many doctors and the Catholic Church oppose it. Dr Andrius Narbekovas, who is both a priest and a doctor, and a member of the Health Ministry’s bioethics commission, told the media:

“The Ministry of Health should protect health and life, instead of looking for ways to take life away. It goes without saying that it is … profitable and cost effective … But a democratic society should very clearly understand that we have to take care of the sick, not kill them.”

Lithuania merely reflects the debate all over Europe which is probably most advanced in Belgium where even involuntary euthanasia (is that not murder?) has been proposed.

Politicians and many aged sufferers could find this irresistible: “Euthanasia is both profitable and cost effective”.

Two of my friends have utilised the services of Dignitas. So, for whatever reasons it may come, I do hope that voluntary euthanasia is available to me when my time comes.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Aging, Ethics, Europe, Sweden | Comments Off on “Euthanasia is both profitable and cost effective”

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »