We’re being explained about chromosomes and gametes and shit, and the recent video we watched mention Chromosomes cross-exchange in the gametes in the first or second cycle. The idea I understood was “genes are swapped between them, so they won’t end up really anything like the parents” which confused me more because that is pretty much how genetics work. I am like my mother physically, and my dad in the metabolistic and internal systems. So I asked my science teacher if the cross-exchange was why eugenics is seen as illegitimate, and she said something along the lines of “no, eugenics is about making a pure race, but often there is more genetic variation intra-race than inter-race.”
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I don’t understand this? Does she think race is a continental thing? Because a northern euro is far different than a south Euro in genetics, to the point I would call different races entirely. And there is far more difference between race in the phenotype viewpoint.
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tl;dr learning about chromosomes, mitosis and meiosis, and sexual reproduction, and I am confused about the cross-exchange and what my science teacher is saying. What is the scientific flaw about eugenics? Not its practical flaw in which I could name many, what is it’s scientific flaw?
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The basic scientific problem that invalidates eugenics is that heritability is not the same as genetics. If I speak spanish, it’s quite likely that my children will as well. First language is very heritable, because most people speak the same language that their parents do. But it obviously isn’t genetic. But for many other things, whether something heritable is genetic in origin or not can be very difficult to tell. Heart disease, for example, is heritable – but is that because people can be genetically predisposed to heart disease? Or is because people tend to eat the same foods and drink a similar amount of alcohol, and be of a similar socio-economic level, that their parents and grandparents did? (The answer is probably both, but it is very difficult to tell what percentage it is of each.) Most of the things that we would like to select for with Eugenics – longevity, intelligence, low incidence of disease – fall into that category of things where they are to some extent heritable, but that doesn’t mean that they are completely genetic in origin.
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