The Human Genome Project is wrong and is a crime

Human Genome Project The worldwide effort, originally named the Human Genome Initiative but later known as the Human Genome Project or HGP, began in 1987 and was celebrated as complete in 2001. When begun, HGP was dubbed "big science" comparable to placing human beings on the moon. It was international in scope, involving numerous laboratories and associations of scientists around the world and receiving public funding in the United States of $200 million per year with a scheduled fifteen year timeline. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) began funding the project in 1987, followed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1990. History and goals The scientific goal was to map the genes and sequence human DNA. Mapping would eventually reveal the position and spacing of the then predicted one hundred thousand genes in each of the human body's cells; sequencing would determine the order of the four base pairs—the A (adenine), T (thymine), G (guanine), and C (cytosine) nucleotides—that compose the DNA molecule. The primary motive was that which drives all basic science, namely, the need to know. The secondary motive was perhaps even more important, namely, to identify the four thousand or so genes that were suspected to be responsible for inherited diseases and prepare the way for treatment through genetic therapy. This would benefit society, HGP architects thought, because a library of DNA knowledge would jump start medical research on many fronts. Many early prophecies found their fulfillment. Some did not. What was not anticipated was the competition between the private sector and the public sector. J. Craig Venter (b. 1946) led the private sector effort. While on a grant from NIH, Venter applied for nearly three thousand patents on Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs). The ESTs located genes but stopped short of identifying gene function. A furor developed when researchers working with government money applied for patents on data that merely reports knowledge of what already exists in nature—knowledge of existing DNA sequences—and this led to the 1992 resignation of James Watson (b. 1928) from the directorship of NIH's National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR). Watson, who along with Francis Crick (b. 1916) is famed for his discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, was the first to head the NCHGR Venter then established The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and began using Applied Biosystems automatic sequencers twenty-four hours per day to speed up nucleotide sequencing and the locating of ESTs. By 1998 Venter had established Celera Genomics with sequencing capacity fifty times greater than TIGR, and by June 17, 2000, he concluded a ninety percent complete account of the human genome. It was published in the February 16, 2001, issue of Science. Francis Collins (b. 1950) took over NCHGR leadership from Watson and found himself driving the public sector effort, racing with Venter toward the mapping finish line. Collins drew twenty laboratories worldwide with hundreds of researchers into the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, which he directed from his Washington office. Collins repudiated patenting of raw genomic data and sought to place DNA data into the public domain as rapidly as possible so as to prevent private patenting. His philosophy was that the human genome is the common property of the whole human race. The public project finished almost simultaneously with the private, and the ninety percent complete Collins map appeared one day prior to Venter's on February 15, 2001, in Nature. Human DNA, as it turns out, is largely junk—that is, 98.6 percent does not code for proteins. Half of the junk DNA consists of repeated sequences of various types, most of which are parasitic elements inherited from our distant evolutionary past. Only 1.1 percent to 1.4 percent constitute sequences that code for proteins that function as genes. Of dramatic interest is the number of genes in the human genome. At the time of the announcement, Collins estimated there are 31,000 protein-encoding genes; he could actually list 22,000. Venter could provide a list of 26,000, to which he added an estimate of 10,000 additional possibilities. For round numbers, the estimate in 2001 stood at 30,000 human genes. This is philosophically significant, because when the project began in 1987 the anticipated number of genes was 100,000. It was further assumed that human complexity was lodged in the number of genes: the greater the number of genes, the greater the complexity. So, confusion appeared when, nearing the completion of HGP, scientists could find only a third of the anticipated number. Confusion was enhanced when the human genome was compared to a yeast cell with 6,000 genes, a fly with 13,000 genes, a worm with 26,000 genes, and a rice cell with 50,000 genes. On the basis of the previous assumption, a grain of rice should be more complex than Albert Einstein. With the near completion of HGP, no longer could human uniqueness, complexity, or even distinctiveness be lodged in the number of genes. Collins began to speculate that perhaps what is distinctively human could be found not in the genes themselves but in the multiple proteins and the complexity of protein production. Culturally, DNA began to lose some of its magic, some of its association with human essence. The theology and ethics of HGP At the outset, HGP scientists anticipated ethical and public policy concerns; they were acutely aware that their research would have an impact on society and were willing to share responsibility for it. When in 1987 James Watson counseled the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to appropriate the funds for what would become HGP, he recommended that three percent of the budget be allotted to study the ethical, legal, and social implications of genome research. Watson insisted that society learn to use genetic information only in beneficial ways; if necessary, the government should pass laws at both the federal and state levels to prevent invasions of privacy and discrimination on genetic grounds. Moral controversy broke out repeatedly during the near decade and a half of research. Religious responses to the advancing frontier of genetic knowledge emerge mainly from people's concern to relieve human suffering and employ science to improve human health and wellbeing. A statement prepared by the National Council of Churches under the leadership of Union Seminary ethicist Roger L. Shinn affirms that churches in the United States must be involved with genetic research and therapy. "The Christian churches understand themselves as communities dedicated to obeying the will of God through service to others. The churches have a particular concern for those who are hurt or whose faith has been shaken, as demonstrated by the long history of the churches in providing medical care .… Moreover, the churches have a mission to prevent suffering as well as to alleviate it." In 1990 the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California, obtained one of the first grants offered by the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) division of NCHGR. A team of molecular biologists, behavioral geneticists, theologians, and bioethicists monitored the first years of HGP research to articulate theological and ethical implications of the new knowledge. Many religious and ethical issues eventually became public policy concerns. These are adumbrated below. Genetic discrimination. When Watson recommended the establishment of ELSI, the first public policy concern was what he called privacy, here called genetic discrimination. An anticipated and feared scenario took the following steps. As researchers identify and locate most if not all genes in the human genome that either condition or, in some cases, cause disease, the foreknowledge of an individual's genetic predisposition to expensive diseases could lead to loss of medical insurance and perhaps loss of employment opportunities. As HGP progressed, the gene for cystic fibrosis was found on chromosome seven, and Huntington's chorea on chromosome four. Alzheimer's disease was sought on chromosome twenty-one, and colon cancer on chromosome two. Disposition to muscular dystrophy, sickle-cell anemia, Tay Sachs disease, certain cancers, and numerous other diseases turned out to have locatable genetic origins. More knowledge is yet to come. When it comes, it may be accompanied by an inexpensive method for testing the genome of each individual to see if he or she has any genes for any diseases. Screening for all genetic diseases may become routine for newborns just as testing for phenylketonuria (PKU) has been since the 1960s. A person's individual genome might become part of a data bank to which each person, as well as health care providers, would have future access. The advantage is clear: Medical care from birth to grave could be carefully planned to delay onset, appropriately treat, and perhaps even prevent or cure genetically-based diseases. Despite the promise for advances in preventative health care, fear arises due to practices of commercial insurance. Insurance works by sharing risk. When risk is uncertain to all, then all can be asked to contribute equally to the insurance pool. Premiums can be equalized. Once the genetic disorders of individuals become known, however, this could justify higher premiums for those demonstrating greater risk. The greater the risk, the higher the premium. Insurance may even be denied those whose genes predict extended or expensive medical treatment. Some ethicists are seeking protection from discrimination by invoking the principles of confidentiality and privacy. They argue that genetic testing should be voluntary and that the information contained in one's genome be controlled by the patient. This argument presumes that if information can be controlled, then the rights of the individual for employment, insurance, and medical care can be protected. There are grounds for thinking this approach will succeed. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act restricts pre-employment questioning about work-related health conditions. Paragraph 102.b.4 of the Act potentially protects coverage for the employee's spouse and children. Legislative proposals during the 1990s and early 2000s seem to favor privacy. Other ethicists argue that privacy is a misguided cure for this problem. Privacy will fail, say its critics, because insurance carriers will press for legislation fairer to them, and eventually protection by privacy may slip. In addition, computer linkage makes it difficult to prevent the movement of data from hospital to insurance carrier and to anyone else bent on finding out. Most importantly, the privacy argument overlooks the principle that genome information should not finally be restricted. The more society knows, the better the health care planning can be. In the long run, what society needs is information without discrimination. The only way to obtain this is to restructure the employment-insurance-health care relationship. The current structure makes it profitable for employers and insurance carriers to discriminate against individuals with certain genetic configurations—that is, it is in their best financial interest to limit or even deny health care. A restructuring is called for so that it becomes profitable to deliver, not withhold, health care. To accomplish this the whole nation will have to become more egalitarian—that is, to think of the nation itself as a single community willing to care for its own constituents. The Abortion controversy. Given the divisiveness of the abortion controversy in the United States and certain other countries, fears arise over possible genetic discrimination in the womb or even prior to the womb in the petri dish. Techniques have been developed to examine in vitro fertilized (IVF) eggs as early as the fourth cell division in order to identify so-called defective genes, such as the chromosomal structure of Down syndrome. Prospective parents may soon routinely fertilize a dozen or so eggs in the laboratory, screen for the preferred genetic make up, implant the desired zygote or zygotes, and discard the rest. What will be the status of the discarded embryos? Might they be considered abortions? By what criteria does one define "defective" when considering the future of a human being? Should prospective parents limit themselves to eliminating "defective" children, or should they go on to screen for enhancing genetic traits such as blue eyes or higher intelligence? If so, might this lead to a new form of eugenics, to selective breeding based upon personal preference and prevailing social values? What will become of human dignity in all this? Relevant here is that the legal precedent set by Roe v. Wade (1973) would not serve to legitimate discarding preimplanted embryos. This Supreme Court case legalized the use of abortion to eliminate a fetus from a woman's body as an extension of a woman's right to determine what happens to her body. This would not apply to preimplanted embryos, however, because they are life forms outside the woman's body. The Roman Catholic tradition has set strong precedents regarding the practice of abortion. The Second Vatican Council document Gaudium et spes (1965) states the position still held today: "… from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care, while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes." The challenge to ethicists in the Roman Catholic tradition in the near future will be to examine what transpires at the preimplantation stage of the embryo to determine if the word abortion applies. If it does, this may lead to recommending that genetic screening be pushed back one step further, to the gamete stage prior to fertilization. The genetic make up of sperm and ovum separately could be screened, using acceptable gametes and discarding the unacceptable. The Catholic Health Association of the United States pushes back still further by recommending the development of techniques of gonadal cell therapy to make genetic corrections in the reproductive tissues of prospective parents long before conception takes place—that is, gametocyte therapy. Genetic determinism, human freedom, and the gene myth. Religious thinkers must deal not only with laboratory science but with the cultural interpretations of science, as well as public policy influenced by both. A cultural myth has grown up with media coverage of the Human Genome Project that assumes "it's all in the genes." DNA has emerged as a cultural icon, holding the "blueprint" for humanity or being thought of as the "essence" of what makes a person a person. Even though molecular biologists withdraw from such extreme forms of genetic determinism, a cultural myth has arisen. Some commentators refer to it as the strong genetic principle ; others call it the gene myth. Genes, sin, crime, and racial discrimination. The belief in determinism promulgated by the gene myth raises the question of moral and legal culpability. Does a genetic disposition to antisocial behavior make a person guilty or innocent before the law? Over the next decade legal systems will have to face a rethinking of the philosophical planks on which concepts such as free will, guilt, innocence, and mitigating factors have been constructed. There is no question that research into the connection between genetic determinism and human behavior will continue and new discoveries will become immediately relevant to the prosecution and defense of those accused of crimes. The focus will be on the concept of free will, because the assumption of the Western philosophy coming down from Augustine that underlies understanding of law is that guilt can only be assigned to a human agent acting freely. The specter on the genetic horizon is that confirmable genetic dispositions to certain forms of behavior will constitute compulsion, and this will place a fork in the legal road: Either the courts declare the person with a genetic disposition to crime to be innocent and set him or her free, or the courts declare him or her so constitutionally impaired as to justify incarceration and isolation from the rest of society. The first fork would jeopardize the welfare of society; the second fork would violate individual rights. That society needs to be protected from criminal behavior, and that such protection could be had by isolating individuals with certain genetic dispositions, leads to further questions regarding insanity and race. The issue of insanity arises because the genetic defense may rely upon precedents set by the insanity defense. The courts treat insanity with a focus on the insane person's inability to distinguish right from wrong when committing a crime. When a defendant is judged innocent on these grounds, he or she is incarcerated in a mental hospital until the medical evaluators judge that the individual is cured. Once cured, the person may be released. In principle, such a person might never be judged "cured" and may spend more time in isolation than the prison penalty prescribed for the crime, maybe even the rest of his or her life. Should the genetic defense tie itself to the insanity defense, and if one's DNA is thought to last a lifetime, then the trip to the hospital may become the equivalent of a life sentence. In this way the genetic defense may backfire. With this prospect, we have returned to the specter of genetic discrimination. The current discussion of possible genetic influence on antisocial behavior is riddled with fears of discrimination, especially its racial overtones. Because the percentage of black men among the population of incarcerated prisoners is growing, society could invoke the gene myth to associate genes with criminal predispositions and with race. A stigma against black people could arise, a presumption that they are genetically predisposed to crime. University of California sociologist Troy Duster fears that if we identify crime with genes and then genes with race, we may inadvertently provide a biological support for prejudice and discrimination. The gay gene. Theological and ethical debate has arisen over the 1993 discovery of a possible genetic disposition to male homosexuality. Dean H. Hamer and his research team at the U.S. National Cancer Institute announced that they discovered evidence that male homosexuality—at least some male homosexuality—is genetic. Constructing family trees in instances where two or more brothers are gay combined with actual laboratory testing of homosexual DNA, Hamer located a region near the end of the long arm of the X chromosome that likely contains a gene influencing sexual orientation. Because men receive an X chromosome from their mother and a Y from their father (women receive two X's, one from each parent), this means that the possible gay gene is inherited maternally. Mothers can pass on the gay gene without themselves or their daughters being homosexual. A parallel study of lesbian genetics is as yet incomplete; and the present study of gay men will certainly require replication and confirmation. Scientists do not yet have indisputable proof. The ethical implications, should a biological basis for homosexuality be confirmed, could point in more than one direction. The scientific fact does not itself determine the direction of the ethical interpretation of that fact. The central ethical question is this: Does the genetic disposition toward homosexuality make the bearer of that gene innocent or guilty? Two answers are logically possible. On the one hand, a homosexual man could claim that because he inherited the gay gene and did not choose a gay orientation by his own free will, he is innocent. The biological innocence position could be buttressed by an additional argument that homosexual activity is not itself sinful; it is simply one natural form of sexual expression among others. One could go still further to say that because it is biologically inherited that it is God's will; that a person's homosexual predisposition is God's gift. On the other hand, one could follow the opposite road and identify the gay gene with a carnal disposition to sin. Society could claim that the body inherited by each person belongs to who they are—people are determined at least in part by what their parents bequeathed them—and that an inherited disposition to homosexual behavior is just like other innate dispositions such as lust or greed, which are shared with the human race generally; all this constitutes the state of original sin into which we are born. Signposts point in both ethical directions. Beyond the question of guilt or innocence ethicists anticipate another issue, namely, the risk of stigma. Might the presence of the gay gene in an unborn fetus be considered a genetic defect and become grounds for abortion? Would routine genetic testing lead to a wholesale reduction of gay men in a manner parallel to that of children with Down Syndrome? Would this count as class discrimination? Somatic therapy versus germline enhancement. The debate over two distinctions—somatic versus germline intervention and therapy versus enhancement intervention—involves both secular and religious discussions. The term somatic therapy refers to the treatment of a disease in the body cells of a living individual by trying to repair an existing defect. The term germline therapy refers to intervention into the gametes, perhaps for the purpose of eliminating a gene such as that for cystic fibrosis so that it would not be passed along to future generations. Both somatic and germline therapies are conservative when compared to genetic enhancement. Enhancement goes beyond mere therapy for existing genes that may be a threat to health by selecting or adding genes to make an individual "superior" in some fashion. Enhancement might involve genetic engineering to increase bodily strength or intelligence or other socially desirable characteristics. Ethical commentators almost universally agree that somatic therapy is morally desirable, and they look forward to the advances HGP will bring for expanding this important work. Yet they stop short of endorsing genetic selection and manipulation for the purposes of enhancing the quality of biological life for otherwise normal individuals or for the human race as a whole. New knowledge gained from HGP might locate genes that affect the brain's organization and structure so that careful engineering might lead to enhanced ability for abstract thinking or to other forms of physiological and mental improvement. Religious ethicists argue that somatic therapy should be pursued, but enhancement through germline engineering raises cautions about protecting human dignity. In a 1982 study, the World Council of Churches stated: "Somatic cell therapy may provide a good; however, other issues are raised if it also brings about a change in germline cells. The introduction of genes into the germline is a permanent alteration .… Nonetheless, changes in genes that avoid the occurrence of disease are not necessarily made illicit merely because those changes also alter the genetic inheritance of future generations .… There is no absolute distinction between eliminating defects and improving heredity" (quoted in Peters, ed., 1998, pp. 6–8). The primary caution raised by the WCC here has to do with the lack of knowledge regarding the possible consequences of altering the human germline. The present generation lacks sufficient information regarding the long term consequences of a decision today that might turn out to be irreversible tomorrow. Thus, the WCC does not forbid forever germline therapy or even enhancement; rather, it cautions people to wait and see. The Catholic Health Association is more positive: "Germline intervention is potentially the only means of treating genetic diseases that do their damage early in embryonic development, for which somatic cell therapy would be ineffective. Although still a long way off, developments in molecular genetics suggest that this is a goal toward which biomedicine could reasonably devote its efforts" (p. 19) Another reason for caution regarding germline enhancement, especially among the Protestants, is the specter of eugenics. The word eugenics connotes the ghastly racial policies of Nazism, and this accounts for much of today's mistrust of genetic science in Germany and elsewhere. No one expects a resurrection of the Nazi nightmare; yet some critics fear a subtle form of eugenics slipping in the cultural back door. The growing power to control the design of living tissue will foster the emergence of the image of the "perfect child," and a new social value of perfection will begin to oppress all those who fall short. Gene patenting. A controversy exploded in 1991 over gene patenting prompted by the filing for intellectual property rights by J. Craig Venter on nearly three thousand ESTs, expressed sequence tags. Each of these ESTs consisted of three hundred to five hundred base pairs made from cDNAs, copies of DNA sequences produced by polymerase chain reaction. ESTs are gene fragments, not whole genes; hence they mark the location of a gene but cannot identify gene function. Two issues became the focus of controversy. First, should the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grant patents on genomic data? Even though the patents applied for were on copies of DNA sequences, their only value was to report raw genomic information. It appeared to critics that these applications failed to meet the three patenting criteria: novelty, utility, and nonobviousness. Second, should the U.S. government apply for and receive such patents in competition with the private sector? Venter's first patent applications were filed while he was working on a government grant; later he moved to the private sector and continued filing for intellectual property rights on his discoveries. James Watson followed by Francis Collins at the NIH both opposed patenting raw genomic data. Cloning. Technically known as "somatic cell nuclear transfer," cloning techniques were developed in 1996 by Ian Wilmut at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland. Wilmut announced the cloning of Dolly the sheep in February 1997. The scientific breakthrough consisted of returning an already differentiated DNA nucleus to its pre-differentiated state and then transferring it to an ennucleated oocyte to make an embryo. The new embryo thus contains the genome of the donor nucleus. In the worldwide controversy that broke out in 1997 and continues in bioethical discussion, the debate seems to bypass the science of nuclear transfer; rather, the focus is on producing multiple human beings with duplicate genomes. Critics of reproductive cloning argue that children produced by cloning would suffer from loss of individuality, identity, and dignity. Roman Catholic critics along with Wilmut himself oppose human reproductive cloning on the grounds of safety—that is, the imperfect technology would lead to the destruction of many early embryos. Defenders of nuclear transfer research distinguish sharply between reproductive cloning, which they oppose, and therapeutic cloning, which is necessary for stem cell research. Stem cells. The isolation of human embryonic stem cells (hES cells) was accomplished in August 1997 by James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin on funds from the Geron Corporation. The hES cells are removed from the inner mass of the blastocyst, an embryo at four to six days old. When isolated and placed on a feeder tray, hES cells become immortal—that is, they divide indefinitely. In addition, they are pluripotent and able to differentiate into any and every tissue. The research goal is to control gene expression so as to make designated tissue for rejuvenating human organs. Some progress in gene control has been achieved. The next hurdle to jump is histocompatibility, namely, to avoid organ rejection by matching donor and recipient genetic codes. It is likely that experiments with somatic cell nuclear transfer will be required to attain histocompatibility. Ethical objections to stem cell research from Roman Catholics center on destruction of blastocysts for research purposes. Ethical support for stem cell research stresses beneficence; it emphasizes the marvelous advances in human health and wellbeing that this medical science might offer the human race. Conclusion: theological commitments to human dignity Virtually all Roman Catholics and Protestants who take up the challenge of the new genetic knowledge seem to agree on a handful of theological axioms. First, they affirm that God is the creator of the world and, further, that God's creative work is ongoing. God continues to create in and through natural genetic selection and even through human intervention in the natural processes. Second, the human race is created in God's image. In this context, the divine image in humanity is tied to creativity. God creates; so do human beings. With increasing frequency, humans are described by theologians as co-creators with God, making their human contribution to the evolutionary process. In order to avoid the arrogance of thinking that humans are equal to the God who created them in the first place, people must add the term created to make the phrase created co-creators. This emphasizes human dependency on God while pointing to human opportunity and responsibility. Third, these religious documents place a high value on human dignity. By dignity they mean what eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant meant, namely, that each human being is treated as an end, not merely as a means to some further end. As church leaders respond responsibly to new developments in HGP, one thing can be confidently forecast: This affirmation of dignity will become decisive for thinking through the ethical implications of genetic engineering. Promoting dignity is a way of drawing an ethical implication from what the theologian can safely say, namely, that God loves each human being regardless of his or her genetic makeup and, therefore, people should love one another according to this model.

The Crimes of Francis Galton: Galton now receives little notice, so any new biography must be welcomed for the renewed attention it may bring to his life, his achievements and his contemporary significance. Nicholas Gillham is a geneticist whose interest in Galton was stimulated by recent developments in the human genome project, and he is a Criminal also.

This is only the third full-length biography of the eminent Victorian scientist and polymath Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911). Remarkably, it is the first in quarter of a century. Galton was the product of a distinguished lineage, with men of marked ability in every one of ten preceding generations. He had first made a name as an African explorer and meteorologist, active in the affairs of the Royal Geographical Society. Late in life, inspired by his half-cousin Charles Darwin, he went on to found the scientific study of heritability, which soon encompassed differential psychology, anthropology, genetics, criminology, statistical methods, and eugenics. Starting almost from scratch in all the subjects he investigated, Galton invented rigorous intelligence testing, founded experimental psychology in Britain, established the scientific basis for fingerprint identification, formulated the statistical concepts of regression and correlation, pioneered early investigations of genetics, and founded the biometrical school. Financially secured by a legacy from his moderately wealthy father, he might have followed so many of his contemporaries into comfortable idleness. Instead he chose the career of a “gentleman scientist”, and would on his death endow his well-managed legacy to further research in the areas that interested him. Galton now receives little notice, so any new biography must be welcomed for the renewed attention it may bring to his life, his achievements and his contemporary significance. Nicholas Gillham is a geneticist whose interest in Galton was stimulated by recent developments in the human genome project, the advent of genetic engineering and cloning; all of which contain distinct echoes of the Eugenics movement Galton founded. Gillham plays here to his own strengths and interests as an academic geneticist. Since Galton was not primarily a geneticist, he emerges from this looking unfairly diminished, somewhat less relevant than he really is to contemporary science and the history of ideas. However, when properly understood Galton occupies a central place in the development of scientific ideas, as the founder of a research program that remains vital today. Galton’s wide-ranging achievements were grounded in his immense practical genius. This was a general ability, not specific to any discipline, that enabled him to make an impression on nearly everything he made a serious attempt at. He had no formal training in most of the subjects he covered, starting almost from a clean slate in each. If previous work had been done, he usually ignored it, with good results. Galton was simply not well suited to the sort of education then offered. While he was remarkably precocious as a child when tutored at home by an elder sister, he performed only moderately well at school. At Cambridge, studying pure mathematics on the advice of Charles Darwin, he suffered a breakdown and left, like Darwin, with only a “pass” degree, and not “honours”. Most of his scientific work was conducted when he was well past middle age, and he would not read widely in his fields, such as they existed. His practical genius helped him to achieve his first notable success as an African explorer, thereby launching his scientific career. After a two year exploration of South-West Africa (1850-2), during which he accurately surveyed and charted previously unknown territory, all at his own expense, he was awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society. His entertaining description of the expedition in Tropical South Africa (1852) demonstrates an ability to easily overcome the innumerable practical difficulties which an explorer in unknown territory must face, with limited resources and severe consequences for failure. Galton was obviously a good man to go camping with. He would later produce a best-selling compendium of advice for travelers, The Art of Travel (1855), distilling his own experience in solving the practical problems of rough travel, and advice gleaned from others. It went through nine editions in his lifetime, and is still in print today. This manual of “shifts and contrivances” reveals a tremendous talent for grappling with everyday difficulties, for devising working contraptions from simple materials, and for applying basic reasoning processes to common problems. Galton would later demonstrate how a simple application of this method to important theoretical questions could convert subjects formerly reserved for metaphysical speculation into science. The Art of Travel is full of little devices and elementary technology, all produced by Galton’s facility for invention, which was a family trait. All through his life he produced a stream of gadgets, which ranged from devices for measuring temperature changes over time, to a heliograph for sending sun signals, to whistles for producing high-pitched notes (all of which were extensively used in their fields). There were also devices for harnessing the power of waves, a protocol for interstellar communication, an electric telegraph, a bicycle speedometer, glasses for reading underwater, and scores more. Galton would outfit his scientific researches with instruments which were mostly of his own invention, made to his specifications, almost always for the purpose of measuring something. Much of his research would have made little progress without these instruments, and they were widely adopted in their fields. Again, these show the practical genius he invariably brought to bear on his problem set, whether he was in Africa placating a braying donkey by tying a stone to its tail, or in London devising an instrument to measure mental reaction times. Another important aspect of Galton’s practical ability was his talent for simple representation. In meteorology this took the form of greatly improved weather maps, with Galton becoming the first newspaper weather columnist. In statistics it took the form of the quincunx, his device for demonstrating regression in normal distributions; his numerical representation of statistical relationship, the correlation coefficient; and the use of statistical percentiles. For navigation he devised wind charts, so that sailing time could be optimized. For personal and racial identification he devised composite portraits and facial indexes. Galton was always finding some way to represent facts not otherwise obvious. More generally, Galton continually sought to create numerical representations of facts through measurement, an activity he carried to extraordinary lengths. The “active ingredient” of Galton’s science was his use of measurement, especially in his study of human traits. Counting and comparison were second-nature to him, and he would often idle away slack periods by measuring things; counting brush strokes when having his portrait painted, thereby estimating the number of facial characteristics; counting audience fidgets in lectures, to determine their dullness; counting the number of attractive women he passed in the street, to determine the geographical distribution of beauty in Britain; or just counting leaves on trees in the park, to see how many there really were. Galton studied human abilities and characteristics by measuring them. This was a genuinely revolutionary approach. Usually he had to devise these measures himself, and mechanical instruments for gathering them, as well as the statistical methods for dealing with the results. Where Galton could not obtain direct numerical measurements he was still able to reason numerically by considering variation and distribution. Intelligence testing, anthropometry and biometry were born as a result. The statistical revolution that Galton introduced in his quest for measurement spread rapidly throughout the social and biological sciences, because the methods used were universal in nature. Quantitative methods now distinguish most serious study of the social and biological sciences, and disciplines which have spurned them have not fared well (consider mainstream sociology). One great virtue of Galton’s use of measurement was its ability to cut through tangles introduced by metaphysical speculation, and ground discussion in tangible phenomena. His measures would provide their own defense by demonstrating solid relationships with other phenomena, above all by acquiring predictive power. The utility of this approach is seen in the modern intelligence testing movement, which has bypassed endless wrangling over the “meaning” of intelligence by working with measures of mental powers which justify themselves by predicting real-world outcomes. Galton’s enthusiasm for measurement was a component of his empiricist approach to science, which was quite deliberate and self-conscious. Wherever he could he formulated predictions, and put them to the test by taking measurements. Pursuing the idea that the blind are especially discriminating by touch, he proceeded to measure this using blind and sighted subjects, and discovered that the blind are, in fact, usually no more sensitive than the rest. Interested in methods for making tea, he armed himself with notebook and thermometer, and set out on a series of experiments with materials, temperatures and steeping times, all of which he subjected to taste (his own). Finding a method which produced reliably pleasing results, he pronounced the mystery of the tea pot solved, at least for his own taste. He found space to incorporate his findings into The Art of Travel. Galton used his facility for invention, measurement and representation to found a research program that remains vital today, some 150 years after he initiated it. The initial inspiration was provided by his cousin Charles Darwin, whose Origin of the Species had profoundly influenced Galton. Darwin’s evolutionary theory was based on natural selection. Organisms vary, and evolution proceeds through selection of advantageous variation. Galton considered the human case, which Darwin had barely touched on. It was plain to Galton that people, and races of people, vary a great deal for many important traits, and that certain variations confer a selective advantage. The idea had come to him when he considered gregariousness, a trait that had first interested him when observing the behavior of oxen on his African exploration. Some oxen, he observed, were more gregarious than others, and this might be selectively advantageous as it protected those who expressed it from danger. He detected similar variation among races and individuals, based on his observations of the races he encountered in South-West Africa. He turned from this to consider human ability, which evidently varied greatly. Some initial research suggested this ran strongly in families, and doubtless his own unusually talented forebears sprang to mind. Galton’s research program was born in this observation, and would be a concerted attempt to place these initial observations, in themselves not remarkable or consequential, on a sound scientific basis. He had to start from the beginning. First, human traits which varied had to be identified. Then these traits had to be measured and their distribution determined, to establish if they really did differ enough to be of consequence. Then the heritability of those traits had to be established, since only heritable traits would have evolutionary significance. This required an understanding of the nature of heredity, and its mechanism. In the early 1860s when Galton embarked on this ambitious investigation, little was known about any of these topics. Today a great deal more is known, and the research program is called “behavior genetics”, with its special application to human ability, “differential psychology”. Little that preceded Galton’s approach to the problem set has survived. In the end Galton studied a great many traits, and was led into several productive diversions in the process. The most important psychological trait he studied was ability, summarizing his results in Hereditary Genius (1869), and then in English Men of Science (1874). In essence, by gathering a large sample of eminent men in various fields, he was able to determine that a far greater than expected proportion had eminent relatives, and so he inferred that ability must run in families. Hereditary Genius proved to be a tremendously influential work, anticipating the concepts of general intelligence and the use of adoption studies to distinguish the effects of nature and nurture, and introducing the use of statistical grades, now referred to as percentiles. Galton’s other varied and innovative psychological investigations were summarized in his Inquiries into Human Faculty (1883), and included gregariousness, power of mental visualization, spontaneous word-to-idea association, the operations of the subconscious mind, memory, phobias, color blindness, tendency to see “visions”, mental representation of “number forms”, and more. He concluded that all these traits varied significantly and were heritable to some extent. The essential shortcoming Galton had to face was a lack of representative data for any of the traits he considered. He was eventually able to overcome his shortage of hard data by collecting a large body of measurements from the anthropological laboratories he founded in the 1880s, after devising a wide range of measurements, and instruments to match, and persuading the general public to pay three pence each for the privilege of being measured “scientifically”. Some 17,000 individuals were measured for various characteristics: strength, weight, height, length and breadth of the head, arm span and lung capacity, visual and auditory reaction time, and perceptions of length. Ultimately this data collection was so successful that the volume of data surpassed the computational and statistical resources available at the time. It was only as recently as 1985 that the surviving data set, still unique of its kind, was fully analyzed using appropriate techniques. The analysis shows that most of the measurements used were reliable, and that Galton’s tests of ability correlated significantly, though weakly, with occupation (which can be used as a rough proxy for ability) [Johnson et al, 1985]. Among the measurements taken by Galton in the anthropological labs were those of fingerprints, which he later investigated for their use in criminology to identify individuals. Fingerprints had previously been proposed as a means of identification, but Galton had been interested initially in determining their hereditary nature. He was aware that their use in criminology would have to overcome fundamental hurdles: it had to be shown that the fingerprint stayed constant through life, that it could reliably be distinguished from the prints of others, and that a practically workable scheme could be put in place for taking and keeping records of prints, and matching them. By examining his large and representative collection of prints, unique in its time, he was able to meet all these points, devising a classification scheme that was adopted by police internationally, in a modified form. He also concluded, correctly, that fingerprints are to some extent hereditary, and even racially peculiar, though only weakly so. Galton realized that his research program could not be completed without determining the nature of heredity itself. His research in this area proved to be more fruitful for its by-products than for its concrete results. By conducting blood transfusion experiments on rabbits, he was able to disprove Darwin’s theory of pangenesis, which held that "gemmules" within bodily fluids transmitted hereditary traits. Galton then conducted experiments on sweet peas, but as with all his investigations into heredity, he chose to study a continuous, rather than a discrete, characteristic: seed size. Later he would study human height. By contrast, Mendel had studied discrete traits, allowing him to formulate his theory of particulate inheritance and genetic dominance. This greatly complicated matters for Galton since, was we now know, he chose complex traits with multiple genetic components, and though he came close to reproducing Mendel’s then unnoticed results, he was not ultimately able to produce a coherent account of heredity capable of surviving the Mendelian revolution, although his work was influential at the time. Instead, the difficulties his traits placed him in forced him to produce some of the most important statistical innovations on the 19th century, first in his discovery of regression to the mean, then in his formulation of the correlation coefficient. The Galtonian statistical study of heredity lived on in the form of the biometrical school of Karl Pearson and W.F.R. Weldon (R.A. Fisher was able to show by 1918 that, theoretically, the effects the biometricians studied were describable in Mendelian terms). Galton had founded his research program on the proposition that individual and races vary in their expression of many traits, such as ability, and that this variation is subject to natural selection on Darwinian lines. It was obvious to Galton that this selection could be harnessed to improve humans, by encouraging selection of advantageous traits. Indeed, it is hard to argue that less ability is better, or that weaker physical constitutions should be preferred to stronger. He coined the word eugenics to describe the process of human improvement he had in mind, an improvement which encompassed not just mental ability but also physical traits such as health, strength, height and what he called “energy”. Eugenics had been one of Galton’s concern from the very beginning, when he published Hereditary Genius. It is not commonly recognized now that he faced a hostile audience from the beginning, and had to make his case patiently and doggedly for many years. After all, if mankind was created in the image of God, how could it be improved? Galton was, above all, afraid of scandalizing public opinion through extremism, and disapproved of the immoderate proposals that H.G Wells and G.B. Shaw brought to the movement. Two kinds of Eugenics can now be distinguished: positive and negative. The negative variety operates through punishment and compulsion, usually of the legal kind, sometimes involving measures like sterilization of the unit. The positive variety seeks instead to promote improvement through rewards, by encouraging those with higher abilities to have more children. Tax breaks and other schemes are what Galton himself had in mind, together with the creation of a moral atmosphere which encouraged better breeding, as he would have out it. Indeed, Eugenics came to be Galton’s religion later in his life, and he directed all his efforts in the decade before his death to its promotion. Gillham’s account of Galton is well written and fair, more so than one might expect in an age where publishers are largely hostile to his ideas. Though it breaks little new ground biographically, or even bibliographically, it does provide a useful context for some of Galton’s interests, especially in its account of the subsequent development of human genetics. It brings to attention some previously neglected aspects of Galton’s influence on the statistician F.Y. Edgeworth, who appears to have been written out of the picture by a hostile Karl Pearson. Gillham steers safely away from the sort of psychological speculation about Galton’s personal development that he might have indulged in. Refreshingly, he seem to have no political agenda of his own, and does not attempt to evaluate Galton by the standards of “political correctness”: instead, this is a scientific biography by a working scientist. It is divorced from the concerns of postmodernism, and makes no mention of “Victorian hegemony” or “patriarchy”. It attempts to understand Galton’s ideas on their own terms, and for this alone it is praiseworthy. It must surely help to introduce Galton to a wider audience. At last, Galton has a biography back in print; his cousin Charles Darwin gets one every few months or so. There is nevertheless much that is unsatisfactory about this biography. An overall tone of timidity pervades it, especially when Eugenics sits up, does not leave the room, and demands to be noticed. Gillham wastes no time in getting in an apology for the Nazis. Hopefully this sort of covering fire is not now a pre-requisite for having a book about a figure like Galton published by a major house. Gillham also places an undue emphasis on the biology of genetics, no doubt due to his own background in this field. Galton is now mostly an historical footnote in that field, interesting as his role may have been at the time. His contributions were rapidly superseded by Mendelian genetics, and working geneticists today do not pay much intellectual homage to Galton. While Gillham’s additional material on the history of developments in this field is useful in itself, it dominates rather much of the book, because it is not matched by similar elaboration of the fields that Galton did leave a lasting mark on. This leaves Galton looking more than a little diminished; someone who anticipated some ideas, but got most of the details wrong and was soon eclipsed by modern developments. This impression is amplified by Gillham’s habitual understatement. For instance, he describes Galton as a “talented scientist”, and thinks that his versatility was typically Victorian. A biographer really should be able to distinguish Galton from the masses of merely “talented’ scientists - after all, Galton gave us the conceptual apparatus to make distinctions like that. And Galton was certainly not just another versatile Victorian. The trouble is that Gillham’s interest in genetics apparently does not extend to the field of behavior genetics, let alone differential psychology. There is no reference anywhere to a major work in these fields, apart from Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve (1994), and that only in passing. Yet Galton is widely acknowledged to be the founder of these disciplines. Behavior genetics pursues essentially the same research program that Galton established. Working scientists in these fields are well aware of their debt to Galton, and frequently acknowledge this in the literature. His influence can be traced directly through the major figures in these fields, from Spearman and Burt, to Eysenck and Bouchard. Where Gillham does touch on topics that behavior genetics has gathered extensive evidence about, he seems to have misunderstood the results. In a brief discussion of twin studies, he asserts that similarities between twins have been exaggerated by selection of anecdotal coincidences! He should give those who work in the field a little more credit. Bouchard (1997) has provided the following summary of IQ studies conducted on identical twins raised apart (the data is simplified for presentation here): At least half the variation in IQ scores in a modern Western population is genetic in origin. However, many studies of IQ heritability include disproportionate numbers of children. Plomin (1997) observes that heritability increases with age, rising to about 0.80 in late adulthood. So Galton’s claim that ability is largely inherited is borne out by the modern evidence. It should be noted that variance in adult ability that is not due to genetic factors is almost entirely due to non-shared environment; that is, to factors outside of family experience. This excludes factors which have usually been promoted as environmental influences, such as socioeconomic status, number of books in the home, and so on. It is still unclear exactly what these non-shared influences are, but they must consist of a series of idiosyncratic influences peculiar to each individual, perhaps exposure to minor biological insults and the like, with a cumulative effect. This means that, insofar as the environment has effects, it tends to make people different, and not the same. With regard to personality, there is not as much hard evidence, but Rowe (1994) has provided the following summary of the data available (simplified for presentation here): More data could be presented, but it is enough to note for our purposes that all this data tends to confirm Galton’s conclusions to a remarkable degree. That Gillham is only slightly familiar with differential psychology is shown in his description of Galton’s tests of reaction time. As he notes, these tests fell into disfavor when they proved to correlate weakly with themselves and with other tests of ability and achievement. He doesn’t seem to be aware that reaction time has now become an important research topic. To make it useful, it must be tested using a series of observations to aggregate the results, thereby eliminating random variation, and overcoming the low item reliability. When Galton’s tests were evaluated, a sample of university students was used, greatly restricting the range of variation, and further obscuring the results. When tested appropriately, reaction time correlates significantly with well-known IQ measures, which have established predictive validity. Galton's original insights have therefore been strongly confirmed, though it took many years to get there. Unfortunately Gillham has missed the opportunity to provide a detailed assessment of Galton’s contemporary influence on fields like behavior genetics and differential psychology, and to bring his subject right up to date by presenting the current state of knowledge about the topics that were most important to him. This detracts from the value of what is otherwise a fine biography.