At
a Behavior Genetics Association meeting in Edinburgh in the summer of 2012,
University of New Mexico associate professor Geoffrey Miller met a university
professor who told him he was searching for “geniuses” willing to participate
in a project to find genes that determine intelligence.
Miller, 48,
immediately became interested in the Chinese project, which sought to gather
2,000 geniuses from around the world.
The
university professor that Miller met was one of the key members of the project
team at BGI, the former Beijing Genomics Institute, the world's largest genetic
analysis firm, which has its headquarters in China.
This company
was founded in 1999 when China joined an international project to map the
entire human genome. At the time, its board of directors included members of
government research facilities, but it was later privatized in 2007. It has a
staff of 5,000, and has presented a series of research papers in top European
and U.S. scientific journals on topics including an analysis of the
relationship between genes and illness.
Miller is an
evolutionary psychologist. He had an interest in the connection between
intelligence and genetics.
He browsed
the project's website, and found there were certain requirements that
applicants needed to meet: high marks in aptitude tests for entering an
American university or graduate school; an excellent result in a mathematics or
physics olympiad; and a doctorate in physics, mathematics or computer science.
It also explicitly stated the necessary scores. Miller fulfilled all the
conditions.
He signed a
statement confirming his participation in the project and e-mailed it to the
organizers, then was sent a kit for collecting saliva that would be used to
analyze his genes. He sent off his sample and officially became a project
participant. The organizers also asked him for his IQ. More than 90 percent of
people have IQs between 70 and 130, but Miller says his is 150.
Human
intelligence is largely determined by environment and education. However, the
influence of genetics to a certain degree has been discovered in a study that
followed identical twins with the same genetic code, and in other research.
Even so, it is thought that a complicated array of several hundred or more
genes are involved, and the actual mechanism is not well understood. There have
been other quests to discover intelligence genes to date, but BGI's sweeping
study of “2,000 geniuses” is unprecedented.
However, as
Miller looked into China's history of population policy, such as its famous
“one-child policy” and its view of reproductive medicine, he began to have
misgivings about the project.
“Potentially,
the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of
their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two
that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence.”
This is an
age when couples can undergo in vitro fertilization, have the genetic
characteristics of each fertilized egg examined, and choose the one that
conforms most to their preferences. In the future, if “genius” genes are
discovered, it would be possible to select one in vitro fertilized egg with the
most likelihood of producing a child with a high IQ.
“This method
of 'preimplantation embryo selection' might allow IQs within every Chinese
family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation,” says Miller. “After a
couple of generations, it would be 'game over' for Western global
competitiveness."
In 2013, he
contributed an article to U.S. online literary magazine Edge with the title
“Chinese Eugenics.” It stirred up controversy, and Miller was interviewed by
international news magazine Vice about his vision of genius Chinese babies bred
through genetic manipulation.
What is the
truth of the matter?
In March,
BGI executives visited Japan to attend a study report meeting regarding genes
and medicine at the University of Tokyo. When asked for an interview, Jun Wang,
a director of the BGI group, responded in a forceful tone.
“Western
media reports take a biased view," he says. "Our study is about the
connection between IQ scores and genes, and it will also help explore the
workings of the human brain and understanding human diseases. This is not
something to make a superman. Genius genes are not the scientific goal of our
study.”
Xun Xu, BGI
executive director at the research division, also categorically denied Miller's
claims. “Genetic mechanisms aren't that simple. The idea of creating a superman
is utterly unrealistic.”
Attempts
have been made in the past to create child prodigies. There was businessman
Robert Klark Graham's Repository for Germinal Choice, also known as the “Nobel
Prize winner's sperm bank,” which existed in the United States in the 1980s and
1990s. According to the book “The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the
Nobel Prize Sperm Bank,” more than 200 children were born with its help, and
some developed IQs of 180.
“For the
moment, we seek advantages through drugs and classes and tutors, but we will
use genes as soon as we can,” says the book's author, American journalist David
Plotz. “The repository's notion that good sperm will make good children is too
crude for our age, but more sophisticated science is coming.”
Children
born according to their parents' preferences regarding intelligence, looks,
physical ability and other factors are described as “designer babies.” At
for-profit sperm banks, prospective recipients can take into account the
height, eye and hair color of donors, as well as their IQ, academic record and
health condition. In the United States, there are clinics that make it possible
for parents to choose the gender of their child by examining the DNA of in
vitro fertilized eggs.
As of May
this year, BGI's genius gene project is still seeking participants. Its
findings have yet to be announced.
Miller is
also waiting for the results to be released.
“Even if the
Chinese state doesn’t promote this eugenics, there’s so much demand among
Chinese parents that the private sector could do most of what the state could
do anyway," he says. "Once the research findings are published,
Americans would be free to use them. Japanese firms could also use them,
right?”
(This
article was written by Shiro Namekata and Ryoko Takeishi.)
The Asahi Shimbun
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