Infuriating books: a case study

I am very relaxed about bad books. Some books are bad in ways that are entirely expected. There is no pleasure or value in pointing that out. Some bad books can even be fun. Most are just boring. To be read, thrown our and no longer thought about. 

However, there are two kinds of book that infuriate me and force me to think about them: books that are overpraised despite being bad (this doesn't happen very often - reviewers are usually pretty good at this); and bad books that could have been good books if authors had worked harder. 

Combined, those books end up taking up disproportionate amounts of my thinking, often because I feel so let down by what I actually read. Control, Adam Rutherford's book about eugenics, is one of those books. Here is everything I didn't like about it: 

Structurally, the book is a short history, followed by a short summary of where we are now. Both had good parts, both were bad. 

Part I
This is the better section. Scientists don't automatically make decent historians (though more so than the reverse), but he's done the work, and writes well. It's a good canter through the cast, though I think it would have benefited from a better chronology and a wider geographical scope. As acknowledged, it's US, UK and Germany only. I think that's an issue. There were other major racists. But it's not major. However, it is peppered with historical asides that don't really add anything and are sloppy. Is it true that 'The powerful really only seek one thing, and that is to maintain their power.'? (p.59) I don't think so, though plenty do. It's certainly not true to assert glibly 'Hitler was a man of his time, and was legitimately appointed to the position of German Chancellor in 1933.' (p.141, my italics) ignoring the role of paramilitaries in early 1930s Germany, and also the obvious areas in which Hitler was an outlier.

These aren't needed, but also stand in juxtaposition to his dismissal of any erroneous position as 'pseudoscience.' Sometimes this is justified: I enjoyed his dismissal of the Nordic Theory (northern European are best etc), and its thesis that Nordic men are actually the progenitors of the ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians. But, for example, it wasn't an unreasonable hypothesis that there would be single genes for things it turns out there aren't, it's just wrong. All wrong science isn't pseudoscience. Indeed, I'm not even sure eugenics is based on this. Towards the end, Rutherford writes: 'Eugenics is a busted flush, a pseudoscience that cannot deliver on its promise. Maybe that will change in time, as we unpick our genomes ever more precisely.' If the issue is simply that the current science won't bear the weight that this put on it, that's important to know, but hardly fundamentally false.

I found this particularly true given the shortness of the period under discussion. The whole debate happens over pretty much one lifetime. This remains a very 

Part 2

However, my main reservations are for the moral and ethical judgements that permeate the whole book, but especially the current state of play. Rutherford has the standard scientist's confidence about their ability to make judgements. He clearly feels that he and his colleagues should be trusted to make the fine judgements about ethics. Here he is:

'Ethical discussions about research into human embryos and genetics occur in every lab as standard, and are a prerequisite for the work to take place. In my experience, these essential and thoughtful processes are largely unaffected by the intellectual posturing of academics who aren’t really involved, but enjoy a scrap on social media.' (p.200)

I am uncertain if all scientist's processes are unaffected by other academics' work, but in any case, he doesn't rely on scientists anyway. As is clear in the opening of the book, rogue scientists, even Chinese ones, are constrained by the legal framework. He is presumably happy with that framework, though it's hard to see how the law differs in kind if not content from 'Pseudo-philosophical articles' or debates that are 'just semantic arguments about definitions of words.' 

In fact, much of the book is a demonstration that definitions of words do - in fact - matter. Perhaps surprisingly, there isn't an argued definition of eugenics in the book at all. I infer from the argument, and the title, that he believes it is national level coercion and includes both euthanasia, abortion (on such grounds) and sterilisation, 'sculpt[ing] society through selective breeding' (p.13). He is clear though on what it's not: it's most definitely not parental choice terminations of babies with Downs Syndrome, that's fine. Now, I think you probably can a distinction around this, but is going to take work - work that he doesn't put in. It's no good saying 'the decision to terminate a pregnancy because of a pre-natal diagnosis is something that I believe is an absolute personal choice and should be an unstigmatised right for women and parents. To do so is not eugenics.' Personal choice isn't absolute. Everyone knows this. Financial incentives for sterilisations are bad, apparently, but I don't think there's an hard economic distinction between society paying you to be sterilised and not paying for enhanced care and support needed for children with severe conditions. If we invested more resources to care for Downs babies and adults, I'm confident that would reduce the termination rate. I don't have a view on whether we should, but either both are coercion, or neither are. 

If there, he's trying to put a line where I don't believe there is one, he's guilty of an extraordinary lack of sophistication elsewhere by omitting lines where there should be lines. Discussing enforced sterilisation, he notes that the Cheyenne 'claims ... sterilisation, sometimes without their knowledge or understanding, had been performed on more than a quarter of Native American women of child-bearing age. How is that different from the actions of the Nazis? Why is that not attempted genocide?' (p.154) Here, we have a claim of sterilisation of a quarter of a population, sometimes without proper consent. That's a lot of conditional words, but even if they are taken maximally, it simply doesn't measure up to enforced euthanasia of whole populations. It's an obscene comparison. I think it's made in good faith, in revulsion at the actions against the Cheyenne, and a geneticists perspective that draws no distinction between sterilisation or murder - their impact on populations in the long term being identical. But all bad things are not the same, and it's wrong. This inability to do distinction properly hampers the book.

Finally, I think he gets into a mess about heritability. As this is clear on, eugenics was conceived of based on as a theory of genetic determinism. Historical eugenicists believed that they could breed better humans. Rutherford is at pains to show how misguided this is and how much of heritability is environmental. I think he's very good on pointing out the weirdness of putting faith in high risk, high cost, genetic solutions when we have well evidenced social interventions that would work better. However, I think he opens the door without even noticing to a eugenics-adjacent position on heritability, which deserves discussion. It's in several places, for example 'alcohol use disorder or alcohol dependency are contemporary and more precise diagnoses, and we know that they are heritable, because everything is.' (p.174) But if it's heritable, then the cause of that heritability doesn't really seem to me to matter if you are trying to 'sculpt society'. If disease selected abortion is OK - 'they are medical techniques specifically conceived and designed for the alleviation of suffering in individuals.' - then why is behavioural abortion not OK. Why should we condemn children to be born into terrible circumstances if it is behavioural, when we don't if it is disease related? Is it eugenics to sterilise those people who would be terrible parents, who either lack capacity to consent or are unable to discharge basic parental obligation? If the distinction is choice, then the genetics is irrelevant. These are complex issues, which I am sure much has been written on. I don't pretend to have expertise in it, but it needs to be addressed here. 

I did think this last criticism was perhaps unfair. That's policy, not eugenics, but then I read this section at the end, 'If we truly wanted to reduce the sum total of human suffering then we should eradicate the powerful, for wars are fought by people but started by leaders.' (p.251) Leaving aside the quality of this argument, which is low, this is a political book. You have to so some of the political work.

Overall, this is such a missed opportunity; It's an relevant topic. The core content about the science and the scientists is well explained and well discussed. I wanted so much more. It is fatally undermined by lack of definitional work, unnecessary overreach and unexamined political positions that are central to the book as written. It's a bad book.