Gene-environment interaction for human fertility

Mega-analysis of 31,396 individuals from 6 countries uncovers strong gene-environment interaction for human fertility

Family and twin studies suggest that up to 50% of individual differences in human fertility within a population might be heritable. However, it remains unclear whether the genes associated with fertility outcomes such as number of children ever born (NEB) or age at first birth (AFB) are the same across geographical and historical environments. By not taking this into account, previous genetic studies implicitly assumed that the genetic effects are constant across time and space. We conduct a mega-analysis applying whole genome methods on 31,396 unrelated men and women from six Western countries. Across all individuals and environments, common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) explained only ~4% of the variance in NEB and AFB. We then extend these models to test whether genetic effects are shared across different environments or unique to them. For individuals belonging to the same population and demographic cohort (born before or after the 20th century fertility decline), SNP-based heritability was almost five times higher at 22% for NEB and 19% for AFB. We also found no evidence suggesting that genetic effects on fertility are shared across time and space. Our findings imply that the environment strongly modifies genetic effects on the tempo and quantum of fertility, that currently ongoing natural selection is heterogeneous across environments, and that gene-environment interactions may partly account for missing heritability in fertility. Future research needs to combine efforts from genetic research and from the social sciences to better understand human fertility.

David Agus: inbred retard?

Discussing a recent study (Directional dominance on stature and cognition in diverse human populations) that found an effect for runs of homozygosity on height and IQ within populations, Greg Cochran notes:

Some retards (British papers) have been spinning this as saying that there are big benefits to mixed-race marriage. Untrue: to avoid lots of ROH (runs of homozygosity), just marry someone who isn’t from the same isolated population as you. We’re talking outside the valley or across the river : intercontinental travel is not necessary. Now there might be a degree of hybrid vigor in some distant crosses (currently unclear) – but likely not enough to compensate for someone coming from a group that has low trait values. Marry a Pygmy and your kids are going to be short. Marry someone from a population whose average IQ is below 90 (much of the world) and your kids will on average be less smart.

CBS medical contributor David Agus (who, wikipedia informs us, "graduated cum laude in molecular biology from Princeton University and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1991") promotes this misinterpretation of the study in a segment on CBS This Morning:

Do kids from mixed genetic backgrounds have an advantage?

Additionally, although one would hope someone who majored in molecular biology at Princeton and co-founded a personal genomics company would know that any benefits from outcrossing will fully accrue in the first generation, Agus gleefully urges the viewer to imagine how much "taller and smarter" children will be if "people of different backgrounds" continue interbreeding generation after generation.

It's a pretty interesting study that tells us a lot because this is really the first couple generations where people of different backgrounds are having children and if this happens in one, one generation children are 1.2 cm shorter, think of if this continues to happen, so, taller and smarter.

Curiously, Agus, the grandson of a rabbi, married a pre-Connie Chung daughter of Maury Povich. That is, Agus chose to mate with a member of the same rather inbred narrow ethnic group as himself. But I'm sure now that he's aware of this study (confused though he may be about it) and excited about the eugenic prospects of racial mixing, he's urged his own children to marry Africans, with that same gleeful look in his eyes.

It’s Sunday night, and Agus is at Jerusalem’s Mamilla Hotel. He just arrived for the Global Forum, a gathering of 70 of the world’s thinkers hosted by Israel’s National Library, to discuss how the People of the Book can use their ancient lore for contemporary needs.

It was Shimon Peres, the honorary chairman of the event, who convinced Agus to attend. Agus and Peres are friends – though he’s not the nonagenarian’s doctor – and the two meet every six months or so. This time, Agus will be discussing Maimonides at the National Library, from the perspective of what he, Agus, believes.

But first he had to go back and read some of the good doctor’s words. It’s been a long time since Agus studied Maimonides at Philadelphia’s Akiba Hebrew Academy. What he found resonated. [. . .]

Now Agus combines teaching, research and patient work, along with spending a lot of time at places like the World Economic Forum, the Aspen Ideas Festival and TEDMED – TED for the health field. He’s also at the CBS studio at 4 a.m., several mornings per week.

“You get a passion to change things, and I decided I don’t care if I’m uncomfortable on camera,” said Agus, who calls himself an introvert by nature. “I need to be a role model and it’s awkward, but you have to do it, over and over again. I get to talk to four million people every morning on CBS. I can just talk, I can call a spade a spade. I look at my patients losing their lives on a daily basis, so I’ve got nothing to lose.”

[Steve Jobs’ ex-doctor is in, and he’s quoting Maimonides. http://www.timesofisrael.com/steve-jobs-ex-doctor-is-in-and-hes-quoting-maimonides/]

Failure of selective breeding?

Mugabe asserts at pumpkinperson:

off topic but a huge “teachable moment” today for hereditists.

for the first time since affirmed in ’78 a horse has won the tiple crown.

what horse still holds the record times in all three triple crown races?

secretariat in ’73.

the lesson is that despite enormous incentive to breed a super horse none have succeeded in besting secretariat. and that’s been ca 14 generations of thoroughbreds since ’73.

While Mugabe's broader point is without merit (there's no shortage of examples of successful applications of selective breeding to animals), it does look like thoroughbred breeders may be doing it wrong. Steve Sailer noted in 2005:

Enormous amounts of money are spent to acquire the best breeding stock for thoroughbred horse racing. The average time of the winning horse in the Kentucky Derby dropped steadily up through middle of the 20th Century (as shown in the red line above), yet there has been virtually no overall improvement in average time since 1950 (as shown in the blue line). If the improvements seen from 1896-1949 had continued, the average winning time today would be about three seconds faster.

Expert ratings seem to point to a similar conclusion:

The trend line (red curve) now shows a clear dip between about 1940 and 1970. This means that a larger number of higher ranked horses are clustered in that time frame. The upward trend since then reinforces the position of the critics in that the horses on the list selected since mid-century are, as a group, not as highly regarded as those that came immediately before them. The overall pattern seems to have been continual improvement through the first half of the 20th century followed by a gradual decline since then. This study is far from definitive because the rankings are objective only to the extent that humans apply their best judgment. On the other hand, since there is no purely objective standard to use, the opinions of the seven experts are as a good as any and better than most. The result of their judgment is that changes have occurred and that the best of recent years are not quite up to the level of the best that preceded them.

In contrast, standardbred harness racing times have continued to decline:

From the above chart, starting in 1930 standardbreds have improved winning Hambo times by 7.9%, while thoroughbreds of the same period have improved Derby winning times by just 1.8%. If you start analyzing the data at the time of the breaking of the magic 2:00 threshold the differences are even more striking – 7.0% for trotters vs. an imperceptible 0.08% for thoroughbreds.

The horse trainer quoted above thinks this difference mostly comes down to thoroughbred trainers not having "a very good grasp of equine exercise physiology". But assuming it's a matter of breeding, here's one major difference:

in order for the resulting foal to be registered with The Jockey Club, Thoroughbred breeders must have their mares bred by live cover. As inconvenient as this might seem to those unfamiliar with the Thoroughbred industry, this policy ensures the ability of more colts to end up at stud. If Thoroughbred mare owners weren't restricted by geography and location, they would no doubt be interested only in the sperm of the best of the best, thereby devaluing the stud services of all other stallions. In fact this is the case in the Standardbred industry. Because artificial insemination is the norm, the breed has improved much faster in comparison to the Thoroughbred. However, the Standardbred colt owner must make a profit at the racetrack because unless the colt is literally the best of the best there is no chance of making a profit on the colt as a stud (1).

There's also the question of what's actually being selected for.

"They're the ones who created this tragedy," Parker said. "Robert Clay is smart enough to know better. He bred her. That's where it starts. You don't blame the trainer, who does not have the reputation of breaking horses down, and you don't blame the poor little jockey. ... She was inbred three times to Raise a Native! [She broke down] right where Raise a Native was the weakest, right in the ankles, and everybody acts like they don't know what caused this filly to break down. It's written right there for everyone to see! Except they refuse to see it. To admit it is to address the fact that all these stallions that are bred like that, that all the yearlings that are bred like that, are potential accidents waiting to happen. And they've got so much money wrapped up in this crap!" [. . .]

Through the first 60 years of the 20th century, most of the major stallions and many of the best mares were owned and controlled by some of the oldest families and richest sporting patrons in America, by the Whitneys and Woodwards, the Bradleys and Wideners, the Klebergs and Mellons. They bred horses to race them, not to sell them, and they did so in order to compete against one other -- to beat their fellow members of The Jockey Club, to see who had the fastest horse. A cardinal article of their faith was to "improve the breed," which meant to breed a horse with great speed, stamina and soundness. In fact, on the C.V. Whitney farm in Lexington, a foal born with a crooked leg was usually taken into the woods and shot, lest he or she pollute the Whitney bloodlines with this inherent deformity.

By the middle of the last century, this tight-knit racing world began to change. As these families died out and their blue-chip breeding stock was sold at dispersal auctions, the best stallions and mares fell into the hands of commercial breeders, whose central motivation was to breed, not so much a sound or durable horse, but rather an attractive horse, a "cosmetic horse," who showed well, who had a pedigree filled with fashionable names, preferably sire lines that glowed with speed, and who thus would draw the biggest price at the fanciest yearlings sales. Because they needed to look like show horses, these hothouse yearlings were often raised in small pens and not allowed to run free, or to kick, bite and roughhouse with their peers.

[. . .] This gradual softening and weakening of the breed has led to the use of more medications to keep these horses running sound, among them the corticosteroids injected into injured knees and ankles. [. . .] Drugs are only one way that the industry has been trying to make up for the weakening of the American thoroughbred. A number of racetracks have already replaced their dirt tracks with softer Polytrack surfaces, for the purpose of reducing breakdowns, but all we know about these tracks is that they often are the bane of true speed horses, favoring come-from-behind plodders. They have made the outcome of races so unpredictable that they have driven the high-rolling, sophisticated gamblers away from the betting parlors; and they may or may not save horses' lives. The jury remains sequestered.

All such expedients are aimed at forgiving commercial breeders for what they have done to the breed. At the core of the problem is the fact that the fastest and most popular sire lines in the world are the least durable and sound.

[Eight Belles' breakdown: a predictable tragedy]

This decrease in starts per horse over time also sheds light on another contemptible fact directly related to the absurdity of the economic covetousness of the industry. With exaggerated breeding fees and bloodstock sales that generate literally millions of dollars it has forced breeders to resort to breeding something fashionable that people will be interested in buying. Unfortunately the fastest sires are usually the most unsound. In the commercial sense of the word, horses are no longer bred to race but rather are bred to sell.

[HORSE RACING — BREEDING FOR TROUBLE]

James Watson: reduce parental age

DNA pioneer James Watson's genetic prescription: Have kids early

"If you add together all the mental diseases ... your chance of having a child with something bad is about 5 percent," Watson explained [. . .] So here's Watson's prescription: "You could reduce the frequency of this 5 percent — maybe down to one and a half percent, or 1 percent — if everyone had their children or if the DNA came from them when they were 15," he said.

Related: Paternal age and fitness in pre-industrial Finland (SMBE 2013)

R. A. Fisher: The Social Selection of Fertility (1930)

Chapter 11 of The Genetical Theory Of Natural Selection:

"De-Extinction" startup and embryo screening

"By reviving lost species, a new company could put a warm and fuzzy face on advanced reproductive engineering":

Two of biotechnology’s most prolific and far-sighted researchers say they’re teaming up to start a company that intends to rewrite the rules of animal reproduction.

The company, provisionally named Ark Corporation, is being cofounded by stem-cell pioneer Robert Lanza and Harvard Medical School DNA expert George Church. [. . .]

But here’s the deal: the very same biotechnologies needed to reanimate lost species are going to have far, far greater financial and social impact when they’re applied to commercial breeding of livestock, pets, and even humans. [. . .]

Ark’s key technology is going to be induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells (see “Growing Heart Cells Just for You”). To make iPS cells, researchers take an ordinary skin cell and, by modifying it or adding certain chemicals, turn it into a potent stem cell that’s able to grow into any other tissue of the body, including eggs and sperm.

It’s exactly this ability to make sperm and eggs in the lab that opens the commercial possibilities Lanza and Church say their startup company will exploit. [. . .]

Beyond farm animals, iPS cells have even more mind-boggling possibilities in human reproduction. With this technology, it may be possible to create functional eggs and sperm for people who are infertile because of age or other issues.

Note that in the China Is Engineering Genius Babies stories statements like "embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelligence by five to 15 IQ points" refer to what's plausible with current IVF technology. Here, a relatively restricted number of embryos would be produced; they'd be sequenced or genotyped; and estimates of genomic IQ or other traits of interest would be used in choosing one or two of the embryos to implant. Again, there's nothing (beyond presently insufficient sample sizes) that prevents this from happening with our current understanding of genetics and existing reproductive technology.

Projecting forward very minimally, if it becomes possible to effectively and cheaply produce hundreds or thousands of eggs from skin cells, besides likely increasing the uptake of IVF with embryo screening by couples with normal fertility (ovarian hyperstimulation, etc., is not something I expect most women would rush to volunteer for in exchange for the promise their children will average 5 points higher in IQ) it should make possible much higher levels of selection per generation. A similar and potentially even greater increase in selective power might come from genetic screening of individual sperm cells prior to fertilization, which has now been demonstrated in mice. Beyond IQ, it should be similarly straightforward to select for any other heritable quantitative trait or for combinations of traits (height, longevity, physical ability, etc.).

Genetic architecture of intelligence from SNP distance measures

From a presentation by Steve Hsu (pdf slides):

Quantitative traits: many alleles, each of small effect. GWAS discovery of individual loci is hard.

But, phenotype differences must be associated with LARGE number of genetic differences.

Investigate pairwise genetic distance as g score (or height) are varied. Extract underlying genetic architecture:
1. Distribution of associated alleles dominated by small MAF (Minor Allele Frequency)
2. More (−) than (+) minor alleles (MAF < 0.5)
3. Rough estimate of 10k causal alleles in total [. . .]

Select outlier groups H and L. Averaging over pairs eliminates fluctuations in distance which are uncorrelated to phenotype.

Average pairwise genetic distance changes with mean IQ and IQ difference: ∼ 39 SNPs per population SD [. . .]

Low IQ = more rare (−) variants. Larger genetic distances between individuals. Similar results for height. [. . .]

Geniuses and Giants: Fewer deleterious alleles.

(A) 39 SNPs per SD of IQ suggests roughly 10k causal variants.

(B) Exceptional cognitive ability = of order 100’s fewer rare (−) variants than an average person.

Apropos of the last post, here's Hsu's comment when linking to these slides:

In the context of human genetics, it's clear there's plenty of room at the top -- possibly as much as +30 SDs based on existing variance in the human population! (Compare to the result of selection in maize.)

Nor does Hsu shrink from the practical implications:

Imagine what a couple might pay to ensure that they get the best out of 10 or 50 possible offspring, optimizing over their choice of heritable attributes. Compare this with the cost of a Harvard education or K-12 private school tuition. The cost of an IVF cycle is down to a few thousand dollars and could go even lower.

Genetic prediction at high accuracy will probably be possible once of order millions of genotype-phenotype data pairs are available for analysis. I predict about 5-10 years. The advance in the Nature article makes me confident that the necessary reproductive technologies will also be available.

I hope that progressive governments will make this procedure free for everyone. The benefits from increased economic output, decreased welfare and criminality rates, etc. far outweigh the cost of what I have described above ( = few cycles of IVF + running my algorithms provided at dirt cheap licensing rates ;-) [. . .]

You can't use US numbers for real medical costs -- our system has huge distortions. Few $K is the cost in Taiwan or Korea and success rates are if anything higher there. That's not even factoring the economies of scale that would arise if a large fraction of couples wanted it.

Who says the US is the first market for this?

No doubt Hsu is correct that Asia is unlikely to hesitate in applying the lessons of quantitative genetics to humans -- regardless of what Alexis Madrigal-types would have for the US. The Chinese government funds the genetics of intelligence study Hsu is involved in. Also see Hsu's slides from a previous talk (pdf):

THE FUTURE OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

• Suppose that we can non- destructively sequence gametes (sperm and egg cells).

• We can imagine parents choosing which gametes to unite in order to constitute their offspring.

• In particular, they might choose to unite gametes bearing many g-enhancing alleles. [. . .]

“Suppose we knew, for instance, twenty [loci affecting] mental characters. These would combine in over a million [homozygous] mental types. In practice each of these would naturally occur rather less frequently than one in a billion, or in a country like England, about once in 20,000 generations.

“It will give some idea as to the excellence of the best of these types when we consider that the Englishmen from Shakespeare to Darwin ... have occurred within ten generations; the thought of a race of men combining the illustrious qualities of these giants, and breeding true to them, is almost too overwhelming ...

“... but such a race will inevitably arise in whatever country first sees the inheritance of mental characters elucidated.”— RONALD A. FISHER, “MENDELISM AND BIOMETRY”

The Atlantic: How Eugenic Breeding Transformed the Dairy Industry

The Perfect Milk Machine: How Big Data Transformed the Dairy Industry:

There is a reason, of course, that the semen that Badger-Bluff Fanny Freddie produces has become such a hot commodity in what one artificial-insemination company calls "today's fast paced cattle semen market." In January of 2009, before he had a single daughter producing milk, the United States Department of Agriculture took a look at his lineage and more than 50,000 markers on his genome and declared him the best bull in the land. And, three years and 346 milk- and data-providing daughters later, it turns out that they were right. [. . .]

No matter how you apportion the praise or blame, the net effect is the same. Thousands of years of qualitative breeding on family-run farms begat cows producing a few thousand pounds of milk in their lifetimes; a mere 70 years of quantitative breeding optimized to suit corporate imperatives quadrupled what all previous civilization had accomplished. And the crazy thing is, we're at the cusp of a new era in which genomic data starts to compress the cycle of trait improvement, accelerating our path towards the perfect milk-production machine, also known as the Holstein dairy cow. [. . .]

"Animal breeders for many decades have used models that assume most traits are influenced by thousands of genes with very small effects. Some [individual] genes do have detectable effects, but many studies of plant and animal traits conclude that most of the genetic variation is from many little effects."

For dairy cows -- or humans, for that matter -- it's just not as simple as the dominant-recessive single-gene paradigm that Mendel created. In fact, Mendel picked his model organism well. Its simplicity allowed him to focus in on the simplest possible genetic model and figure it out. He could easily manipulate the plant breeding; he could observe key traits of the plant; and these traits happened to be controlled by a single gene, so the math lay within human computational range. Pea plants were perfect for studying the basics of genetics.

With that in mind, allow me to suggest, then, that the dairy farmers of America, and the geneticists who work with them, are the Mendels of the genomic age. That makes the dairy cow the pea plant of this exciting new time in biology. Last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, two of the most successful bulls of all time had their genomes published.

This is a landmark in dairy herd genomics, but it's most significant as a sign that while genomics remains mostly a curiosity for humans, it's already coming of age when it comes to cattle. It's telling that the cutting-edge genomics company Illumina has precisely one applied market: animal science. They make a chip that measures 50,000 markers on the cow genome for attributes that control the economically important functions of those animals. [. . .]

Mendel may have worked with plants, the rules he revealed turned out to be universal for all living things. The same could be true of the statistical rules that dairy scientists are learning about how to match up genomic data with the physical attributes they generate. The statistical rules that reflect the way dozens or hundreds of genes come together to make a cow likely to develop mastitis, say, may be formally similar to the rules that govern what makes people susceptible to schizophrenia or prone to living for a long time. Researchers like the University of Queensland's Peter Visscher are bringing the lessons of animal science to bear on our favorite animal, ourselves.

Want to live for a very long time? Well, we hope to discover the group of genes that are responsible for longevity. The problem is that you have genomic data over here and you have phenotypic data, i.e. how things actually are, over there. What you need, then, is some way of translating between these two realms. And it's that matrix, that series of transformations, that animal scientists have been working on for the past decade.

And this is as deep as the author of this piece, Alexis Madrigal, gets into the "lessons of animal science" for humans. Predict lifespan and disease risk. But don't allow yourself to imagine this sort of information might have any more direct uses or implications for humans. Breathlessly promoting genetic betterment of cows in one article; mouthing sentiments like this in another:

Ever since humans deduced the powerful nature of DNA and all the associated molecules that do work in our cells, people have wondered: how long before we can simply change our own genes? On the one hand, all kinds of genetic diseases could be cured. On the dark side, if genetics sets the limits of human action, how long before we create genetically enhanced humans? And, like many things in bioethics, these thoughts are never very far away from the long shadow of the Nazis' eugenics program.

TEDxCambridge: George Church on genomics and human diversity

"George Church considers recent advances in genomics and personalized medicine and asks: as we seek to eliminate disorders like schizophrenia and dyslexia, or even rare genetic diseases, how should we think about preserving human diversity?"

Slide at 7:20:

"Rare [does not necessarily equal] Deleterious

MSTN: Lean muscles
LRP5: Extra-strong bones
PCSK9: Greatly reduced risk of heart disease
CCR5: Virus-resistance

Embrace the extremes: informative, easy, powerful"

Conclusion: "So anyway we and others are sequencing these long-lived animals and humans and we hope this will be part of a bigger project to measure and design humans going forward."

Some asshole named "Ken Weiss" wants whole genome sequencing to go away

Is whole genome sequencing fading? Will it rebound (or relapse)?

There are various informal indicators that funders are losing enthusiasm for human whole genome sequencing. [. . .] If this turns out to be more than a few anecdotes or personal opinions, and is actually occurring, it's understandable and to be lauded. As we think we can truthfully claim, we have for years been warning of the dangers of the kind of overkill that genomics (and, indeed, other 'omics' fads) present: promise miracles and you had better deliver!

The same thing applies to evolutionary studies that seek whole genome sequences as well as to studies designed to use such data to predict individual diseases. There are too many variants to sort through, the individual signal is too weak, and too many parts of the genome contribute to many if not most traits, for genomes to be all that important--whether for predicting future disease, normal phenotypes like behaviors, or fitness in the face of natural selection.

The proper response to genomic complexity is of course not to throw ones hands up and go back to candidate gene studies, but to sequence lots and lots of genomes in full. This is what needs to happen, and falling sequencing costs mean this is what will happen, regardless of what Ken Weiss wants.

Note: Ken Weiss is "Evan Pugh Professor of Anthropology and Genetics at Penn State University". I can think of a few possibilities: (1) Weiss is sincere in believing medical science and evolutionary research would be better advanced with less whole genome sequencing; he's not malicious -- just short-sighted, unimaginative, and breathtakingly ignorant of the broader state of his supposed academic specialty. (2) Weiss is merely jealous that his colleagues are getting bigger grants than him, a frailty he could perhaps be forgiven. (3) "Anthropology and Genetics" professor Weiss, for some reason, prefers that human evolutionary and genetics research not advance.

Looking at some of his other posts, I see plenty of evidence ethnic and/or ideological considerations underpin Weiss's "warnings" about genomics.

Advice for women and men

Some woman: "In the end, infertility can make you feel less human. As cultivated as we are, we hold on to a deep-rooted belief that our worth is tied to how well, and how much, we reproduce. I've seen women and men shrink like salted slugs during IVF treatment. [. . .] Many women are still listening to their bosses instead of their gynecologists and their guts. They still trust that their mid to late 30s is a fine time to start trying for children. True, they could get lucky. But the question should be asked: Would you prefer to have children earlier and naturally or later, by dosing yourself up with drugs, submitting to surgery and paying tens of thousands of dollars? [. . .] The first thing I'd like to tell women ages 26 to 34 is: Start having babies. I know it's not polite or funny. But I don't want others to go through what I'm going through now." (Holly Finn; My Fertility Crisis; We hear about fertility treatments when they're successful. But for millions of women, they mean regret, heartbreak, shame and silence.)

Winston Churchill: "There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies" - radio broadcast, 1943. "You must have four children. One for Mother, one for Father, one for Accidents, one for Increase".

Julian Huxley: "If we want to maintain the race, at a high level, physically and mentally, everybody sound in body and mind should marry and have enough children to perpetuate their stock and carry on the race."

Genetic deterioration of modern populations?

A post by Notus Wind brought this paper to my attention:

Although mutation provides the fuel for phenotypic evolution, it also imposes a substantial burden on fitness through the production of predominantly deleterious alleles, a matter of concern from a human-health perspective. [. . .] a consideration of the long-term consequences of current human behavior for deleterious-mutation accumulation leads to the conclusion that a substantial reduction in human fitness can be expected over the next few centuries in industrialized societies unless novel means of genetic intervention are developed.

I know Hamilton expressed similar concerns, but to the extent accelerated accumulation of deleterious mutations under modern conditions is a real/serious problem this author's suggestion of "multigenerational cryogenic storage and utilization of gametes and/or embryos" seems preferable to some of Hamilton's goofier "solutions" (such as marrying HIV- Nairobi prostitutes to protect one's offspring from impending AIDS epidemic). I'm not too worried about imminent mutational meltdown (some modern "problems" like antibiotics may be in the process of solving themselves), but from a strictly conservationist or even historical standpoint, large-scale, long-term storage of human genetic and/or gametic material makes sense. If we can see the need for plants and animals, why not for ourselves?

Puritan intelligence: the ideological background to IQ

Anti-IQ academic "blames" intelligence testing and eugenics on Puritans and Quakers.

John White. Puritan intelligence: the ideological background to IQ. Oxford Review of Education, Volume 31, Issue 3 September 2005 , pages 423 - 442.

Given well-known difficulties in justifying the Galtonian conception of intelligence as innate general intellectual capacity, a historical explanation is required of why this problematic notion became so prominent in Britain and in the USA in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Parallels are drawn between it and various features of the thought-world of the Puritans, including ideas of predestination, the elect, salvation, vocation, and intellectual education. An examination of the family backgrounds of the leading pioneers of intelligence and intelligence testing reveals that most, if not all, of them had puritan roots. A final section focuses on the tight connexion made between Galtonian intelligence and abstract thinking. It suggests that this may be linked with the central role of logic in puritan thought and its alliance with 'pneumatology', the forerunner of scientific psychology.

More excerpts within:

IQ dysgenics in the United States

Richard Hoste recently wrote about an analysis of NLSY data by Gerhard Meisenberg published in the journal Intelligence showing a negative relationship between IQ and realized fertility. Here's the abstract of a related paper from Meisenberg published in Mankind Quarterly:

A negative relationship between intelligence and fertility in the United States has been described repeatedly, but little is known about the mechanisms that are responsible for this effect. Using data from the NLSY79, we investigate this issue separately for Blacks, non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanics. The major findings are: (1) Differential fertility would reduce the average IQ of the American population by up to 1.2 points per generation in the absence of migration and environmental changes; (2) About 0.4 points of the effect is caused by selection within racial and ethnic groups, and the rest is caused by between-group selection; (3) Differential fertility by intelligence is greatest in Hispanics and smallest in non-Hispanic Whites; (4) The fertility-reducing effect of intelligence is greater in females than males; (5) The IQ-fertility relationship is far stronger for unmarried than married people, especially females; (5) High intelligence does not reduce the desire for children; (6) High intelligence does not reduce the likelihood of marriage; (7) Education is the principal mediator of the IQ effect for married women.

[Gerhard Meisenberg, Anubhav Kaul. Effects of Sex, Race, Ethnicity and Marital Status on the Relationship between Intelligence and Fertility. Mankind Quarterly. Washington: Spring 2010. Vol. 50, Iss. 3; pg. 151, 37 pgs.]

Geneticists and the biology of race crossing

Writing in Science in 1973, Will Provine argues (pdf):

Geneticists in England and the United States clearly reversed their published remarks on the effects of race crossing between 1930 and 1950. [. . .] The entire reversal occurred in the light of little new compelling data from studies of actual human race crosses.

Provine also displays the following bit of prescience:

Geneticists' ideas about the related question of hereditary mental differences between races is perhaps undergoing a similar development to that seen earlier in their ideas about race crossing. [. . .] It will be interesting to see if during the next several decades geneticists will argue, on the basis of little additional evidence, that hereditary mental differences between races do not exist.

More excerpts below (continue reading).

Black-white differences in digit ratio during prenatal development

An exhibit from the 1921 second international congress of eugenics shows black-white 2d:4d differences established by the third month of gestation [1].

While this bit of evidence does not definitively rule out involvement of androgens in the black-white divergence in digit ratio, it certainly does nothing to quell my doubts about the meaningfulness of cross-racial comparisons of digit ratio for inferring cross-racial differences in prenatal testosterone exposure. The critical windows of androgen exposure for developing males seem to come with mid-gestational and postnatal surges of testosterone to near-adult levels [2]. I'm inclined to believe, rather, black-white differences in digit ratio are due largely if not entirely to genetic factors unconnected to prenatal androgenization. On an entirely unrelated note, a caption above reads:

The hand is relatively broader and slightly shorter and the thumb relatively longer in the white fetus than in the negro fetus

Coincidentally, according to the second source I cite above (a review article from 2006):

Non-human apes and brachiating monkeys have shorter thumbs and longer fingers, and also lower 2D:4D.

Other differences reported in the 1921 study include smaller brain case and higher frequency of evolution toe in black fetuses (continue reading).

Coon: Race and social evolution (1962)

The conclusion of Carleton Coon's paper from the CIBA Foundation conference "Man and His Future":

I have left to the end the most troublesome — and least rationally handled — aspect of the total problem of social evolution, that of race. Yet it is a real problem and must be faced if we are to do anything but chat about the future of man. Since the time of our first knowledge of Homo erectus our genus has been divided into geographical races adapted in varying fashions and degrees to heat, cold, altitude, and disease. These adaptations remain. How long will the Communist Chinese be able to survive and reproduce their kind in the thin air of Tibet? Will the genetic superiority of native West Africans over White men, which has kept the latter out for centuries, be lost when all the malaria-carrying mosquitoes have been stamped out with millions of tons of DDT? If the races of man stay where they are best adapted, it creates much less trouble than when they move into each other's territories.

And, more importantly, are all peoples equally suited, in a neuroendocrinological sense, to live under the regimentation which is bound to come in a vastly overcrowded world? These are questions that I cannot answer, and the very mention of them is considered indecent in my country. Do the minds of all races work in the same fashion, do not their emotions differ with differences in their hormonal peculiarities, and is it not possible that cultures vary to a certain extent in terms of these variations? These questions require research, and the results may mar the vision of a single world culture. People are genetically and culturally different, and short of a global police state run by persons yet to be determined, entrusted with the power to perform chromosomal surgery and interspecific transplants, they will remain different for a long time to come. If the world is to become united, the union must be a loose confederation of very different units, or it will not long endure.

[Carleton S. Coon, "Growth and Development of Social Groups," in Man and His Future (Gordon Wolstenholme, ed.), a Ciba Foundation Volume (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963), pp. 120-133.]

In his autobiography, Coon says of the reaction to his paper:

In my diary I noted that Haldane had approved it heartily, and Bronowski had liked all of it except the last part, on race. He was a tiny man, almost a dwarf, with a huge, globular head topped with tightly curled, black hair. Had I been his twin, I wouldn't have like it either.

[Adventures and Discoveries, p. 346]

The official publication of the conference, Man and His Future, is available online (thanks, again, to archive.org's biodiversity collection). More on the conference, from Coon's autobiography:

At five o'clock, just after tea, Sir Julian Huxley delivered the first of sixteen papers. It was entitle "The Future of Man--Evolutionary Aspects." For me to try to abstract it here would do it ill justice. I can only note that he mentioned Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere, at that time a fashionable subject; the dependence of human progress on a procession of ideas: ecology, new drugs, population control, the population explosion, birth control; and a need for a rise in global IQ. In general, Sir Julian's paper was a stimulating overview of what the symposium was about.

And, describing the final chapter of The Living Races of Man:

Chapter 11, the last, is entitle "The Future of the Races of Man," and subtitled, "Every Man a Genius and the Centaur's Return." It is half joke, half fantasy. In it I toyed with some of the ideas expressed at the CIBA conference of 1962 by J. B. S. Haldane, Joshua Lederberg, Gregory Pincus, and others, about slicing chromosome with nano-knives (microscopic scalpels) to make transgeneric hybrids to serve as seal-human frogmen, building sperm banks that Hermann Muller had begun and William Shockley has revived; my own idea was to re-create black and white centaurs who could play polo with each other forever, thus stalemating interracial troubles.

Some notes on Sheldon and correlations between physique and personality

A pdf version of William H. Sheldon's 1942 book Varieties of temperament: a psychology of constitutional differences can be downloaded here. A summary of Sheldon's claims and some later work:

Sheldon (1942) claimed to have found strong correlations between somatotype and human behavior.

He posited three fundamental dimensions of temperament, each associated with a component of physique;

1. Visceratonia (associated with endomorphy) is characterized by lassitude, slow reaction to stimuli, and love of eating and physical comfort.
   
2. Somatotonia (associated with mesomorphy) is characterized by assertiveness, risk taking, aggressiveness, and indifference to pain.
   
3. Cerebrotonia (associated with ectomorphy) is characterized by physical and emotional restraint, fast reaction to stimuli, and social inhibition (Sheldon, 1942).

Table 1 shows the correlations between temperament and somatotype found by Sheldon (1942).

Table 1. Correlations between temperament and somatotype reported by Sheldon (p. 400, 1942)

	Endomorphy	Mesomorphy	Ectomorphy
Viscerotonia	.79	-.23	-.40
Somatotonia	-.29	.82	-.53
Cerebrotonia	-.32	-.58	.83

Note. All coefficients are significant at p < .01. N = 200.

However, these results were strongly criticized on methodological grounds. Sheldon’s early method of somatotyping, used in the 1942 study, involved a degree of subjective judgment (Carter and Heath, 1990; Cortés and Gatti, 1972; Parnell, 1958) and the ratings of temperament were made by the same researcher (Sheldon) who somatotyped the subjects. Sheldon fully acknowledged this latter point; [. . .]

Nevertheless, constitutional psychology can not be so easily dismissed. For example, there is now a large literature on the relationship between somatotype and a variety of health conditions, including hypertension and heart disease (Singh, 2007). Both Child (1950) and Cortés and Gatti (1965) tried to replicate Sheldon’s psychological findings using more objective somatotyping procedures and self-report measures of temperament. These results are shown in Tables 2 and 3.

Table 2. Correlations between temperament and somatotype reported by Child (p. 447, 1950)

	Endomorphy	Mesomorphy	Ectomorphy
Viscerotonia	.13**	.13**	-.15**
Somatotonia	.03	.38**	-.37**
Cerebrotonia	-.03	-.38**	.27**

Note. N = 400. **p < .01.

Table 3. Correlations between temperament and somatotype reported by Cortés and Gatti (p. 57, 1972)

	Endomorphy	Mesomorphy	Ectomorphy
Viscerotonia	.35**
Somatotonia		.22*
Cerebrotonia			.34***

Note. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001. N = 114. Other values not reported.

While the effect sizes were lower than those found by Sheldon, the pattern of correlations in these studies is essentially the same. There is now a substantial body of research showing weak to moderate correlations between somatotype and such variables as occupational interest (Deabler, Hartl, and Willis, 1975), academic performance (Parnell, 1958), temperament type (Peterson, Liivamagi, and Koskel, 2006), and susceptibility to hypnosis (Edmonston, 1977). Perhaps the most studied behavioral correlate of somatotype is the relationship between criminal behavior and mesomorphy (Cortés and Gatti, 1972; Glueck and Glueck, 1956). In a review of the research, Ellis and Walsh (2000) note that “to date, all studies have reported significant tendencies for delinquents and criminals to be more mesomorphic than persons in general” (p. 278).

[Jeremy E. C. Genovese. Physique Correlates with Reproductive Success in an Archival Sample of Delinquent Youth. Evolutionary Psychology. 2008. 6(3): 369-385.]

John Derbyshire mentions a 1951 Life magazine article on Sheldon's work.

On the basis of his work up to now, many workers in the psychiatric field and in the allied sciences of sociology and anthropology are convinced that Dr. Sheldon has done what Hippocrates tried to do 2,500 years ago: he has shown that character and physique are closely related, and that the first, like the second, is to a considerable extent a product of heredity.

[Robert Coughlan. What Manner of Morph Are You? In old debate on what makes temperament a new school of "constitutional psychiatry" gives heredity equal place with environment. LIFE Jun 25, 1951.]

A fan of his work is mortified by Sheldon's political views:

Sheldon in The Varieties of Delinquent Youth ranted about the endomorphic-mesomorphic mothers of the delinquents, and how America had become mongrelized from its original New England Anglo-Saxon origins. But just how much of a racist was Sheldon? Here we can look at the account by John Sample, in "A Closer Look at William H. Sheldon." It certainly looks like Sheldon had become prey to all sorts of fearful and hostile fantasies.

From the aforementioned essay by John Sample:

Far from a coolly objective social theorist, Sheldon, vituperatively anti-Semitic, favored northern Europeans, particularly Anglo-Saxons, as his preferred racial groups.

At the end of our visit, Sheldon said I could look forward to doing "great things." I think he may have said this because I was a reasonably intelligent, clean-cut Wasp! [. . .] He sent me on my way with a copy of American Nazi Lincoln Rockwell’s biography… Those visits ended my personal contact with William H. Sheldon.

Sheldon's origins:

William Herbert Sheldon was born in Pawtuxet, Rhode Island, on November 19, 1898. His parents, William Herbert and Mary Abby Greene, were related to old New England families like the Carders and Remingtons. And his father had been well off until a partner in the family firm ran off with the money. William and Mary had lost their first two daughters to diphtheria and then had three more children: Israel in 1889, Kate in 1891, and finally William seven years later. Sheldon's father had been able to keep the family homestead, which dated from around 1740, and supported his family by working as a jeweler in nearby Providence.

More:

William Herbert Sheldon was born in Warwick, Rhode Island, to an old New England family; his father bred poultry and dogs competitively. Sheldon’s early familiarity with the idea of breeding better species, and his sense of the importance of his own Anglo-Saxon pedigree, fed into his lifelong advocacy of eugenics, the program for breeding better humans that inspired his morphological research. Through his father’s tutelage, Sheldon came to recognize what he later termed a t or thoroughbred factor in the human constitution, the quality of appearing aesthetically pleasing.

[Nicole Rafter. SOMATOTYPING, ANTIMODERNISM, AND THE PRODUCTION OF CRIMINOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE. Criminology. Volume 45 Issue 4, Pages 805 - 833.]

This page lists some ways to determine body types; "measure your temperament", from the 1951 Life article:

The Puritans as a test case (1945)

Chapter 6 of Mainsprings of Civilization by Ellsworth Huntington. Some previous posts related to Huntington's work on the descendants of New England Puritans. The book (see body of post for link to complete version) also contains discussion of Icelanders, Junkers, and various other groups.

Here, focusing on a larger sample of names, Huntington finds that the descendants of the earliest Puritan settlers are more successful than those descended from later waves, and those with a greater degree of New England ancestry are more successful than those with less New England ancestry (continue reading).

Homo Sapiens 1900 (1998)

A somewhat tedious history of the eugenics movement by The Architecture of Doom-director Peter Cohen.

Google videos link; Wikipedia; IMDB.