Dominic Cummings predicted new methods will “revolutionise” IVF, ... Eugenics is a long-discredited and dangerous pseudo-science and should have no …
One response is that if this sort of thing does become possible, then a national health system should fund everybody to do this. Boris Johnson is under pressure to sack a 27-year-old adviser who praised the merits of eugenics. From 2007 to 2014, he was a special adviser to Michael Gove, including the time that Gove served as Education Secretary, leaving when Gove was made Chief Whip in a cabinet reshuffle. Dominic Cummings is the brains behind Boris.
But he added: “We will also be able to make predictions about outliers in cognitive abilities (the high and low ends).”Labour's Shadow Communities Secretary Andrew Gwynne claimed: "However Cummings tries to dance around his beliefs - it is clear that this is eugenics. In response, he insisted that he had "warned of the dangers of public debates being confused by misunderstanding of such technical terms." That silence over those questions before he quit should tell us all we need to know.On the same site Sabisky argued it was unclear if FGM was really “a serious risk to young girls...of certain minority group origins”. If the poor cannot do the same, then the rich could quickly embed advantages and society could become not only more unequal but also based on biological classes. The latest outcry is about Andrew Sabisky, who was thought to have been contracted by Downing Street under Boris Johnson’s aide Dominic Cummings, apparently to work on special projects.
Get our daily email briefing straight to your inboxHe added: "China is pushing very hard on genomics… America has political and regulatory barriers holding it back on genomics that are much weaker here.This is where embryos are excluded from IVF based on markers in their DNA.
Once the knowledge exists, it is hard to see what will stop some people making use of it and offering services to – at least – the super-rich.”PM’s aide dragged further into row over decision to hire adviser with eugenicist viewsCummings’s ideas were also criticised by Andrew Gwynne, the shadow communities secretary, who said: “However Cummings tries to dance around his beliefs, it is clear that this is eugenics.
It has repeatedly refused to answer questions this week over whether Johnson agrees with Sabisky that black people have lower IQs on average.David Curtis, an honorary professor in the UCL Genetics Institute at University College London, said Cummings had “fundamentally misunderstood key concepts in genetics and his suggestions are wildly unrealistic”.The professor, who is editor-in-chief of the Annals of Human Genetics, whose original title was the Annals of Eugenics, called the idea “ludicrous” and said: “It’s incredible to think that his proposals would involve creating 10 healthy fertilised embryos and then discarding nine of them, purely to select the one which scored highest on some completely illusory measure.”In a blogpost covering his views on the future of “designer babies”, Cummings said he believed rich would-be parents would inevitably select embryos with “the highest prediction for IQ” and floated the idea that “a national health system should fund everybody to do this” to avoid an unfair advantage for the wealthy.He said this could allow rich people to become more intelligent than poorer people who could not afford expensive genetic screening, and said one way to combat the problem would be making embryo selection for intelligence available on national health services.Cummings’ suggestion that the state could provide embryo selection by potential IQ to anyone who wants it will alarm critics who fear radical change to the NHS under Boris Johnson’s stewardship.Prof Richard Ashcroft, a medical ethicist at City University, called Cummings’ ideas “cargo cult science”.
He might be able to play the Cabinet, but he can’t be allowed to play God.”Mr Sabisky was accused of supporting eugenics after writing in 2014 that long-term contraception could be enforced at puberty to stop a “permanent underclass”.The criticism came as No10 faced questions yesterday about how aide Andrew Sabisky - who quit his role on Monday night - was hired in Mr Cummings’ appeal for “weirdos and misfits”.On his blog, Mr Cummings quoted research saying genes have a “substantial influence” on people’s IQ, and said genomic tests - cheaper all the time - can now predict people’s heights “within a few cm”.He warned against relying on ‘early years’ programmes like Sure Start, which he said was based on flawed evidence, to improve children’s lives. Peter Jukes posted the quote from a story about Sir Humphry Tyrrell Wakefield, the father of Cummings' wife, Mary Wakefield, missing pheasant season to ride his horse the length of Britain. This has been corrected.No 10 declined to comment on whether Cummings still held the same views on selection of genes for intelligence as expressed in the 2014 post.