Jane Goodall Quotes
I believe that we have more capability than any other creature to control our biological inheritance - and we do so most of the time.
Goodall, Jane. In the Shadow of Man. Houghton Mifflin, 1971.
Actually, while such selective breeding is possible in all animals, the selection for a single trait almost always produces other unintended and unanticipated traits and these could be devastating to the “new generation”, unpleasant, benign, or anything else. At the time selective breeding was the only possible tool to produce “desirable” traits in an animal or to eliminate what someone things of as “undesirable” traits. Today, our understanding of the human genome and genetic engineering offers a much more reliable possibility of affecting animal traits without as many risks of random and unintended consequences that are present with breeding.
As early as this was in scientific history, he essentially described the process whereby new species are formed by the mutation from the old series.
40 years later, it was clear that he was correct about the possibility of man directing his own evolutionary future. It was also clear that man was doing just that by his effect on his own ecosphere and other humans. However Beadle envisioned an intentional planned set of actions, taken by society as a whole. However, in most counties the political system has not been very facile at examining the alternatives with the advice of scientists. In the United States about half of the politicians reject the information provided by the overwhelming majority of the scientists, and the great challenge was whether in the future man will knowingly and with forethought affect his evolution or with ignorance and unintended consequence will do so.
The Eugenics Movement, which grew quite popular for a while, tried to improve the race of man, not by improving individual people or even a generation of people, but of selective and restrictive breeding of humans. The coercion and bias associated with it caused one of the worst violations of human rights in American History, and then was picked up by Adolf Hitler who carried the ideas to one of the worst atrocities in human history—the murder of “inferior races” so that they could not breed, thereby in their warped theory developing a super race.
He was certainly correct. Once we had the human genome, it was bio-scientists who first started rethinking their perspective on life, Then it was physicians and other scientists. Soon the philosophers and theologians reconsidered their views, and then some laypeople and politicians.
He and others have already done it. Joyce's lab at the Scripps Research Institute was the first to produce a self-replicating in vitro system, capable of exponential growth and continuing evolution, composed entirely of RNA enzymes. Most politicians do not understand much about evolution and many actually believe that evolution has not been proven an is not what governs the development of species. And at some point these men and women will have to come to grips with this scientific reality and decide what if any restrictions there should be on the human control and manipulation of the evolution of different species.
This pseudo-scientific organization, in spite of the junk science it was promulgating, actually had a substantial American following and over 20 states actually passed laws to allow forced sterilization who were “UNFIT”. In reality while there is a genetic component to each of the examples it only increases the probabilities and is not determinative. And even f it were and there were selective breeding of humans, these “TRAITS” would not be eliminated in 3 generations,
Dame Jane Morris Goodall DBE, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 60-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960, where she witnessed human-like behaviours amongst chimpanzees, including armed conflict.
