Genetic Progress by Voluntarily Conducted Germinal Choice 
endowment and the rate of reproduction. However, counsellors 
would understandably hesitate to be so cavalier as to assign 
people over-all ratings of so comprehensive a nature, and if they 
did so their advice would probably be resented and rejected. 
Similarly, the public in a democratic society would probably 
be unwilling to adopt social or economic rearrangements that 
were known to have as their purpose the encouragement of large 
families on the part of certain occupational groups, whose 
members were considered eugenically more desirable, and the 
making of reproduction less attractive for other occupational 
groups, considered genetically inferior. Moreover, the public’s 
objections to the introduction of such programmes would 
probably remain even if the people concerned were allowed the 
deciding voice in their choice of occupation. 
Perhaps such considerations as these have played a part in 
leading Dr. P. B. Medawar’7 and some others to conclude that 
consciously directed genetic change in man could only be 
carried out under a dictatorship, as was attempted by Hitler. 
As they realize, a dictatorship, though it might hoodwink, cajole 
and compel its subjects into participation in its programme, 
would try to create a servile population uncomplainingly con- 
forming to their rulers’ whims. That would constitute an 
evolutionary emergency much more immediate and ominous 
than any gradual degeneration occasioned by a negative cul- 
tural feedback. 
If all these proposed means of escaping our genetic predica- 
ment are impracticable, insufficiently effective, or even posi- 
tively vicious, what other recourse is available for us? To con- 
sider this problem we must rid ourselves of preconceptions 
based on our traditional behaviour in matters of parentage, and 
open our minds to the new possibilities afforded by our scientific 
knowledge and techniques. We shall then see that our progress 
along certain biological lines has won for us the means of 
Overcoming the negative feedback with which we are here 
concerned. We can do so by bringing our influence to bear 
not on the number of children in a family but on their genetic 
composition. 
257 
