444 ROBERT COOK 



In a moment, I wish to comment on questionable features of the stock- 

 breeding analogy, but in one respect it is excellent. The differences in exist- 

 ing breeds were brought about long before Mendel was born. They could 

 be maintained if every genetic text were burned. Is there any sense at all 

 in giving lay writers and the lay public the absurd idea that present genetic 

 concepts have gotten so complicated that eugenic progress is impossible? 

 Present genetic concepts have had absolutely no effect in producing the 

 existing breeds and varieties of plants and animals. To say that their in- 

 creasing complexity has any serious bearing on the possibility of improving 

 the inborn qualities of the human race is just as sensible as to say that the 

 increasingly muddled state of the science of immunology has any connection 

 with the problem of whether diphtheria antitoxin should be given to a child 

 exposed to that dread disease. 



The basic elements of Mendelism, unit characters, segregation, etc., do 

 make faster progress possible. But this message is still undelivered. A 

 man recently complained to me that he could not understand why the full- 

 brother of an outstanding racehorse was not just as good as his distinguished 

 sib. If the man had been a barber, playing the races occasionally, the inci- 

 dent would not have been significant. Rather disconcertingly, he was a 

 man of more than average intelligence and he had been breeding race horses 

 for years! Something seems to have gone wrong with the first sentence of 

 our message to Garcia. 



Eugenics, as suggested before, will remain a futile fad until it has its 

 hundreds of thousands of convinced and enthusiastic supporters. When 

 those who are actually engaged in breeding, though only as a hobby, have 

 not received even the first paragraph of the message, how can we even dare 

 hope that the necessary popular support will ever be forthcoming? 



Another most important factor is the emotional effect of our message upon 

 the recipient. It is here that the technique of cultists and of eugenists 

 differs most greatly. Dr. Hokum, the apostle of a nothing-in-particular 

 drones out meaningless phrases sonorously, and if we don't look too closely, 

 convincingly. They have an extremely comforting sound, and before he 

 knows it our friend Garcia is convinced, or thinks he is convinced, which is 

 all the same thing. Nothing is brought up that would put him in a "men- 

 tal state." Not so, alas, the eugenist. A case in point is the stock breed- 

 ing concept of human racial improvement as it has been used as a text more 

 than once. There is not the slightest question that this analogy can and 

 does produce very violent counter-reactions on the part of a great many 

 people. Furthermore, is it even passable as an analogy? The purposes in 

 the two fields are so very different! The breeder's ideal of a uniform type 



