The Evolution of Utopia
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 1991
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr Steve Jones, Reader in Genetics at University College, London delivers his final Reith lecture, in a series about the new biological insight into humanity.
In this lecture, Dr Jones explores the long history of genetic engineering including Frances Galton's founding of the 'science' of eugenics and its consequences.
There has long been a history of attempted genetic engineering by parents trying to dictate the sex of their offspring by various, almost always futile, and often painful, methods. It is now possible to do this with almost 100% success by separating female and male eggs in the test tube. Dr Jones examines the moral implications and varying views on such procedures, and how gene-therapy provokes the same sort of moral questions.
He argues that the biology of the future will not be very different to that of the past and it may even be that humans are at the end of their evolutionary road; as near to our biological utopia as we're ever likely to get.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures. |
| 0:04.4 | This lecture in the series The Language of the Genes given by Steve Jones was originally broadcast in 1991. |
| 0:12.2 | In Paraguay, there's an isolated village with an unusual name, Nueva Hermania, New Germany. |
| 0:19.7 | Its inhabitants look quite different from their neighbours. Many have blonde |
| 0:23.4 | hair and blue eyes. Their names are not Spanish, but are more likely to be Schutter or Neumann. |
| 0:29.8 | These people are the descendants of an experiment, an experiment in improving humanity. |
| 0:35.5 | Their ancestors were chosen from Saxony in 1886 by Elizabeth Nietzsche, sister of the philosopher, |
| 0:42.0 | as particularly splendid specimens selected for the German purity of their blood. |
| 0:47.3 | The idea was suggested by Wagner, who planned to visit, although he never did. |
| 0:52.2 | They were expected to found a community |
| 0:54.3 | so favoured in its genetic endowment |
| 0:56.4 | that it would be the seed of a new race of Superman. |
| 1:01.1 | Elizabeth Nietzsche died in 1935. |
| 1:04.1 | Hitler himself wept at her funeral. |
| 1:06.8 | Today, the people of Nueva Hermania are poor, |
| 1:10.1 | inbred and diseased. Their utopia has failed. |
| 1:16.9 | Before the Second World War, the idea that one can improve humanity by meddling with genes was popular. |
| 1:23.4 | It originated with the founder of my laboratory at University College London, |
| 1:29.7 | Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin. |
| 1:33.0 | Every day, I walk past relics of his life, |
| 1:35.7 | the fingerprints of a prime minister and a chimp, |
| 1:39.4 | an old copy of the Times and a brass counting gadget. |
... |
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