LLike many of us, I was dismayed when I woke up a few weeks ago to learn that Donald Trump would be returning to the White House. This time he was helped by the world’s richest man and astronaut, Elon Musk. Among the many attractive aspects of their unity is a fondness for some unsavory genetics. Trump is an ardent advocate of the “horse theory”, which he shares with white people; the belief that he himself is superior and that this is based on his “good genes”. It’s a silly idea, but it directly informs his toxic views on immigration, where he says the country needs to be protected “bad genes” of outsiders.
Meanwhile, Musk has his own weird ideas about genetics, wrapped up in a messiah. Like other technologists, he aims to “save humanity” by producing as many children as possible, convinced that our future depends on them. This would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that Trump and Musk now have more power than they ever had before. The shared thread running through their speeches is genetic determinism: the idea that who you are, and what you can achieve, all depends on your DNA. Nothing else matters.
The problem is that genetic determinism, with the exception of fixing the “big molecule”, is boringly fraught. When James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA in 1953, they hailed it as “the secret of life”. In 2000, President Bill Clinton declared that sequencing the human genome is like learning “the language in which God created life”. In fact, science always has the potential to be exciting in this way; I don’t want to kill any scientist. But I worry that in all the excitement, we might forget that DNA doesn’t define us.
This discourse has continued outside the world of science, marketing cars “with their DNA”, or the discussion of the “DNA” of a football team – it has become synonymous with everything else. One from “qualifications” to “values”. “. The proliferation of discourses that link DNA to identity is dangerous for generating false ideas. This is the kind of language that Musk and Trump thrive on, making the policies of isolation look like smart science-based decisions. Because, if genetics is everything, why bother with policies aimed at addressing inequality? Why waste time and resources to solve social problems when we are all products of our genes?
In debates about genetics and public policy, it’s easy for the language of genetic selection to lure you into casual discussions of “nature”. You know this argument: maybe you were born with it; maybe it’s the prevailing levels of social inequality? But this debate completely misses the big picture: it should not be seen as a binary choice. The truth is, people are born with genes that require a good environment to thrive. It is not either/or, but a complex interaction between the two that determines who a person becomes. We have a nurturing nature. Good science accounts for this complexity, rather than reducing it to a simple binary.
As well as making it difficult to argue for progressive social policies, genetic determination also has a long history of being used to justify violence, particularly on the right. In 2022, a gunman in Buffalo, New York, cited genetics as part of his reasoning for racially motivated mass shootings. Rasethunya took various scientific ideas, mainly from genetics, but also from the environment, and combined them with white people’s conspiracies such as the “grand theory of evolution”.
The hope that real-world violence can re-emerge from the twisted interpretation of genetic science is not just a matter of theory; it is a dangerous truth. So how can we stop genes from working? It’s not just about calling out amazing scientific explanations: in some ways, it’s the easy part. A more difficult question involves emotions. Why are people – often driven by anger or fear – responsible for genetic engineering to justify their political views?
When trying to answer this question, one important thing to consider is that science is not only a selection of facts, but also a form of culture. As such, it is subject to “cultural poaching”, as the sociologist Michel de Certeau puts it – the illegal borrowing and repurposing of ideas. For example, take “survival of the fittest”. When Charles Darwin and other evolutionary scientists used the term, they had some idea of what they meant when they said “more”, they talk about how well an organism adapts to its environment. But in the wider culture, this idea has taken on a life of its own, where “better” is synonymous with “best”, or “power” – a term often used to express great ideas in a scientific way. .
There is evidence that some on the right are still tracking certain areas of study and publishing misrepresentations of scholarly research papers as soon as they become available. With due awareness of this type of phenomenon, some scientists are now publishing journal articles on how to prevent genetics from being used by extremists, while scientific ethics organizations such as Cera provides tools to achieve the same goal.
With figures like Trump and Musk wielding enormous power, and alt-right keyboard warriors helping them spread disinformation, genetic science has been forced forward. As uncomfortable as it may be, it’s more urgent than ever for people working in the field to ask: “How can my work be stolen, and what can I do about it?” are you stopping?”
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