WEBVTT 00:05.080 --> 00:07.800 'Should some of us be stopped from having children?' 00:12.040 --> 00:17.000 'Eugenics is the controversial idea that we can improve the quality 00:17.000 --> 00:22.920 'of the human race by selecting who can and who can't reproduce.' 00:22.920 --> 00:25.960 NEWSREEL: It would have been better by far for them 00:25.960 --> 00:29.200 and for the rest of the community if they had never been born. 00:31.560 --> 00:36.360 For more than a century, eugenics led innocent people, the disabled, 00:36.360 --> 00:41.120 the poor, the non-white, to be segregated, even sterilised, 00:41.120 --> 00:43.560 in the name of science. 00:43.560 --> 00:46.800 It was a formative influence on Adolf Hitler 00:46.800 --> 00:49.840 and a driving force of the Nazi death camps. 00:52.440 --> 00:57.160 We think it has nothing to do with us but in this series 00:57.160 --> 01:01.520 we'll find out how eugenics was, in fact, invented and promoted 01:01.520 --> 01:04.360 within the British establishment. 01:04.360 --> 01:06.800 My goodness. 01:06.800 --> 01:08.160 British. 01:08.160 --> 01:09.760 British idea. 01:09.760 --> 01:11.240 We invented it. 01:11.240 --> 01:13.960 The greatest horrors of the 20th century. 01:13.960 --> 01:16.840 The ideological roots are partly right here in London 01:16.840 --> 01:18.280 near where I live. 01:20.120 --> 01:24.280 I'm Angela Saini, an author and a science journalist. 01:24.280 --> 01:28.560 I'll be investigating the British scientists who came up with eugenics 01:28.560 --> 01:31.800 and asking why it became popular. 01:31.800 --> 01:36.480 I'll explore how this flawed idea managed to affect 01:36.480 --> 01:40.400 town planning, our education system, immigration laws, 01:40.400 --> 01:42.840 even attitudes to birth control. 01:44.960 --> 01:48.280 Pop one of those over your cervix, you are literally promoting 01:48.280 --> 01:49.560 the strength of the race. 01:49.560 --> 01:52.000 It's off-putting as well. 01:54.240 --> 01:59.360 I'm Adam Pearson, a reporter and disability rights activist. 01:59.360 --> 02:02.000 I was born with a genetic condition. 02:03.120 --> 02:06.720 I'll find out how eugenicists ruin people's lives. 02:08.560 --> 02:10.520 He was also known as a rat catcher. 02:10.520 --> 02:14.120 He'd go looking for people that were different. 02:14.120 --> 02:17.040 She was treated brutally. 02:17.040 --> 02:22.360 I want to know, are we about to enter a new age of eugenics 02:22.360 --> 02:27.360 as medical breakthroughs give us the power to manipulate our own DNA? 02:31.000 --> 02:34.200 There's no doubt genetic science will bring countless benefits. 02:34.200 --> 02:37.920 But what does it mean for the disabled 02:37.920 --> 02:39.520 or anyone not considered perfect? 02:42.120 --> 02:45.360 If you're telling me that the world without me is a better world, 02:45.360 --> 02:47.360 what does that say about me? 02:47.360 --> 02:49.880 That's eugenics, isn't it? Exactly. 02:51.160 --> 02:55.600 What will the next wave of science bring and what must we do to avoid 02:55.600 --> 02:58.720 repeating the terrible mistakes of the past? 03:00.880 --> 03:04.720 Philosophically, it's a minefield. 03:04.720 --> 03:06.720 Complete minefield. 03:18.200 --> 03:20.680 Bloomsbury in central London. 03:20.680 --> 03:22.440 In the 19th century 03:22.440 --> 03:25.560 this was the intellectual heart of Britain, 03:25.560 --> 03:28.680 home to famous scientists and writers. 03:28.680 --> 03:31.560 But I'm here to investigate the darker side 03:31.560 --> 03:33.680 of this illustrious past. 03:35.680 --> 03:38.960 What I really want to do is understand the connection 03:38.960 --> 03:43.800 between this place, London and Britain, and the history 03:43.800 --> 03:45.400 of this terrible idea. 03:47.160 --> 03:51.840 But this is the kind of thing I really want to dig deeper into. 03:51.840 --> 03:54.720 You know, where do these ideas come from? 03:57.640 --> 04:02.480 Eugenics begins with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. 04:02.480 --> 04:06.880 Although he had no idea how it would go on to be abused, 04:06.880 --> 04:08.960 the implications were there, 04:08.960 --> 04:12.280 embodied in a creature familiar to us all. 04:17.680 --> 04:20.280 These are known as 'fancy pigeons', 04:20.280 --> 04:24.360 bred by author and illustrator Katrina Van Grouw. 04:24.360 --> 04:27.160 As you can see, there are lots of different pigeons of all different 04:27.160 --> 04:29.640 colours and patterns in here. 04:29.640 --> 04:32.160 There are white ones and what we call 'checker'. 04:32.160 --> 04:36.560 There are red ones, black ones, all different colours of pigeons. 04:36.560 --> 04:39.600 Charles Darwin would have felt at home here. 04:39.600 --> 04:43.440 Like Katrina, he was an enthusiastic pigeon breeder. 04:45.880 --> 04:49.880 By carefully picking out the breeding partner for each bird, 04:49.880 --> 04:54.840 Darwin learned how characteristics are passed on through generations. 05:01.840 --> 05:04.880 Your house is absolutely chock-full of skeletons 05:04.880 --> 05:08.040 like these, and these beautiful drawings that you've done. 05:08.040 --> 05:09.120 Thank you. 05:09.120 --> 05:13.280 We're joined by science historian Greg Radick. 05:13.280 --> 05:17.040 This shows beautifully, exactly what Darwin was getting at. 05:17.040 --> 05:20.440 He wanted to document, this is the whole point of his pigeon studies, 05:20.440 --> 05:25.320 how variable even one species, even one breed 05:25.320 --> 05:28.960 within a species is, and your picture captures that and that's 05:28.960 --> 05:30.680 so important for Darwin. 05:34.760 --> 05:38.680 Darwin published his Theory Of Evolution By Natural Selection 05:38.680 --> 05:40.400 in 1859. 05:42.560 --> 05:46.800 Soon after, one scientist wondered what artificial breeding 05:46.800 --> 05:49.200 might mean for humans. 05:50.800 --> 05:54.120 He was Francis Galton, Darwin's cousin. 05:55.880 --> 05:58.600 Galton reads the book and gets excited 05:58.600 --> 06:01.480 because those qualities are inherited. 06:01.480 --> 06:06.400 Galton thinks if we can do that to dogs and pigeons and horses, 06:06.400 --> 06:08.720 what could we do to ourselves? 06:08.720 --> 06:13.040 Imagine if we gave a 20th of the attention to improving 06:13.040 --> 06:17.880 ourselves as a species as we give to our dogs and our cattle. 06:17.880 --> 06:21.280 What a galaxy of genius we might create. 06:21.280 --> 06:27.400 Galton coined the word "eugenics", meaning "well-born". 06:27.400 --> 06:30.080 Right. So that is the start of eugenics, then. 06:30.080 --> 06:33.040 That is the point at which people start to think 06:33.040 --> 06:35.840 that artificial breeding of the kind that you do with pigeons 06:35.840 --> 06:37.840 perhaps could be applied to people. 06:37.840 --> 06:41.120 That we could do the same to ourselves? Yes, absolutely. 06:50.800 --> 06:53.800 Following Francis Galton's trail leads me 06:53.800 --> 06:55.880 to University College London. 06:59.680 --> 07:04.320 Curator Subhadra Das looks after Galton's personal archive. 07:09.000 --> 07:13.400 Subhadra, what is the connection between Galton and UCL 07:13.400 --> 07:16.240 where we are now? That's a very good question. 07:16.240 --> 07:17.800 He was never a professor here. 07:17.800 --> 07:22.080 He never taught, but there is an important legacy that he left 07:22.080 --> 07:26.360 behind to this university, which was money for a professorship 07:26.360 --> 07:28.360 for Britain's, and possibly the world's, 07:28.360 --> 07:30.000 first-ever chair of eugenics. 07:30.000 --> 07:32.880 So, tell me more about Galton. Who was he? 07:32.880 --> 07:35.600 Galton is probably the most important Victorian scientist 07:35.600 --> 07:37.080 no-one has ever heard of. 07:37.080 --> 07:40.560 He contributed to many different subjects, things like crime science, 07:40.560 --> 07:42.320 things like meteorology. 07:42.320 --> 07:44.000 He was an African explorer. 07:44.000 --> 07:47.080 He did all of these different things, but his particular genius 07:47.080 --> 07:50.480 was statistics, and what he wanted to do was to understand 07:50.480 --> 07:52.160 the mechanism of heredity - 07:52.160 --> 07:55.040 how were traits passed from parents to their children? 07:58.800 --> 08:03.920 'Deep inside the archive are objects belonging to the eugenics department 08:03.920 --> 08:06.360 'that Galton helped to found here 08:06.360 --> 08:08.120 'more than a century ago. 08:09.760 --> 08:14.480 'Among them are a few unusual items invented by Galton himself.' 08:14.480 --> 08:17.160 I have a little box of tricks. 08:17.160 --> 08:19.160 OK, so this... 08:20.600 --> 08:23.160 So one of these is, they look like gardening gloves. 08:23.160 --> 08:25.440 They do look like gardening gloves. They are gloves. 08:25.440 --> 08:28.280 Left hand glove has been modified so there is a piece of felt, 08:28.280 --> 08:32.960 like a little felt pocket, across the top two fingers there. 08:32.960 --> 08:35.360 And we can take out a little piece of paper in there. 08:35.360 --> 08:37.200 Yep. Oh, my goodness. 08:37.200 --> 08:40.200 And then the other modification is, if you look in the thumb, 08:40.200 --> 08:42.600 can you see what's coming out the thumb there? 08:42.600 --> 08:46.720 There's a needle. And the needle, a sharp end of a needle. 08:46.720 --> 08:49.320 So what was he doing, then, with that needle? 08:49.320 --> 08:53.800 They are Galton's counting gloves and what they are is simultaneously 08:53.800 --> 08:56.600 a covert counting and rating device. 08:56.600 --> 08:58.680 A secret way of measuring something? 08:58.680 --> 09:01.680 Exactly. The way that it would work, if I could demonstrate to you, 09:01.680 --> 09:02.960 is like this. 09:02.960 --> 09:05.560 So, at this moment in time I am counting... You're measuring. 09:05.560 --> 09:07.360 Yeah. You can't even tell. 09:07.360 --> 09:09.560 That's so creepy. It is, isn't it? 09:09.560 --> 09:12.200 But what was he measuring? Gets creepier. 09:12.200 --> 09:16.480 So what he was measuring was the relative attractiveness 09:16.480 --> 09:19.560 of women in different metropolitan centres in Britain. 09:19.560 --> 09:21.960 So every time a woman walks by he's making a hole in the piece 09:21.960 --> 09:25.840 of paper and where he makes the hole is his judgment 09:25.840 --> 09:28.440 of her attractiveness. It's just bizarre! 09:28.440 --> 09:31.920 You can just imagine him kind of standing on a street corner, 09:31.920 --> 09:34.520 this creepy old man with his hands in his pocket... 09:34.520 --> 09:37.200 Watching the girls go by. ..watching the girls go by. 09:37.200 --> 09:40.720 Why did he think this was of any use, scientific use, at all? 09:40.720 --> 09:45.040 Well, so in terms of the eugenic state, the best babies come 09:45.040 --> 09:49.160 from intelligent mothers and Galton equated 09:49.160 --> 09:51.000 intelligence with attractiveness. 09:51.000 --> 09:53.920 If this project is going to be carried out nationally 09:53.920 --> 09:56.280 you need to know where the best incubators are. And then 09:56.280 --> 09:59.760 from that, you take these people with the beneficial traits and get 09:59.760 --> 10:01.240 them to breed. Absolutely. 10:01.240 --> 10:05.040 He wanted to increase the quality of the race 10:05.040 --> 10:06.960 because his concern was degeneration. 10:06.960 --> 10:10.360 There's growing urbanisation, there's growing industrialisation, 10:10.360 --> 10:13.920 there's a growing underclass of urban poor which he sees 10:13.920 --> 10:18.400 as completely criminal, and so he's concerned that those type of people 10:18.400 --> 10:22.000 are going to now start outnumbering HIS kind of people. 10:22.000 --> 10:24.720 So the only way to win is to win the breeding game. 10:27.960 --> 10:32.200 Galton set up a laboratory to measure the physical differences 10:32.200 --> 10:34.240 between thousands of people. 10:38.040 --> 10:42.600 To do this, he analysed vast swathes of data. 10:45.600 --> 10:49.440 In the process he helped invent modern statistics, 10:49.440 --> 10:52.760 including key concepts like standard deviation 10:52.760 --> 10:54.760 and regression to the mean. 10:56.960 --> 11:00.520 Eugenics is a discredited science but the basic ideas 11:00.520 --> 11:03.280 that are inherent in it, we've kept the statistics. 11:12.240 --> 11:16.640 Scientists may not go around drawing beauty maps any more, 11:16.640 --> 11:19.720 but the idea that the way you look might somehow 11:19.720 --> 11:22.920 determine your worth, is still alive and well. 11:28.200 --> 11:33.000 There is a great deal of stigma that comes with disability 11:33.000 --> 11:34.880 and disfigurement. 11:34.880 --> 11:38.280 For example, I've been assaulted, 11:38.280 --> 11:40.880 I'm getting yelled at in the street. 11:40.880 --> 11:43.480 Things like "Quasimodo", "The Elephant Man" 11:43.480 --> 11:46.520 "Spastic", "Big Head", "Freak". 11:46.520 --> 11:48.800 Camera phones coming out. 11:51.520 --> 11:55.840 If you have a disability, you are somehow less human, or subhuman. 11:57.080 --> 12:00.600 If I'd lived a hundred years ago when eugenics was new, 12:00.600 --> 12:03.920 when eugenics was kind of the iPad of its time, 12:03.920 --> 12:06.680 how would my life have turned out? 12:13.640 --> 12:17.440 To understand this, I'm investigating the way Galton thought 12:17.440 --> 12:21.080 looks could be used to identify the right sort of people, 12:21.080 --> 12:23.680 those who should breed, and the wrong sort of people, 12:23.680 --> 12:26.080 those who should not. 12:27.160 --> 12:32.080 In the 1880s, he visited the famous mental asylum Bethlem, to take 12:32.080 --> 12:34.080 photographs of the inmates. 12:36.120 --> 12:39.720 I'm with disability historian Richard Rieser. 12:39.720 --> 12:43.360 So, a lot of Galton's research is based on the fact 12:43.360 --> 12:46.920 that someone could literally look like an idiot, 12:46.920 --> 12:49.520 like if their head was a certain measurement, 12:49.520 --> 12:52.800 or if the statistics and data pointed a certain way 12:52.800 --> 12:55.000 that they'd be deemed incapable. 12:55.000 --> 12:57.040 Is that correct? 12:57.040 --> 12:58.280 Yes. 12:58.280 --> 13:01.960 Well, that was his hypothesis, and he then sought to prove 13:01.960 --> 13:05.320 that by taking pictures, measurements, to try and prove 13:05.320 --> 13:08.480 that this was a distinct group in the population. 13:08.480 --> 13:10.320 And so, for instance, this first woman 13:10.320 --> 13:12.000 with a very sullen expression, 13:12.000 --> 13:14.120 she's staring vacantly at the camera, 13:14.120 --> 13:18.000 she isn't really looking after how she looks and he's trying 13:18.000 --> 13:21.880 to say from this, you can deduce that this is someone 13:21.880 --> 13:23.880 with mental deficiency. 13:23.880 --> 13:26.360 This young man, the same sort of thing. 13:26.360 --> 13:29.360 But if you look at prison mugshots you would get the same thing 13:29.360 --> 13:32.760 and that doesn't mean that all those people are mentally deficient. 13:32.760 --> 13:35.040 It means that people are in a situation they don't want 13:35.040 --> 13:38.400 to be in and are being forced to have their picture taken. 13:38.400 --> 13:40.440 And his mission was to try and establish 13:40.440 --> 13:44.240 that there was this different subspecies of human beings, 13:44.240 --> 13:45.920 the mentally defective. 13:49.960 --> 13:52.440 ANGELA: This was not good science. 13:52.440 --> 13:53.840 We know that now. 13:55.560 --> 14:00.040 But despite its many flaws, Galton and his colleagues succeeded 14:00.040 --> 14:03.520 in establishing eugenics as a serious subject. 14:07.200 --> 14:10.480 At UCL he helped fund what would become 14:10.480 --> 14:15.120 the Francis Galton Laboratory For National Eugenics. 14:20.200 --> 14:24.120 Researchers here weren't just occupied with disabled people 14:24.120 --> 14:26.640 and the so-called mentally deficient. 14:26.640 --> 14:30.840 They also turned their eyes to people of other races. 14:32.640 --> 14:36.640 In the early 1900s, we begin to see disturbing links 14:36.640 --> 14:42.360 between British researchers at UCL and race scientists in Germany. 14:46.840 --> 14:49.880 Subhadra, that is just the creepiest thing I've ever seen. 14:49.880 --> 14:52.680 So these are glass eyes? These are glass eyes. 14:52.680 --> 14:54.840 But why was this important to understand that people 14:54.840 --> 14:57.360 have different eye colours and why? What does it matter? 14:57.360 --> 14:59.440 Well, because it's associated with racial types. 14:59.440 --> 15:01.160 So this 15:01.160 --> 15:04.040 is very similar to the eye gauge that we were just looking at, 15:04.040 --> 15:06.080 but this time it's with hair. 15:06.080 --> 15:08.040 So you'll see it says, "hair colour gauge, 15:08.040 --> 15:10.120 Professor Doctor Eugen Fischer." 15:10.120 --> 15:12.520 So this is an object of Fischer's design, 15:12.520 --> 15:15.200 and as you can see, there's different hair colours represented. 15:15.200 --> 15:19.120 So I would be somewhere here, 20... Well, both of us would. Yeah, 27. 15:19.120 --> 15:20.560 Exactly. 15:20.560 --> 15:24.120 And this device is specifically designed to measure the relative 15:24.120 --> 15:26.560 whiteness of mixed heritage people. 15:26.560 --> 15:29.200 And he is measuring the relative whiteness of people 15:29.200 --> 15:33.440 who are the children of European soldiers and native African women. 15:33.440 --> 15:36.600 This object has a sinister history. 15:36.600 --> 15:41.360 It was used in the early 1900s as German Imperial forces quashed 15:41.360 --> 15:45.200 an uprising in their colonies in southwest Africa, 15:45.200 --> 15:49.920 murdering as many as 80,000 people in the first genocide 15:49.920 --> 15:51.920 of the 20th century. 15:51.920 --> 15:56.640 The designer of the hair gauge, Eugen Fischer, experimented 15:56.640 --> 16:01.040 on prisoners, injecting them with tuberculosis and smallpox 16:01.040 --> 16:03.800 and measuring decapitated skulls. 16:07.120 --> 16:11.880 Fischer wrote books condemning racial mixing and justifying 16:11.880 --> 16:13.920 white racial superiority. 16:15.240 --> 16:19.800 His work would directly influence Hitler and Nazi policy. 16:22.200 --> 16:27.360 And just two years after the end of the genocide in southwest Africa, 16:27.360 --> 16:31.600 the Fischer hair gauge ended up here at UCL 16:31.600 --> 16:35.000 to be used by this man. 16:35.000 --> 16:39.920 Professor Karl Pearson was Galton's protege and the first chair 16:39.920 --> 16:43.240 of National Eugenics after Galton died. 16:47.640 --> 16:50.480 Professor Gavin Schaffer, a historian, 16:50.480 --> 16:53.560 has looked at the research that Pearson carried out 16:53.560 --> 16:54.920 in London's East End 16:54.920 --> 16:57.960 to build his theories of racial difference. 16:59.360 --> 17:02.200 Gavin has a personal connection to this. 17:04.680 --> 17:07.320 My great grandparents would have lived in this neighbourhood. 17:07.320 --> 17:11.120 They, in fact, did just live up the road and I am part of the... 17:11.120 --> 17:13.080 well, like so many of us are, 17:13.080 --> 17:16.160 I am part of the story that you're telling. 17:18.200 --> 17:21.120 The Jews' Free School in the East End 17:21.120 --> 17:23.560 was among the places Pearson visited. 17:23.560 --> 17:27.240 He wanted to carry out physical and mental tests 17:27.240 --> 17:29.440 on the children of immigrants. 17:30.960 --> 17:35.920 His work ended up in a report that was full of racial stereotypes. 17:37.560 --> 17:42.240 "Taken on the average, this alien Jewish population is somewhat 17:42.240 --> 17:46.680 "inferior, physically and mentally to the native population. 17:46.680 --> 17:50.080 "They will develop into a parasitic race." 17:51.640 --> 17:56.280 Pearson's claim was that the British race was degenerating. 17:56.280 --> 18:00.960 The eugenics solution was to stop Jewish immigration. 18:00.960 --> 18:04.880 The argument that he's trying to make is if it can be showed 18:04.880 --> 18:09.560 that this immigrant population is weaker, worse than the general 18:09.560 --> 18:12.720 population, then there is a case for not allowing more of them 18:12.720 --> 18:14.880 to come to Britain. 18:14.880 --> 18:19.400 Pressure from eugenicists like Pearson hit their mark. 18:19.400 --> 18:23.880 Laws passed before and after the time of the First World War 18:23.880 --> 18:27.680 placed tougher restrictions on immigration. 18:27.680 --> 18:32.320 The work of eugenicists feeds into social thinking as politicians 18:32.320 --> 18:37.800 are deciding to restrict immigration to stop poor immigrants coming 18:37.800 --> 18:40.320 from Eastern Europe, if they possibly can. 18:40.320 --> 18:44.640 Their ideas are shaped by social Darwinist, eugenical thinking 18:44.640 --> 18:47.440 on racial superiority and inferiority. 18:47.440 --> 18:51.960 So today, do you think we still live with a legacy of those ideas? 18:51.960 --> 18:55.080 I mean, do we still think in these terms now? 18:55.080 --> 19:00.600 Immigrant communities, refugee communities, continue to face 19:00.600 --> 19:02.720 hostility, to be targeted by legislation 19:02.720 --> 19:04.280 that tries to keep them out. 19:04.280 --> 19:07.560 We still want to keep a fence around our nation. 19:07.560 --> 19:09.800 And whilst I don't think it would be fair to say 19:09.800 --> 19:13.520 that the principles keeping up that fence are now eugenical, 19:13.520 --> 19:15.480 it probably doesn't feel that different 19:15.480 --> 19:17.440 when you're on the wrong end of it. 19:17.440 --> 19:21.920 Nowadays, we live in a climate where we generally understand 19:21.920 --> 19:26.240 that racism is wrong, but I think we still are attached to ideas 19:26.240 --> 19:29.480 that between our different ethnicities, there are solid, 19:29.480 --> 19:33.560 firm, maybe even natural differences and it would be silly not to see 19:33.560 --> 19:37.000 that there is a line from those ideas that we still hold, all the 19:37.000 --> 19:39.160 way back to the eugenics movement. 19:47.760 --> 19:51.960 ADAM: In the years leading up to the First World War these eugenic fears 19:51.960 --> 19:55.960 that the British race was getting weaker alarmed senior politicians, 19:55.960 --> 19:58.560 both Liberal and Conservative. 20:02.400 --> 20:06.840 Winston Churchill, who became Home Secretary in 1910, 20:06.840 --> 20:09.720 was an influential advocate of eugenics. 20:14.200 --> 20:18.520 "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded 20:18.520 --> 20:23.600 "and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction 20:23.600 --> 20:27.600 "among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes 20:27.600 --> 20:33.120 "a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate." 20:37.480 --> 20:41.560 The growing intellectual enthusiasm for eugenics was captured 20:41.560 --> 20:46.200 in this film, presented by leading British biologist Julian Huxley. 20:47.560 --> 20:50.600 NARRATION: Here is a man who, although normal, comes from 20:50.600 --> 20:52.440 a mentally defective family. 20:52.440 --> 20:55.720 Here is his wife who is also normal, 20:55.720 --> 21:00.440 who had 17 children. Seven children are all mental defectives. 21:02.120 --> 21:05.680 How has this disastrous state of affairs come about? 21:05.680 --> 21:08.320 If we examine the pedigree of this family 21:08.320 --> 21:12.880 we find that although the father and mother of the youngest generation 21:12.880 --> 21:15.720 are both normal, the father's brother was insane. 21:15.720 --> 21:18.160 We thus see how mental deficiency has passed 21:18.160 --> 21:20.200 from one generation to another. 21:20.200 --> 21:22.960 But it would have been better by far, for them 21:22.960 --> 21:26.080 and for the rest of the community, if they had never been born. 21:26.080 --> 21:27.080 OMINOUS MUSIC 21:28.280 --> 21:31.440 British eugenicists campaigned hard to ensure 21:31.440 --> 21:34.800 that so-called "feeble-minded" families were removed 21:34.800 --> 21:36.800 from the national gene pool. 21:38.720 --> 21:42.200 The result was the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. 21:44.200 --> 21:47.280 Thanks to opposition from the Catholic Church and some MPs, 21:47.280 --> 21:52.440 it stopped short of an official sterilisation programme. 21:52.440 --> 21:55.520 Instead, dozens of colonies of what they called 21:55.520 --> 21:58.280 the "mentally deficient", were set up. 22:00.400 --> 22:03.400 NARRATION: In institutions such as this all over the country, 22:03.400 --> 22:06.040 mental defectives are cared for. 22:06.040 --> 22:09.440 These are children who are helpless in every way 22:09.440 --> 22:11.480 and need constant attention. 22:13.640 --> 22:17.560 At the height of the operation of the Act, up to 65,000 people 22:17.560 --> 22:19.560 were kept in these colonies. 22:22.160 --> 22:24.120 So, the whole thing was geared 22:24.120 --> 22:26.600 so there wouldn't be any sexual liaisons. 22:26.600 --> 22:29.040 Of course they found a way of getting together, 22:29.040 --> 22:32.360 but then the doctors in charge of the place would make sure 22:32.360 --> 22:35.160 that they didn't have the baby through abortion 22:35.160 --> 22:36.920 and then they would sterilise them. 22:36.920 --> 22:39.000 And this was all unlawful, but it happened. 22:41.520 --> 22:45.520 I wanted to know more about how people were chosen to be locked up 22:45.520 --> 22:48.200 and what it meant for them. 22:48.200 --> 22:51.120 And what's this? Who's Mabel Cooper? 22:51.120 --> 22:55.000 Well, Mabel Cooper was at one of these hospitals, St Lawrence's, 22:55.000 --> 22:58.800 and she was picked up in Islington because it was deemed her mother 22:58.800 --> 23:02.600 couldn't look after her and she was then assessed a number of times. 23:02.600 --> 23:07.040 Here we have a case paper of her mental deficiency. 23:07.040 --> 23:09.120 We have a Doctor Casey saying, 23:09.120 --> 23:13.240 "This is an imbecile girl of 13 whose intelligence is not superior 23:13.240 --> 23:15.640 "to that of an average seven-year-old, 23:15.640 --> 23:18.040 "incapable of telling the time." 23:18.040 --> 23:20.040 And then the second doctor says, 23:20.040 --> 23:22.280 "She can read only a few two and three-letter words, 23:22.280 --> 23:25.400 "hesitant guessing manner. 23:25.400 --> 23:28.000 "She says sixpence and twopence is threepence." 23:28.000 --> 23:29.640 So that was the test. 23:29.640 --> 23:34.200 I find this whole concept quite malicious and terrifying 23:34.200 --> 23:39.160 in that Mabel herself was never considered. 23:39.160 --> 23:41.520 And her removal from society 23:41.520 --> 23:46.040 was more to benefit society than to safeguard her. Absolutely. 23:46.040 --> 23:49.800 It was a shocking life for these people, really. 23:52.800 --> 23:56.000 I find it upsetting to hear that a cursory examination 23:56.000 --> 23:59.440 by two doctors could have a child like Mabel Cooper 23:59.440 --> 24:01.920 locked up, sometimes for decades. 24:04.880 --> 24:07.920 The fact it was very much a state-mandated thing 24:07.920 --> 24:11.080 is completely terrifying. 24:11.080 --> 24:14.760 Erm, you know, there is still an undertone of that 24:14.760 --> 24:16.720 but it's not written in law, 24:16.720 --> 24:20.360 it's more put out on Twitter by idiots now. 24:20.360 --> 24:24.720 It was very much a well-respected, well-thought-through science, 24:24.720 --> 24:27.280 but really high profile people 24:27.280 --> 24:30.440 like, even Churchill was a eugenicist. 24:30.440 --> 24:34.440 They don't mention that in the films and the books, 24:34.440 --> 24:36.920 but very much a eugenicist. 24:41.560 --> 24:46.080 ANGELA: Lost in the haze of the eugenic dream are ordinary people, 24:46.080 --> 24:50.480 women, men, and children like Mabel. 24:50.480 --> 24:56.120 The question for me is how could individual lives be so easily 24:56.120 --> 24:59.200 sacrificed for a scientific idea? 24:59.200 --> 25:03.560 An idea that continues to shape how we live today. 25:05.640 --> 25:09.520 At the Wellcome Trust in London, Dr Bonnie Evans takes me 25:09.520 --> 25:12.840 through the writings of a child psychologist 25:12.840 --> 25:16.200 whose job was to measure children's intelligence 25:16.200 --> 25:19.160 to help implement the Mental Deficiency Act. 25:20.880 --> 25:23.600 Cyril Burt is a psychologist. 25:23.600 --> 25:26.720 He's the first official psychologist appointed 25:26.720 --> 25:29.240 to the London County Council in 1913 25:29.240 --> 25:32.480 and he was an incredibly powerful person. 25:34.520 --> 25:40.000 Burt came up with his own tests to assess a child's mental capacity. 25:40.000 --> 25:43.120 Today, we would call this an IQ test. 25:43.120 --> 25:45.320 This one is comparing lines, 25:45.320 --> 25:50.120 looking at which line is the longest or the shortest. 25:50.120 --> 25:53.360 These ones are to do with comparing faces, 25:53.360 --> 25:55.400 so children will be asked 25:55.400 --> 25:59.280 to look at the differences in the facial features. 25:59.280 --> 26:03.080 A child who failed could be sent to an institution. 26:03.080 --> 26:05.200 As a eugenicist, 26:05.200 --> 26:09.720 Cyril Burt was convinced that intelligence was mostly inherited. 26:09.720 --> 26:14.040 To him, a child he considered to be mentally feeble 26:14.040 --> 26:16.200 probably couldn't be helped. 26:16.200 --> 26:21.200 In 1933 he becomes professor of UCL, 26:21.200 --> 26:26.000 at UCL, and he works very closely with government 26:26.000 --> 26:29.760 on many consultative committees on education. 26:29.760 --> 26:35.880 When, after the war, new moves are made to extend education 26:35.880 --> 26:40.000 and to make secondary education available to all, 26:40.000 --> 26:45.400 Burt's ideas of classifying and dividing at age 11 are used. 26:50.320 --> 26:56.000 Under the 11 Plus system, every pupil took an exam, and based 26:56.000 --> 26:59.040 on their results, they'd be sent to a grammar school, 26:59.040 --> 27:03.120 a secondary modern or a technical college. 27:03.120 --> 27:07.520 The system was largely phased out by 1977. 27:07.520 --> 27:12.760 But even so, many selective schools across the country 27:12.760 --> 27:16.280 still use a form of 11 Plus today. 27:18.240 --> 27:20.760 Right, so Burt's ideas are what led to the system 27:20.760 --> 27:23.600 that many parts of the country still live with now. 27:23.600 --> 27:27.320 Yeah, yeah, and you know, the obsession with testing individuals 27:27.320 --> 27:28.680 as well, you know, 27:28.680 --> 27:32.320 that was something that, Burt was the originator of... 27:32.320 --> 27:35.080 The legacy of these people is still alive, 27:35.080 --> 27:37.560 that we live with it and it's affecting us. 27:37.560 --> 27:40.440 It's affected me in the tests that I've took when I was growing up 27:40.440 --> 27:43.160 and it will affect my children. Yeah. That's right. 27:43.160 --> 27:46.080 So yeah, children are still being tested in this way. 27:47.960 --> 27:51.400 I found it incredibly disturbing and sad 27:51.400 --> 27:54.280 listening to what Bonnie had to say. 27:54.280 --> 27:57.280 What hurts the most is knowing that we still live with these ideas 27:57.280 --> 28:01.120 now, through the selective education system. 28:01.120 --> 28:03.800 We're still trying to grapple with 28:03.800 --> 28:06.200 this incredibly 28:06.200 --> 28:10.360 ethically fraught idea of how do we give kids 28:10.360 --> 28:12.960 the best possible start in life 28:12.960 --> 28:15.600 and so many mistakes have been made 28:15.600 --> 28:18.440 in the process of figuring this out. 28:25.880 --> 28:30.840 During the inter-war period, a time of technological optimism, 28:30.840 --> 28:35.320 many believed eugenics offered a rational, scientific answer 28:35.320 --> 28:37.080 to social problems. 28:41.280 --> 28:44.360 Even some of the most progressive members of society, 28:44.360 --> 28:46.560 people I think of as heroes, 28:46.560 --> 28:50.560 imagined that eugenics might make Britain better. 28:50.560 --> 28:55.200 This is the site of an early birth control clinic 28:55.200 --> 29:01.160 opened in London in 1925 by feminist pioneer Marie Stopes. 29:01.160 --> 29:04.760 I've always admired her. 29:04.760 --> 29:08.600 But there's another side to the Stopes story, 29:08.600 --> 29:12.280 one that lies in the vaults of the Science Museum. 29:13.840 --> 29:17.000 Tell me more about Marie Stopes. What kind of person was she? 29:17.000 --> 29:20.240 I suppose I always see Marie Stopes as somebody who knew she was right 29:20.240 --> 29:23.240 and she was utterly convinced that her way of doing things 29:23.240 --> 29:25.200 was the only way of doing things. 29:25.200 --> 29:27.200 She definitely broke a lot of taboos. 29:27.200 --> 29:29.640 At that point in time then, 29:29.640 --> 29:31.520 how important was birth control to people? 29:31.520 --> 29:33.600 Were people using contraceptives generally? 29:33.600 --> 29:35.920 It was probably more of a middle-class thing, 29:35.920 --> 29:40.080 more educated people knew what to do and how to go about it. 29:40.080 --> 29:43.120 But this was not the case for the working classes. 29:44.880 --> 29:50.880 In her clinics, Stopes gave poor and working class women access 29:50.880 --> 29:53.160 to birth control. 29:53.160 --> 29:54.400 Why did that bother her? 29:54.400 --> 29:56.720 Why did she care so much that the working classes 29:56.720 --> 29:58.840 weren't getting access to contraceptives? 29:58.840 --> 30:03.240 I think what's important for us to understand is that, at this time, 30:03.240 --> 30:06.920 birth control was really synonymous with eugenics. 30:06.920 --> 30:10.920 Right, OK. So that's not something that we make the connection for 30:10.920 --> 30:13.600 today at all, it's very much a personal choice 30:13.600 --> 30:16.280 but certainly in the inter-war period, 30:16.280 --> 30:18.800 eugenics and birth control go hand-in-hand. 30:18.800 --> 30:20.560 They are almost the same thing. 30:20.560 --> 30:22.360 They were worried that, 30:22.360 --> 30:24.960 particularly the middle classes 30:24.960 --> 30:28.240 or the more prudent careful and healthy people, 30:28.240 --> 30:31.800 were producing children at a much slower rate 30:31.800 --> 30:34.560 than the imprudent and feckless, 30:34.560 --> 30:39.080 and people who are less physically strong, who were producing children 30:39.080 --> 30:42.480 at a rate that they found very alarming. 30:42.480 --> 30:45.880 Not only was it the theory behind her work 30:45.880 --> 30:49.160 but actually it was very much part of the brand. 30:49.160 --> 30:52.760 So, we've got here two examples of a cervical cap 30:52.760 --> 30:57.120 and it's just...classic barrier method of contraception. 30:57.120 --> 30:59.360 But if you look more closely at these caps, 30:59.360 --> 31:03.440 you can actually see the words "Pro Race" on them. 31:03.440 --> 31:07.680 So, literally, if you're about to have sex and you pop one 31:07.680 --> 31:10.400 of those over your cervix to make sure you don't get pregnant, 31:10.400 --> 31:13.160 you are literally promoting the strength of the race 31:13.160 --> 31:15.800 by doing that and you've got it written over your cervix. 31:15.800 --> 31:18.360 It's quite shocking. It is. 31:18.360 --> 31:21.400 It's offputting, as well, I imagine! 31:21.400 --> 31:24.640 I suppose, really, instead of improving diet and housing, 31:24.640 --> 31:28.960 the idea was that they were poor because they were being profligate 31:28.960 --> 31:31.640 and having too many children, and therefore, if you tackle 31:31.640 --> 31:35.480 that angle, then the health of society would improve. 31:35.480 --> 31:39.680 And it was incredibly complicated because often, you know, 31:39.680 --> 31:42.040 working women themselves would be desperate not to have 31:42.040 --> 31:45.200 any more children. I mean, there's heart-rending letters of them, 31:45.200 --> 31:48.520 you know, writing and saying you know, we know that there is a way 31:48.520 --> 31:51.120 of stopping this. How do we stop it? 31:51.120 --> 31:53.960 Because if you can't afford to care for the children you've got, 31:53.960 --> 31:55.560 then you don't want any more. 31:55.560 --> 31:59.760 And that is why Marie Stopes was such a pioneering feminist figure 31:59.760 --> 32:03.440 and so important for women, because she gave us that freedom. 32:03.440 --> 32:06.240 You know, she allowed us to be able to have the choice 32:06.240 --> 32:08.480 not to have more children than we wanted. 32:08.480 --> 32:12.040 And I mean, that's the complexity of her legacy then, I suppose. 32:12.040 --> 32:14.320 On the one hand we know she was a eugenicist - 32:14.320 --> 32:16.840 she has "race" written on the same contraceptives 32:16.840 --> 32:18.160 that she was handing out, 32:18.160 --> 32:21.040 but at the same time, she liberated us. 32:21.040 --> 32:24.000 I think what's really important for us to remember 32:24.000 --> 32:28.440 is that eugenics was not some strange frowned-on sideline. 32:28.440 --> 32:30.960 This was absolutely mainstream. 32:38.360 --> 32:42.160 I wanted to know more about the victims of eugenics, 32:42.160 --> 32:44.680 the people in the 1920s and '30s 32:44.680 --> 32:47.000 who were locked up in colonies 32:47.000 --> 32:49.640 for the so called mentally deficient. 32:53.880 --> 32:56.080 So I'm curious. What were these places like? 32:56.080 --> 32:57.760 It's one thing hearing about all this 32:57.760 --> 33:00.400 in a historical context 33:00.400 --> 33:04.040 as to how the 1913 Act played itself out. 33:04.040 --> 33:06.200 But what were these places actually like? 33:06.200 --> 33:08.720 Could you live there? Could you work there? 33:08.720 --> 33:11.040 What were the day-to-day operations and lifestyles like 33:11.040 --> 33:13.760 of the people living there? 33:13.760 --> 33:17.080 I'm...I'm fascinated. 33:17.080 --> 33:21.000 So, we're off to a place in Leeds called Meanwood Park 33:21.000 --> 33:24.560 that was one of many institutions up and down the country. 33:24.560 --> 33:27.640 I'm going to go and talk to a guy called Mark Davis 33:27.640 --> 33:31.520 who has an archive, knows the people's stories. 33:37.000 --> 33:41.160 This particular block here is the old mansion. 33:41.160 --> 33:42.640 They housed 87 people. 33:42.640 --> 33:44.080 It was pretty tough. 33:44.080 --> 33:45.960 You know, you came in here and the first thing 33:45.960 --> 33:48.360 they did was segregate you, segregate the sexes. 33:48.360 --> 33:50.600 Because it was all about, 33:50.600 --> 33:54.440 erm, stopping them procreating, you see? 33:54.440 --> 33:57.440 So you would have the male and female separated. 33:57.440 --> 33:59.080 They'd put you to work. 33:59.080 --> 34:01.440 If you were bad, they'd put you in seclusion cells, 34:01.440 --> 34:05.680 they'd have you scrubbing, they'd have you doing all sorts of things. 34:05.680 --> 34:08.200 It sounds a lot like prison. 34:08.200 --> 34:09.360 Yeah, essentially. 34:09.360 --> 34:11.920 And anybody coming in here's a mental defective. 34:11.920 --> 34:14.320 It was always classed, once mentally defective, 34:14.320 --> 34:15.800 always mentally defective. 34:15.800 --> 34:18.320 So it was really an arbitrary life sentence. 34:18.320 --> 34:21.240 You didn't get out. You wasn't ever going to get out. 34:21.240 --> 34:24.760 And, of course, when you take that kind of thing away from somebody, 34:24.760 --> 34:28.360 you take away the most precious thing, which is hope itself, 34:28.360 --> 34:30.080 because without hope, what have you got? 34:33.920 --> 34:37.880 Mark tells me the story of Samuel Wormald. 34:37.880 --> 34:42.240 He was an enthusiastic and terrifying county official 34:42.240 --> 34:45.320 whose job was to select potential inmates. 34:48.440 --> 34:52.720 There was a chap employed as what they call the Executive Officer 34:52.720 --> 34:55.840 and he was a eugenicist and was called Samuel Wormald. 34:55.840 --> 34:57.160 And he was like the bogeyman. 34:57.160 --> 35:00.040 You know, the kids, they're like "the bogeyman's going to get you", 35:00.040 --> 35:02.880 you're going to end up in Meanwood Park and end up in the nuthouse, 35:02.880 --> 35:04.000 all this sort of thing. 35:04.000 --> 35:06.120 And he was also known as a rat catcher. 35:06.120 --> 35:09.320 And he was the man that specifically went out 35:09.320 --> 35:12.480 looking for "special" people, people that were different. 35:14.360 --> 35:16.800 He'd go into the schools, he'd go into the mills. 35:16.800 --> 35:20.720 And initially, when he were bringing people in here, especially the kids, 35:20.720 --> 35:23.920 he'd actually bring them in the basket in the front of his bicycle. 35:23.920 --> 35:26.840 So I could have been like just down the park or at school, 35:26.840 --> 35:28.440 minding my own business. 35:28.440 --> 35:30.880 Samuel could have been... You'd have been spied. 35:30.880 --> 35:33.040 He was looking for all sorts of people. 35:33.040 --> 35:35.400 The deaf, the blind, the dumb, anybody. 35:35.400 --> 35:38.240 He brought them in here and this guy, you know, 35:38.240 --> 35:41.600 when he retired in 1939, he was quite proud of the fact 35:41.600 --> 35:45.560 that he'd captured over 2,000 people - men, women and children - 35:45.560 --> 35:48.960 and put them in the largest mental deficiency colony in Yorkshire. 35:48.960 --> 35:50.840 It sounds a lot like kidnapping. 35:50.840 --> 35:54.320 Just going round, picking up people...on his bike. 35:54.320 --> 35:56.640 Well, it was all about eugenics. 35:56.640 --> 35:59.080 They didn't want these people to breed again. 35:59.080 --> 36:01.240 So they put them in here. Containment. 36:01.240 --> 36:03.360 Segregation and containment. 36:03.360 --> 36:05.680 And do not allow them to procreate. 36:14.960 --> 36:20.400 Meeting Mark today was good but also kind of sinister. 36:21.480 --> 36:23.760 Before I started this journey 36:23.760 --> 36:28.200 I'd only heard of eugenics in kind of vague generalities. 36:28.200 --> 36:31.600 It's kind of a cliche, "Ooh, it were well rough back in t'day..." 36:31.600 --> 36:34.600 whereas to come and talk to someone who's passionate about it 36:34.600 --> 36:38.960 and knows about it and has essentially made it his life, 36:38.960 --> 36:44.280 to hear kind of people were here for 50, 60 years for no good reason. 36:44.280 --> 36:47.360 And if I'd have been born here in like the '20s, 36:47.360 --> 36:50.560 as opposed to Croydon in the '80s, 36:50.560 --> 36:53.520 I'd have been picked up by some nutter on a bike 36:53.520 --> 36:56.040 and I'd have been here for the rest of my life. 36:56.040 --> 36:57.560 It's just terrifying. 37:10.320 --> 37:12.600 The 1920s and '30s were a time 37:12.600 --> 37:16.480 when Britain was locking disabled people away 37:16.480 --> 37:18.720 in places like Meanwood, 37:18.720 --> 37:22.280 and yet it was also a time when it seemed possible 37:22.280 --> 37:25.200 to design a better way of living. 37:25.200 --> 37:27.320 New towns like this appeared - 37:27.320 --> 37:30.640 Welwyn Garden City, founded in 1920. 37:32.360 --> 37:35.600 The person behind this was Ebenezer Howard, 37:35.600 --> 37:37.360 a planning visionary 37:37.360 --> 37:42.160 who lived here until he died in the utopia he had designed. 37:44.000 --> 37:47.440 And there was a sense that you could create environments 37:47.440 --> 37:51.000 that would actually uplift people, that would make them... 37:51.000 --> 37:53.080 Historian Dr Sue Correll 37:53.080 --> 37:56.480 has studied Howard's garden cities movement. 37:56.480 --> 38:00.640 So, Ebenezer Howard, his idea was based on utopian ideas 38:00.640 --> 38:03.720 that you could transform people's lives 38:03.720 --> 38:06.880 by putting them in the right environment. 38:06.880 --> 38:13.320 Howard produced these stylised plans outlining his radical vision. 38:13.320 --> 38:18.880 What you see here is a perfectly rationally planned garden city. 38:18.880 --> 38:24.400 You have the municipal centre of the largest city in the middle, 38:24.400 --> 38:27.880 and then satellite towns around the edge. 38:27.880 --> 38:31.240 Everyone has a garden where they can grow their own vegetables. 38:31.240 --> 38:34.840 Everyone has enough space to live and to have children, 38:34.840 --> 38:37.760 and to have big families - big, healthy families. 38:39.000 --> 38:42.840 In these towns, everyone has their place 38:42.840 --> 38:46.320 and those who eugenicists considered less desirable 38:46.320 --> 38:50.320 were separated, kept well away from the rest. 38:50.320 --> 38:53.640 Here you have the epileptic farms. 38:53.640 --> 38:56.200 There's a home for waifs 38:56.200 --> 38:59.240 so these are kind of homeless, unwanted people. 38:59.240 --> 39:01.720 Home for inebriates. Yeah. 39:01.720 --> 39:04.440 And there's an insane asylum here. 39:04.440 --> 39:07.240 There's a separation of the desirable 39:07.240 --> 39:08.840 and the undesirable. 39:08.840 --> 39:12.720 The desirable people get to live in the cities and the nice suburbs 39:12.720 --> 39:16.080 with their beautiful names like Philadelphia and Concord, 39:16.080 --> 39:20.520 and everybody else is stuck in these kind of in-between places. 39:20.520 --> 39:23.960 The underlying influences on this definitely come 39:23.960 --> 39:27.640 from eugenic ideas about uplift and improvement 39:27.640 --> 39:30.400 but also segregation and separation. 39:36.400 --> 39:40.720 Many influential inter-war figures were drawn to eugenics. 39:40.720 --> 39:43.840 Policies encouraging the healthy to have children 39:43.840 --> 39:46.960 and discouraging the poor from doing so 39:46.960 --> 39:50.520 seemed like a scientific way of improving society. 39:51.960 --> 39:55.760 This vision attracted the likes of Sidney and Beatrice Webb 39:55.760 --> 39:57.400 of the Fabian Society... 39:59.120 --> 40:02.760 ..and William Beveridge, creator of the welfare state. 40:10.640 --> 40:13.080 I think that's what I learnt in Welwyn Garden City. 40:13.080 --> 40:15.800 Here is a place that I could see myself living 40:15.800 --> 40:23.080 and it was built on these principles of living a healthy, positive life 40:23.080 --> 40:27.520 in a society built on very rational, scientific principles. 40:27.520 --> 40:31.880 This idea that we can create a utopian future, 40:31.880 --> 40:35.880 that we can use the science and technology of the time 40:35.880 --> 40:38.640 to solve society's problems, 40:38.640 --> 40:42.520 I can't help but wonder if I had been around at that time 40:42.520 --> 40:47.360 and been part of those intellectual circles, whether these ideas 40:47.360 --> 40:49.840 would have appealed to me, too. 40:49.840 --> 40:51.720 And it's quite a disturbing thought. 40:57.200 --> 41:01.320 ADAM: Support for eugenics peaked in the 1920s 41:01.320 --> 41:05.680 and spread out of Britain and was taken up across Europe and America. 41:07.880 --> 41:10.800 It became the mantra of the day. 41:10.800 --> 41:12.800 You have beauty contests organized, 41:12.800 --> 41:16.520 you have literary festivals organized, people writing poems. 41:16.520 --> 41:21.120 You have drawings organized about the ideal type of human being. 41:21.120 --> 41:24.120 So it really becomes part and parcel of what we call today 41:24.120 --> 41:26.120 "popular culture". 41:26.120 --> 41:28.080 Professor Marius Turda 41:28.080 --> 41:30.880 is a leading expert in the field. 41:30.880 --> 41:34.480 He talks me through how all this turned very dark. 41:36.720 --> 41:38.240 During the 1920s, 41:38.240 --> 41:41.840 several US states passed eugenic laws. 41:41.840 --> 41:43.800 Over the following decades, 41:43.800 --> 41:47.280 around 60,000 people were forcibly sterilised. 41:50.280 --> 41:53.360 European eugenicists watched with interest. 41:55.600 --> 41:59.360 There is a lot of conversation already in the 1920s amongst 41:59.360 --> 42:04.240 eugenicists in America and Germany, and to some extent, Britain, 42:04.240 --> 42:10.040 about the best way forward to achieve the perfect society. 42:12.680 --> 42:15.960 Adolf Hitler was an early fan of American eugenics, 42:15.960 --> 42:17.760 praising it in Mein Kampf. 42:19.120 --> 42:22.400 Nazi sterilisation laws were directly influenced 42:22.400 --> 42:25.360 by sterilisation policies in the USA. 42:32.320 --> 42:36.400 It's impossible to blame the Holocaust on any one thing. 42:36.400 --> 42:39.720 But along with anti-Semitism and nationalism, 42:39.720 --> 42:43.200 eugenics was a key part of the Nazi vision. 42:43.200 --> 42:46.200 It inspired something called Aktion T4, 42:46.200 --> 42:48.600 a project to murder the disabled. 42:50.280 --> 42:55.720 With respect to eugenic arguments, I think the T4 programme is, 42:55.720 --> 42:59.560 in a way, illustrative of how the Nazi regime 42:59.560 --> 43:04.480 saw the creation of the internal cleansing of the national body, 43:04.480 --> 43:07.000 getting rid of all the weeds, defectives, 43:07.000 --> 43:09.760 people who don't conform. 43:09.760 --> 43:14.720 And indeed, do not tolerate any form of disability whatsoever. 43:16.400 --> 43:19.880 Aktion T4 began in 1939. 43:19.880 --> 43:23.160 Hitler ordered his personal doctor Karl Brandt 43:23.160 --> 43:24.920 and SS officer Philipp Bouhler 43:24.920 --> 43:27.040 to implement a programme to kill people 43:27.040 --> 43:30.280 considered to carry hereditary defects. 43:30.280 --> 43:33.560 During the 1930s, the Nazis funded films and posters 43:33.560 --> 43:36.680 stressing how much people with hereditary illnesses 43:36.680 --> 43:38.400 cost the taxpayer. 43:38.400 --> 43:41.680 This poster shows a disabled person cost the taxpayer 43:41.680 --> 43:43.840 60,000 reichsmarks. 43:45.760 --> 43:49.200 Big argument on the propaganda posters about the T4, 43:49.200 --> 43:53.640 about how much money people with disability cost the state. 43:54.720 --> 43:59.080 If you're not useful at all, then why do you exist for? 43:59.080 --> 44:00.800 The individual was nothing. 44:00.800 --> 44:03.160 Society, or in the case of Nazi Germany, race, 44:03.160 --> 44:05.960 was everything. 44:05.960 --> 44:09.720 The SS trialled poison gas on disabled people. 44:09.720 --> 44:11.920 As part of Aktion T4, 44:11.920 --> 44:13.840 300,000 people, 44:13.840 --> 44:17.520 including several thousand children, were murdered. 44:22.520 --> 44:25.920 ANGELA: As I've been learning on this journey, Hitler's theories 44:25.920 --> 44:29.600 of racial hygiene didn't emerge out of a vacuum. 44:31.440 --> 44:35.160 They arose out of a scientific and political context 44:35.160 --> 44:38.840 that was part of the mainstream here in Britain. 44:40.160 --> 44:43.400 It's a history that curator of the Galton Collection 44:43.400 --> 44:46.640 Subhadra Das has also struggled with. 44:48.240 --> 44:51.280 It's just shocking to think that these ideas, 44:51.280 --> 44:54.880 the birthplace of these ideas, wasn't in Nazi Germany. 44:54.880 --> 44:57.960 It was right here, near where I live. Exactly. 44:57.960 --> 45:01.080 And in the university in which I work. We invented it. 45:01.080 --> 45:02.520 Galton is a British scientist. 45:02.520 --> 45:05.880 If you say "eugenics", immediately, if people have even heard the word, 45:05.880 --> 45:09.400 they will think "Nazis". But no. British. British idea. 45:11.520 --> 45:15.720 It's difficult to get your head around the fact that this, 45:15.720 --> 45:18.920 the greatest horrors of the 20th century, 45:18.920 --> 45:21.760 the ideological roots are partly right here in London, 45:21.760 --> 45:23.960 near where I live. 45:23.960 --> 45:30.560 I always find it difficult not to judge people by modern standards 45:30.560 --> 45:32.720 but at the same time, 45:32.720 --> 45:38.240 maybe we can blame him, partly, for the legacies of these ideas 45:38.240 --> 45:39.960 and what came after he died. 45:41.080 --> 45:44.440 But I feel morally conflicted about it because... 45:46.000 --> 45:48.280 ..because he was also a man of his time. 45:55.960 --> 46:00.760 'I want to find out, how do modern-day scientists reflect 46:00.760 --> 46:03.560 'on this complicated legacy? 46:05.880 --> 46:10.080 'I'm on my way to meet the current head of what was, for decades, 46:10.080 --> 46:12.160 'The Eugenics Society. 46:12.160 --> 46:15.760 'It's now known as The Galton Institute.' 46:16.920 --> 46:19.680 She's a very distinguished geneticist in her own right. 46:19.680 --> 46:21.320 She's had a very illustrious career 46:21.320 --> 46:24.040 and what I really want to understand is, 46:24.040 --> 46:27.400 what does the legacy of Francis Galton mean to her? 46:27.400 --> 46:30.040 Why does she feel that 46:30.040 --> 46:34.160 an institute like this is still appropriate 46:34.160 --> 46:37.000 and what she is doing leading it? 46:40.200 --> 46:44.800 'Veronica van Heyningen could not be further from a eugenicist. 46:46.520 --> 46:49.640 'Her research has advanced medical knowledge 46:49.640 --> 46:52.080 by identifying genetic mutations 46:52.080 --> 46:54.840 'associated with serious eye diseases.' 46:57.080 --> 47:00.320 Well, I don't think, I don't know. 47:00.320 --> 47:02.640 I, I don't think so. 47:02.640 --> 47:06.800 She knows better than most the murderous consequences 47:06.800 --> 47:09.640 of 20th-century race science. 47:10.880 --> 47:13.880 So, these are my parents. 47:13.880 --> 47:16.880 Survivor of Mauthausen and of Auschwitz, 47:16.880 --> 47:19.840 Ravensbruck and Buchenwald. 47:19.840 --> 47:22.360 I do think a lot about my parents 47:22.360 --> 47:25.520 and wish I'd asked them more questions. 47:25.520 --> 47:27.600 My father never talked about his experiences 47:27.600 --> 47:30.160 but my mother talked quite a lot. 47:30.160 --> 47:32.600 My mother was in Auschwitz, 47:32.600 --> 47:35.040 as a Jew, of course, 47:35.040 --> 47:40.200 and all her family were killed in Auschwitz. 47:40.200 --> 47:44.840 So I had no grandparents on that side or the other side, actually. 47:44.840 --> 47:50.160 My father had been taken to a labour camp 47:50.160 --> 47:54.080 and he survived that and they married after the war. 47:54.080 --> 47:57.800 And I was born in Hungary in 1946. 47:57.800 --> 48:01.600 The Nazis wanted to purify the race. 48:01.600 --> 48:05.040 It's a really terrible idea ethically, 48:05.040 --> 48:07.960 but actually, in my view, biologically, as well 48:07.960 --> 48:11.080 because the greater diversity we can maintain, 48:11.080 --> 48:13.600 I think the better it is for the world. 48:13.600 --> 48:16.600 Quite incredible to have that knowledge, 48:16.600 --> 48:20.600 to know that the terrible uses of eugenics... Absolutely. 48:20.600 --> 48:23.400 ..but then, for you now in the 21st century, 48:23.400 --> 48:25.320 to be head of The Galton Institute 48:25.320 --> 48:27.440 which used to be The Eugenics Society. 48:27.440 --> 48:29.480 I mean, how do you square that? 48:29.480 --> 48:36.040 I just know that they are just not involved in any way in eugenics now 48:36.040 --> 48:42.200 and that what we spend our efforts on is to bring modern genetics 48:42.200 --> 48:44.440 to as many people as we can. 48:44.440 --> 48:47.600 In order to avoid genetic abnormalities 48:47.600 --> 48:49.440 we need to understand them 48:49.440 --> 48:52.240 and that has been my life's work, really. 48:52.240 --> 48:56.320 But how does it feel for you to know that Galton's name is still used 48:56.320 --> 49:00.440 in these contexts, that the name of the institute that you're heading 49:00.440 --> 49:02.440 carries his name? Do you feel... 49:02.440 --> 49:04.720 I mean, how do you feel about Galton now? 49:04.720 --> 49:06.840 I think he was a great geneticist. 49:06.840 --> 49:11.320 I mean, he was he was the person who coined the term "eugenics", 49:11.320 --> 49:15.400 and he was, he was racist, as well. 49:15.400 --> 49:18.360 I think people took his ideas 49:18.360 --> 49:21.960 and subverted them to much worse use 49:21.960 --> 49:25.040 and I think it would be much better 49:25.040 --> 49:29.280 not to forget about Galton, but to talk about him. 49:29.280 --> 49:33.480 If we start along the line of rejecting all the people 49:33.480 --> 49:40.680 who had troubling and now-dismissed ideas 49:40.680 --> 49:45.400 and, along with that, reject all their other work as well, 49:45.400 --> 49:49.720 we're going to get into tremendous difficulties. 49:58.640 --> 50:03.760 I think it's very risky to judge people by the standards of our time, 50:03.760 --> 50:05.160 for obvious reasons. 50:05.160 --> 50:08.200 We know that, we know all the terrible things that happened 50:08.200 --> 50:10.960 in the 20th century and the consequences of eugenics, 50:10.960 --> 50:13.760 but they didn't know that. 50:13.760 --> 50:17.160 Because the view was that eugenics could have offered 50:17.160 --> 50:21.800 this glittering, wonderful new society very quickly, this utopia. 50:21.800 --> 50:22.840 Erm... 50:23.920 --> 50:26.000 And I guess that's a lesson for us now 50:26.000 --> 50:28.680 to be careful when new science comes along, 50:28.680 --> 50:31.240 to not rush to... 50:31.240 --> 50:33.680 ..deploy it in the real world, 50:33.680 --> 50:35.960 to think about the consequences of it 50:35.960 --> 50:38.040 and, erm, be careful. 50:50.400 --> 50:52.640 Right at the beginning of my journey, 50:52.640 --> 50:54.840 I heard about the story of Mabel Cooper. 50:57.160 --> 50:59.120 She was locked up in 1957 50:59.120 --> 51:02.640 after a cursory examination by two doctors. 51:04.240 --> 51:07.640 There is no way you can escape these walls. 51:07.640 --> 51:11.000 Mabel spent two decades in an institution. 51:11.000 --> 51:14.440 But as I found out, it wasn't the end of her story. 51:14.440 --> 51:15.640 Right. 51:16.880 --> 51:18.800 Welcome... 51:18.800 --> 51:20.680 ..to Paradise Fields. 51:20.680 --> 51:22.600 While you are here 51:22.600 --> 51:26.840 you will be doing daily chores. 51:26.840 --> 51:31.560 I'm in east London with theatre company Access All Areas. 51:31.560 --> 51:34.960 They've researched Mabel Cooper's life for a play 51:34.960 --> 51:38.160 about her experiences. 51:38.160 --> 51:39.840 On your marks... 51:39.840 --> 51:43.160 Mable was eventually sent to an institution 51:43.160 --> 51:46.840 called St Lawrence's Hospital 51:46.840 --> 51:49.400 where she was treated 51:49.400 --> 51:52.840 fucking brutally, seriously. 51:52.840 --> 51:55.400 She wasn't taught to read or write, 51:55.400 --> 51:58.400 she wasn't allowed to wear her own clothes, 51:58.400 --> 52:01.560 and it gave her what I call a secondary handicap, 52:01.560 --> 52:04.840 not a natural handicap but a secondary handicap. 52:04.840 --> 52:08.880 And if you think about it, this wasn't hundreds of years ago. 52:08.880 --> 52:13.160 This was, it was only in the 1950s that she was in these institutions 52:13.160 --> 52:14.800 and she was there for a long time. 52:14.800 --> 52:18.240 Yeah, yeah. And it's kind of a scary thought, 52:18.240 --> 52:20.280 that to think if kind of you or I 52:20.280 --> 52:23.120 had been born kind of 50, 60, 70 years ago... Yeah, God... 52:23.120 --> 52:25.880 ..this would have been us. 52:25.880 --> 52:30.320 You are here because society has no room for you! 52:30.320 --> 52:34.680 Access All Areas have invited me to take part in rehearsals. 52:34.680 --> 52:36.160 Quickly. 52:36.160 --> 52:39.160 In this scene, inmates queue up to brush their teeth, 52:39.160 --> 52:42.200 sharing one toothbrush for every five people. 52:42.200 --> 52:47.920 We're all doing our bit to make the now late Mabel Cooper, 52:47.920 --> 52:52.960 proud, you know, and hundreds, if not thousands, of these 52:52.960 --> 52:57.160 patients all around the world 52:57.160 --> 53:03.040 have been in this, this awful, brutal position. 53:03.040 --> 53:06.440 You will now scrub the floor. 53:08.200 --> 53:10.520 Right. Start scrubbing. 53:10.520 --> 53:13.840 Part of the theatre company is Harvey Waterman. 53:13.840 --> 53:18.360 He was certified under the Mental Deficiency Act at the age of four. 53:18.360 --> 53:24.160 He spent 29 years at St Lawrence's at the same time as Mabel Cooper. 53:24.160 --> 53:28.080 Would you be able to tell me about your time in St Lawrence's? 53:28.080 --> 53:31.240 Well, it wasn't all that good. 53:31.240 --> 53:33.480 Why? Why not? 53:33.480 --> 53:35.760 Because they kept the doors locked. 53:37.040 --> 53:40.840 If you wanted to go out, they had to unlock the door. 53:40.840 --> 53:43.840 And what was the day-to-day like? 53:43.840 --> 53:46.680 Just wasn't good. 53:46.680 --> 53:50.360 Well, every time you tried to do anything, 53:50.360 --> 53:52.480 was all these tablets, 53:52.480 --> 53:55.320 you had to share the toothbrush, 53:55.320 --> 53:56.880 all the time. 53:59.280 --> 54:02.400 The system at St Lawrence's was designed to stop the inmates 54:02.400 --> 54:03.960 from having children. 54:05.560 --> 54:08.480 Was there any kind of social activities? 54:08.480 --> 54:10.480 A dance hall. 54:10.480 --> 54:12.920 We had to go to the dances. 54:12.920 --> 54:13.960 SWING-STYLE JAZZ 54:16.640 --> 54:19.880 All the men were one side 54:19.880 --> 54:21.760 and the women were the other side. 54:21.760 --> 54:23.360 Back to your places. 54:23.360 --> 54:28.120 We couldn't mix, we couldn't go on the female corridors. 54:28.120 --> 54:31.480 Did you want to go on the female corridors? 54:32.680 --> 54:35.120 I'd like to see Gloria again. 54:35.120 --> 54:37.280 Tell me more about Gloria. 54:37.280 --> 54:40.400 She was my first friend. 54:40.400 --> 54:43.440 How did you meet? We met at the hospital. 54:43.440 --> 54:45.120 And were you friends? 54:45.120 --> 54:47.120 Were you more than friends? 54:47.120 --> 54:50.280 Well, she was my first girlfriend. 54:50.280 --> 54:51.840 And how was that? 54:51.840 --> 54:54.040 That was great. 54:54.040 --> 54:57.080 Because she was quite nice. 54:57.080 --> 54:59.840 And how would you feel now, 54:59.840 --> 55:03.120 kind of looking back at your experience 55:03.120 --> 55:05.120 in St Lawrence's? 55:05.120 --> 55:09.080 It makes me a bit happier being out. 55:09.080 --> 55:13.600 What would you say to people who may find themselves, 55:13.600 --> 55:18.200 for whatever reason, in similar circumstances? 55:18.200 --> 55:20.200 Find a way of getting out. 55:24.280 --> 55:26.200 As for Mabel Cooper, 55:26.200 --> 55:28.920 she left St Lawrence's in 1977. 55:30.120 --> 55:33.160 She'd then join and eventually ran an organization 55:33.160 --> 55:36.720 campaigning for people with learning disabilities. 55:37.880 --> 55:40.360 She was an inspirational person to many, 55:40.360 --> 55:43.200 co-authoring a book and receiving an honorary degree. 55:45.640 --> 55:48.720 For me, one of the worst aspects of eugenics was 55:48.720 --> 55:52.800 it caused so many talented people to be shut out of society. 55:55.880 --> 55:58.600 So would you say that this kind of, 55:58.600 --> 56:01.680 what is almost eugenic thinking 56:01.680 --> 56:07.280 is still echoing throughout the decades to now? 56:07.280 --> 56:12.440 Back in, like, the 19th century, they used to have freak shows. 56:12.440 --> 56:14.480 Like, people like you and me would be... 56:14.480 --> 56:16.640 Well, I would I would be the village idiot. 56:16.640 --> 56:18.320 You would be the elephant man. 56:18.320 --> 56:22.440 Yeah. Sorry to say it but... I say it about myself. 56:22.440 --> 56:25.760 These days, you know, we can't afford a repeat 56:25.760 --> 56:28.360 of the last of the last 60, 56:28.360 --> 56:31.160 of the last hundred years. 56:31.160 --> 56:32.720 We've come far. 56:32.720 --> 56:36.200 But our journey is far from over. 56:48.600 --> 56:51.080 After my experiences with Access All Areas, 56:51.080 --> 56:53.760 I've decided to come on a small pilgrimage. 56:57.280 --> 57:01.280 'So, where I'm standing is all that now remains 57:01.280 --> 57:02.720 'of what was St Lawrence's. 57:02.720 --> 57:05.200 'The railings and the pillars are all that stand. 57:05.200 --> 57:07.920 'There's a blue plaque to commemorate the whole thing. 57:07.920 --> 57:10.000 'What lies beyond here now 57:10.000 --> 57:13.080 'is actually a very nice housing estate.' 57:14.280 --> 57:18.560 So I've not necessarily come here to see St Lawrence's, 57:18.560 --> 57:20.800 because it doesn't exist any more. 57:20.800 --> 57:25.800 I just wanted to come and see what they would look out on, what, 57:25.800 --> 57:32.040 what they would see as a world that I very much take for granted. 57:32.040 --> 57:35.520 And to see the actual physical parameters of their existence. 57:38.760 --> 57:42.960 For them, this would have been like a harsh reality. 57:42.960 --> 57:45.840 The basic freedoms I take for granted, 57:45.840 --> 57:48.920 like the ability to pop round the corner for a coffee 57:48.920 --> 57:51.000 or pop over the road for a pint, 57:51.000 --> 57:52.800 just would not have existed. 57:53.840 --> 57:57.520 It's erm, it's a bit haunting, really. 58:05.920 --> 58:10.200 'In the next episode, we investigate how the influence of eugenics 58:10.200 --> 58:13.080 'continued long after the war.' 58:13.080 --> 58:16.520 We have eight million sterilisation happening in India 58:16.520 --> 58:19.800 within one year. That's shocking. Eight million! 58:19.800 --> 58:22.160 ADAM: And do recent medical breakthroughs, 58:22.160 --> 58:23.880 combined with prejudice, mean 58:23.880 --> 58:27.880 we're about to enter a new era of eugenics? 58:27.880 --> 58:29.840 "I think we need to kill these people. 58:29.840 --> 58:32.240 "At the very least, imprison them." 59:05.600 --> 59:11.000 Should some of us be stopped from having children? 59:12.400 --> 59:15.100 Eugenics is the controversial belief 59:15.100 --> 59:17.580 that we can improve the human race 59:17.580 --> 59:21.220 by selecting who can and who can't reproduce. 59:23.300 --> 59:25.420 It would have been better by far, for them 59:25.420 --> 59:29.220 and for the rest of the community, if they had never been born. 59:30.380 --> 59:34.980 Eugenics was notoriously used to justify the Holocaust. 59:34.980 --> 59:38.620 But we've seen that it was first developed and promoted 59:38.620 --> 59:40.860 by British scientists and politicians. 59:42.300 --> 59:44.140 My goodness. 59:44.140 --> 59:45.940 British. 59:45.940 --> 59:47.460 British idea. 59:47.460 --> 59:48.860 We invented it. 59:48.860 --> 59:52.140 It's led to disabled, poor and non-white people 59:52.140 --> 59:54.620 being locked up and sterilised. 59:54.620 --> 59:57.100 The greatest horrors of the 20th century, 59:57.100 --> 01:00:00.140 the ideological roots were partly right here in London, 01:00:00.140 --> 01:00:01.780 near where I live. 01:00:03.380 --> 01:00:06.460 I'm Angela Saini, an author and science journalist. 01:00:08.100 --> 01:00:12.340 Now I want to investigate how eugenics rebranded itself 01:00:12.340 --> 01:00:15.140 after the horrors of the Second World War, 01:00:15.140 --> 01:00:19.180 and how its devastating legacy continued across the world. 01:00:20.660 --> 01:00:25.140 We have eight million sterilisations happening in India within one year. 01:00:25.140 --> 01:00:27.940 That's shocking. Eight million! 01:00:27.940 --> 01:00:30.860 We'll see how eugenics-style attitudes 01:00:30.860 --> 01:00:34.860 towards the poor remain with us in today's Britain. 01:00:34.860 --> 01:00:38.380 It is, quite explicitly, a message to some to parts of society - 01:00:38.380 --> 01:00:41.180 "We think you're having too many children." 01:00:43.340 --> 01:00:48.020 I'm Adam Pearson, a reporter and disability rights activist. 01:00:48.020 --> 01:00:50.620 I was born with a genetic condition. 01:00:53.500 --> 01:00:56.700 I want to explore - do medical breakthroughs, 01:00:56.700 --> 01:01:00.300 combined with prejudice against disabled people, 01:01:00.300 --> 01:01:03.540 mean we are on the verge of a new era of eugenics? 01:01:05.140 --> 01:01:08.380 I think we need to kill these people, right? 01:01:08.380 --> 01:01:10.700 At the very least, imprison them. 01:01:12.180 --> 01:01:15.980 Could we be heading for a society where anyone not considered perfect 01:01:15.980 --> 01:01:18.460 will be prevented from being born? 01:01:23.740 --> 01:01:27.900 If you're telling me that the world without me is a better world, 01:01:27.900 --> 01:01:29.460 what does that say about me? 01:01:29.460 --> 01:01:30.940 Well, that's eugenics, isn't it? 01:01:30.940 --> 01:01:31.980 Exactly. 01:01:31.980 --> 01:01:35.100 Philosophically, it's a minefield. 01:01:36.180 --> 01:01:37.860 Complete minefield. 01:01:46.260 --> 01:01:48.980 In the aftermath of World War II, 01:01:48.980 --> 01:01:52.540 the horrors of the Holocaust became widely known. 01:01:52.540 --> 01:01:57.740 But few connected these events with the work of British scientists. 01:02:00.340 --> 01:02:02.820 Eugenics, one of the ideologies 01:02:02.820 --> 01:02:05.900 driving the Nazis' genocidal project, 01:02:05.900 --> 01:02:08.140 originated in Victorian London. 01:02:09.700 --> 01:02:13.260 It had become part of mainstream British thought, 01:02:13.260 --> 01:02:16.220 and even helped shape government policy. 01:02:18.620 --> 01:02:22.420 This was now an inconvenient truth, 01:02:22.420 --> 01:02:24.940 and most British advocates of eugenics 01:02:24.940 --> 01:02:27.020 distanced themselves from it. 01:02:28.060 --> 01:02:29.900 But some did not. 01:02:32.900 --> 01:02:36.100 This is King's College, London, 01:02:36.100 --> 01:02:38.020 where I studied as a postgraduate. 01:02:39.460 --> 01:02:42.620 I've asked to see the collected papers of 01:02:42.620 --> 01:02:44.300 Reginald Ruggles Gates. 01:02:44.300 --> 01:02:46.180 Professor of Botany here, 01:02:46.180 --> 01:02:50.980 he continued to espouse openly eugenic views throughout the 1950s. 01:02:54.140 --> 01:02:56.060 My goodness. 01:02:56.060 --> 01:02:58.780 So this is a skin colour chart. 01:02:58.780 --> 01:03:00.620 And it shows at the beginning, it says, 01:03:00.620 --> 01:03:03.980 "Represents the skin colour of an individual coloured person." 01:03:03.980 --> 01:03:07.020 So this is presumably someone who isn't racially mixed, 01:03:07.020 --> 01:03:10.100 and the skin colour of a white person who isn't racially mixed, 01:03:10.100 --> 01:03:12.220 and then lots of colours in between. 01:03:12.220 --> 01:03:15.620 And the purpose of this is to look at racial mixing, 01:03:15.620 --> 01:03:19.860 so that he can identify who is more mixed and who isn't. 01:03:19.860 --> 01:03:23.500 He was obsessed by skin colour, clearly. 01:03:23.500 --> 01:03:26.020 I mean, he's drawn up a chart, for goodness' sake. 01:03:26.020 --> 01:03:28.620 And here it comes in a wheel, as well. 01:03:30.220 --> 01:03:33.060 Gates believed that racial intermarriage 01:03:33.060 --> 01:03:36.780 would cause mental and physical disabilities. 01:03:36.780 --> 01:03:42.580 "Would dilute and degrade the more advanced race," was how he put it. 01:03:42.580 --> 01:03:45.660 Gates believed that races were different species, 01:03:45.660 --> 01:03:49.860 so not just that we have superficial differences like skin colour, 01:03:49.860 --> 01:03:52.660 but that we evolved separately. 01:03:52.660 --> 01:03:57.620 And so for him, there was a real danger here in races mixing. 01:03:57.620 --> 01:03:59.740 In the early 1960s, 01:03:59.740 --> 01:04:03.660 Gates helped found a notorious journal called 01:04:03.660 --> 01:04:07.500 Mankind Quarterly, which argued for eugenics. 01:04:08.980 --> 01:04:13.060 It was influential with supporters of racial segregation in America 01:04:13.060 --> 01:04:15.900 and apartheid in South Africa. 01:04:15.900 --> 01:04:20.540 Even today, it's present in the toxic ideologies of the far right. 01:04:21.980 --> 01:04:25.620 Gates's interest in race spans so far, 01:04:25.620 --> 01:04:30.700 that in his papers I even stumbled on something personal to me. 01:04:31.980 --> 01:04:34.900 I was looking through the catalogue. 01:04:34.900 --> 01:04:39.420 One mentioned Sainis, which is my surname, so I've got this here. 01:04:40.420 --> 01:04:45.420 The study of ABO Blood Groups of Sainis of Punjab. 01:04:45.420 --> 01:04:49.620 The subjects of various districts was studied in Punjab - 01:04:49.620 --> 01:04:51.780 Hoshiarpur, Jullundur and Ambala. 01:04:51.780 --> 01:04:55.060 Hoshiarpur is where my father's family are from. 01:04:55.060 --> 01:04:59.900 So these were blood tests taken from people who could well 01:04:59.900 --> 01:05:03.820 very easily have been members of my family at the time. 01:05:06.620 --> 01:05:09.100 And that's so strange. 01:05:10.620 --> 01:05:12.180 It's unnerving. 01:05:12.180 --> 01:05:15.420 Although this paper wasn't written by Gates, 01:05:15.420 --> 01:05:19.180 he collected it as part of a scientific quest 01:05:19.180 --> 01:05:21.260 to promote racial difference. 01:05:22.580 --> 01:05:23.940 We need to read this. 01:05:23.940 --> 01:05:27.180 We need to understand the history of this because if we don't, 01:05:27.180 --> 01:05:29.500 then it just gets swept under the carpet. 01:05:29.500 --> 01:05:32.260 So even though it's painful to read it, and personally painful, 01:05:32.260 --> 01:05:37.060 especially for me, it's incredibly important, I think, that we see it. 01:05:37.060 --> 01:05:38.900 And I'm glad this archive is here. 01:05:47.300 --> 01:05:49.740 Investigating eugenics, 01:05:49.740 --> 01:05:52.220 I know I'd uncover stories of people whose lives 01:05:52.220 --> 01:05:54.020 have been deeply damaged. 01:05:55.940 --> 01:06:00.700 But I didn't realise how disturbing it would be to meet them in person. 01:06:03.780 --> 01:06:05.940 Elena is a member of the Roma community 01:06:05.940 --> 01:06:08.020 who live in the Czech Republic. 01:06:19.660 --> 01:06:23.660 In 1990, in hospital for the birth of her second child, 01:06:23.660 --> 01:06:27.140 Elena had no idea what was about to happen to her. 01:07:12.540 --> 01:07:15.340 She was told later that as her previous two children 01:07:15.340 --> 01:07:18.660 had been born via Caesarean section, 01:07:18.660 --> 01:07:22.780 she was sterilised to prevent further risky pregnancies. 01:07:25.820 --> 01:07:27.580 But she was never consulted, 01:07:27.580 --> 01:07:32.620 and soon found out that other Romany women have had similar experiences. 01:07:44.820 --> 01:07:47.220 Why do you think you were sterilised? 01:08:00.940 --> 01:08:03.980 Why Romany women in particular? 01:08:19.220 --> 01:08:22.020 Elena is now the head of a group of Romany women 01:08:22.020 --> 01:08:24.140 who all claim they were sterilised, 01:08:24.140 --> 01:08:26.780 and have campaigned for years for justice. 01:08:29.420 --> 01:08:33.620 Recently, a Czech MP introduced a bill to the country's parliament 01:08:33.620 --> 01:08:35.860 to compensate them for what happened to them. 01:08:38.540 --> 01:08:41.380 A bit messed up, isn't it, that 01:08:41.380 --> 01:08:46.420 a woman who was already from a marginalised community just died. 01:08:47.460 --> 01:08:48.540 It angers me. 01:08:49.940 --> 01:08:52.500 That this is happening in the '90s, 01:08:52.500 --> 01:08:56.620 I can't get my head around 01:08:56.620 --> 01:08:58.180 that timeline at all. 01:08:59.300 --> 01:09:03.100 I've been saying for a while now, "This could have been me." 01:09:03.100 --> 01:09:05.620 But in reality, it could've been anyone. 01:09:05.620 --> 01:09:11.180 Anyone could have been handed a document to sign in a blind panic 01:09:11.180 --> 01:09:13.340 and then been sterilised. 01:09:20.820 --> 01:09:24.780 It's a little known fact that sterilisation policies carried 01:09:24.780 --> 01:09:28.100 on in many countries after the war. 01:09:28.100 --> 01:09:32.420 In Sweden, more than 60,000 people were sterilised 01:09:32.420 --> 01:09:35.540 to improve racial purity in a state programme 01:09:35.540 --> 01:09:38.100 which carried on until the mid-1970s. 01:09:39.380 --> 01:09:43.780 Two Canadian provinces and 33 American states 01:09:43.780 --> 01:09:48.100 practised sterilisation before and after the war. 01:09:48.100 --> 01:09:51.980 North Carolina alone sterilised more than 7,000 people. 01:09:56.140 --> 01:09:59.020 Historian Marius Turda has investigated 01:09:59.020 --> 01:10:03.140 how sterilisation programmes were the result of years 01:10:03.140 --> 01:10:06.900 of lobbying by American and European eugenicists. 01:10:09.940 --> 01:10:13.140 He begins by telling me about Carlos Blacker, 01:10:13.140 --> 01:10:19.300 the general secretary of the British Eugenics Society from 1931 to 1952. 01:10:21.340 --> 01:10:26.700 He was a very important eugenicist, both before and after 1945. 01:10:26.700 --> 01:10:30.340 Blacker joined forces with people like Margaret Sanger, 01:10:30.340 --> 01:10:33.740 the American Birth Control activist and eugenicist. 01:10:33.740 --> 01:10:38.740 They campaigned against overpopulation in places like India. 01:10:38.740 --> 01:10:41.860 By 1952, they all convened in Bombay, India, 01:10:41.860 --> 01:10:45.140 to actually convince the Indian governments 01:10:45.140 --> 01:10:47.340 that the only way to deal with poverty 01:10:47.340 --> 01:10:49.620 is to diminish the fertility rates. 01:10:49.620 --> 01:10:54.420 We need to bring some form of 01:10:54.420 --> 01:10:58.300 eugenic therapy, inverted commas, to countries such as India. 01:10:58.300 --> 01:11:01.580 And the Indian government is finally persuaded. 01:11:01.580 --> 01:11:06.580 The Indian government offered cash to its citizens to get sterilised. 01:11:08.540 --> 01:11:11.060 I mean, these are enormous figures. 01:11:11.060 --> 01:11:13.460 So just in this one place in Madras 01:11:13.460 --> 01:11:17.980 between 1956 and 1962, 01:11:17.980 --> 01:11:21.740 more than 55,000 people were sterilised. 01:11:22.860 --> 01:11:24.700 In the 1960s and '70s, 01:11:24.700 --> 01:11:29.020 as India suffered natural disasters and famine, 01:11:29.020 --> 01:11:31.780 the American government and aid agencies 01:11:31.780 --> 01:11:34.460 made it clear to the Indian authorities 01:11:34.460 --> 01:11:36.180 that if they wanted aid, 01:11:36.180 --> 01:11:39.020 they would have to control the population. 01:11:40.140 --> 01:11:42.660 Lyndon Johnson told one of his advisers, 01:11:42.660 --> 01:11:46.020 "I'm not going to piss away foreign aid in nations 01:11:46.020 --> 01:11:49.260 "where they refuse to deal with their own population problems." 01:11:51.020 --> 01:11:52.740 The message got through. 01:11:54.620 --> 01:11:58.700 In the mid-1970s, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi 01:11:58.700 --> 01:12:02.940 suspended democratic rule and her son, Sanjay Gandhi, 01:12:02.940 --> 01:12:07.660 led an extraordinary campaign to reduce the country's birth rate. 01:12:09.460 --> 01:12:12.100 And by 1976-77, 01:12:12.100 --> 01:12:16.900 we have eight million sterilisations happening in India within one year. 01:12:16.900 --> 01:12:19.300 Shocking. Eight million! 01:12:19.300 --> 01:12:20.500 I can't... 01:12:20.500 --> 01:12:21.980 Yes, it is quite a number. 01:12:21.980 --> 01:12:25.020 It is shocking to me that I don't know that. Yes. 01:12:25.020 --> 01:12:28.580 The Indian government didn't call this policy eugenics. 01:12:28.580 --> 01:12:31.100 It was framed as an answer to famine, 01:12:31.100 --> 01:12:35.980 but human rights critics argue that the burden of sterilisation 01:12:35.980 --> 01:12:40.820 fell heavily on India's poor, echoing the history of eugenics. 01:12:40.820 --> 01:12:44.860 We have stories about bulldozers going into very poor neighbourhoods 01:12:44.860 --> 01:12:47.380 and, you know, fishing out the men and sterilising them. 01:12:47.380 --> 01:12:50.100 There's some speculation that up to this point maybe we're talking 01:12:50.100 --> 01:12:55.580 about 40 million people sterilised in India since 1950 to this day. 01:12:55.580 --> 01:13:00.060 It's important not to damn the whole population control movement. 01:13:00.060 --> 01:13:02.540 They weren't all eugenicists. 01:13:02.540 --> 01:13:05.900 Many were driven by sincere environmental concerns, 01:13:05.900 --> 01:13:09.740 or to improve women's access to birth control. 01:13:09.740 --> 01:13:11.740 Not all of these people are eugenicists. 01:13:11.740 --> 01:13:15.260 There are lots of people interested in population issues 01:13:15.260 --> 01:13:17.660 who are not eugenicists. 01:13:17.660 --> 01:13:22.900 However, it was the big figures in this movement, at least 01:13:22.900 --> 01:13:26.260 in the 1950s, had that eugenic inclination. 01:13:29.500 --> 01:13:32.940 Well, I think one thing that is recurrent in the story of eugenics 01:13:32.940 --> 01:13:35.540 throughout the 20th century 01:13:35.540 --> 01:13:38.780 is that the target always seems to be the poorest. 01:13:38.780 --> 01:13:42.020 Whether that's the poorest within British society 01:13:42.020 --> 01:13:45.060 or whether that's the poor wherever they happen to be in the world. 01:13:45.060 --> 01:13:47.420 Just goes to show that that element 01:13:47.420 --> 01:13:52.940 of wanting to get rid of poor people one way or another remains. 01:13:54.620 --> 01:14:00.700 And, in some ways, is the darkest element of eugenics that, you know, 01:14:00.700 --> 01:14:03.140 only the wealthy should be allowed to have children. 01:14:03.140 --> 01:14:06.820 That has never changed. That's been the constant throughout. 01:14:11.260 --> 01:14:14.180 The other side of the British eugenic vision 01:14:14.180 --> 01:14:19.700 was to encourage the educated middle classes to have more children, 01:14:19.700 --> 01:14:23.700 something eugenicists pushed even after the war. 01:14:23.700 --> 01:14:28.220 I'm meeting a retired academic with a strange story. 01:14:28.220 --> 01:14:30.180 In the early 1960s, 01:14:30.180 --> 01:14:31.940 Hilary Rose and her husband 01:14:31.940 --> 01:14:35.260 were working at the London School of Economics. 01:14:35.260 --> 01:14:37.100 To Hilary's surprise, 01:14:37.100 --> 01:14:42.260 the LSC quietly offered an incentive to academics to have more babies. 01:14:43.340 --> 01:14:44.460 Why? 01:14:44.460 --> 01:14:49.020 Because they were seen as the brightest and the best. 01:14:49.020 --> 01:14:50.260 And it was funny. 01:14:51.340 --> 01:14:55.460 What we got was £50 for every child that you had. 01:14:55.460 --> 01:14:57.980 And how was this presented to you? 01:14:57.980 --> 01:15:00.100 It just was there in your payslip. 01:15:00.100 --> 01:15:02.900 I mean, nobody told you about it. 01:15:02.900 --> 01:15:05.940 You just thought, "Where did this money come from?" 01:15:05.940 --> 01:15:08.140 So for all the extra children you had... 01:15:08.140 --> 01:15:09.540 We had two children. Right. 01:15:09.540 --> 01:15:12.020 We got £200. 01:15:12.020 --> 01:15:15.660 If we'd only had one academic, obviously a male academic, 01:15:15.660 --> 01:15:18.740 then they would have only got £100. 01:15:18.740 --> 01:15:20.620 Remarkably, the scheme 01:15:20.620 --> 01:15:23.900 had originally been proposed in the 1920s, 01:15:23.900 --> 01:15:27.060 by then LSC director William Beveridge, 01:15:27.060 --> 01:15:30.620 the future architect of the welfare state. 01:15:30.620 --> 01:15:34.580 He had been fascinated by the idea of positive eugenics. 01:15:35.940 --> 01:15:37.980 When you look back on that now, 01:15:37.980 --> 01:15:39.620 now in the 21st century, 01:15:39.620 --> 01:15:42.060 how do you feel about it? 01:15:42.060 --> 01:15:43.540 Well, a bit guilty. 01:15:43.540 --> 01:15:46.620 I mean, it's, you know, it was so unjust. 01:15:47.700 --> 01:15:50.180 But did you feel at all flattered that you were considered 01:15:50.180 --> 01:15:53.420 the desirable parents, that you were the good people? 01:15:53.420 --> 01:15:54.860 I mean, we just laughed about it. 01:15:54.860 --> 01:15:57.700 I mean, look, I'm married to a biologist. 01:15:57.700 --> 01:16:02.620 I mean, he knows the whole thing is just scientific garbage. 01:16:02.620 --> 01:16:05.700 I regard it as just monstrous. 01:16:05.700 --> 01:16:09.020 You know, if you believe that all children should be treated 01:16:09.020 --> 01:16:11.820 with love and care and have a good life. 01:16:13.180 --> 01:16:17.180 I mean, how could I feel that as an incentive? 01:16:19.380 --> 01:16:21.980 Hilary went on to have a distinguished career 01:16:21.980 --> 01:16:23.700 as a sociologist. 01:16:23.700 --> 01:16:27.380 She's spoken out against the promotion of eugenics 01:16:27.380 --> 01:16:31.860 under the guise of population control or social improvement. 01:16:31.860 --> 01:16:34.660 What do you do if you've got a litter of dogs 01:16:34.660 --> 01:16:37.100 and one is the runt of the litter? 01:16:37.100 --> 01:16:40.780 You strangle it, or you put it in a bucket of water. 01:16:40.780 --> 01:16:47.260 And that's how I think the ruling strata thought about the people, 01:16:47.260 --> 01:16:50.100 is that you want to look after it, 01:16:50.100 --> 01:16:53.140 you want to look after the national stock. 01:16:55.500 --> 01:16:57.860 I couldn't have imagined that eugenics 01:16:57.860 --> 01:17:01.180 would continue in Britain after the war. 01:17:01.180 --> 01:17:03.700 But now I'm wondering if its key dogma - 01:17:03.700 --> 01:17:07.140 that the poor are some kind of burden - has survived. 01:17:08.180 --> 01:17:10.420 The phrase "Problem Families" 01:17:10.420 --> 01:17:13.620 was used by the Eugenics Society in the 1950s 01:17:13.620 --> 01:17:17.460 to describe an underclass in which crime, poverty 01:17:17.460 --> 01:17:21.700 and unemployability runs through generations. 01:17:21.700 --> 01:17:24.660 More recent politicians don't talk about this 01:17:24.660 --> 01:17:26.220 as a genetic problem, 01:17:26.220 --> 01:17:30.100 but they have talked in terms of culture and society. 01:17:32.420 --> 01:17:37.140 In 1974, senior Conservative politician Keith Joseph said 01:17:37.140 --> 01:17:41.700 the human stock was threatened by poor people breeding too much. 01:17:43.740 --> 01:17:45.500 In 2006, 01:17:45.500 --> 01:17:49.620 Tony Blair said problem families were a menace to society. 01:17:50.780 --> 01:17:54.540 And in 2011, after riots in British cities, 01:17:54.540 --> 01:17:59.580 David Cameron laid some of the blame on troubled families. 01:17:59.580 --> 01:18:01.620 I think we've all known for years 01:18:01.620 --> 01:18:04.260 that a relatively small number of families 01:18:04.260 --> 01:18:08.740 are the source of a large proportion of problems in our society. 01:18:08.740 --> 01:18:12.140 Drug addiction, alcohol abuse, crime, 01:18:12.140 --> 01:18:15.620 a culture of disruption and irresponsibility 01:18:15.620 --> 01:18:18.540 that cascades through generations. 01:18:18.540 --> 01:18:22.500 But in recent years, a series of reports and inquiries 01:18:22.500 --> 01:18:25.540 have debunked the notion that unemployment 01:18:25.540 --> 01:18:27.420 and crime run in families. 01:18:30.460 --> 01:18:34.900 Professor Jonathan Portes was one of a number of experts asked 01:18:34.900 --> 01:18:38.580 by the government to carry out an independent evaluation 01:18:38.580 --> 01:18:40.420 of its troubled families programme. 01:18:42.900 --> 01:18:45.100 The myth of intergenerational worklessness 01:18:45.100 --> 01:18:47.340 has been comprehensively exploded. 01:18:47.340 --> 01:18:51.580 There are very, very few families that are workless 01:18:51.580 --> 01:18:53.460 for more than one generation, 01:18:53.460 --> 01:18:55.940 let alone for two or three generations. 01:18:55.940 --> 01:18:59.620 There's always been a view that there were the deserving poor 01:18:59.620 --> 01:19:01.340 and the undeserving poor. 01:19:01.340 --> 01:19:05.660 The way it's sold or justified is typically with, you know, 01:19:05.660 --> 01:19:10.860 a spread in a tabloid newspaper of a mum with ten or 11 children. 01:19:10.860 --> 01:19:12.820 And the message is, 01:19:12.820 --> 01:19:18.340 "These people are special, they're somehow breeding like rabbits, 01:19:18.340 --> 01:19:23.220 "and you, the honest, hardworking taxpayer, are paying for them." 01:19:23.220 --> 01:19:25.900 I'm sure there's no politicians, no policy makers now 01:19:25.900 --> 01:19:27.700 who would ever think in these terms, 01:19:27.700 --> 01:19:28.900 who would ever advocate, 01:19:28.900 --> 01:19:31.220 as they did in the 1920s and 1930s, 01:19:31.220 --> 01:19:33.620 sterilisation for certain groups of people. 01:19:33.620 --> 01:19:38.300 Or, you know, to encourage certain people to reproduce and not others. 01:19:38.300 --> 01:19:41.140 Well, that's not quite true, of course. Really? 01:19:41.140 --> 01:19:44.340 Well, I mean we have just chosen to introduce 01:19:44.340 --> 01:19:47.900 a three-child limit in Universal Credit. 01:19:47.900 --> 01:19:50.780 You know, more than two children, that is your lot. 01:19:50.780 --> 01:19:55.380 You are being irresponsible, and you, your family, your children 01:19:55.380 --> 01:19:58.060 will have to accept the financial consequences 01:19:58.060 --> 01:20:00.220 of that irresponsibility. 01:20:00.220 --> 01:20:04.940 With some exceptions, families whose third child is born 01:20:04.940 --> 01:20:09.380 after 6th April 2017 don't receive Universal Credit 01:20:09.380 --> 01:20:11.740 for that child, or any more. 01:20:11.740 --> 01:20:14.260 We are effectively saying to low-income families, 01:20:14.260 --> 01:20:16.780 and that includes low-income families in work, 01:20:16.780 --> 01:20:20.380 that we are going to penalise you for the act of having a third child. 01:20:20.380 --> 01:20:24.420 And I think that is quite explicitly a message to some parts of society, 01:20:24.420 --> 01:20:27.060 "Actually, we think you're having too many children." 01:20:31.460 --> 01:20:35.900 The idea that some groups are a burden to society is still with us. 01:20:38.100 --> 01:20:41.420 And in recent years, social media has become rife with prejudice. 01:20:45.300 --> 01:20:51.100 Here, the eugenic idea that some people aren't fit to breed is back 01:20:51.100 --> 01:20:52.380 with a vengeance. 01:20:55.380 --> 01:20:58.580 I'm going to Stoney Bridge, just outside of Manchester. 01:20:58.580 --> 01:21:02.940 The reason being, I've come to talk to a friend of mine, Steve. 01:21:02.940 --> 01:21:06.860 He's done a bit of TV work, advocacy work, etc. 01:21:07.980 --> 01:21:09.820 He's got a genetic condition, 01:21:09.820 --> 01:21:13.660 and there's a 50/50 chance that he could pass it on to his children 01:21:13.660 --> 01:21:15.660 and, most crucial to this story, 01:21:15.660 --> 01:21:19.940 has expressed interest in both him and his wife starting a family. 01:21:21.660 --> 01:21:23.500 Steve has a genetic condition, 01:21:23.500 --> 01:21:24.740 Crouzon syndrome, 01:21:24.740 --> 01:21:27.100 which means some of the bones in his skull 01:21:27.100 --> 01:21:29.620 fused together too early in infancy. 01:21:32.820 --> 01:21:35.060 There are potentially dangerous side effects, 01:21:35.060 --> 01:21:36.940 but with modern medical care, 01:21:36.940 --> 01:21:40.380 people with the syndrome have a normal life expectancy. 01:21:41.820 --> 01:21:45.460 But after Steve and his wife, Vicky, told a newspaper they were thinking 01:21:45.460 --> 01:21:50.020 of starting a family, they began to receive online hate messages. 01:21:52.140 --> 01:21:55.500 "I think we need to kill these people, right? 01:21:55.500 --> 01:21:58.380 "At the very least, imprison them. 01:21:58.380 --> 01:22:01.620 "If you heard there was someone out there intentionally inflicting 01:22:01.620 --> 01:22:03.820 "people with debilitating diseases, 01:22:03.820 --> 01:22:06.660 "would you let them run about and continue to do so, 01:22:06.660 --> 01:22:09.220 "or try to put a stop to it? 01:22:09.220 --> 01:22:12.900 "How does society feel about forced vasectomies? 01:22:12.900 --> 01:22:15.100 "Some cords are just better cut. 01:22:15.100 --> 01:22:17.940 "It's either that, or beat this guy over the head with a rock 01:22:17.940 --> 01:22:20.300 "and ship him down the river to the '80s cult classic 01:22:20.300 --> 01:22:21.860 "that he came from." 01:22:21.860 --> 01:22:24.180 And that kind of shocked us more than anything, 01:22:24.180 --> 01:22:26.420 because it's not something I've usually come across. 01:22:26.420 --> 01:22:28.900 I've come across the bullying comments, 01:22:28.900 --> 01:22:32.260 people making childish names, 01:22:32.260 --> 01:22:34.860 and abusing me, 01:22:34.860 --> 01:22:38.340 but that's a whole new level that I've experienced. 01:22:39.740 --> 01:22:44.460 I was upset and, obviously, hearing them say things 01:22:44.460 --> 01:22:47.820 like that about my husband, who I love dearly, 01:22:47.820 --> 01:22:49.460 obviously is a massive shock. 01:22:49.460 --> 01:22:51.980 I'm fully prepared for if I do have a child with Crouzon's. 01:22:51.980 --> 01:22:56.140 I was brought up with the situation that you have a condition, 01:22:56.140 --> 01:22:58.260 you're not different from anyone else. 01:22:58.260 --> 01:23:01.260 And that's the kind of environment I can bring my child up in. 01:23:01.260 --> 01:23:05.380 And you can still live a happy life. 01:23:05.380 --> 01:23:07.220 He hasn't really thought this through. 01:23:07.220 --> 01:23:10.620 I mean, no-one knows the path of Crouzon's better than you. 01:23:10.620 --> 01:23:14.740 We both agree that we'd make fantastic parents. 01:23:14.740 --> 01:23:17.380 You know, I think if we did have a baby, or children, 01:23:17.380 --> 01:23:19.940 you know, they'd all be greatly loved. 01:23:25.580 --> 01:23:28.180 I'm really angry right now. 01:23:28.180 --> 01:23:31.180 I want to know when did we as a human race decide 01:23:31.180 --> 01:23:35.660 when it was OK to say who can and who can't have kids? 01:23:36.700 --> 01:23:41.380 And it's made all the more infuriating 01:23:41.380 --> 01:23:43.100 by the fact that these are people I know. 01:23:43.100 --> 01:23:46.700 This is like a really good mate of mine and his wife, 01:23:46.700 --> 01:23:49.380 who wanted to start a family. 01:23:49.380 --> 01:23:52.420 It's like a perfectly normal thing, 01:23:52.420 --> 01:23:55.780 just subject to such scrutiny and vitriol. 01:24:01.700 --> 01:24:03.020 And to make matters worse, 01:24:03.020 --> 01:24:04.420 there are also growing fears 01:24:04.420 --> 01:24:07.060 around recent medical breakthroughs. 01:24:09.180 --> 01:24:13.820 About one in five people in the UK have a form of disability, 01:24:13.820 --> 01:24:16.180 and some of them worry that emerging science 01:24:16.180 --> 01:24:18.620 might usher in a new era of eugenics. 01:24:23.980 --> 01:24:26.740 Sarah Leiter was born with albinism 01:24:26.740 --> 01:24:28.940 and is almost completely blind. 01:24:30.540 --> 01:24:32.500 She's also a genetic researcher, 01:24:32.500 --> 01:24:36.620 and is concerned about the potential misuse of medical advances. 01:24:41.180 --> 01:24:44.260 What is the medical landscape like at the moment? 01:24:44.260 --> 01:24:46.700 What's been developing a lot over the past few years 01:24:46.700 --> 01:24:47.900 has been screening. 01:24:47.900 --> 01:24:50.100 So I think the most prominent example people would know 01:24:50.100 --> 01:24:53.660 about is Down's syndrome screening in pregnancy. 01:24:53.660 --> 01:24:58.300 Today, an estimated 90% of Down's syndrome pregnancies are terminated. 01:25:03.300 --> 01:25:06.940 Advocacy groups like the Don't Screen Us Out campaign are concerned 01:25:06.940 --> 01:25:08.980 that one day people with Down's syndrome 01:25:08.980 --> 01:25:11.100 will be eradicated from society. 01:25:12.820 --> 01:25:17.780 And now a new technique is available that could expand screening hugely. 01:25:19.300 --> 01:25:22.180 Now we can do non-invasive antenatal genetics 01:25:22.180 --> 01:25:25.820 which is basically where you take a blood sample from the mum 01:25:25.820 --> 01:25:29.620 and you're basically... Because there's a very small amount of DNA 01:25:29.620 --> 01:25:33.340 from the baby is going to be circulating in Mum's blood. 01:25:33.340 --> 01:25:36.420 So actually by taking a sample of blood from Mum, we can now 01:25:36.420 --> 01:25:40.660 look at, are there certain genetic changes in the baby? 01:25:42.100 --> 01:25:45.340 And at the moment this is mostly being done in a targeted approach. 01:25:45.340 --> 01:25:50.220 So, like, a family might have one child with cystic fibrosis 01:25:50.220 --> 01:25:52.700 which is, you know, a life-limiting condition. 01:25:52.700 --> 01:25:57.820 They might say we don't want a second child with cystic fibrosis. 01:25:57.820 --> 01:26:00.020 So at the moment, I think it's still very much based 01:26:00.020 --> 01:26:01.900 on if you know your family has a condition. 01:26:04.020 --> 01:26:05.540 But who knows whether in future 01:26:05.540 --> 01:26:08.380 this will just become a much more broad approach, 01:26:08.380 --> 01:26:11.460 where you say, actually we screen for every potential genetic mutation 01:26:11.460 --> 01:26:13.020 there is and then we like, you know... 01:26:13.020 --> 01:26:16.020 Actually, I don't know how many embryos would be left in the end. 01:26:16.020 --> 01:26:18.780 You'd actually have to rule out probably 01:26:18.780 --> 01:26:21.100 about a tenth of all pregnancies. 01:26:21.100 --> 01:26:24.380 Could this mean that in the future there'll be fewer people like me 01:26:24.380 --> 01:26:25.780 and these children? 01:26:27.900 --> 01:26:30.060 We share the same genetic condition - 01:26:30.060 --> 01:26:33.780 Neurofibromatosis Type 1, or NF1. 01:26:35.980 --> 01:26:38.500 It's caused by a mutation on a single gene. 01:26:42.300 --> 01:26:45.020 This causes benign tumours to appear. 01:26:45.020 --> 01:26:47.300 Mine are on my face, but they can form anywhere, 01:26:47.300 --> 01:26:50.580 causing many different complications. 01:26:52.420 --> 01:26:54.340 You eat pizza as well? 01:26:54.340 --> 01:26:55.900 Yep. 01:26:55.900 --> 01:26:58.860 Screening can now detect NF1 in embryos, 01:26:58.860 --> 01:27:02.820 and couples can choose not to go ahead with pregnancies. 01:27:06.700 --> 01:27:10.700 I asked the mum of eight-year-old Ellie what she thinks. 01:27:10.700 --> 01:27:13.180 This is, I think, really, really tough. 01:27:13.180 --> 01:27:16.660 When you're thinking about it from a eugenics point of view, 01:27:16.660 --> 01:27:19.420 you're thinking about what genetic issues 01:27:19.420 --> 01:27:21.900 do you not want to carry on populating. 01:27:21.900 --> 01:27:25.180 But you're missing out on what potentially 01:27:25.180 --> 01:27:28.340 could you have aside from that. 01:27:28.340 --> 01:27:30.780 And I think to view a person's life 01:27:30.780 --> 01:27:33.620 as a catalogue of medical appointments 01:27:33.620 --> 01:27:38.100 really misses out on all the other stuff that matters far more. 01:27:41.780 --> 01:27:43.820 Some disabled people fear screening 01:27:43.820 --> 01:27:46.020 will ultimately remove them from society, 01:27:46.020 --> 01:27:49.220 which is what eugenicists have always wanted. 01:27:53.140 --> 01:27:55.140 I'm with the Lichy family. 01:27:55.140 --> 01:27:57.580 Mum, Dad and both children are all deaf. 01:28:00.420 --> 01:28:02.500 We're getting to the stage now medically 01:28:02.500 --> 01:28:04.820 where we can start screening 01:28:04.820 --> 01:28:06.820 for things like deafness. 01:28:06.820 --> 01:28:08.980 Is that a good idea? 01:28:08.980 --> 01:28:10.900 No. 01:28:10.900 --> 01:28:14.980 I was really angry when I first heard that they were able 01:28:14.980 --> 01:28:17.180 to look at the genes of a baby 01:28:17.180 --> 01:28:20.900 or an embryo and then get rid of the deaf genes. 01:28:20.900 --> 01:28:23.180 And I thought, 01:28:23.180 --> 01:28:26.380 "Do you think that deaf people's lives aren't worth living? 01:28:26.380 --> 01:28:30.500 "Does that mean deaf people are lesser than hearing people?" 01:28:30.500 --> 01:28:33.540 And I felt very offended by that. 01:28:33.540 --> 01:28:35.580 I believe deaf people have a lot of life to live 01:28:35.580 --> 01:28:39.580 and a lot to offer and provide to society. 01:28:39.580 --> 01:28:40.860 I feel targeted. 01:28:44.300 --> 01:28:47.340 Because all that campaigning for human rights, for rights about, 01:28:47.340 --> 01:28:51.900 for example, black, white people, gay, straight people, 01:28:51.900 --> 01:28:54.140 it just feels like all that campaigning 01:28:54.140 --> 01:28:55.860 for all of this equality law 01:28:55.860 --> 01:28:57.700 actually doesn't mean anything, 01:28:57.700 --> 01:29:01.020 because disabled people are being targeted by this. 01:29:01.020 --> 01:29:03.700 Yeah, it feels like two stories, you know? 01:29:03.700 --> 01:29:06.460 On one hand we're valued and we should have equality, 01:29:06.460 --> 01:29:07.700 and on the other hand, 01:29:07.700 --> 01:29:09.940 we shouldn't have existed in the first place. 01:29:14.980 --> 01:29:17.980 But is screening always wrong? 01:29:17.980 --> 01:29:20.940 Philosophically, it's a minefield. 01:29:22.220 --> 01:29:23.540 Complete minefield. 01:29:25.020 --> 01:29:28.380 The worlds of Adam Pearson and NF1 are completely 01:29:28.380 --> 01:29:30.220 and utterly inseparable. 01:29:30.220 --> 01:29:32.100 I've dealt with that and I've got no doubt 01:29:32.100 --> 01:29:35.060 my prospective children will be able to deal with it. 01:29:36.500 --> 01:29:38.700 But would it be easier if they didn't have to? 01:29:40.780 --> 01:29:43.020 Kind of, for me, I wouldn't change it for the world, 01:29:43.020 --> 01:29:44.420 because it's made me who I am 01:29:44.420 --> 01:29:47.700 and it's given me the platform that I now have. 01:29:50.060 --> 01:29:54.620 But, you know, I've had 35 surgeries by 34 years of age. 01:29:56.020 --> 01:29:57.540 That's not fun. 01:29:57.540 --> 01:29:59.260 Got bullied a lot at school, 01:29:59.260 --> 01:30:01.900 and there's the whole thing when you have a facial disfigurement, 01:30:01.900 --> 01:30:06.060 you somehow lose your anonymity and become public property. 01:30:06.060 --> 01:30:11.260 And it's also not my decision exclusively, either. 01:30:11.260 --> 01:30:14.060 You know, when we're talking about kind of raising children, 01:30:14.060 --> 01:30:16.340 there's invariably always someone else involved. 01:30:24.860 --> 01:30:27.940 I want to meet people who've used screening to avoid passing 01:30:27.940 --> 01:30:29.860 on a hereditary condition. 01:30:31.140 --> 01:30:33.220 I'm meeting the Chiocci family. 01:30:34.420 --> 01:30:36.980 Dad Michael, like me, has NF1. 01:30:39.460 --> 01:30:42.260 So, much like me, you have NF1 01:30:42.260 --> 01:30:45.500 but it's affected us in very different ways, obviously. 01:30:45.500 --> 01:30:49.020 I've got a lot of fibroma on my face and upper body. 01:30:49.020 --> 01:30:50.860 How has it affected you? 01:30:50.860 --> 01:30:53.500 I've got quite a few like fibromas as well. 01:30:53.500 --> 01:30:56.300 So, obviously, I've got the neurofibroma here. 01:30:56.300 --> 01:30:58.580 I've got a few. I've got them all down my back. 01:30:58.580 --> 01:31:01.860 I just look like I've got a lot of extra nipples all over my body, 01:31:01.860 --> 01:31:03.180 generally on my back, 01:31:03.180 --> 01:31:05.500 but I think, apart from that, I'm still quite clumsy 01:31:05.500 --> 01:31:07.020 and I think Emma will probably tell you 01:31:07.020 --> 01:31:09.220 that sometimes my short term memory is not brilliant. 01:31:09.220 --> 01:31:10.820 I kind of get quite forgetful at times. 01:31:10.820 --> 01:31:12.900 Yeah, very. I'm clumsy as hell. 01:31:12.900 --> 01:31:15.860 So, we have that in common. 01:31:18.500 --> 01:31:21.060 Their first son Josh was conceived naturally. 01:31:22.140 --> 01:31:24.580 He has inherited the NF1 gene. 01:31:26.220 --> 01:31:28.420 He's 13 years old now. 01:31:28.420 --> 01:31:30.860 And how has NF affected Josh? 01:31:30.860 --> 01:31:33.180 He's got moderate learning problems. 01:31:33.180 --> 01:31:35.780 He's got... 01:31:35.780 --> 01:31:38.460 ..a plexi-form neurofibroma under his tongue. 01:31:38.460 --> 01:31:40.380 He's got them round his jaws. 01:31:40.380 --> 01:31:42.220 He's hyper-mobility. 01:31:42.220 --> 01:31:43.620 He's got scoliosis. 01:31:43.620 --> 01:31:46.060 Very outgoing. 01:31:46.060 --> 01:31:47.940 He doesn't let anything stand in his way. 01:31:47.940 --> 01:31:50.460 But I think he's starting to realise now, doesn't he, 01:31:50.460 --> 01:31:53.220 that he's a little bit different. 01:31:55.220 --> 01:31:58.220 After Josh was born, Emma and Michael heard about 01:31:58.220 --> 01:32:00.580 a pioneering new medical technique 01:32:00.580 --> 01:32:03.780 called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, 01:32:03.780 --> 01:32:06.820 which involves creating embryos using IVF. 01:32:09.460 --> 01:32:11.860 On average, in cases like the Chioccis, 01:32:11.860 --> 01:32:15.140 half will carry the NF gene and half won't. 01:32:16.980 --> 01:32:20.780 Doctors select the embryos without the faulty gene 01:32:20.780 --> 01:32:23.500 and implant them in the mother's womb. 01:32:23.500 --> 01:32:26.740 I think with us they re-implanted two, 01:32:26.740 --> 01:32:28.820 and that's how we ended up with Oliver. 01:32:28.820 --> 01:32:30.980 Nice. Yeah. Show your muscles! 01:32:32.900 --> 01:32:35.220 The debate that rages on is, 01:32:35.220 --> 01:32:39.140 are we ultimately screening out disability? 01:32:39.140 --> 01:32:42.460 How was the response from the NF community? 01:32:42.460 --> 01:32:45.900 Well, we did have a few people that said that they didn't agree 01:32:45.900 --> 01:32:47.420 with what we were doing, 01:32:47.420 --> 01:32:49.820 which I did struggle with for a while. 01:32:49.820 --> 01:32:51.900 But I have no regrets. 01:32:53.740 --> 01:32:57.620 But do you understand the point they're making? Yeah, I do. 01:32:57.620 --> 01:33:00.460 Are we or aren't we screening out disability? 01:33:00.460 --> 01:33:02.100 I do. I do understand that. 01:33:02.100 --> 01:33:06.740 But why should a child suffer unnecessarily if they don't have to? 01:33:06.740 --> 01:33:09.980 And you're not trying to get rid of people who are alive today. 01:33:09.980 --> 01:33:11.940 We're just trying to give people, no, 01:33:11.940 --> 01:33:13.780 to children who haven't even been born yet, 01:33:13.780 --> 01:33:15.140 the best chance for the future, 01:33:15.140 --> 01:33:17.380 which is a completely different thing altogether. 01:33:17.380 --> 01:33:18.700 No, completely. 01:33:18.700 --> 01:33:23.460 I mean, I do wonder sometimes if I've given Michael and Joshua 01:33:23.460 --> 01:33:27.780 the idea that maybe I was saying that they weren't good enough, 01:33:27.780 --> 01:33:30.940 but I was just doing it to have a healthy child. 01:33:30.940 --> 01:33:33.980 I didn't want another child to go through what Joshua's been through. 01:33:33.980 --> 01:33:36.620 I think like most parents, all you ever want is what's best 01:33:36.620 --> 01:33:38.260 for your children, really. 01:33:38.260 --> 01:33:40.340 I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. 01:33:40.340 --> 01:33:44.540 I think it's what is best for you. 01:33:44.540 --> 01:33:46.860 I don't think what we've done is wrong. 01:33:46.860 --> 01:33:48.540 Everyone makes their own decisions. 01:33:48.540 --> 01:33:51.260 I think everyone's circumstances are different. 01:33:51.260 --> 01:33:53.260 Everyone's had different experiences. 01:33:53.260 --> 01:33:54.900 So, currently, this technology 01:33:54.900 --> 01:33:58.780 is being used to screen for things like NF and Huntington's. 01:33:58.780 --> 01:34:03.380 But the big debate is that the further advanced it becomes, 01:34:03.380 --> 01:34:06.380 the more possibilities there are. 01:34:06.380 --> 01:34:11.300 And it could stray off into a kind of design your own baby area. 01:34:11.300 --> 01:34:14.500 Where do you think the line should be drawn? 01:34:14.500 --> 01:34:16.820 I think we've got it right in the UK at the moment. 01:34:16.820 --> 01:34:18.460 I mean, when you go for your PGD, 01:34:18.460 --> 01:34:20.500 there's not like a shopping list. 01:34:20.500 --> 01:34:21.660 Do you want a boy or a girl? 01:34:21.660 --> 01:34:23.940 What colour eyes and hair do you want them to have? 01:34:23.940 --> 01:34:26.820 It is solely, basically, to make sure that the baby's healthy, 01:34:26.820 --> 01:34:30.900 doesn't have the same problem that you have yourself. 01:34:32.300 --> 01:34:36.180 It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a family where two members 01:34:36.180 --> 01:34:40.380 already have a genetic condition like NF1 would try PGD. 01:34:43.340 --> 01:34:46.700 I really liked them, and they've really thought it through. 01:34:46.700 --> 01:34:50.940 Ultimately, parents want the best possible life for their kids 01:34:50.940 --> 01:34:54.500 which is what any parent wants and it isn't unreasonable. 01:34:54.500 --> 01:34:56.820 And I get it. 01:34:56.820 --> 01:35:01.500 I would probably make a very similar choice in their situation. 01:35:01.500 --> 01:35:04.580 And I understand the objection 01:35:04.580 --> 01:35:08.220 that if we start screening out disability, what does that say 01:35:08.220 --> 01:35:11.860 about how we value disabled people? 01:35:11.860 --> 01:35:14.180 And I don't think that's what happening with PGD. 01:35:14.180 --> 01:35:15.900 I think there's a definite line 01:35:15.900 --> 01:35:17.540 that's been drawn in the sand. 01:35:17.540 --> 01:35:20.740 Where this all starts to become a bit more eugenic 01:35:20.740 --> 01:35:25.460 in its practise is when you go from trying to relieve suffering 01:35:25.460 --> 01:35:30.020 and slowly creep towards enhancing and altering humans. 01:35:33.140 --> 01:35:36.180 Oliver is a living, breathing example 01:35:36.180 --> 01:35:41.020 of how modern genetic science can alleviate suffering. 01:35:41.020 --> 01:35:44.900 But what if the same kind of technology that helped him 01:35:44.900 --> 01:35:49.100 could be used to change children in other ways? 01:35:49.100 --> 01:35:53.300 What if you could use IVF to create a number of embryos 01:35:53.300 --> 01:35:57.020 and genetically test them for skills or talents? 01:35:58.380 --> 01:36:00.420 So, for instance, you could choose the one likely 01:36:00.420 --> 01:36:02.420 to be the most intelligent. 01:36:04.380 --> 01:36:07.660 Current law prohibits this use for PGD. 01:36:07.660 --> 01:36:11.940 But some scientists say it could be technically possible 01:36:11.940 --> 01:36:14.220 and that we need to consider it. 01:36:16.740 --> 01:36:19.860 When you look at the history of eugenics, intelligence is key. 01:36:19.860 --> 01:36:23.220 How do we figure out who are the most intelligent people, 01:36:23.220 --> 01:36:25.340 and who are the least intelligent. 01:36:25.340 --> 01:36:28.340 But identifying intelligence is so difficult. 01:36:29.660 --> 01:36:32.340 Even now, we have IQ testing 01:36:32.340 --> 01:36:35.540 but many scientists are not confident 01:36:35.540 --> 01:36:38.820 IQ tests really measure intelligence. 01:36:38.820 --> 01:36:41.540 Even if we know what intelligence is in all its complexity, 01:36:41.540 --> 01:36:45.300 it's such a kind of difficult thing to pin down. 01:36:45.300 --> 01:36:50.020 But there are some geneticists out there who believe 01:36:50.020 --> 01:36:53.940 that we can not only measure intelligence through tests, 01:36:53.940 --> 01:36:56.100 so through written-down tests, 01:36:56.100 --> 01:36:58.580 but that if we look inside our DNA, 01:36:58.580 --> 01:37:00.100 inside our genomes, 01:37:00.100 --> 01:37:04.100 we might be able to isolate intelligence in our genes. 01:37:04.100 --> 01:37:06.740 And it's incredibly controversial. 01:37:06.740 --> 01:37:09.740 I don't know if the science is even there yet. 01:37:09.740 --> 01:37:11.940 I don't think the science is there. 01:37:11.940 --> 01:37:15.100 But I certainly want to understand 01:37:15.100 --> 01:37:18.900 how it works and how they think it might be possible. 01:37:20.060 --> 01:37:23.460 I'm visiting scientists at King's College, London. 01:37:23.460 --> 01:37:28.260 They've called publicly for society and government to urgently confront 01:37:28.260 --> 01:37:31.500 the possibility that we will, in the future, 01:37:31.500 --> 01:37:34.580 be able to screen embryos for intelligence. 01:37:37.300 --> 01:37:39.460 Here, and around the world, 01:37:39.460 --> 01:37:42.300 scientists have spent years looking 01:37:42.300 --> 01:37:44.620 at educational achievement 01:37:44.620 --> 01:37:48.500 and trying to find shared patterns in DNA. 01:37:48.500 --> 01:37:51.980 So if I were to have my DNA sample and then send it into a company 01:37:51.980 --> 01:37:54.220 it would end up something like that. Yes. 01:37:54.220 --> 01:37:56.380 They say that occasional variations 01:37:56.380 --> 01:38:00.620 in a person's genome, known as their genetic score, 01:38:00.620 --> 01:38:04.020 can partly explain how well that person could do 01:38:04.020 --> 01:38:06.260 at school and university. 01:38:08.740 --> 01:38:13.140 And, in theory, you could do that test before they're even born. 01:38:15.340 --> 01:38:18.380 So we now have lots of information from huge samples of people. 01:38:18.380 --> 01:38:20.780 So these are called genome-wide association studies. 01:38:20.780 --> 01:38:24.820 The most recent study that looked at this found that knowing someone's 01:38:24.820 --> 01:38:27.860 genetic score right now, on the information we have right now... 01:38:27.860 --> 01:38:30.500 So a baby? Yeah. Yeah. 01:38:30.500 --> 01:38:32.500 We could do that, or an adult. 01:38:32.500 --> 01:38:34.580 You know, just take a DNA test, 01:38:34.580 --> 01:38:37.140 saliva, or blood or whatever. 01:38:37.140 --> 01:38:38.740 ..it's about as good as knowing, 01:38:38.740 --> 01:38:40.700 in terms of predicting how well 01:38:40.700 --> 01:38:41.820 they'll do in school, 01:38:41.820 --> 01:38:43.820 It's about as good as knowing their parents' income. 01:38:43.820 --> 01:38:45.460 So, like, not that good. 01:38:45.460 --> 01:38:47.820 But like, you know, obviously people differ a lot 01:38:47.820 --> 01:38:50.180 with income brackets in how well they do at school. 01:38:50.180 --> 01:38:52.220 Some people do really well, some people don't. 01:38:52.220 --> 01:38:53.500 And with this genetic score, 01:38:53.500 --> 01:38:55.620 some people do really well and some people don't. 01:38:55.620 --> 01:38:59.380 But it's about as good as knowing their parents' income. 01:38:59.380 --> 01:39:01.860 This is hotly debated. 01:39:01.860 --> 01:39:04.900 Just because two things are associated, 01:39:04.900 --> 01:39:09.140 it doesn't mean one is necessarily causing the other. 01:39:09.140 --> 01:39:13.580 These genetic markers may not be directly linked to intelligence 01:39:13.580 --> 01:39:16.740 but may, for example, be more common in better-off families 01:39:16.740 --> 01:39:18.540 who took part in the study, 01:39:18.540 --> 01:39:22.340 who can afford a higher standard of education. 01:39:22.340 --> 01:39:24.820 Whatever the true relationship, 01:39:24.820 --> 01:39:29.660 Stuart and his colleagues argue that they can use DNA 01:39:29.660 --> 01:39:32.140 to partly predict educational achievement. 01:39:33.820 --> 01:39:35.900 Can you imagine a day when a mother 01:39:35.900 --> 01:39:38.260 or father would be able to go to a clinic, 01:39:38.260 --> 01:39:40.900 have their foetuses tested, 01:39:40.900 --> 01:39:45.900 and pick out the one that they think of as the ideal child? 01:39:45.900 --> 01:39:47.500 Yeah. 01:39:47.500 --> 01:39:50.660 In future, yeah, I totally think that the technology is possible 01:39:50.660 --> 01:39:53.220 to do that, which is why we need to be having this debate. 01:39:53.220 --> 01:39:55.380 At the moment, we've made the decision as a society 01:39:55.380 --> 01:39:56.900 that we test for rare diseases, 01:39:56.900 --> 01:39:59.380 because we don't want kids growing up 01:39:59.380 --> 01:40:03.020 with those devastating, rare conditions. 01:40:03.020 --> 01:40:05.220 But we need to adjust that debate 01:40:05.220 --> 01:40:08.340 and start talking now about other traits, as well, 01:40:08.340 --> 01:40:10.620 and which we should be allowing parents to select for. 01:40:10.620 --> 01:40:12.260 This information is going to be available 01:40:12.260 --> 01:40:14.300 and we need to work out what we're going to do with it. 01:40:14.300 --> 01:40:16.940 We're now at the point where we can make predictions, 01:40:16.940 --> 01:40:19.460 we can say this person is predicted to be, you know, 01:40:19.460 --> 01:40:23.660 in the top end of the educational distribution, for instance. 01:40:23.660 --> 01:40:27.700 Or this person is as predicted to do really, really poorly 01:40:27.700 --> 01:40:29.540 in an intelligence test. 01:40:29.540 --> 01:40:33.140 So really just by studying the DNA, you can make that prediction? Yes. 01:40:33.140 --> 01:40:35.900 So when we look at the history of eugenics, 01:40:35.900 --> 01:40:37.700 I mean, the entire impetus 01:40:37.700 --> 01:40:41.060 behind it was the idea that we could isolate in somebody's body 01:40:41.060 --> 01:40:44.460 their innate capacities, their innate abilities. 01:40:44.460 --> 01:40:46.460 And from that be able to tell 01:40:46.460 --> 01:40:51.100 whether they would be useful to society or not so useful to society. 01:40:51.100 --> 01:40:54.540 Do you feel that genetics now is getting towards that? 01:40:54.540 --> 01:40:56.020 No. 01:40:56.020 --> 01:41:00.380 Because science doesn't tell us anything about whether people 01:41:00.380 --> 01:41:02.900 have any kind of innate worth or value. 01:41:02.900 --> 01:41:05.700 That's completely outside of the realm of science. 01:41:05.700 --> 01:41:07.340 We have to make judgments about that. 01:41:07.340 --> 01:41:09.700 My personal view is that everyone has equal worth, no matter 01:41:09.700 --> 01:41:11.700 what their intelligence test score. 01:41:11.700 --> 01:41:13.620 They're just differences. That's all they are. 01:41:13.620 --> 01:41:16.020 And we have to work out ways of dealing with that. 01:41:17.700 --> 01:41:19.700 I mean, on the surface of it, 01:41:19.700 --> 01:41:22.260 you could say if you could screen out 01:41:22.260 --> 01:41:25.700 a very damaging condition, something that might shorten your child's life 01:41:25.700 --> 01:41:27.940 or cause them severe disabilities in the future, 01:41:27.940 --> 01:41:30.580 then why would you not want to be able to do that? 01:41:30.580 --> 01:41:32.780 So to go one step further and say, 01:41:32.780 --> 01:41:35.700 "Well, now that we can screen out for these diseases, 01:41:35.700 --> 01:41:38.420 "perhaps we can screen out for everyday diseases." 01:41:38.420 --> 01:41:39.860 And perhaps after that, 01:41:39.860 --> 01:41:42.740 we could screen for the genes that might make you 01:41:42.740 --> 01:41:45.660 have a certain eye colour or a certain hair colour, 01:41:45.660 --> 01:41:47.740 or a certain level of intelligence. 01:41:47.740 --> 01:41:49.860 And why then wouldn't you want to do that, as well? 01:41:49.860 --> 01:41:53.140 You know, if you're going one step, why not go all the way? 01:41:53.140 --> 01:41:55.780 Logically then, it's hard to fault that, 01:41:55.780 --> 01:42:00.020 because we've already started walking down that path. 01:42:01.180 --> 01:42:03.980 But it's incredibly fraught. 01:42:03.980 --> 01:42:06.420 And I think it's as fraught now as it was 100 years ago. 01:42:06.420 --> 01:42:10.900 We haven't really resolved these ethical queries for ourselves. 01:42:13.900 --> 01:42:16.740 I've learned so far that today's genetic technologies 01:42:16.740 --> 01:42:18.780 are only used to ease suffering. 01:42:19.820 --> 01:42:21.300 But as science advances, 01:42:21.300 --> 01:42:24.900 it puts current regulations under more and more strain. 01:42:26.940 --> 01:42:30.220 And, of course, regulations can be broken. 01:42:32.460 --> 01:42:35.820 This is the Francis Crick Institute in London. 01:42:35.820 --> 01:42:38.380 I am here to quiz Britain's top geneticist 01:42:38.380 --> 01:42:41.700 about a scientific scandal that shocked the world. 01:42:43.300 --> 01:42:47.820 It concerns a revolutionary new technique known as gene editing, 01:42:47.820 --> 01:42:50.340 and it's raised the spectre of unborn children 01:42:50.340 --> 01:42:52.380 being genetically enhanced. 01:42:52.380 --> 01:42:53.580 A eugenic dream. 01:42:55.780 --> 01:42:58.060 And it was all to do with this man. 01:43:01.260 --> 01:43:05.340 In November, 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui, 01:43:05.340 --> 01:43:07.780 or JK as he refers to himself, 01:43:07.780 --> 01:43:10.260 stunned the world when he made an announcement 01:43:10.260 --> 01:43:12.300 at a genetics conference in Hong Kong. 01:43:13.340 --> 01:43:18.100 First of all, we didn't know when he accepted the invitation 01:43:18.100 --> 01:43:19.620 to come and speak to us 01:43:19.620 --> 01:43:22.780 any of the work that he's now going to talk about. 01:43:22.780 --> 01:43:25.940 Leading British geneticist Robin Lovell-Badge 01:43:25.940 --> 01:43:28.580 was one of the conference organisers. 01:43:29.740 --> 01:43:33.980 His hero is Bob Edwards, the pioneer of in vitro fertilisation. 01:43:35.260 --> 01:43:37.580 He told me that he wanted to emulate this. 01:43:37.580 --> 01:43:39.020 He wanted to do something 01:43:39.020 --> 01:43:41.940 that would be of benefit to millions of people. 01:43:43.860 --> 01:43:47.020 For the last three years, JK had been performing gene editing 01:43:47.020 --> 01:43:49.420 experiments in secret on humans. 01:43:52.500 --> 01:43:56.380 He was driven by huge ambition and he was very wealthy. 01:43:58.220 --> 01:44:02.460 JK recruited seven couples where the man was HIV positive. 01:44:04.380 --> 01:44:06.100 He told them he could use gene editing 01:44:06.100 --> 01:44:08.740 to make their children immune to the disease. 01:44:10.940 --> 01:44:12.980 Gene editing works thanks to something called 01:44:12.980 --> 01:44:14.020 CRISPR-Cas9, 01:44:14.020 --> 01:44:16.420 a programmable molecular scissor. 01:44:17.700 --> 01:44:20.620 This can be programmed to find a specific location 01:44:20.620 --> 01:44:22.460 on the DNA molecule and cut it. 01:44:24.020 --> 01:44:26.980 Then a new piece of genetic code can be inserted there. 01:44:30.260 --> 01:44:33.940 JK tried to use this technique to give embryos something called 01:44:33.940 --> 01:44:36.740 a CCR5 Delta 32 mutation. 01:44:38.180 --> 01:44:42.500 People born with this can be resistant to HIV. 01:44:42.500 --> 01:44:44.980 In late 2018, twin girls were born 01:44:44.980 --> 01:44:47.740 who had undergone JK's gene editing. 01:44:48.900 --> 01:44:51.940 But it seems although he had made some change 01:44:51.940 --> 01:44:55.580 to the baby's genes, it wasn't the ones he'd intended. 01:44:55.580 --> 01:44:58.700 He didn't actually make the Delta 32 mutation 01:44:58.700 --> 01:45:01.500 which we understand something about. 01:45:01.500 --> 01:45:04.340 He made completely random mutations 01:45:04.340 --> 01:45:07.380 that we don't know the consequences of the specific 01:45:07.380 --> 01:45:09.540 mutations he's making in the gene. 01:45:12.060 --> 01:45:14.700 The conference attendees were shocked. 01:45:14.700 --> 01:45:16.300 We were just stunned, 01:45:16.300 --> 01:45:19.020 because basically what he had done 01:45:19.020 --> 01:45:24.300 was completely outside all ethical frameworks that we all stand by. 01:45:24.300 --> 01:45:26.340 It's illegal in many countries. 01:45:26.340 --> 01:45:28.820 And he was completely unregulated and we've learnt 01:45:28.820 --> 01:45:31.620 since that the ethics process that he claimed to have gone 01:45:31.620 --> 01:45:34.220 through wasn't real, it was fake. 01:45:34.220 --> 01:45:37.140 And the consent process that the families apparently engaged 01:45:37.140 --> 01:45:42.140 with was also not real and true, so it was fraudulent. 01:45:42.140 --> 01:45:45.860 After the huge international outcry against his work, 01:45:45.860 --> 01:45:49.380 JK is reported to be under house arrest in China. 01:45:50.580 --> 01:45:55.100 So where does all this leave us with the hype over designer babies? 01:45:57.540 --> 01:46:00.500 At present, scientists have had some limited success 01:46:00.500 --> 01:46:02.100 editing genes in mice. 01:46:03.420 --> 01:46:04.500 How successful? 01:46:05.540 --> 01:46:09.220 Well, that's the problem. At the moment, it's not efficient enough. 01:46:10.660 --> 01:46:14.620 So when we're doing experiments in mice, 01:46:14.620 --> 01:46:16.940 occasionally, it works really well. 01:46:16.940 --> 01:46:23.420 We get maybe 90%, 95%, sometimes 100% of the mice born 01:46:23.420 --> 01:46:28.060 carrying the particular genetic alteration we wanted. 01:46:28.060 --> 01:46:29.780 But often, it's not that efficient. 01:46:29.780 --> 01:46:33.140 It's down to about 20% or so. 01:46:33.140 --> 01:46:34.580 So that's not good enough. 01:46:34.580 --> 01:46:36.460 If we really want to use these techniques, 01:46:36.460 --> 01:46:40.060 we have to know that they're going to work. 01:46:40.060 --> 01:46:42.340 Preferably in all the embryos, 01:46:42.340 --> 01:46:45.780 and certainly in all the cells within each embryo. 01:46:47.940 --> 01:46:49.580 These techniques will improve, 01:46:49.580 --> 01:46:54.300 but will they ever be used to make a baby stronger or cleverer? 01:46:54.300 --> 01:46:57.500 Traits like these are the result of your upbringing, 01:46:57.500 --> 01:47:01.180 environment and hundreds of genes working in tandem. 01:47:02.780 --> 01:47:05.980 So the idea that designer babies are just around the corner 01:47:05.980 --> 01:47:07.700 is pure science fiction. 01:47:09.820 --> 01:47:11.780 You know, it's hard enough altering one gene 01:47:11.780 --> 01:47:13.780 and making sure that there are no problems, 01:47:13.780 --> 01:47:16.420 that you've done exactly the alteration you want. 01:47:16.420 --> 01:47:20.500 If you start saying, "I want to alter five genes," 01:47:20.500 --> 01:47:25.180 all the complications multiply each time, so you increase the number. 01:47:25.180 --> 01:47:28.220 It's possible, but it gets harder and harder. 01:47:28.220 --> 01:47:32.500 And if you're talking about 20, 50 or 100 genes, forget it. 01:47:32.500 --> 01:47:34.140 It's just not possible. 01:47:34.140 --> 01:47:36.900 There's a big difference between me and the missus 01:47:36.900 --> 01:47:38.780 coming to you and saying, 01:47:38.780 --> 01:47:41.260 "Hey, we want to correct for the NF gene," 01:47:41.260 --> 01:47:42.900 and coming to you and saying, 01:47:42.900 --> 01:47:45.220 "Hey, don't make it ginger, quite smart, 01:47:45.220 --> 01:47:47.780 "not too smart, and don't have it like Chelsea." 01:47:47.780 --> 01:47:49.540 That's a whole different... 01:47:49.540 --> 01:47:51.860 Completely impossible to do the latter. 01:47:51.860 --> 01:47:54.060 We would hope to be able to do the former, 01:47:54.060 --> 01:47:56.140 but we could not possibly do the latter. 01:47:59.180 --> 01:48:01.940 Gene editing has enormous potential. 01:48:01.940 --> 01:48:05.740 One day, it will help cure cancers and other diseases. 01:48:06.900 --> 01:48:09.540 And, of course, it's impractical to monitor 01:48:09.540 --> 01:48:12.100 every scientist in every corner of the world, 01:48:12.100 --> 01:48:14.260 so abuses are still possible. 01:48:15.380 --> 01:48:17.420 But I wanted to know how we in the UK 01:48:17.420 --> 01:48:20.820 are preparing for future scientific breakthroughs. 01:48:22.740 --> 01:48:24.460 So I've come to meet one of the country's 01:48:24.460 --> 01:48:26.420 leading genetic scientists. 01:48:28.620 --> 01:48:31.420 Ewan Birney, director of Genomics England, 01:48:31.420 --> 01:48:34.380 was part of the team that sequenced the human genome. 01:48:37.060 --> 01:48:40.620 The first thing to emphasise is that there were many questions 01:48:40.620 --> 01:48:42.820 which don't get answered by scientists here. 01:48:42.820 --> 01:48:45.980 So there are many questions where scientists gives us, 01:48:45.980 --> 01:48:50.500 science gives us new options and tools and things that we could do. 01:48:50.500 --> 01:48:53.780 But we have to have a process to decide, societally, 01:48:53.780 --> 01:48:56.860 what is acceptable or not. 01:48:56.860 --> 01:48:59.860 And so we need a forum which isn't science-led, 01:48:59.860 --> 01:49:03.820 where science informs but the decision is made by society. 01:49:03.820 --> 01:49:06.500 Now, in the UK, for many of these decisions 01:49:06.500 --> 01:49:09.900 the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority 01:49:09.900 --> 01:49:12.060 is a very good model for this. 01:49:12.060 --> 01:49:13.860 It's one of the best in the world. 01:49:13.860 --> 01:49:15.980 Where they have some legislative 01:49:15.980 --> 01:49:18.500 framework that's set up by parliament 01:49:18.500 --> 01:49:22.820 and then they have a set of non-scientists thinking very hard 01:49:22.820 --> 01:49:25.740 and taking evidence from many different groups 01:49:25.740 --> 01:49:29.780 to make a decision about what's allowable and what's not allowable. 01:49:29.780 --> 01:49:33.180 So you understand the mistrust because of past mistakes? 01:49:33.180 --> 01:49:36.540 I think so and I think a real mistake is to pretend 01:49:36.540 --> 01:49:37.860 the history isn't there, 01:49:37.860 --> 01:49:41.420 because some of the leading lights who founded genetics 01:49:41.420 --> 01:49:44.100 were also strong proponents of eugenics. 01:49:44.100 --> 01:49:47.140 So it's part of our history that we have to understand and own, 01:49:47.140 --> 01:49:49.580 and we have to be cognisant 01:49:49.580 --> 01:49:54.420 that people can make these arguments again. 01:49:54.420 --> 01:49:59.340 And then we need to understand and be able to rebut them, 01:49:59.340 --> 01:50:02.980 both scientifically, but also engage with people in society 01:50:02.980 --> 01:50:06.260 to show that we understand what we're doing 01:50:06.260 --> 01:50:08.620 and how our tools can be used. 01:50:10.740 --> 01:50:14.100 Eugenics is a chilling lesson from history. 01:50:14.100 --> 01:50:17.140 At its heart is the belief that who we can be 01:50:17.140 --> 01:50:22.340 and what we're capable of is decided on the day we're born. 01:50:22.340 --> 01:50:23.940 And as a science journalist, 01:50:23.940 --> 01:50:26.100 what's particularly disturbing for me 01:50:26.100 --> 01:50:30.420 is to see how this aspect of eugenics has survived. 01:50:30.420 --> 01:50:32.020 Some people still believe 01:50:32.020 --> 01:50:35.060 that there are substantial innate differences 01:50:35.060 --> 01:50:36.780 between classes and races. 01:50:38.140 --> 01:50:40.940 As political tensions rise around the world, 01:50:40.940 --> 01:50:45.100 it's crucial that we understand properly where the small differences 01:50:45.100 --> 01:50:48.340 we see between us actually come from. 01:50:48.340 --> 01:50:52.460 I've come to Oxford to hear the results of a giant research project 01:50:52.460 --> 01:50:54.820 to answer precisely this question. 01:50:56.980 --> 01:51:01.300 It was led by Oxford University and John Radcliffe Hospital. 01:51:02.620 --> 01:51:06.780 The Intergrowth-21st project is a population-based study. 01:51:06.780 --> 01:51:07.980 It's an international study 01:51:07.980 --> 01:51:09.220 which has been carried out 01:51:09.220 --> 01:51:11.260 in eight different countries across the world. 01:51:11.260 --> 01:51:14.460 Each site had 600 mothers who were pregnant. 01:51:15.660 --> 01:51:19.060 The baby's physical growth and neurological development 01:51:19.060 --> 01:51:23.700 were measured in the womb at birth and through their early lives. 01:51:24.900 --> 01:51:26.860 What we're doing at the moment 01:51:26.860 --> 01:51:30.100 is a snapshot at the time of their second birthday. 01:51:30.100 --> 01:51:33.100 What we would expect normally-developing children 01:51:33.100 --> 01:51:36.140 to look like from a neural development point of view 01:51:36.140 --> 01:51:39.380 at the time of their second birthday. 01:51:39.380 --> 01:51:42.820 Mothers were chosen who were well-nourished, healthy, 01:51:42.820 --> 01:51:47.500 living in a good environment and with good medical care. 01:51:47.500 --> 01:51:50.140 The aim was to see how children develop 01:51:50.140 --> 01:51:53.580 if they're given an equal start in life. 01:51:53.580 --> 01:51:58.180 Professor Stephen Kennedy says the results were clear. 01:51:58.180 --> 01:52:02.060 When you study healthy women around the world, 01:52:02.060 --> 01:52:05.940 their babies grow in a similar way inside the womb. 01:52:07.500 --> 01:52:10.100 They achieve a similar size at birth. 01:52:11.780 --> 01:52:15.660 And they continue to grow in a similar way 01:52:15.660 --> 01:52:17.660 up until two years of age. 01:52:17.660 --> 01:52:20.780 They've hit the same, similar milestones. 01:52:22.500 --> 01:52:26.020 Irrespective of the colour of their skin, 01:52:26.020 --> 01:52:27.940 irrespective of race, 01:52:27.940 --> 01:52:30.060 ethnicity, any of these terms, 01:52:30.060 --> 01:52:31.740 or where they're living. 01:52:34.700 --> 01:52:38.860 We found that the differences between countries was less than 10%. 01:52:38.860 --> 01:52:41.540 And if their environments are decent and good enough, 01:52:41.540 --> 01:52:44.300 we'll show that the foetuses and the children 01:52:44.300 --> 01:52:46.540 in all these different countries 01:52:46.540 --> 01:52:49.140 could achieve the very same potential. 01:52:50.940 --> 01:52:54.860 No-one is saying that genes do not contribute something 01:52:54.860 --> 01:52:57.340 to human growth and brain development. 01:52:57.340 --> 01:52:59.100 No-one is saying that. 01:52:59.100 --> 01:53:01.900 All one is saying is that nurture 01:53:01.900 --> 01:53:05.420 is far, far more important than nature. 01:53:05.420 --> 01:53:07.740 Get nurture right, 01:53:07.740 --> 01:53:09.780 people will thrive, 01:53:09.780 --> 01:53:14.580 will grow, as they should do, to their full potential. 01:53:16.660 --> 01:53:19.380 What's surprising to me is that Professor Kennedy 01:53:19.380 --> 01:53:22.340 says his team's work has ruffled feathers. 01:53:23.940 --> 01:53:26.380 It's generally believed 01:53:26.380 --> 01:53:30.620 that there's an association 01:53:30.620 --> 01:53:34.700 between a mother's skin colour 01:53:34.700 --> 01:53:39.380 and how well children grow inside the womb. 01:53:39.380 --> 01:53:42.700 Really? Where is it generally believed that this is the case? 01:53:42.700 --> 01:53:46.940 In the scientific community, and certainly in the lay community. 01:53:46.940 --> 01:53:48.580 That's quite shocking. 01:53:48.580 --> 01:53:54.380 They visit rural India and they see that the children are stunted. 01:53:54.380 --> 01:53:57.020 They don't ask themselves the question, 01:53:57.020 --> 01:53:59.020 "Why are these kids stunted?" 01:53:59.020 --> 01:54:02.740 It's got nothing to do with the mother's genetic inheritance. 01:54:02.740 --> 01:54:07.220 It's got everything to do with the fact that the mother may be malnourished, 01:54:07.220 --> 01:54:12.100 just as her parents and her grandparents were. 01:54:12.100 --> 01:54:15.060 So, you think there are still people within the scientific community, 01:54:15.060 --> 01:54:17.420 the mainstream scientific community, 01:54:17.420 --> 01:54:21.660 who do cling to these ideas that populations are different 01:54:21.660 --> 01:54:24.020 and there are some kind of fundamental differences 01:54:24.020 --> 01:54:28.460 between people of different class or different race? Absolutely. 01:54:28.460 --> 01:54:31.460 It is... This is the belief out there. 01:54:31.460 --> 01:54:33.740 What your study really shows is that that's not the case. 01:54:33.740 --> 01:54:35.420 We are pretty much all the same. 01:54:35.420 --> 01:54:40.140 We are all the same. We are one species, Homo sapiens. 01:54:40.140 --> 01:54:44.860 So the public health message is massive. 01:54:44.860 --> 01:54:51.340 If you wish to improve overall human capital in your country... 01:54:52.580 --> 01:54:56.420 ..invest in women. 01:55:00.020 --> 01:55:02.900 Eugenics began with scientists claiming 01:55:02.900 --> 01:55:05.860 that certain groups of people are superior 01:55:05.860 --> 01:55:08.740 because of what they inherit. 01:55:08.740 --> 01:55:12.540 Our story ends with the opposite conclusion - 01:55:12.540 --> 01:55:15.860 as a species, human DNA is unusually similar. 01:55:20.060 --> 01:55:24.940 What makes us different is much more than our genes. 01:55:25.980 --> 01:55:27.820 For more than 100 years, 01:55:27.820 --> 01:55:32.260 a lot of us have been fed this message that we are who we are. 01:55:32.260 --> 01:55:34.780 We're born a certain way, and that is all... 01:55:34.780 --> 01:55:38.460 That contains all the potential for that human being. 01:55:38.460 --> 01:55:41.860 That this baby's fate is decided on the day that they're born. 01:55:41.860 --> 01:55:45.540 I know the effects of racial stereotypes. I've heard them myself, 01:55:45.540 --> 01:55:48.980 living as a person of Indian origin in Britain. 01:55:48.980 --> 01:55:53.580 I am British, but I'm not always treated as the same as white British people. 01:55:53.580 --> 01:55:56.980 I think it'll take a long time, um... 01:55:56.980 --> 01:55:59.820 ..for us to move away from that and have a more nuanced 01:55:59.820 --> 01:56:02.940 and balanced understanding of what it means to be human. 01:56:05.780 --> 01:56:08.420 Making these films, I've heard some amazing stories 01:56:08.420 --> 01:56:10.540 and met some amazing people. 01:56:13.300 --> 01:56:15.380 People I won't forget. 01:56:15.380 --> 01:56:17.540 People who were written off by society. 01:56:17.540 --> 01:56:20.380 People who were deemed to be lesser. 01:56:20.380 --> 01:56:22.460 People who proved everyone wrong. 01:56:24.420 --> 01:56:27.580 If delving into eugenics has taught me anything, 01:56:27.580 --> 01:56:29.780 it's about humanity. 01:56:29.780 --> 01:56:33.340 It's about how to root for the underdog. 01:56:33.340 --> 01:56:37.500 I'm the ultimate underdog, how can I not root for them? 01:56:37.500 --> 01:56:40.340 And at some point, we're all going to be touched by 01:56:40.340 --> 01:56:42.940 at least the principles of eugenics. 01:56:44.300 --> 01:56:46.660 We're all going to get turned down for something, 01:56:46.660 --> 01:56:50.300 get knocked back because we're not deemed useful enough, 01:56:50.300 --> 01:56:52.900 or desirable enough in a particular area. 01:56:52.900 --> 01:56:56.900 And it's a case of, how do we respond to that? 01:56:56.900 --> 01:57:02.780 How far do we go to attain this false narrative of...of perfection?