Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Sabisky Row: Dominic Cummings Criticised over 'Designer Babies' post


THE GUARDIAN: PM’s aide dragged further into row over decision to hire adviser with eugenicist views

Boris Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings has been dragged further into the row over No 10’s decision to hire an adviser with eugenicist views after it emerged that he suggested in his own writings that the NHS should cover the cost of selecting babies to have higher IQs.

In a blogpost covering his views on the future of “designer babies”, Cummings said he believed rich would-be parents would inevitably select embryos with “the highest prediction for IQ” and floated the idea that “a national health system should fund everybody to do this” to avoid an unfair advantage for the wealthy.

Experts criticised Cummings’s theories about genetics, saying they were unworkable, unethical and amounted to eugenics, two days after Andrew Sabisky resigned as a No 10 contractor over his past claims that black Americans on average had lower IQs than white people. » | Rowena Mason and Ian Sample | Wednesday, February 19, 2020