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Materialism and genetics
By Frank Kaufmann, on November 1st, 2010
Abstract
: Advances ingenetic scienceis one of the most excitingdevelopments of our time. There arises from this great hope to curemanycrippling maladieswhose quiddities
 
have eluded us so far. But, solong as these advances occur in an environment of scientismandmaterialistreductionism, progress in the study of genetics will continueto carry clear and substantial social dangers.Dominic Lawson, in his October 31, 2010,
Times of London
piece entitled, “Geneby gene, we turn back into brutes,” provides a most readable exposition onmatters that should trouble many somewhere deep down.He describes the:
dispiriting
reductionism
in the high fashion of popular science, whichnow seems to amount to little more than a concerted attempt to explainevery action we take in terms of our genes
His article and observation responds to the publication followed by “breathlessAmerican newspaper reports” from four researchers from the University of California and Harvard, led by Professor James Fowler claiming to have unearthed“the liberal gene”. Their claim was published in the peer-reviewed paper:
Friendships Moderate an Association between a Dopamine Gene Variant and Political Ideology 
, that arguesa connection between those declaring themselves to be “liberal” and “the 7Rvariant of the dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4), which has previously beenassociated with novelty seeking”.While it is inviting to respond to costly science of this sort with a shrug, or toimagine an appropriate scene from the Marx Brother’s, too much is at stake toreact so mildly.Lawson puts the potential horrors of this materialist reductionism in plain view ina mad pendulum swing across two short paragraphs:
The notion of 
homosexuality
as genetic destiny won plaudits amongthose who thought that described the origins of their own sexualidentity; but the discovery or belief that there is a simple and 
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