The eugenics movement (early 20^th century) was influential in passing laws requ

Question

The eugenics movement (early 20^th century) was influential in passing laws requiring sterilization of people with "undesirable" traits. These sterilizations continued in some U.S. states until the 1970s. An influential eugenicist named Goddard gathered data that convinced the eugenics community that normalmindedness was dominant and feeblemindedness was recessive. Eugenicists sought to reduce the frequency of undesirable alleles such as feeblemindedness to 0 in human populations. Would sterilization programs have been an effective means of eliminating the feeblemindedness allele? Historical fun fact: Goddard's feeblemindedness phenotype included individuals who were uneducated, abandoned children, and women who dressed too sexy. Select all answers that are correct a. Yes, this program (while ethically questionable) would have been effective at eliminating feeblemindedness due to artificial selection b. Yes, this program (while ethically questionable) would have been effective at eliminating feeblemindedness due to natural selection. c. No, this program assumes feeblemindedness is hereditary, variation in this trait may be entirely due to environmental causes. d. No, this program could not be effective as selection cannot drive a recessive allele out of a population.

Explanation / Answer

Heritability defines the ratio of variance due to genetic factors to the variance due to epigenetic factors (environmental). If somebody says heritability of a particular trait as 0.4 which means that variance in the trait due to genetic changes are 0.4 and variance of trait due to epigenetic factor is 0.6. Hence the above statement is true. Body weight 0.4 means body weight is determined by 40% of genetic factor and 60% epigenetic factors.

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