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How Would Haldane Have Viewed the Societal Implications of Today’s Genetic Knowledge?

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Human Population Genetics

Abstract

All of us participating in this Symposium must be aware that J.B.S. Haldane was a man of strong political convictions, and indeed, it was those convictions that brought him here to India and ultimately set the stage for this meeting. Some of us, and I include myself, have, when he found human fallibility too much to bear quietly, on occasion followed him to Hyde Park. But his political interests were almost as broad as his scientific, and it would be most presumptuous of me to pretend on an occasion like this to guess in what intellectual direction Haldane would have loosed his barbs and wit. On the other hand, I suspect he would have felt that this program would not be complete without some consideration of the implications for society of the activities of contemporary human geneticists. If I fall short of his insights and eloquence, I trust you will bear with me.

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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Neel, J.V. (1993). How Would Haldane Have Viewed the Societal Implications of Today’s Genetic Knowledge?. In: Majumder, P.P. (eds) Human Population Genetics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2970-5_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2970-5_22

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-6292-0

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