Like so many of us, I was dispirited to wake up a few weeks ago to learn that Donald Trump will be back in the White House. This time he was aided by the world’s richest man and professional spaceship-crasher, Elon Musk. Among the many charming aspects of their partnership is a fondness for some highly unsavoury views on genetics. Trump is an enthusiastic advocate of “racehorse theory”, which he shares with white supremacists; the belief that he is personally superior and that this is rooted in his “good genes”. It’s a vapid idea, but it directly informs his toxic views on immigration, where he argues the country needs to be shielded from the “bad genes” of outsiders.
Meanwhile, Musk has his own equally baffling take on genetics, infused with a characteristic messiah complex. Like some of his fellow tech moguls, he is determined to “save humanity” by producing as many offspring as possible, convinced that our future depends on it. This might all be laughable were it not for the fact that Trump and Musk now wield more power than they ever have before. The shared thread running through their rhetoric is genetic determinism: the idea that who you are, and what you can achieve, is all down to your DNA. Nothing else matters.
The problem is that genetic determinism, with its odd fixation on the “master molecule”, is annoyingly pervasive. When James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA in 1953, they hailed it as the “secret of life”. In 2000, President Bill Clinton declared that sequencing the human genome was like learning “the language in which God created life”. Of course, science always carries the potential to be this thrilling; I don’t want to kill anyone’s science buzz. But I worry that in all the excitement, we can forget that DNA does not define us.
This language has leaked far outside the world of science, to marketing that raves about cars “with adventure in their DNA”, or a discussion of a football club’s “DNA” – it has become a synonym for everything from “characteristics” to “values”. The ubiquity of rhetoric that conflates DNA and identity risks propping up some insidious ideas. This is the language Musk and Trump thrive on, making exclusionary policies look like rational decisions grounded in science. Because, if genes are everything, why bother with policies aimed at tackling inequality? Why waste time and resources addressing social problems when we’re all just products of our genetic code?
In debates surrounding genetics and social policy, it is easy for the language of genetic determinism to lure you into an ill-advised “nature v nurture” debate. You know this debate: maybe she’s born with it; maybe it’s the pervasive conditions of social inequality? But this debate misses the bigger picture entirely: it should not be seen as a binary choice. The truth is, humans are born with genes that require a good environment to thrive. It’s not either/or, but a complex interaction between the two that determines who someone becomes. We have a nature that requires nurture. Good science accounts for this complexity, rather than reducing it to a simplistic binary.
Along with making it harder to argue for progressive social policies, genetic determinism also has a long history of being used to justify violence, particularly by the far right. In 2022, a gunman in Buffalo, New York, cited genetics as part of his rationale for a racially motivated mass shooting. The gunman took various scientific ideas, most notably from genetics, but also environmentalism, and blended these with white supremacist conspiracies such as the “great replacement theory”.
The prospect that real-world violence might once again emerge from a warped interpretation of genetic science isn’t just a theoretical concern; it’s a dangerous reality. So how do we stop genetics from being weaponised? It’s not just about calling out dodgy interpretations of the science: in some ways, that’s the easy part. The harder question involves emotions. Why are people – often driven by anger or fear – liable to co-opt genetics to justify their reactionary political ideologies?
In trying to answer this question, one important thing to note is that science is not just a selection of facts, but also a form of culture. As such, it is subject to “cultural poaching”, as the sociologist Michel de Certeau put it – an unauthorised borrowing and re-contextualising of ideas. Take “survival of the fittest”, for example. When Charles Darwin and other evolutionary scientists used that phrase, they had a specific idea of what they meant by “fittest”, and were referring to how well-adapted an organism is to its environment. But in wider culture, the idea has taken on a life of its own, whereby “fittest” is just a synonym for “best”, or “strongest” – the phrase is often deployed to give bigoted ideas a scientific veneer.
There is evidence that some on the far right are tracking particular academic fields and broadcasting flawed interpretations of scholarly research papers as soon as they are available. Rightly wary of this kind of activity, some scientists are now publishing journal articles discussing how to stop genetics being co-opted by extremists, while science ethics organisations such as Cera provide resources to the same end.
With figures such as Trump and Musk wielding huge power, and the “alt-right” keyboard warriors helping them spread disinformation, genetic science has been forced to the frontline. As uncomfortable as it might be, it is more urgent than ever for people working in the field to ask: “How might my work be poached, and what can I do to stop it?”
Jonathan Roberts is a genetic counsellor and academic who researches health inequalities and the accessibility of genetic testing
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