Dominic Cummings suggested the NHS should cover the cost of selecting babies to have higher IQs, it emerged last night.
Boris Johnson’s aide said rich would-be parents would inevitably select embryos with the ‘highest prediction for IQ’.
In a 2014 blog post on ‘designer babies’, he also floated the idea that a ‘national health system should fund everybody to do this’ to avoid creating an unfair advantage for the wealthiest in society.
His comments, uncovered by the Guardian, surfaced after a row over No 10’s decision to hire an adviser with eugenicist views after Mr Cummings put out an advert for ‘misfits and weirdos’.
Boris Johnson’s aide said rich would-be parents would inevitably select embryos with the ‘highest prediction for IQ’
Mr Cummings was last night accused of operating like he was in charge of an ‘authoritarian regime’ as ministers were in growing revolt over his behaviour.
Special advisers past and present said Boris Johnson’s chief aide had created a toxic atmosphere in No 10 as he ‘ruled through fear rather than respect’.
They said aides have been driven to tears, some had sought counselling due to stress and others were on the brink of quitting after being told to spy on ministers.
In his post on ‘designer babies’, Mr Cummings wrote: ‘It is already the case that farmers use genomes to make predictions about cows’ properties and behaviour… Once we identify a substantial number of IQ genes, there is no obvious reason why rich people will not select the egg that has the highest prediction for IQ.’
He added: ‘This clearly raises many big questions … If the poor cannot do the same then the rich could quickly embed advantages and society could become not only more unequal but also based on bio- logical classes.
‘One response is if this sort of thing does become possible, then a national health system should fund everybody to do this.
Growing anger with Mr Cummings culminated this week in his new adviser Andrew Sabisky leaving
‘Once the knowledge exists, it is hard to see what will stop some people making use of it and offering services to – at least – the super-rich.’
Growing anger with Mr Cummings culminated this week in his new adviser Andrew Sabisky leaving.
Mr Sabisky, who once suggested enforcing the uptake of contraception to stop unplanned pregnancies from creating a ‘permanent underclass’, announced he was standing down on Monday evening.
He said he did not want to be a distraction to the government after previous comments made by him, including that black people had IQs that were ‘close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation’, were unearthed.
Ministers said Mr Sabisky ‘jumped before he was pushed’ following a slew of ‘reprehensible’ past comments.
In 2014, he wrote on Mr Cummings’s website that to stop unplanned pregnancies there should be legal enforcement of contraception.
He wrote: ‘One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty. Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.’
Andrew Sabisky answered Dominic Cummings’s call for ‘weirdos and misfits’ to take jobs in Number 10
On another blog post discussing female genital mutilation, he claimed: ‘It is still unclear to what extent FGM represents a serious risk to young girls, raised in the UK, of certain minority group origins. Much of the hue and cry looks more like a moral panic.’
And in another post being circulated on social media, Mr Sabisky claimed black people had lower IQs than white people.
In the article, entitled ‘Disabilities by race’ he said: ‘If the mean black American IQ is (best estimate based on a century’s worth of data) around 85, as compared to a mean white American IQ of 100, then if IQ is normally distributed, you will see a far greater percentage of blacks than whites in the range of IQs 75 or below, at which point we are close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation.’
He added that this was the reason there was a higher rate of black students with an ‘intellectual disability’.
Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng blasted Mr Sabisky’s past remarks as ‘offensive’ and ‘racist’, and alleged the aide walked out on the government before he could be sacked.