It’s all in our jeans: does our DNA shape our character?

We’ve known for many a year that genetics can explain a lot when it comes to predicting the frequency of brown hair and blue eyes in a population and whether or not you’re born with an appendix. Most recently, popular forensic TV scientists have taken it upon themselves to investigate the DNA of one Mr. A. Hitler. In the TV programme “Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator” they aim to “assess [Hitler’s] genetic propensity for psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions”, by carrying out polygenic risk score (PRS) tests. From the results, they assert that Hitler had “higher-than-likely average likelihood of ADHD”, a “high probability” of some autistic behaviours, a “propensity for antisocial behaviour” and “a high probability of developing schizophrenia” and various other claims about his sexual prowess and proclivities.

This genetic determinism is extremely disturbing giving it’s likely to generate a lot of wild assertions. As The Guardian puts it:

“When it comes to autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the risks of stigmatising these conditions by attaching them to a universally reviled figure are especially glaring. If the takeaway from watching Hitler’s DNA for some is that “Hitler had autism”, will those with these neurodiversities be branded Little Hitlers? Or, conversely, does it garner sympathy for the prime architect of the Holocaust and the second world war?”

Perhaps it’s about time that if anyone in the media wants to assert anything about the role anyone else’s DNA has on their personality and subsequent behaviours, they should have their DNA analysed and shared with the wider public first of all.

They’ll be able to locate the gene which determines whether or not they are lying bastards, common to many in the popular press and wider body politic. Apparently this gene (the ‘lying bastard‘ gene) is located next to smaller gene complexes entitled ‘scurrilous’, ‘shifty’ and ‘tosser’. Clearly, depending on whether your genes demonstrate dominant or recessive behaviour, your chromosomes will determine whether or not you are a scurrilous, shifty, lying bastard of a tosser – or just a tosser.

The future potential that character mapping of human DNA provides us with is immense with many economic and cultural implications. The media and many politicians will no doubt help us in this desire to help us purge ourselves of undesirable genetic features, exhibiting as they do all the positive qualities of a future genetically engineered population: ‘honesty’, ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’.