Tall blokes and a can of worms

I see that an international research team of scientists has identified the first gene that affects a person’s height. According to the researchers, hundreds of genes are believed to be involved in determining whether a person will be tall or short, and they now confidently expect a "flood" of discoveries relating to the rest.

An article on the discovery, in The Sydney Morning Herald, identified only two members of the international team, Tim Frayling of the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter and Joel Hirschhorn of Harvard Medical School in the USA. The researchers found that the gene in question certainly affects people’s stature — but it hardly makes giants: people who inherit one copy of the "tall" genetic variant are about half a centimeter taller than those without. People who inherit two copies are roughly a whole centimeter taller than people without the gene. The research team’s discoveries confirm that, all other factors being equal, the normal variation in height between people is determined by genes.

However, it has been known for a good number of years that to at least some extent the sub-standard physique of the poor and the deprived was (and still is) a function of their environment: inadequate diet, lack of sunshine and the breathing of polluted air in the slums of industrial or mining towns. Ruling class conservatives will doubtless try to use the genetic research team’s highly qualified conclusions to push the bourgeoisie’s position that the physiological effects of poverty are simply genetic and nothing to do with them.

I have mentioned before in these columns the curious phenomenon that was noted in the First World War: that when the young bush men from Australia met their English counterparts in the trenches of the Western Front or in the dust of Palestine, the Tommies had to literally look up to the taller Aussies (as they did to their officers) and consequently tended to also call the Aussie Diggers "Sir". The parents or grandparents of those Diggers had come from the same grim cities and slums in Britain as the Tommies, but a generation or more of clean air and good food had done its work. In the absence of the environmental factors that stunted the growth of the unfortunate Tommies, the Diggers had been able to reach something closer to their genetic potential. However, the ruling class had as little interest then as it has now in helping the masses to reach their genetic potential. It was sufficient that their workers were healthy enough physically to do the jobs the ruling class wanted doing. Turning the "lower orders" into the kind of tall, handsome, well-muscled, clean-cut workers that featured on Soviet posters was never a ruling class aim!