Universal nepotism is instinctual. Evolution selects for altruism in this regard in relationship to relatedness. Genes are more likely to survive from those closest to us by instinct to make those genes survive and sometimes altruism will manifest for no more than the expectation of reciprocal altruism. Sometimes the mechanism for altruism is love. Sometimes that mechanism is friendship. Sometimes the relationship for reciprocal altruism is among comrades. Sometimes it is for no reason at all and altruistic sacrifice of life becomes just another way to get out of this world.

There is the you-scratch-my-back-and-later-I'll-scratch-yours model (Robert Trivers) where there is no biological relatedness. -- The mechanism for it is _delayed self-interest_. But some have proposed the super-organism approach (Howard Bloom), popularized by Edward O. Wilson (Harvard zoologist and founder of Sociobiology and wrote that popular book, On Human Nature which won the Pulitzer Prize.) and Richard Dawkins (British zoologist who has written so much on evolution and everyone should be familiar with his work, especially the Selfish Gene, which has been used in many undergraduate classes.) (and Robert Wright's very popular and fiercely Darwinian 1994 book The Moral Animal.) - all suggesting the view which has become the accepted view that `only replicators matter' and genes are fundamentally biological replicators and the organism, which might be us, is just the gene's way of using the organism to make another gene which gives us the grand postulate that evolution is not just about survival, it is mainly about reproduction. Survival is important of course, but it is important because it serves REPRODUCTION. If there is a conflict between survival and reproduction, the latter will win. ALWAYS!

Gender is an important distinction. It is a myth that there are only physical differences. Behavior, attitude, and other biological differences are all important and testosterone does matter. Males are more aggressive than females. Males do not generally have the same feelings about their children. Females are rightfully (because they are biologically) concerned about their reproduction risks and strategies.

Soon after Wilson's book, On Human Nature, was published, in the New York Review of Books in 1975--a letter from 16 scientists, (which some have considered the leftist objection) titled "Against `Sociobiology' teachers, and physicians, which including Steven Jay Gould, Ruth Hubbard, and Richard Lewontin, who were also all colleagues of Wilson's at Harvard, all wrote that they disagreed with Wilson's conclusions. But they were against it mainly for political reasons because it promoted a view that behavior was not a product of nurture - and not based on the goodness of man - and Wilson proposed a an opposite conclusion - that so much of human nature was of nature, not nurture - that is, of genetic inheritance - a view which now has become the accepted view of the scientific community.

The letter stated: "What we are left with," they concluded, "is a particular theory about human nature, which has no scientific support, and which upholds the concept of a world with social arrangements remarkably similar to the world which E. O. Wilson inhabits.... Wilson joins the long parade of biological determinists whose work has served to buttress the institutions of their society by exonerating them from responsibility for social problems."

Malvin Konner in What is Darwin's Truth? (Darwin's Truth, Jefferson's Vision, The American Prospect - July 1, 1999 by Melvin Konner) writes: "Whether Wilson had done any such thing, inadvertently or otherwise, is debatable; a fair perusal of the book supports no such claim. But the letter set the tone for avowedly left-wing criticism of sociobiology ever since." Konner continues, "Writing a decade later in the mid- 1980s, Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin had no doubt that sociobiology was popular because it helped to justify the economic policies of the Thatcher-Reagan era. In their book Not In Our Genes, they renounced the claim of objectivity for any sort of science and declared, "We share a commitment to the prospect of the creation of a more socially just--a socialist--society." They called for a "radical science movement" dedicated to "the possibility of a critical and liberatory science." Of course, this hoary rhetoric did not necessarily make them wrong, but their book was naive at best. They tendentiously attacked long outdated research on intelligence testing and struck out wildly against psychiatric and even neurological medications. Guilt by juxtaposition served in place of evidence and argument to make modern behavioral biologists of all kinds seem as much as possible like nineteenth-century racists."

Science should not become the political football of the left or the right. It is important to understand that science has no politics. The purpose of science is to find the truth no matter where that truth leads no matter how unconfortable those conclusions might be. Science is based on testable theories for which there is evidence. Science does not need politics to justify it or to deny the evidence for scientific reality, i.e. evolution, human nature, natural law, etc. We also have the capability for changing our nature and achieving a world where everyone benefits from science. There are trans-humanists who look forward to changing us to live longer and better. I'm not sure it is worth the effort.