Eugenics

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v t e

Eugenics (

The concept predates the term; Plato suggested applying the principles of selective breeding to humans around 400 BCE. Early advocates of eugenics in the 19th century regarded it as a way of improving groups of people. In contemporary usage, the term eugenics is closely associated with scientific racism. Modern bioethicists who advocate new eugenics characterize it as a way of enhancing individual traits, regardless of group membership.

While eugenic principles have been practiced as early as

The eugenics movement became associated with

A criticism of eugenics policies is that, regardless of whether negative or positive policies are used, they are susceptible to abuse because the genetic selection criteria are determined by whichever group has political power at the time.

Origin and development

Types of eugenic practices have existed for millennia. Some indigenous peoples of Brazil are known to have practiced infanticide against children born with physical abnormalities since precolonial times.^[17] In ancient Greece, the philosopher Plato suggested selective mating to produce a "guardian" class.^[18] In Sparta, every Spartan child was inspected by the council of elders, the Gerousia, who determined whether or not the child was fit to live.^[19]

The geographer Strabo (c. 64 BCE - c. 24 CE) states that the Samnites would take ten virgin women and ten young men who were considered to be the best representation of their sex and mate them.^[20] Following this, the best woman would be given to the best male, then the second-best woman to the second-best male. It is possible^{[original research?]} that the "best" men and women were chosen based on athletic capabilities. This would continue until all 20 people had been assigned to one another. Any selected male dishonoring himself,^{[clarification needed]} would be separated from his partner.

In the early years of the Roman Republic, a Roman father was obliged by law to immediately kill any "dreadfully deformed" child.^[21] According to Tacitus (c. 56 - c. 120), a Roman of the Imperial Period, the Germanic tribes of his day killed any member of their community they deemed cowardly, unwarlike or "stained with abominable vices", usually by drowning them in swamps.^[22][23] Modern historians, however, see Tacitus' ethnographic writing as unreliable in such details.^[24][25]

The idea of a modern project for improving the human population through selective breeding was originally developed by

Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists, with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York City. Eugenic policies in the United States were first implemented by state-level legislators in the early 1900s.^[33] Eugenic policies also took root in France, Germany, and Great Britain.^[34] Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, the eugenic policy of sterilizing certain mental patients was implemented in other countries including Belgium,^[35] Brazil,^[36] Canada,^[37] Japan and Sweden. Frederick Osborn's 1937 journal article "Development of a Eugenic Philosophy" framed eugenics as a social philosophy—a philosophy with implications for social order.^[38] That definition is not universally accepted. Osborn advocated for higher rates of sexual reproduction among people with desired traits ("positive eugenics") or reduced rates of sexual reproduction or sterilization of people with less-desired or undesired traits ("negative eugenics").

In addition to being practiced in a number of countries, eugenics was internationally organized through the

Early critics of the philosophy of eugenics included the American sociologist Lester Frank Ward,^[50] the English writer G. K. Chesterton, the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas, who argued that advocates of eugenics greatly over-estimate the influence of biology,^[51] and Scottish tuberculosis pioneer and author Halliday Sutherland. Ward's 1913 article "Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics", Chesterton's 1917 book Eugenics and Other Evils, and Boas' 1916 article "Eugenics" (published in The Scientific Monthly) were all harshly critical of the rapidly growing movement. Sutherland identified eugenicists as a major obstacle to the eradication and cure of tuberculosis in his 1917 address "Consumption: Its Cause and Cure",^[52] and criticism of eugenicists and Neo-Malthusians in his 1921 book Birth Control led to a writ for libel from the eugenicist Marie Stopes. Several biologists were also antagonistic to the eugenics movement, including Lancelot Hogben.^[53] Other biologists such as J. B. S. Haldane and R. A. Fisher expressed skepticism in the belief that sterilization of "defectives" would lead to the disappearance of undesirable genetic traits.^[54]

Among institutions, the

Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States made it a crime for individuals to wed someone categorized as belonging to a different race.^[61] These laws were part of a broader policy of racial segregation in the United States to minimize contact between people of different ethnicities. Race laws and practices in the United States were explicitly used as models by the Nazi regime when it developed the Nuremberg Laws, stripping Jewish citizens of their citizenship.^[62]

Nazism and the decline of eugenics

The scientific reputation of eugenics started to decline in the 1930s, a time when

While there is ostensibly less support for eugenics today, forced sterilization remains a problem around the world.^[75][76] It has been used against Indigenous women in Canada as recently as 2019.^[77] Until 2014, the Netherlands required sterilization of transgender people as a prerequisite for legal recognition of their genders.^[78] A similar law persists in Japan and was upheld in 2019 as constitutional.^[79] In the United States, most people affected by forced sterilization are under guardianship,^[80] though procedures were also performed on inmates in the California prison system.^[81] According to a report from The National Women's Law Center, 31 states and D.C. have laws allowing forced sterilization, and in most other states it is not clear whether it is legal or not.^[82] Seventeen states allow the sterilization of children under the age of 18, and some do not even require a legal guardian to make that decision.^[83]

Modern eugenics

Developments in

In a 2006 newspaper article, Richard Dawkins said that discussion regarding eugenics was inhibited by the shadow of Nazi misuse, to the extent that some scientists would not admit that breeding humans for certain abilities is at all possible. He believes that it is not physically different from breeding domestic animals for traits such as speed or herding skill. Dawkins felt that enough time had elapsed to at least ask just what the ethical differences were between breeding for ability versus training athletes or forcing children to take music lessons, though he could think of persuasive reasons to draw the distinction.^[86]

The National Human Genome Research Institute says that eugenics is "inaccurate", "scientifically erroneous and immoral".^[92]

A system was proposed by California State Senator Nancy Skinner to compensate victims of the well-documented examples of prison sterilizations resulting from California's eugenics programs, but this did not pass by the bill's 2018 deadline in the Legislature.^[95]

Meanings and types

The term eugenics and its modern field of study were first formulated by Francis Galton in 1883,^[96] drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin.^[97][98] Galton published his observations and conclusions in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development.

The origins of the concept began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance and the theories of August Weismann.^[99] The word eugenics is derived from the Greek word eu ("good" or "well") and the suffix -genēs ("born"); Galton intended it to replace the word "stirpiculture", which he had used previously but which had come to be mocked due to its perceived sexual overtones.^[100] Galton defined eugenics as "the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations".^[101]

The most disputed aspect of eugenics has been the definition of "improvement" of the human gene pool, such as what is a beneficial characteristic and what is a defect. Historically, this aspect of eugenics was tainted with scientific racism and pseudoscience.^{[2][102][103]}

Historically, the idea of eugenics has been used to argue for a broad array of practices ranging from prenatal care for mothers deemed genetically desirable to the forced sterilization and murder of those deemed unfit.^[5] To population geneticists, the term has included the avoidance of inbreeding without altering allele frequencies; for example, J. B. S. Haldane wrote that "the motor bus, by breaking up inbred village communities, was a powerful eugenic agent."^[104] Debate as to what exactly counts as eugenics continues today.^[105]

Edwin Black, journalist, historian, and author of War Against the Weak, argues that eugenics is often deemed a pseudoscience because what is defined as a genetic improvement of a desired trait is a cultural choice rather than a matter that can be determined through objective scientific inquiry.^[2] Black states the following about the pseudoscientific past of eugenics: "As American eugenic pseudoscience thoroughly infused the scientific journals of the first three decades of the twentieth century, Nazi-era eugenics placed its unmistakable stamp on the medical literature of the twenties, thirties and forties." ^[106] Black says that eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race, used by Adolf Hitler to "try to legitimize his anti- Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics."^[107]

Early eugenicists were mostly concerned with factors of perceived

Eugenic policies have been conceptually divided into two categories.[5] Positive eugenics is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the genetically advantaged; for example, the reproduction of the intelligent, the healthy, and the successful. Possible approaches include financial and political stimuli, targeted demographic analyses, in vitro fertilization, egg transplants, and cloning.^[109] Negative eugenics aimed to eliminate, through sterilization or segregation, those deemed physically, mentally, or morally "undesirable". This includes abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning.^[109] Both positive and negative eugenics can be coercive; in Nazi Germany, for example, abortion was illegal for women deemed by the state to be fit.^[110]

Controversy over scientific and moral legitimacy

Arguments for scientific validity

The

Pleiotropy occurs when one gene influences multiple, seemingly unrelated phenotypic traits, an example being phenylketonuria, which is a human disease that affects multiple systems but is caused by one gene defect.^[117] Andrzej Pękalski, from the University of Wroclaw, argues that eugenics can cause harmful loss of genetic diversity if a eugenics program selects a pleiotropic gene that could possibly be associated with a positive trait. Pekalski uses the example of a coercive government eugenics program that prohibits people with myopia from breeding but has the unintended consequence of also selecting against high intelligence since the two go together.^[118] Further, a culturally-accepted "improvement" of the gene pool may result in extinction, due to increased vulnerability to disease, reduced ability to adapt to environmental change, and other factors that may not be anticipated in advance. This has been evidenced in numerous instances, in isolated island populations. A long-term, species-wide eugenics plan might lead to such a scenario because the elimination of traits deemed undesirable would reduce genetic diversity by definition.^[12]

While the science of genetics has increasingly provided means by which certain characteristics and conditions can be identified and understood, given the complexity of human genetics, culture, and psychology, at this point there is no agreed objective means of determining which traits might be ultimately desirable or undesirable. Some conditions such as

Societal and political consequences of eugenics call for a place in the discussion on the ethics behind the eugenics movement.[119] Many of the ethical concerns regarding eugenics arise from its controversial past, prompting a discussion on what place, if any, it should have in the future. Advances in science have changed eugenics. In the past, eugenics had more to do with sterilization and enforced reproduction laws.^[120] Now, in the age of a progressively mapped genome, embryos can be tested for susceptibility to disease, gender, and genetic defects, and alternative methods of reproduction such as in vitro fertilization are becoming more common.^[121] Therefore, eugenics is no longer ex post facto regulation of the living but instead preemptive action on the unborn.^[122]

With this change, however, there are ethical concerns which some groups feel warrant more attention before this practice is commonly rolled out. Sterilized individuals, for example, could volunteer for the procedure, albeit under incentive or duress, or at least voice their opinion. The unborn fetus on which these new eugenic procedures are performed cannot speak out, as the fetus lacks the voice to consent or to express their opinion.^[123] Philosophers disagree about the proper framework for reasoning about such actions, which change the very identity and existence of future persons.^[124]

Opposition

Amanda Caleb, Professor of Medical Humanities at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, says "Eugenic laws and policies are now understood as part of a specious devotion to a pseudoscience that actively dehumanizes to support political agendas and not true science or medicine."^[128]

Endorsement

Some, for example Nathaniel C. Comfort from Johns Hopkins University, claim that the change from state-led reproductive-genetic decision-making to individual choice has moderated the worst abuses of eugenics by transferring the decision-making process from the state to patients and their families.^[129] Comfort suggests that "the eugenic impulse drives us to eliminate disease, live longer and healthier, with greater intelligence, and a better adjustment to the conditions of society; and the health benefits, the intellectual thrill and the profits of genetic bio-medicine are too great for us to do otherwise."^[130] Others, such as bioethicist Stephen Wilkinson of Keele University and Honorary Research Fellow Eve Garrard at the University of Manchester, claim that some aspects of modern genetics can be classified as eugenics, but that this classification does not inherently make modern genetics immoral.^[131]

In their book published in 2000, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, bioethicists Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler argued that liberal societies have an obligation to encourage as wide an adoption of eugenic enhancement technologies as possible (so long as such policies do not infringe on individuals' reproductive rights or exert undue pressures on prospective parents to use these technologies) in order to maximize public health and minimize the inequalities that may result from both natural genetic endowments and unequal access to genetic enhancements.^[132]

In his book A Theory of Justice (1971), American philosopher John Rawls argued that "Over time a society is to take steps to preserve the general level of natural abilities and to prevent the diffusion of serious defects".^[133] The original position, a hypothetical situation developed by Rawls, has been used as an argument for negative eugenics.^[134][135]

In science fiction

The novel

.

The film

genetic-determinist ideology that may frame it.^[138] In a 1997 review of the film for the journal Nature Genetics, molecular biologist Lee M. Silver stated that "Gattaca is a film that all geneticists should see if for no other reason than to understand the perception of our trade held by so many of the public-at-large".^[139] In his 2018 book Blueprint, behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin writes that while Gattaca warned of the dangers of genetic information being used by a totalitarian state, genetic testing could also favour better meritocracy in democratic societies which already administer psychological tests to select people for education and employment. Plomin suggests that polygenic scores might supplement testing in a manner that is free of biases.^[140]

Various works by author Robert A. Heinlein mention the Howard Foundation, a group aimed at improving human longevity through selective breeding.

Eugenics is commonly seen in popular media, as highlighted by series like Resident Evil.^[141]

See also

See also:

Outline of Genocide studies

• Ableism – Discrimination against disabled people
• Biological determinism – Theory of genetic influence
• Culling – Process of segregating organisms in biology
• Directed evolution (transhumanism) – Term in transhumanism
• Dor Yeshorim – Jewish genetic screening organization
• Dysgenics – Decrease in genetic traits deemed desirable
• Eugenic feminism – Areas of the women's suffrage movement which overlapped with eugenics
• Eugenics in Mexico – Review of the topicPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
• Eugenics in the United States
• Euthenics – Study of improving living conditions to increase well-being
• Genetic discrimination – Discrimination based on specific gene mutations
• Genetic enhancement
   – Technologies to genetically improve human bodiesPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Human enhancement – Natural, artificial, or technological alteration of the human body
• In vitro embryo selection – Assisted reproductive technology procedure (preimplantation genetic diagnosis – Genetic profiling of embryos prior to implantation)
• New eugenics – Advocates the use of reproductive and genetic technologies to enhance human characteristics
• Life unworthy of life – Phrase in Nazi Germany
• Mendelian traits in humans
• Nazi eugenics – Nazi German policy of the murder of "undesirable" persons from the German people
• Procreative beneficence
   – Australian philosopher and bioethicistPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Prevention of rare diseases – Disease affecting a small percentage of the population
• Sterilization – Government policies which force people to undergo sterilization
• Social Darwinism – Group of theories and societal practices
• Somatotype and constitutional psychology – Taxonomy to categorize human physiques

Citations

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    • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
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General and cited references

Main article: Bibliography of genocide studies

• Agar, Nicholas (2004). Liberal Eugenics: In Defense of Human Enhancement. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Agar, Nicholas (2019). "Why we Should Defend Gene Editing as Eugenics". Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. 34 (1): 9–19.
  S2CID 58195676
  .
• ISBN 9781568582580
  .
• Buchanan, Allen (2017). Better than Human: The Promise and Perils of Deliberate Biomedical Enhancement. "Philosophy in Action" series. Oxford University Press.
  ISBN 9780190664046
  .
• Cavaliere, Giulia (2018). "Looking into the Shadow: Eugenics arguments in debates about reproductive technologies". Monash Bioethics Review. 36 (1–4): 1–22.
  PMID 30535862
  .
• Daar, J. (2017). The New Eugenics: Selective Breeding in an Era of Reproductive Technologies. Yale University Press.
• Savulescu, Julian; Kahane, Guy (2009). The Moral Obligation to Have Children with the Best Chance of the Best Life (PDF). Bioethics. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 February 2021.
• Shaw, David (2006). Genetic Morality. Bern: Peter Lang.
  ISBN 9783039111497
  .
• Sparrow, Robert (2014). "In Vitro Eugenics". Journal of Medical Ethics. 40 (11): 725–731.
  S2CID 959092
  .
• Veit, Walter; Anomaly, Jonathan; Agar, Nicholas; Singer, Peter; Fleischman, Diana; Minerva, Francesca (2021). "Can 'eugenics' be defended?". Monash Bioethics Review. 39 (1): 60–67.
  PMID 34033008
  .

Histories of eugenics (academic accounts)

• Carlson, Elof Axel (2001). The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea. Cold Spring Harbor, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Press.
  ISBN 9780879695873
  .
• ISBN 9780313327919
  .
• Farrall, Lyndsay (1985). The Origins and Growth of the English eugenics movement, 1865–1925. Garland Publishing.
  ISBN 9780824058104
  .
• ISBN 9780520057630
  .
• Largent, Mark (2008). Breeding Contempt: The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
  ISBN 9780813541839
  .
• Leon, Sharon M. (2013). An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle with Eugenics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Paul, Diane (2006). Darwin, Social Darwinism, and Eugenics (PDF). Cambridge University Press.
• Redman, Samuel J. (2016). Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  ISBN 9780674660410
  .
• Stepan, Nancy Leys (1991). "The Hour of Eugenics": Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race". USHMM.org. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2004. Archived from the original on 4 September 2013.
• ISBN 9780262037204
  .
• Wyndham, Diana (2003). Eugenics in Australia: Striving for national fitness. London: Galton Institute.
  ISBN 9780950406671
  .

Histories of hereditarian thought

• Barkan, Elazar (1992). The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Ewen, Elizabeth; Ewen, Stuart (2006). Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality. New York: Seven Stories Press.
  ISBN 9781583227350
  .
• ISBN 9780393014891
  .
• Gillette, Aaron (2007). The Nature–Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  ISBN 9780230108455
  .

Criticisms of eugenics

• Chesterton, G. K. (1922). Eugenics and Other Evils. Cassell and Company.
• ISBN 9780771016301
  .
• Galton, David (2002). Eugenics: The Future of Human Life in the 21st Century. London: Abacus.
  ISBN 9780349113777
  .
• Goldberg, Jonah (2007). Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. New York: Doubleday.
  ISBN 9780385511841
  .
• Joseph, Jay (2004). The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology Under the Microscope. New York: Algora.
  ISBN 9780875863436. Archived from the original
  on 12 May 2009.
• Joseph, Jay (June 2005). "The 1942 'euthanasia' debate in the American Journal of Psychiatry" (PDF). History of Psychiatry. 16 (62 Pt. 2): 171–179.
  S2CID 35728753
  .
• Joseph, Jay (2006). The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes. New York: Algora.
  ISBN 9780875864105. Archived from the original
  on 17 April 2009.
• Kerr, Anne; Shakespeare, Tom (2002). Genetic Politics: from Eugenics to Genome. Cheltenham: New Clarion.
  ISBN 9781873797259
  .
• Maranto, Gina (1996). Quest for perfection: the drive to breed better human beings. New York: Scribner.
  ISBN 9780684800295
  .
• Ordover, Nancy (2003). American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  ISBN 9780816635597
  .
• S2CID 145688957
  .
• Smith, Andrea (2005). Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press.
  ISBN 9780896087439
  .
• Wahlsten, D. (1997). "Leilani Muir versus the philosopher king: Eugenics on trial in Alberta" (PDF). Genetica. 99 (2–3): 185–198.
  S2CID 45536970
  .
• Wilson, Robert A. (2019). "Eugenics undefended". Monash Bioethics Review. 37 (1): 68–75.
  S2CID 198131924
  .

External links

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Eugenics

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• Eugenics: Its Origin and Development (1883–Present) by the National Human Genome Research Institute (November 30, 2021)
• Eugenics and Scientific Racism Fact Sheet by the National Human Genome Research Institute (November 3, 2021)