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Eugenics (/juːˈdʒɛnɪks/ yoo-JEN-iks; from Ancient Greek εύ̃ (eû) 'good, well', and -γενής (genḗs) 'born, come into being, growing/grown')[1][2] is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population.[3][4][5] Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior.[6] Since the early 2020s, the term has seen a revival in bioethical discussions on the usage of new technologies such as CRISPR and genetic screening, with ongoing debate around whether these technologies should be considered eugenics or not.[7]
While it is commonly argued to have begun as a quintessentially progressive social movement,[8][9][10][11] in contemporary usage, the term is still closely associated with scientific racism. Modern bioethicists who advocate new eugenics characterize it as a matter of individual or parental choice in enhancing traits, rather than group-based policies.[12]
The contemporary history of eugenics began in the late 19th century, when a popular eugenics movement emerged in the United Kingdom,[13] and then spread to many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia,[14] and most European countries (e.g. Sweden and Germany). In this period, people from across the political spectrum espoused eugenic ideas. Consequently, many countries adopted eugenic policies, intended to improve the quality of their populations' genetic stock. Such programs included both positive measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly "fit" to reproduce, and negative measures, such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction.
As a social movement, eugenics reached its greatest popularity in the early decades of the 20th century, when it was practiced around the world and promoted by governments, institutions, and influential individuals (such as the playwright G. B. Shaw). Many countries enacted[15] various eugenics policies, including: genetic screenings, birth control, promoting differential birth rates, marriage restrictions, segregation (both racial segregation and sequestering the mentally ill), compulsory sterilization, forced abortions or forced pregnancies, ultimately culminating in genocide. By 2014, gene selection (rather than "people selection") was made possible through advances in genome editing,[16] leading to what is sometimes called new eugenics, also known as "neo-eugenics", "consumer eugenics", or "liberal eugenics"; which focuses on individual freedom and allegedly pull away from racism, sexism, heterosexism or a focus on intelligence.[17]
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 long since precolonial times.[18]
According to Plutarch, in Sparta, every proper citizen's child was inspected by their council of elders, the Gerousia, which determined whether or not the child was fit to live.[19] If the child was indeed deemed incapable of living a Spartan life, it was usually exposed[20][21] in the Apothetae near the Taygetus mountain. Further alleged trials to discern a child's fitness included bathing them in wine and exposing them to the elements to fend for themselves. To Sparta, this would ensure only the strongest survived and procreated.[22] This eugenic purism has often been discerned as Sparta's very most characteristic and formative mainspring.[23][24]
The now archetypal form of utopian eugenics was most famously expounded by Plato's political philosophy, who believed human reproduction should be cautiously monitored and controlled by the state.[25] He advocated selective breeding be used not just to further the capacities of various animals, but also those of humans. However, Plato understood this form of government control would not be readily accepted, and proposed the truth be concealed from the public via a fixed lottery. Mates, in Plato's Republic, would be chosen by a "marriage number" in which the quality of the individual would be quantitatively analyzed, and persons of high numbers would be allowed to procreate with other persons of high numbers. This would then lead to predictable results and the improvement of the human race. Plato's ideas may have been one of the earliest attempts to mathematically analyze genetic inheritance, prefiguring some of what would much later become known as Mendelian genetics.[26]
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. Furthermore, any selected male committing a dishonorable act would be separated from his partner.[27]
"We put down mad dogs; we kill the wild, untamed ox; we use the knife on sick sheep to stop their infecting the flock; we destroy abnormal offspring at birth; children, too, if they are born weak or deformed, we drown. Yet this is not the work of anger, but of reason – to separate the sound from the worthless."
The Twelve Tables of Roman Law, established early in the formation of the Roman Republic, obliged citizens by law to immediately kill any "dreadfully deformed" child.[29] And so selective infanticide seems to have been comparably widespread in Ancient Rome[30] as it had already long been in Athens.[31]
Furthermore, 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.[32][33]
The characteristic practice of selective infanticide in the Roman Empire did not subside until its Christianization, which however also mandated negative eugenics, e.g. by the council of Adge in 506, which forbade marriage between cousins.[34]The term eugenics and its modern field of study were first formulated by Francis Galton in 1883,[35][36][37][a] directly drawing on the recent work delineating natural selection by his half-cousin Charles Darwin.[39][40][41][b] He published his observations and conclusions chiefly in his influential book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. Galton himself defined it as "the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations".[43] The first to systematically apply Darwinism theory to human relations, Galton believed that various desirable human qualities were also hereditary ones, although Darwin strongly disagreed with this elaboration of his theory.[44] And it should also be noted that many of the early geneticists were not themselves Darwinians.[41]
Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities and received funding from various sources.[45] Organizations were formed to win public support for and to sway opinion towards responsible eugenic values in parenthood, including the British Eugenics Education Society of 1907 and the American Eugenics Society of 1921. Both sought support from leading clergymen and modified their message to meet religious ideals.[46] In 1909, the Anglican clergymen William Inge and James Peile both wrote for the Eugenics Education Society. Inge was an invited speaker at the 1921 International Eugenics Conference, which was also endorsed by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York Patrick Joseph Hayes.[46]
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.[47] Eugenic policies also took root in France, Germany, and Great Britain.[48] Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, the eugenic policy of sterilizing certain mental patients was implemented in other countries including Belgium,[49] Brazil,[50] Canada,[51] 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.[52] 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 International Federation of Eugenics Organizations.[53] Its scientific aspects were carried on through research bodies such as the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics,[54] the Cold Spring Harbor Carnegie Institution for Experimental Evolution,[55] and the Eugenics Record Office.[56] Politically, the movement advocated measures such as sterilization laws.[57] In its moral dimension, eugenics rejected the doctrine that all human beings are born equal and redefined moral worth purely in terms of genetic fitness.[58] Its racist elements included pursuit of a pure "Nordic race" or "Aryan" genetic pool and the eventual elimination of "unfit" races.[59][60] Many leading British politicians subscribed to the theories of eugenics. Winston Churchill supported the British Eugenics Society and was an honorary vice president for the organization. Churchill believed that eugenics could solve "race deterioration" and reduce crime and poverty.[42][61][62]
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.[6] 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."[63] Debate as to what exactly counts as eugenics continues today.[64]
Early eugenicists were mostly concerned with factors of perceived intelligence that often correlated strongly with social class. These included Karl Pearson and Walter Weldon, who worked on this at the University College London.[44] In his lecture "Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics", Pearson claimed that everything concerning eugenics fell into the field of medicine.[65]
Early critics of the philosophy of eugenics included the American sociologist Lester Frank Ward,[67] 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,[68] 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",[69] 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.[70] 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.[71]
Among institutions, the Catholic Church was an opponent of state-enforced sterilizations, but accepted isolating people with hereditary diseases so as not to let them reproduce.[72] Attempts by the Eugenics Education Society to persuade the British government to legalize voluntary sterilization were opposed by Catholics and by the Labour Party.[73] The American Eugenics Society initially gained some Catholic supporters, but Catholic support declined following the 1930 papal encyclical Casti connubii.[46] In this, Pope Pius XI explicitly condemned sterilization laws: "Public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects; therefore, where no crime has taken place and there is no cause present for grave punishment, they can never directly harm, or tamper with the integrity of the body, either for the reasons of eugenics or for any other reason."[74]
In fact, more generally, "[m]uch of the opposition to eugenics during that era, at least in Europe, came from the right."[75]: 36 The eugenicists' political successes in Germany and Scandinavia were not at all matched in such countries as Poland and Czechoslovakia, even though measures had been proposed there, largely because of the Catholic church's moderating influence.[76]
Eugenic policies have been conceptually divided into two categories.[6] 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.[77] 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.[77] 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.[78]
Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, refers to any government-mandated program to involuntarily sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's capacity to reproduce, and is usually done by surgical or chemical means.
Purported justifications for compulsory sterilization have included population control, negative eugenics, limiting the spread of HIV[79] or other venereal diseases and ethnic genocide.
Several countries implemented sterilization programs in the early 20th century.[80] Although such programs have been made illegal in much of the world, instances of forced or coerced sterilizations still persist.Eugenic feminism was a current of the women's suffrage movement which overlapped with eugenics.[81] Originally coined by the Lebanese-British physician and vocal eugenicist Caleb Saleeby,[82][83][84] the term has since been applied to summarize views held by prominent feminists of Great Britain and the United States. Some early suffragettes in Canada, especially a group known as The Famous Five, also pushed for various eugenic policies.
Eugenic feminists argued that if women were provided with more rights and equality, the deteriorating characteristics of a given race could be averted.Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States made it a crime for individuals to wed someone categorized as belonging to a different race.[85] 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.[86]
Indeed, the eugenics movement became widely associated with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust when the defense of many of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials of 1945 to 1946 attempted to justify their human-rights abuses by claiming there was little difference between the Nazi eugenics programs and the US eugenics programs.[87]
The scientific reputation of eugenics started to decline in the 1930s, a time when Ernst Rüdin used eugenics as a justification for the racial policies of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler had praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf in 1925 and emulated eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in the United States once he took power.[88] Some common early 20th century eugenics methods involved identifying and classifying individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women, homosexuals, and racial groups (such as the Roma and Jews in Nazi Germany) as "degenerate" or "unfit", and therefore led to segregation, institutionalization, sterilization, and even mass murder.[89] The Nazi policy of identifying German citizens deemed mentally or physically unfit and then systematically killing them with poison gas, referred to as the Aktion T4 campaign, is understood by historians to have paved the way for the Holocaust.[90][91][92]
By the end of World War II, many eugenics laws were abandoned, having become associated with Nazi Germany.[93] H. G. Wells, who had called for "the sterilization of failures" in 1904,[94] stated in his 1940 book The Rights of Man: Or What Are We Fighting For? that among the human rights, which he believed should be available to all people, was "a prohibition on mutilation, sterilization, torture, and any bodily punishment".[95] After World War II, the practice of "imposing measures intended to prevent births within [a national, ethnical, racial or religious] group" fell within the definition of the new international crime of genocide, set out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[96] The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union also proclaims "the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at selection of persons".[97]
In spite of the decline in discriminatory eugenics laws, some government mandated sterilizations continued into the 21st century. During the ten years President Alberto Fujimori led Peru from 1990 to 2000, 2,000 persons were allegedly involuntarily sterilized.[98] China maintained its one-child policy until 2015 as well as a suite of other eugenics-based legislation to reduce population size and manage fertility rates of different populations.[99][100][101]
Developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the beginning of the 21st century have raised numerous questions regarding the ethical status of eugenics, effectively creating a resurgence of interest in the subject. Some, such as UC Berkeley sociologist Troy Duster, have argued that modern genetics is a back door to eugenics.[102] This view was shared by then-White House Assistant Director for Forensic Sciences, Tania Simoncelli, who stated in a 2003 publication by the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College that advances in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) are moving society to a "new era of eugenics", and that, unlike the Nazi eugenics, modern eugenics is consumer driven and market based, "where children are increasingly regarded as made-to-order consumer products".[103]
In October 2015, the United Nations' International Bioethics Committee wrote that the ethical problems of human genetic engineering should not be confused with the ethical problems of the 20th century eugenics movements. However, it is still problematic because it challenges the idea of human equality and opens up new forms of discrimination and stigmatization for those who do not want, or cannot afford, the technology.[104][c]
The American National Human Genome Research Institute says that eugenics is "inaccurate", "scientifically erroneous and immoral".[106]
Transhumanism is often associated with eugenics, although most transhumanists holding similar views nonetheless distance themselves from the term "eugenics" (preferring "germinal choice" or "reprogenetics") to avoid having their position confused with the discredited theories and practices of early-20th-century eugenic movements.[107]
Prenatal screening has been called by some a contemporary form of eugenics because it may lead to abortions of fetuses with undesirable traits.[108]
Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, promoted eugenics as late as 1983.[109] A proponent of nature over nurture, he stated that "intelligence is 80% nature and 20% nurture", and attributed the successes of his children to genetics.[110] In his speeches, Lee urged highly educated women to have more children, claiming that "social delinquents" would dominate unless their fertility rate increased.[110] In 1984, Singapore began providing financial incentives to highly educated women to encourage them to have more children. In 1985, incentives were significantly reduced after public uproar.[111][112]
"The people who designed the quasi-mandated genetic screening programs in the Republic of Cyprus succeeded in avoiding all that what was evil in earlier eugenic practices; indeed, the Cypriot version of thalassemia screening is so far removed from eugenics that it should not even be called by the same name."
Jewish proponent of a liberal eugenics,[113] Ruth Schwartz Cowan.[114]: 101
Cyprus is a country with high prevalence of β-Thalassemia major, an inherited blood disorder. One in seven residents of the country is a carrier of the defective gene without being ill themselves. If both parents have the genetic defect, the risk of a child developing thalassemia rises to 25 percent. Treatment of the disease is only possible with great effort through lifelong weekly blood transfusions and additional medication. New treatment methods extended the survival time of those affected to such an extent that without further measures the number of sufferers in the Cypriot population would have doubled approximately every eight to ten years. This would have overwhelmed the resources of the healthcare system on Cyprus in the foreseeable future. As early as the 1970s, almost every healthy resident of the country came to donate blood twice a year, as around 500 blood transfusions were carried out per week to treat thalassemia. Of the around 11,000 newborns per year at that time, around 70 were ill. A fifth of the entire country's already comparatively large health budget was spent on purchasing the necessary drug Desferal, which, like blood transfusions, is given free of charge to affected patients.[114]
However, in 1976 a eugenics program was introduced there expressly to prevent the further spread of thalassemia. It serves as one of the rare examples of a popular legislation in place in both of the dual jurisdictions of the island. Almost every adult resident knows their own thalassemia status based on some prior genetic test. Couples in which both partners carry the recessive mutation are advised to undergo voluntary prenatal diagnosis during genetic counseling. Furthermore, since 1983, a screening certificate confirming that a couple has taken part in genetic screening and appropriate human genetic counseling has been a compulsory prerequisite for church weddings.[d][113]
Since almost every family on Cyprus is, to some extent, affected by thalassemia, there is no significant resistance among the population against this voluntary eugenics. Genetic testing, prenatal diagnosis, and possible abortion are all free of charge. Yet more, preimplantation diagnosis has been available on Cyprus as a more technologically advanced alternative. Spending on Desferal has fallen by half, and the number of sick newborns is only two per year total. Since about the same number of thalassemia patients die each year, the number of patients has been constant at around 630 for some time.[115] Since the program's implementation, it has reduced the ratio of children born with the hereditary blood disease from 1 out of every 158 births to almost zero.[116][117] As such, the ongoing program is commonly deemed a decisive success story.[118]
Medical ethicist Robert Ranisch notes that there still has built up an implicit social expectation to not conceive predisposed offspring (i.e. a slippery slope),[114] but nonetheless concedes that:
While the Cypriote model of a quasi-obligatory screening for future marriage partners touches on various ethical issues that require debate, the fact that this programme aimed at a population level does not preclude such a project per se. The approach taken built on the idea of public health.[e][120]
One general concern that many bring to the table, is that the reduced genetic diversity some argue to be a likely feature of long-term, species-wide eugenics plans,[121] could eventually result in inbreeding depression,[121] increased spread of infectious disease,[122][123] and decreased resilience to changes in the environment.[124][page needed] It should be noted, however, that not all proponents of human enhancement necessarily find such a net reduction in the diversity of human geno- and or phenotypes desirable at all.[125][126]
Most generally, in a 2006 newspaper article, prominent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, lauded by some as "the skeptic's chaplain",[127] stated of the matter:
The spectre of Hitler has led some scientists to stray from "ought" to "is" and deny that breeding for human qualities is even possible. But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as "these are not one-dimensional abilities" apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice.
I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn't the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?[128]
The heterozygote test is used for the early detection of recessive hereditary diseases, allowing for couples to determine if they are at risk of passing genetic defects to a future child.[129] The goal of the test is to estimate the likelihood of passing the hereditary disease to future descendants.[129]
Besides the aforementioned case of Cyprus, there are various examples of eugenic acts that managed to lower the prevalence of recessive diseases, although not influencing the prevalence of heterozygote carriers of those diseases. The elevated prevalence of certain genetically transmitted diseases among the Ashkenazi Jewish population (Tay–Sachs, cystic fibrosis, Canavan's disease, and Gaucher's disease), has been decreased in current populations by the application of genetic screening[130] (cf. also Dor Yeshorim).
The first major challenge to conventional eugenics based on genetic inheritance was made in 1915 by Thomas Hunt Morgan. He demonstrated the event of genetic mutation occurring outside of inheritance involving the discovery of the hatching of a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) with white eyes from a family with red eyes,[42]: 336–337 demonstrating that major genetic changes occurred outside of inheritance.[42]: 336–337 Additionally, Morgan criticized the view that certain traits, such as intelligence and criminality, were hereditary because these traits were subjective.[131] Despite Morgan's public rejection of eugenics, much of his genetic research was adopted by proponents of eugenics.[132][133]
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.[134] 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. Pękalski 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.[135]
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 sickle-cell disease and cystic fibrosis respectively confer immunity to malaria and resistance to cholera when a single copy of the recessive allele is contained within the genotype of the individual, so eliminating these genes is undesirable in places where such diseases are common.[124] Such cases in which, furthermore, even individual organisms' massive suffering or even death due to the odd 25 percent of homozygotes ineliminable by natural section under a Mendelian pattern of inheritance may be justified for the greater ecological good that is conspecifics incurring a greater so-called heterozygote advantage in turn.[136]
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."[137]
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.[3] Indeed, 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 is often considered to be tainted with scientific racism and pseudoscience.[3][138]
Regarding the lasting controversy above, himself citing recent scholarship,[140][141] historian of science Aaron Gillette notes that:
Others take a more nuanced view. They recognize that there was a wide variety of eugenic theories, some of which were much less race- or class-based than others. Eugenicists might also give greater or lesser acknowledgment to the role that environment played in shaping human behavior. In some cases, eugenics was almost imperceptibly intertwined with health care, child care, birth control, and sex education issues. In this sense, eugenics has been called, "a 'modern' way of talking about social problems in biologizing terms".'[142]: 11
Indeed, granting that the historical phenomenon of eugenics was that of a pseudoscience, Gilette further notes that this derived chiefly from its being "an epiphenomenon of a number of sciences, which all intersected at the claim that it was possible to consciously guide human evolution."[142]: 2
Societal and political consequences of eugenics call for a place in the discussion on the ethics behind the eugenics movement.[143] 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.[144] Now, in the age of a progressively mapped genome, embryos can be tested for susceptibility to disease, sex, and genetic defects, and alternative methods of reproduction such as in vitro fertilization are becoming more common.[145] Therefore, eugenics is no longer ex post facto regulation of the living but instead preemptive action on the unborn.[146] 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.[147] Philosophers disagree about the proper framework for reasoning about such actions, which change the very identity and existence of future persons.[148]
In a book directly addressed at socialist eugenicist J.B.S. Haldane and his once-influential Daedalus, Betrand Russell, had one serious objection of his own: eugenic policies might simply end up being used to reproduce existing power relations “rather than to make men happy.”[153]
Environmental ethicist Bill McKibben argued against germinal choice technology and other advanced biotechnological strategies for human enhancement. He writes that it would be morally wrong for humans to tamper with fundamental aspects of themselves (or their children) in an attempt to overcome universal human limitations, such as vulnerability to aging, maximum life span and biological constraints on physical and cognitive ability. Attempts to "improve" themselves through such manipulation would remove limitations that provide a necessary context for the experience of meaningful human choice. He claims that human lives would no longer seem meaningful in a world where such limitations could be overcome with technology. Even the goal of using germinal choice technology for clearly therapeutic purposes should be relinquished, he argues, since it would inevitably produce temptations to tamper with such things as cognitive capacities. He argues that it is possible for societies to benefit from renouncing particular technologies, using Ming China, Tokugawa Japan and the contemporary Amish as examples.[154]
Furthermore, many criticize negative eugenics in particular as a violation of certain purportedly inviolable human rights claims,[155] chiefly the right to reproduce. On the other hand, liberal proponents of human enhancement (and therein usually first and foremost positive eugenics), have long since used terminology much like this as well. A notable such appeal to much the same effect[156] is that of philosopher and political libertarian[157] John A. Robertson’s “procreative liberty.”[158][159] More generally yet, the exact foundations of human rights claims are themselves commonly contested in scholarly contexts,[160] with various personages likely to reject them outright[g] and an especially broad battery of rebuttals having accumulated against their use in favor of bioethics regulation in particular.[105][161]
As regards deontology, bioconservatives often invoke Kantian moral universalism of a certain sort, insofar as they find human enhancement to instantiate especially troubling kinds of asymmetry between and dissonance within agents.[162] It should be noted on that point, however, that scholarship commonly disagrees with such construals on the grounds that Kant did not, in fact, consider any given entity common sense – not to speak of genetic testing – may discern to be human, to also satisfy the minimum in rational agency he held necessary for entering the moral plane whatsoever.[h] In any case, German sociologist and early member of the Frankfurt School, Jürgen Habermas has famously employed various arguments of this deontological variety in his treatise directed against all, but especially “liberal”[i] modalities of the emerging "new eugenics".[164] Yet, outside of the more moderate German context, these were immediately subject to comprehensive criticism from various sources,[165][166][167][168] and were influential enough as to inspire a whole cascade of systematic attacks on the conceptual[169] such as moral-political substantiveness of human dignity.[170][171]
"Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday’s abhorrences are today calmly accepted—not always for the better. In some crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power completely to articulate it. [...] [W]e intuit and we feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear. [...] [R]evulsion may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder."
Leon Kass[172]
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.[175] 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."[176] 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.[177]
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.[75]
In his book A Theory of Justice (1971), American philosopher John Rawls argued that "[o]ver time a society is to take steps to preserve the general level of natural abilities and to prevent the diffusion of serious defects".[178] The original position, a hypothetical situation developed by Rawls, has been used as an argument for negative eugenics.[179][180]
The term directed evolution is used chiefly within the transhumanist community to refer to the idea of applying the principles of directed evolution and experimental evolution to the control of human evolution.[181] The concept has been described as the Holy Grail of transhumanism.[181]
Oxford philosopher Julian Savulescu wrote:In a similar spirit, UCLA biophysicist and entrepreneur Gregory Stock – otherwise known for his best-selling books, some of which are expansive arguments in favor of a new, liberal eugenics[183][184] – notes:Humanity until this point has been a story of evolution for the survival [of] genes [...] Now we are entering a new phase of human evolution—evolution under reason—where human beings are masters of their destiny. Power has been transferred from nature to science.[182][j]
Riccardo Campa of the IEET wrote that "self-directed evolution" can be coupled with many different political, philosophical, and religious views.[186]. As such, it is comparable to techno-progressivism.Humanity is leaving its childhood and moving into its adolescence as its powers infuse into realms hitherto beyond our reach.[185]
Self-described opponents of historical eugenics first and foremost,[k] are known to insist on a particularly stringent treatment-enhancement distinction (sometimes also called divide or gap). This distinction, naturally, "draws a line between services or interventions meant to prevent or cure (or otherwise ameliorate) conditions that we view as diseases or disabilities and interventions that improve a condition that we view as a normal function or feature of members of our species”.[189]
Two proponents of the enhancement modality, in turn, define the supposed schism as follows:An intervention that is aimed at correcting a specific pathology or defect of a cognitive subsystem may be characterized as therapeutic. An enhancement is an intervention that improves a subsystem in some way other than repairing something that is broken or remedying a specific dysfunction.[190]
And yet the adequacy of such a dichotomy is highly contested in modern scholarly bioethics. One simple counterargument is that it has long been ignored throughout various contemporary fields of scientific study and practice such as: “preventive medicine, palliative care, obstetrics, sports medicine, plastic surgery, contraceptive devices, fertility treatments, cosmetic dental procedures, and much else”[191] This is one way of conducting ostensively what has been coined the “moral continuum argument” by some of its critics.[192] Others argue on more theoretical grounds that the notion of therapy is connected to presumptuous concepts such as “normality” or “health,” which have been called “fishy”[193], and that, vice versa, “disease” is impossible to ever conclusively define,[194] i.e. a vague notion, and so much so that some consider it practically useless.[195] And yet others focus on the boundary between these therapeutic categories and related ones from discourses of enhancement, taking it to be, at best, “fuzzy”[196] or relative.[197][l]
Granting these assertions' validity, one may, once more, call this first and foremost a moral collapse of the therapy-enhancement distinction. Without such a clear divide, restorative medicine and exploratory eugenics also invariably become harder to distinguish;[m] and accordingly might one explain the matter's relevance to ongoing transhumanist discourses.The novel Brave New World by the English author Aldous Huxley (1931), is a dystopian social science fiction novel which is set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy.
Various works by the author Robert A. Heinlein mention the Howard Foundation, a group which attempts to improve human longevity through selective breeding.
Among Frank Herbert's other works, the Dune series, starting with the eponymous 1965 novel, describes selective breeding by a powerful sisterhood, the Bene Gesserit, to produce a supernormal male being, the Kwisatz Haderach.[201]
The Star Trek franchise features a race of genetically engineered humans which is known as "Augments", the most notable of them is Khan Noonien Singh. These "supermen" were the cause of the Eugenics Wars, a dark period in Earth's fictional history, before they were deposed and exiled. They appear in many of the franchise's story arcs, most frequently, they appear as villains.[202][n]
The film Gattaca (1997) provides a fictional example of a dystopian society that uses eugenics to decide what people are capable of and what their place in the world is. The title alluding to the letters G, A, T and C, the four nucleobases of DNA, and depicts the possible consequences of genetic discrimination in the present societal framework. Relegated to the role of a cleaner owing to his genetically projected death at 30,2 years due to a heart condition, the protagonist observes enhanced astronauts there as they are demonstrating their superhuman athleticism. Nonetheless, against mere uniformity being the movies key theme, it may be highlighted[205] that it also includes an esteemed concert pianist with 12 fingers. Even though it was not a box office success, it was critically acclaimed and it is said to have crystallized the debate over human genetic engineering in the public consciousness.[206][207][o] As to its accuracy, its production company, Sony Pictures, consulted with a gene therapy researcher and prominent critic of eugenics known to have stated that "[w]e should not step over the line that delineates treatment from enhancement",[210] William French Anderson, to ensure that the portrayal of science was realistic. Disputing their sucess in this mission, Philim Yam of Scientific American called the film "science bashing" and Nature's Kevin Davies called it a "surprisingly pedestrian affair", while molecular biologist Lee Silver described its extreme determinism as "a straw man".[211][212][p] In an even more pointed critique, in his 2018 book Blueprint, the behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin writes that while Gattaca warned of the dangers of genetic information being used by a totalitarian state, genetic testing could also favor better meritocracy in democratic societies which already administer a variety of standardized tests to select people for education and employment. He suggests that polygenic scores might supplement testing in a manner that is essentially free of biases.[214] Along similar lines, in the 2004 book Citizen Cyborg,[213] democratic transhumanist James Hughes had already argued against what he considers to be "professional fear-mongers",[213]: xiii stating of the movie's premises:
what is termed in Greek, eugenes namely, good in stock, hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. This, and the allied words, eugeneia, etc., are equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a neater word and a more generalized one than viriculture which I once ventured to use.... The investigation of human eugenics – that is, of the conditions under which men of a high type are produced – is at present extremely hampered by the want of full family histories, both medical and general, extending over three or four generations.
Racially targeted sterilization practices between the 1960s and the present have been perhaps the most common topic among scholars arguing for, and challenging, the ongoing power of eugenics in the United States. Indeed, unlike in the modern period, contemporary expressions of eugenics have met with widespread, thoroughgoing resistance
As an applied science, thus, the practice of eugenics referred to everything from prenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization and euthanasia. Galton divided the practice of eugenics into two types—positive and negative—both aimed at improving the human race through selective breeding.
The Spartan Council of Elders or Gerousia decided whether a new-born child brought before them would live or die. Impairment, deformity, even puny appearance was enough to condemn a child to death.
But the exposure of deformed babies seems to have been a more widespread practice. For Athens, the most conclusive allusion is in Plato's Theaetetus
Tacitus's Germania, read through this kind of filter, became a manual for racial and sexual eugenics
Policy adoption: In the pre–World War I period, eugenic policies were enacted only in the United States, which was both the hotbed of international eugenics activism and unusually decentralized politically, so that sub-national state units could adopt such policies in the absence of central state approval.
4. The State is not entitled to deprive an individual of his procreative power simply for material (eugenic) purposes. But it is entitled to isolate individuals who are sick and whose progeny would inevitably be seriously tainted.
The mark of the following pages is that they assume the principle of what we may call Eugenic Feminism
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Dr. Caleb Saleeby, an obstetrician and active member of the British Eugenics Education Society, opposed his contemporaries – such as Sir Francis Galton – who took strong anti-feminist stances in their eugenic philosophies. Perceiving the feminist movement as potentially "ruinous to the race" if it continued to ignore the eugenics movement, he coined the term "eugenic feminism" in his 1911 text Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
Eugenics was prominent at the Nuremberg trials ... much was made of the similarity between US and German eugenics by the defense, who argued that German eugenics differed little from that practiced in the United States ... .
The goal of enhancing individuals and the human species by engineering the genes related to some characteristics and traits is not to be confused with the barbarous projects of eugenics that planned the simple elimination of human beings considered as 'imperfect' on an ideological basis. However, it impinges upon the principle of respect for human dignity in several ways. It weakens the idea that the differences among human beings, regardless of the measure of their endowment, are exactly what the recognition of their equality presupposes and therefore protects. It introduces the risk of new forms of discrimination and stigmatization for those who cannot afford such enhancement or simply do not want to resort to it. The arguments that have been produced in favour of the so-called liberal eugenics do not trump the indication to apply the limit of medical reasons also in this case.
We argue that prenatal screening (and specifically NIPT) for Down syndrome can be considered a form of contemporary eugenics, in that it effaces, devalues, and possibly prevents the births of people with the condition.
In addition, it is possible to adopt eugenic policies, more or less explicit. I shall not consider questions of eugenics, confining myself throughout to the traditional concerns of social justice. We should note, though, that it is not in general to the advantage of the less fortunate to propose policies which reduce the talents of others. Instead, by accepting the difference principle, they view the greater abilities as a social asset to be used for the common advantage. But it is also in the interest of each to have greater natural assets. This enables him to pursue a preferred plan of life. In the original position, then, the parties want to insure for their descendants the best genetic endowment (assuming their own to be fixed). The pursuit of reasonable policies in this regard is something that earlier generations owe to later ones, this being a question that arises between generations. Thus over time a society is to take steps at least to preserve the general level of natural abilities and to prevent the diffusion of serious defects.
Rawls arrives at the difference principle by considering how justice might be drawn from a hypothetical 'original position.' A person in the original position operates behind a 'veil of ignorance' that prevents her from knowing any information about herself such as social status, physical or mental capabilities, or even her belief system. Only from such a position of universal equality can principles of justice be drawn. In establishing how to distribute social primary goods, for example, 'rights and liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth" and self-respect, Rawls determines that a person operating from the original position would develop two principles. First, liberties ascribed to each individual should be as extensive as possible without infringing upon the liberties of others. Second, social primary goods should be distributed to the greatest advantage of everyone and by mechanisms that allow equal opportunity to all. ... Genetic engineering should not be permitted merely for the enhancement of physical attractiveness because that would not benefit the least advantaged. Arguably, resources should be concentrated on genetic therapy to address disease and genetic defects. However, such a result is not required under Rawls' theory. Genetic enhancement of those already intellectually gifted, for example, might result in even greater benefit to the least advantaged as a result of the gifted individual's improved productivity. Moreover, Rawls asserts that using genetic engineering to prevent the most serious genetic defects is a matter of intergenerational justice. Such actions are necessary in terms of what the present generation owes to later generations.
humans [already] vary in large degree in terms of their biological makeup. Such differences are the raison d’être of human rights, whose very point is to equalize across differences. The changes most likely to come sooner rather than later from genetic technology (boosts to ‘primary goods’ such as the immune system, memory, or intelligence) will merely replicate the exact nature of the differences that already exist among individuals protected by human rights.[105]: 6
Furthermore, the number of couples who decide against marriage after genetic testing and counseling is less than three percent.
There is widespread religious disagreement among the individuals to whom these rights apply. Atheists will reject the notion that human beings are sacred, since ‘sacred’ implies a God whose creations are sacred, while non-Christians will reject the notion that humans are sacred in the eyes of a single Christian God. Humans disagree about what kinds of being they are and what makes them special, if anything.[105]: 4
Kant notes that mental illness may be so severe that people need to be put in a mental asylum where they can be controlled by the reason of others. Clearly, such severe mental illness vastly reduces, and in some cases even eliminates, moral agency. Kant also notes that mental illness can be inherited and that it is dangerous to marry into families with even one mentally deranged person. If germ-line genetic engineering could eliminate such mental illness or even ameliorate it, this would be a great boon for humanity in the Kantian sense of rational moral agency.[163]
We are lucky to have our biology. If evolution had gone another way, rational beings might not be. But we should not engage in biology worship. Our biology is not sacrosanct. We should change it to make our lives longer and better.
Some forms of assistive reproduction previously seen as enhancement are now considered to be treatments. This vagueness in therapy is mirrored in the classification of interventions. Vaccination can be seen as a form of prevention, but also as an enhancement of the immune system. To distinguish between laser eye surgery and contact lenses or glasses appears artificial.[199]
Because a flexible definition of health relates to a flexible definition of the disabled, any attempt to prohibit access to enhancement technology can be challenged as a violation of disability rights. Presented this way, disability rights are the gateway for the application of transhumanism. Any attempt to identify a moral or natural hazard associated with enhancement technology must also include some limitation of disability rights, which seems to go against the entire direction of human rights legislation over the last century.[200]
Law professors George Annas and Lori Andrews have similarly argued that the use of these technologies could lead to such human-posthuman caste warfare.[203][204]
Accordingly, 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".[209]
Control over human nature is unlikely to lead to neglect of environmental improvement. Society might just ramp up kids’ intelligence instead of providing them with better-funded schools. But that wouldn’t work very well, since smarter kids would only make the inadequacies of the schools more glaring. We will fix obesity genes, but people will still have to eat right and exercise. Fixes for lung cancer and skin cancer are unlikely to dry up our concern about industrial pollution and the ozone layer.[213]: 146