Eugenics (; from Greek εὐγενής eugenes
'well-born' from εὖ eu, 'good, well' and
γένος genos, 'race, stock, kin') is a
set of beliefs and practices that aims at
improving the genetic quality of a human population.
The exact definition of eugenics has been
a matter of debate since the term was coined
by Francis Galton in 1883. The concept predates
this coinage, with Plato suggesting applying
the principles of selective breeding to humans
around 400 BCE.
Frederick Osborn's 1937 journal article "Development
of a Eugenic Philosophy" framed it as a social
philosophy—that is, a philosophy with implications
for social order. 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 and sterilization of
people with less-desired or undesired traits
(negative eugenics).
Alternatively, gene selection rather than
"people selection" has recently been made
possible through advances in genome editing,
leading to what is sometimes called new eugenics,
also known as neo-eugenics, consumer eugenics,
or liberal eugenics.
While eugenic principles have been practiced
as far back in world history as ancient Greece,
the modern history of eugenics began in the
early 20th century when a popular eugenics
movement emerged in the United Kingdom and
spread to many countries including the United
States, Canada and most European countries.
In this period, eugenic ideas were espoused
across the political spectrum. Consequently,
many countries adopted eugenic policies with
the intent 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. People
deemed unfit to reproduce often included people
with mental or physical disabilities, people
who scored in the low ranges of different
IQ tests, criminals and deviants, and members
of disfavored minority groups. The eugenics
movement became negatively associated with
Nazi Germany and the Holocaust when many of
the defendants at the Nuremberg trials attempted
to justify their human rights abuses by claiming
there was little difference between the Nazi
eugenics programs and the U.S. eugenics programs.
In the decades following World War II, with
the institution of human rights, many countries
gradually began to abandon eugenics policies,
although some Western countries, among them
the United States and Sweden, continued to
carry out forced sterilizations.
Since the 1980s and 1990s, when new assisted
reproductive technology procedures became
available such as gestational surrogacy (available
since 1985), preimplantation genetic diagnosis
(available since 1989), and cytoplasmic transfer
(first performed in 1996), fear has emerged
about a possible revival of eugenics.
A major criticism of eugenics policies is
that, regardless of whether "negative" or
"positive" policies are used, they are susceptible
to abuse because the criteria of selection
are determined by whichever group is in political
power at the time. Furthermore, negative eugenics
in particular is considered by many to be
a violation of basic human rights, which include
the right to reproduction. Another criticism
is that eugenic policies eventually lead to
a loss of genetic diversity, resulting in
inbreeding depression due to lower genetic
variation.
== History ==
=== Origin and development ===
The concept of positive eugenics to produce
better human beings has existed at least since
Plato suggested selective mating to produce
a guardian class. In Sparta, every Spartan
child was inspected by the council of elders,
the Gerousia, which determined if the child
was fit to live or not. In the early years
of ancient Rome, a Roman father was obliged
by law to immediately kill his child if they
were physically disabled. Among the ancient
Germanic tribes, people who were cowardly,
unwarlike or "stained with abominable vices"
were put to death, usually by being drowned
in swamps.The first formal negative eugenics,
that is a legal provision against birth of
inferior human beings, was promulgated in
Western European culture by the Christian
Council of Agde in 506, which forbade marriage
between cousins.This idea was also promoted
by William Goodell (1829–1894) who advocated
the castration and spaying of the insane.The
idea of a modern project of improving the
human population through a statistical understanding
of heredity used to encourage good breeding
was originally developed by Francis Galton
and, initially, was closely linked to Darwinism
and his theory of natural selection. Galton
had read his half-cousin Charles Darwin's
theory of evolution, which sought to explain
the development of plant and animal species,
and desired to apply it to humans. Based on
his biographical studies, Galton believed
that desirable human qualities were hereditary
traits, though Darwin strongly disagreed with
this elaboration of his theory. In 1883, one
year after Darwin's death, Galton gave his
research a name: eugenics. With the introduction
of genetics, eugenics became associated with
genetic determinism, the belief that human
character is entirely or in the majority caused
by genes, unaffected by education or living
conditions. Many of the early geneticists
were not Darwinians, and evolution theory
was not needed for eugenics policies based
on genetic determinism. Throughout its recent
history, eugenics has remained controversial.
Eugenics became an academic discipline at
many colleges and universities and received
funding from many sources. Organizations were
formed to win public support and 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. In 1909 the Anglican clergymen
William Inge and James Peile both wrote for
the British 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.Three International Eugenics
Conferences presented a global venue for eugenists
with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921
and 1932 in New York City. Eugenic policies
were first implemented in the early 1900s
in the United States. It also took root in
France, Germany, and Great Britain. Later,
in the 1920s and 1930s, the eugenic policy
of sterilizing certain mental patients was
implemented in other countries including Belgium,
Brazil, Canada, Japan and Sweden.
In addition to being practiced in a number
of countries, eugenics was internationally
organized through the International Federation
of Eugenics Organizations. Its scientific
aspects were carried on through research bodies
such as the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology,
Human Heredity, and Eugenics, the Cold Spring
Harbour Carnegie Institution for Experimental
Evolution, and the Eugenics Record Office.
Politically, the movement advocated measures
such as sterilization laws. 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.
Its racist elements included pursuit of a
pure "Nordic race" or "Aryan" genetic pool
and the eventual elimination of "unfit" races.
Early critics of the philosophy of eugenics
included the American sociologist Lester Frank
Ward, 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, 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
eugenists as a major obstacle to the eradication
and cure of tuberculosis in his 1917 address
"Consumption: Its Cause and Cure", and criticism
of eugenists and Neo-Malthusians in his 1921
book Birth Control led to a writ for libel
from the eugenist Marie Stopes. Several biologists
were also antagonistic to the eugenics movement,
including Lancelot Hogben. 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.Among institutions,
the Catholic Church was an opponent of state-enforced
sterilizations. Attempts by the Eugenics Education
Society to persuade the British government
to legalize voluntary sterilization were opposed
by Catholics and by the Labour Party. The
American Eugenics Society initially gained
some Catholic supporters, but Catholic support
declined following the 1930 papal encyclical
Casti connubii. 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."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.
Many countries enacted 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.
=== Nazism and the decline of eugenics ===
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. 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, euthanasia,
and even mass murder. The Nazi practice of
euthanasia was carried out on hospital patients
in the Aktion T4 centers such as Hartheim
Castle.
By the end of World War II, many discriminatory
eugenics laws were abandoned, having become
associated with Nazi Germany. H. G. Wells,
who had called for "the sterilization of failures"
in 1904, 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". 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. The Charter of Fundamental Rights
of the European Union also proclaims "the
prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular
those aiming at selection of persons". 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. 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. In 2007 the
United Nations reported coercive sterilizations
and hysterectomies in Uzbekistan. During the
years 2005 to 2013, nearly one-third of the
144 California prison inmates who were sterilized
did not give lawful consent to the operation.
=== Modern resurgence of interest ===
Developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive
technologies at the end of the 20th 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, claim that modern genetics is a back
door to eugenics. This view is shared by 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". 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.Lee Kuan Yew,
the Founding Father of Singapore, started
promoting eugenics as early as 1983.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.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.
Prenatal screening can be considered a form
of contemporary eugenics because it may lead
to abortions of children with undesirable
traits.
== Meanings and types ==
The term eugenics and its modern field of
study were first formulated by Francis Galton
in 1883, drawing on the recent work of his
half-cousin Charles Darwin. 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. The word
eugenics is derived from the Greek word eu
("good" or "well") and the suffix -genēs
("born"), and was coined by Galton in 1883
to replace the word "stirpiculture", which
he had used previously but which had come
to be mocked due to its perceived sexual overtones.
Galton defined eugenics as "the study of all
agencies under human control which can improve
or impair the racial quality of future generations".Historically,
the term eugenics has referred to everything
from prenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization
and euthanasia. 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." Debate as to
what exactly counts as eugenics continues
today.Edwin Black, journalist and author of
War Against the Weak, claims eugenics is often
deemed a pseudoscience because what is defined
as a genetic improvement of a desired trait
is often deemed a cultural choice rather than
a matter that can be determined through objective
scientific inquiry. 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.Early
eugenists were mostly concerned with factors
of perceived intelligence that often correlated
strongly with social class. Some of these
early eugenists include Karl Pearson and Walter
Weldon, who worked on this at the University
College London.Eugenics also had a place in
medicine. In his lecture "Darwinism, Medical
Progress and Eugenics", Karl Pearson said
that everything concerning eugenics fell into
the field of medicine. He basically placed
the two words as equivalents. He was supported
in part by the fact that Francis Galton, the
father of eugenics, also had medical training.Eugenic
policies have been conceptually divided into
two categories. 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. The movie Gattaca provides a fictional
example of a dystopian society that uses eugenics
to decided what you are capable of and your
place in the world. 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. Both
positive and negative eugenics can be coercive;
abortion for fit women, for example, was illegal
in Nazi Germany.Jon Entine claims that eugenics
simply means "good genes" and using it as
synonym for genocide is an "all-too-common
distortion of the social history of genetics
policy in the United States." According to
Entine, eugenics developed out of the Progressive
Era and not "Hitler's twisted Final Solution".
=== Implementation methods ===
According to Richard Lynn, eugenics may be
divided into two main categories based on
the ways in which the methods of eugenics
can be applied.
Classical eugenics
Negative eugenics by provision of information
and services, i.e. reduction of unplanned
pregnancies and births.Advocacy for sexual
abstinence.
Sex education in schools.
School-based clinics.
Promoting the use of contraception.
Emergency contraception.
Research for better contraceptives.
Voluntary sterilization.
Abortion.
Negative eugenics by incentives, coercion
and compulsion.Incentives for sterilization.
The Denver Dollar-a-day program, i.e. paying
teenage mothers for not becoming pregnant
again.
Incentives for women on welfare to use contraceptions.
Payments for sterilization in developing countries.
Curtailment of benefits to welfare mothers.
Compulsory sterilization of the "mentally
retarded".
Compulsory sterilization of female criminals.
Compulsory sterilization of male criminals.
Licences for parenthood.
Positive eugenics.Financial incentives to
have children.
Selective incentives for childbearing.
Taxation of the childless.
Ethical obligations of the elite.
Eugenic immigration.
New eugenics
Artificial insemination by donor.
Egg donation.
Prenatal diagnosis of genetic disorders and
pregnancy terminations of defective fetuses.
Embryo selection.
Genetic engineering.
Gene therapy.
Cloning.
== Arguments ==
=== Efficacy ===
The first major challenge to conventional
eugenics based upon 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.
Morgan claimed that this demonstrated that
major genetic changes occurred outside of
inheritance and that the concept of eugenics
based upon genetic inheritance was not completely
scientifically accurate. Additionally, Morgan
criticized the view that subjective traits,
such as intelligence and criminality, were
caused by heredity because he believed that
the definitions of these traits varied and
that accurate work in genetics could only
be done when the traits being studied were
accurately defined. Despite Morgan's public
rejection of eugenics, much of his genetic
research was absorbed by eugenics.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. The goal
of the test is to estimate the likelihood
of passing the hereditary disease to future
descendants.Recessive traits can be severely
reduced, but never eliminated unless the complete
genetic makeup of all members of the pool
was known, as aforementioned. As only very
few undesirable traits, such as Huntington's
disease, are dominant, it could be argued
from certain perspectives that the practicality
of "eliminating" traits is quite low.There
are 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.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. Andrzej
Pękalski, from the University of Wrocław,
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.
=== Loss of genetic diversity ===
Eugenic policies could also lead to loss of
genetic diversity, in which case a culturally
accepted "improvement" of the gene pool could
very likely—as evidenced in numerous instances
in isolated island populations —result in
extinction due to increased vulnerability
to disease, reduced ability to adapt to environmental
change, and other factors both known and unknown.
A long-term, species-wide eugenics plan might
lead to a scenario similar to this because
the elimination of traits deemed undesirable
would reduce genetic diversity by definition.Edward
M. Miller claims that, in any one generation,
any realistic program should make only minor
changes in a fraction of the gene pool, giving
plenty of time to reverse direction if unintended
consequences emerge, reducing the likelihood
of the elimination of desirable genes. Miller
also argues that any appreciable reduction
in diversity is so far in the future that
little concern is needed for now.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 no agreed objective
means of determining which traits might be
ultimately desirable or undesirable. Some
diseases 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. Reducing the
instance of sickle-cell disease genes in Africa
where malaria is a common and deadly disease
could indeed have extremely negative net consequences.
However, some genetic diseases cause people
to consider some elements of eugenics.
=== Ethics ===
Societal and political consequences of eugenics
call for a place in the discussion on the
ethics behind the eugenics movement. 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. 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.
Therefore, eugenics is no longer ex post facto
regulation of the living but instead preemptive
action on the unborn.With this change, however,
there are ethical concerns which lack adequate
attention, and which must be addressed before
eugenic policies can be properly implemented
in the future. 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 his or her opinion.
Philosophers disagree about the proper framework
for reasoning about such actions, which change
the very identity and existence of future
persons.
==== Opposition ====
A common criticism of eugenics is that "it
inevitably leads to measures that are unethical".
Some fear future "eugenics wars" as the worst-case
scenario: the return of coercive state-sponsored
genetic discrimination and human rights violations
such as compulsory sterilization of persons
with genetic defects, the killing of the institutionalized
and, specifically, segregation and genocide
of races perceived as inferior. Health law
professor George Annas and technology law
professor Lori Andrews are prominent advocates
of the position that the use of these technologies
could lead to such human-posthuman caste warfare.In
his 2003 book Enough: Staying Human in an
Engineered Age, environmental ethicist Bill
McKibben argued at length 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,
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 as examples Ming China, Tokugawa Japan
and the contemporary Amish.
==== 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
from the state to the patient and their family.
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." 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.
In a co-authored publication by Keele University,
they stated that "[e]ugenics doesn't seem
always to be immoral, and so the fact that
PGD, and other forms of selective reproduction,
might sometimes technically be eugenic, isn't
sufficient to show that they're wrong."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.Original
position, a hypothetical situation developed
by American philosopher John Rawls, has been
used as an argument for negative eugenics.
== See also ==
== References ==
Notes
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Kerr, Anne; Shakespeare, Tom (2002). Genetic
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== External links ==
Media related to Eugenics at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Eugenics at Wikiquote
