The Chronicle of Higher Education last week published a rather odd article on the evolution of eugenics excerpted from Nathaniel Comfort’s new book The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine. It’s odd because, though it acknowledges the evils that eugenicists have historically committed, it assumes that today’s eugenics are (and will remain) entirely benign.
Here’s Comfort’s description of the twentieth-century version, whose victims are still with us:
Progressive-era eugenics sought to eliminate undesirable traits (negative eugenics) and cultivate desirable ones (positive eugenics) by population control, mostly through regulating immigration and sex. Eugenicists were interested in the genetics of disease, personality, intelligence, and race—just as we are today. Birth control, marriage restrictions, and sexual sterilization of “defectives” (a medical term still in use as late as the 1970s) were among their means of effecting genetic change. They hoped people would voluntarily do the right thing for the greater good—but if they didn’t, the state had a responsibility to do it for (i.e., to) them.
Today, on the other hand, we don’t need to use coercion. In vitro fertilization, pre-implantation genetic screening, and abortion are so widely accessible and accepted that they play the same role as state-sponsored intervention once did. Eugenics has moved from the realm of state control to individual choice—which means, to the autonomy-maximizing liberal, that eugenics must be an unequivocally good thing.
Comfort acknowledges in passing the inevitable commoditization of human life that today’s baby-designing techniques encourage: “The standards of perfection are selected more democratically now, but they are conditioned by the perversities of market pressures and fashion.” But he sees no reason to fight it because, as he writes in his strangely blithe closing paragraphs, eugenics we will always have with us:
The eugenic impulse drives us to eliminate disease, to live longer and healthier, with greater intelligence and a better adjustment to the conditions of society. It arises whenever the humanitarian desire for happiness and social betterment combines with an emphasis on heredity as the essence of human nature. It is the aim of control, the denial of fatalism, the rejection of chance. The dream of engineering ourselves, of reducing suffering now and forever.
The question is not one of whether there ought to be such an impulse, whether it should be called eugenics, or even whether biomedicine ought to focus so much on genetics. These things just are. And besides, the health benefits, the intellectual thrill, and the profits of genetic biomedicine are too great for us to do otherwise. Resistance would be ill-advised and futile.
The important questions, rather, concern how to proceed: How do we ensure that appropriate weight is given to the environmental causes of illness? How do we minimize profiteering and racism in this age of selfishness? And above all, how do we know when we know enough to control our own evolution?
I agree in part: The eugenic impulse is indeed ineradicable and closely tied to (though not inextricable from, I’d argue) the quest to alleviate suffering.
But setting aside for now the moral issues (since we’re familiar with them) and the claim that “resistance would be ill-advised and futile” (a silly pseudo-argument that one could apply to just about any historical development, desirable or not), does Comfort truly believe that his closing questions are the only crucial ones? To me there’s a more obvious question that his historical account makes unavoidable: What are the chances that eugenics, once widely accepted by a given society, will remain voluntary?
I believe they’re slim. Historically, after all, the quest to eliminate disease usually ends in eliminating the diseased—as Comfort should know quite well. And technocratic experts are do not look kindly upon those who would imperil their pursuit of the perfect society, for example by refusing to abort a baby with Down syndrome or demanding that their children with genetic illnesses receive adequate health care.
Don’t believe me? Spend a couple minutes browsing the literature on eugenics and you’ll come across documents like this 1998 Journal of Medical Ethics article by David J. Galton.
“A major problem for the future,” he writes, “will be where to draw the fine line between state control and personal choice for the many genetic issues that will arise with the application of the new DNA technology. This is particularly so as some of the genetic issues related to multifactorial disease are complex and may go beyond the understanding of some citizens who may be involved in such decisions.” The experts know best, after all. On the last page Galton reveals the proposal he had at first couched in euphemism:
Currently the trend for eugenics has been very much away from social coercion by various state institutions to providing more education and freedom for citizens to make their own genetic and reproductive choices. For example, mothers can choose to have a disabled child with trisomy 21 even though the state may eventually have to provide for the child’s long term care. . . . The only “cure” at present for trisomy 21 is termination of pregnancy and perhaps a state body should intervene in such cases if the mother is clearly unable to provide economically for the long term care of her handicapped child.
In short, today’s eugenicists prefer the methods of “education and freedom”; however, in certain special cases, coercion could be justifiable. Contra Nathaniel Comfort, it seems that not much has changed.
November 20th, 2012 | 11:28 am
Historically, after all, the quest to eliminate disease usually ends in eliminating the diseased—as Comfort should know quite well.
Please explain. I can’t think of a disease that has been eliminated by eliminating the people who have it. Remember what eugenics is:
Aborting Down Syndrome babies may be reprehensible (I certainly disapprove) but it is not eugenics. It has no impact on the genetic makeup of the human population, since people with Down Syndrome do not reproduce, and it does nothing to lessen the incidence of Down Syndrome in the future.
And technocratic experts are do not look kindly upon those who would imperil their pursuit of the perfect society, for example by refusing to abort a baby with Down syndrome or demanding that their children with genetic illnesses receive adequate health care.
The case of Amelia Rivera was a difficult one, but there was an outpouring of support in favor of a transplant, and the last information I can find on the story (August 2012) was that a transplant was approved with the girl’s mother as the donor. I don’t really think it counts as evidence for the point put forward here.
November 20th, 2012 | 11:40 am
David,
It should be clear that I’m arguing based on a slightly looser definition of eugenics — a definition that scholars of the field like David J. Galton obviously accept (see the link in the blog post). Thus he considers infanticide in ancient Greece, and abortion in present-day America, to be forms of eugenics.
November 20th, 2012 | 12:03 pm
Wouldn’t arranging marriages between the “right” families be a form of eugenics, then, too?
If so, that kind of argues that “eugenics, once widely accepted by a given society, will remain voluntary”, at least over the long term. We’ve moved from arranged marriages to ‘voluntary’ ones, not vice-versa.
November 20th, 2012 | 12:35 pm
David Nickol:
I have a son with Down Syndrome.
80% of all pregnancies where there has been a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome of the child in the womb end in abortion. People like my son are being exterminated in the womb because of their genetic make up – pure and simple. That doesn’t “impact the genetic makeup of the population?” Don’t sugar coat it by calling it something other than eugenics.
Instead, let’s tell it like it is – The Down Syndrome population will be slowly but surely destroyed (Social pressure or the requirements of law – does it really matter? In any event they are dead.) because our society has been taught that these beautiful, loving people don’t meet our utilitarian standards, and it is more convenient to kill them in the womb, than risk being challenged by their true love after they have been born.
Ironically, our society’s “hereditary qualities” wont’ be “improved” with fewer people with Down syndrome in it. It will just become more cold and calculating.
November 20th, 2012 | 12:37 pm
Just a side note, an arranged marriage is not the opposite of a voluntary marriage. Of those in arranged marriages, all from India, that my wife and I know, the spice were given the option of saying no before the arrangements were finalized. The closest antonym is the romantic marriage, where only the couple are involved in the decision. So I suggest a correction to Ray’s statement: we’ve (that is in the U.S. at least) moved from arranged to romantic marriages. Given the stats, I’m less sure that has been an improvement rather than simply a change.
November 20th, 2012 | 12:41 pm
“since people with Down Syndrome do not reproduce,”
Maybe not generally, but it is possible.
http://www.ds-health.com/faq.htm
Q: Are adults with Down Syndrome sterile?
A: Women with DS are fertile. Men with DS have traditionally been considered sterile; however, there have been two documented cases of adult men with DS fathering children.
That having been said, one of the issues with so-called “eugenics”, is that it essentially amounts to a colossal expression of epistemic arrogance. So,even if wasn’t repellent and disgusting to manipulate and violate humanity like machine parts, we simply are unqualified to determine what constitutes a “defect”.
Selective breeding is merely an exercise in vanity, exaggerating the manifestation or frequency of some (usually conspicuous) attributes, and often doing the same with inconspicuous covariant other traits. Hence many breeds of dogs end up with wonderful snouts and “perfect” proportions, but high incidences of defects like hip displasia or cancer.
It has been opined that the great genius Nikola Tesla may have had Asperger’s syndrome, and a recent study appears to show increased autism rates in areas where there is a concentration of IT related occupations.
I seriously doubt that Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes (among others) had any idea of pleitropy, or that in many respects, their misanthropy was an undesireable defect, a truncation of humanity’s naturally social nature, perhaps deserving of disdain far greater than they reserved for what the considered “defects”.
If it this foul heresy rears it’s ugly head again and becomes prevalent, you can be sure that the attribute the eugenicists will value is docility.
November 20th, 2012 | 12:44 pm
Ray,
Yes, arranging marriages for the supposed benefit of the human race is considered a form of eugenics. Yes, marriages are more often voluntarily contracted than they once were. Yet my argument about a return to coercive forms of eugenics does not depend on the forceful implementation of every possible eugenic technique.
November 20th, 2012 | 2:03 pm
But my point was the long-term trend in that areGaltona doesn’t seem to support your argument. Even Galton states directly that “the trend for eugenics has been very much away from social coercion by various state institutions to providing more education and freedom for citizens to make their own genetic and reproductive choices”.
November 20th, 2012 | 2:48 pm
Don’t sugar coat it by calling it something other than eugenics.
JERD,
Why not make the case that it is worse than eugenics. Strictly defined, eugenics is neither moral or immoral. It was the way eugenics programs were carried out in the first half of the 20th century that has made eugenics a frightening word. But even back then, the goal was the future improvement of the human race. Aborting Down Syndrome babies doesn’t even have that going for it. No matter how many Down Syndrome babies are aborted, the same number will continue to be conceived. Aborting Down Syndrome babies is not bettering the future of the human race. It’s continuously killing off an unwanted group of people before they are born. Eugenics tainted though it is, is too good a word for it.
November 20th, 2012 | 4:01 pm
“It has been opined that the great genius Nikola Tesla may have had Asperger’s syndrome, and a recent study appears to show increased autism rates in areas where there is a concentration of IT related occupations.”
I predict that if we come up with prenatal tests for Asperger’s Syndrome and autism, there will be fewer of “those people” around. The sanctimonious excuse will be about “quality of life”.
November 20th, 2012 | 5:47 pm
In the U.S., it might be more likely that eugenics of some form continues to exist via both coercion and autonomous choice. The HHS mandate is an example of this paradoxical dynamic. An autonomous voluntarist ontology and a corresponding ideology that views the State as the defender of unimpeded individual autonomy under-grids the paradoxically, although seemingly unbeknownst to its proponents, intrusive legislation.
In this instance coercion is accepted and even requested on the grounds that such intrusion protects against any barriers to a certain ontology of “freedom.”
Likewise, both autonomous individual choice and State-activism are the reasons why the abortion and contraception industries hold such political currency. Both market dynamics of supply and demand and State-regulatory intervention support the aforementioned industries. Vast numbers of individuals freely consume such products and the industries that produce those products receive vast amounts of tax-dollar funding at federal, state and local levels.
Skeptics of State-voluntarism ought to consider that less overreach and more market competition are inadequate responses to the paradoxical paradigm described above. Only if men (especially men) and women choose and live a “freedom for excellence” rather than a “freedom of indifference,” will our social and political structures reflect a less commoditized and dehumanized view of the human person.
November 21st, 2012 | 8:50 am
I suppose prohibition of incest can and has been motivated in part by eugenics or a desire for a ‘good birth’ but rescuing the term eugenics from its broader associations and connotations in people’s minds today seems the least of our worries. I am quite comfortable with and admiring of G.K. Chesterton’s title for his fine book Against Eugenics and Other Evils, a book that in hindsight appears a moral feat at a time when so many Western intellectuals like G.B. Shaw were romancing eugenics in it’s most murderous form and when Nazi Germany had not had it’s horrific run. It does seem to me, though, that acknowledging and delimiting where it is legitimate to think of avoiding genetic problems in conception is necessary to some extent to avoid muddying the waters. One poster here seemed to suggest we are not able to identify ‘defects,’ a line of thinking I have tried before, but I don’t think that denying a defect exists is the solution to valuing human life with its defects against a devaluing eugenics. It is suggestive of a flawed theodicy too. Should we not acknowledge that we desire our children to be born without DS just as we desire them to be born with two legs, etc.? But in cases like the use of the term “degenerate” by Oliver W. Holmes or Darwin’s classification of the “lower races” of man, there is obviously an onerous subjective valuation, a culpable lapse of moral judgment expressed in pseudo scientific terms. What seems to me extremely dangerous about eugenics thinking today is how it is combined with a reductionist genetic determinism and a low view of the human being. It puts at center stage what should be in the background. It exalts the stage and belittles the play on the stage. Perhaps eugenics only takes on wild importance when the horizonal interpretation of human beings is grossly imbalanced.
I think Anna Williams is very right to underscore a complacent assumption that eugenics will not be used coercively and she is right to point out the silliness of the argument of historical inevitability. The HHS mandate certainly suggests the option of coercion is on the table and can be used this way. In Nazi Germany part of the argument for killing the handicapped was that they were a burden to the State and a collective mentality that does not acknowledge that we live by gift can easily become one where it is thought that we live by its gift. Apparently many doctors now strongly emphasize abortion as the only responsible choice for parents with a DS child when the only responsible thing would be for them to shut their traps!
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact