Eugenics

Eugenics is the applied science of the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population, usually a human population. It is a

social philosophy which advocates for the improvement of human hereditary traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of more desired people and traits, and the reduction of

reproduction of less desired people and traits.

History

Throughout history, eugenics remains a controversial concept. As a social movement, eugenics reached its greatest popularity in the early decades of the 20th century. At this point in time,

eugenics was practiced around the world and was promoted by governments, and influential individuals and institutions. Many countries enacted various eugenics policies and programs, including: genetic screening, birth control, promoting differential birth rates, marriage

restrictions, segregation (both racial segregation and segregation of the mentally ill from the rest of the population), compulsory sterilization, forced abortions or forced pregnancies and

genocide. Most of these policies were later regarded as coercive and/or restrictive, and now few jurisdictions implement policies that are explicitly labeled as eugenic or unequivocally eugenic in substance.

The way eugenics was practiced in this period involved "interventions", which is a euphemistic

name for the identification and classification of individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women, homosexuals and entire

racial groups — such as the Roma and Jews — as "degenerate" or "unfit"; the segregation or institutionalisation of such individuals and groups, their sterilization, euthanasia, and in the extreme case of Nazi Germany, their mass extermination.

Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities, and received funding

from many sources. Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York. Eugenic

policies were first implemented in the early 1900s in the United States. Later, in the 1920s and 30s, the eugenic policy of sterilizing certain mental patients was I mplemented in a variety of other countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Canada, and Sweden, among others. 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, and when proponents of eugenics among

scientists and thinkers prompted a backlash in the public. Nevertheless, in Sweden the eugenics program continued until 1975.

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

through the International Federation of Eugenic 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. Its political aspects involved successful advocacy for changes of law to pursue eugenic objectives, for instance sterilization laws. Its moral aspects

included rejection of the doctrine that all human beings are born equal and redefining morality

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 less fit races

By the end of World War II, eugenics had been largely abandoned, having become associated

with Nazi-Germany. This country's approach to genetics and eugenics was focused on Eugen Fischer's concept of phenogenetics and the Nazi twin study methods of Fischer and Otmar

Freiherr von Verschuer. Both the public and some elements of the scientific community have associated eugenics with Nazi abuses, such as enforced "racial hygiene", human experimentation, and the extermination of "undesired" population groups., However,

developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century are, as per some, definitely not all, perspectives, raising for some people numerous new

questions regarding the ethical status of eugenics, effectively creating a resurgence of interest in the subject.

Today it is still regarded by some as a brutal movement which inflicted massive human rights

violations on millions of people. Some practices engaged in by people in the name of eugenics involving violations of privacy, attacks on reputation, violations of the right to life, to found a family, to freedom from discrimination are all today classified as violations of human rights.

The practice of negative racial aspects of eugenics, after World War II, 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.

Meanings and types

The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883 drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin. He wrote down many of his observations and

conclusions in a 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 derives from the Greek word eu (good or well) and the suffix -genēs (born), and was coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883 to replace the word stirpiculture which he had

used previously but which had come to be mocked by people of culture 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".Eugenics has, from the very beginning, meant many different things to many different people. Historically, the term 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 necessarily 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".Much debate has taken place in the past, as it does today, as to what exactly counts as eugenics. Some types of eugenics deal

only with perceived beneficial and/or detrimental genetic traits. These are sometimes called "pseudo-eugenics" by proponents of strict eugenics.

The term eugenics is often used to refer to movements and social policies influential during the

early 20th century. In a historical and broader sense, eugenics can also be a study of "improving human genetic qualities". It is sometimes broadly applied to describe any human action whose

goal is to improve the gene pool. Some forms of infanticide in ancient societies, present-day reprogenetics, preemptive abortions and designer babies have been (sometimes controversially) referred to as eugenic. Because of its normative goals and historical association with scientific

racism, as well as the development of the science of genetics, the western scientific community has mostly disassociated itself from the term "eugenics", although one can find advocates of

what is now known as liberal eugenics. Despite its ongoing criticism in the United States, several regions globally practice different forms of eugenics.

Eugenicists advocate specific policies that (if successful) they believe will lead to a perceived

improvement of the human gene pool. Since defining what improvements are desired or beneficial is perceived by many as a cultural choice rather than a matter that can be determined objectively (e.g., by empirical, scientific inquiry), eugenics has often been deemed a

pseudoscience. 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. This

aspect of eugenics has historically been tainted with scientific racism.

Early eugenicists were mostly concerned with perceived intelligence factors that often correlated strongly with social class. Many eugenicists took inspiration from the selective breeding of animals (where purebreds are often strived for) as their analogy for improving human society.

The mixing of races (or miscegenation) was usually considered as something to be avoided in the name of racial purity. At the time this concept appeared to have some scientific support, and it

remained a contentious issue until the advanced development of genetics led to a scientific consensus that the division of the human species into unequal races is unjustifiable.

Eugenics has also been concerned with the elimination of hereditary diseases such as hemophilia and Huntington's disease. However, there are several problems with labeling certain factors as

genetic defects. In many cases there is no scientific consensus on what a genetic defect is. It is often argued that this is more a matter of social or individual choice. What appears to be a

genetic defect in one context or environment may not be so in another. This can be the case for genes with a heterozygote advantage, such as sickle-cell disease or Tay-Sachs disease, which in their heterozygote form may offer an advantage against, respectively, malaria and tuberculosis.

Although some birth defects are uniformly lethal, disabled persons can succeed in life. Many of the conditions early eugenicists identified as inheritable (pellagra is one such example) are

currently considered to be at least partially, if not wholly, attributed to environmental conditions. Similar concerns have been raised when a prenatal diagnosis of a congenital disorder leads to abortion (see also preimplantation genetic diagnosis).

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. Negative eugenics is aimed at lowering fertility among the genetically

disadvantaged.Negative eugenics aimed to eliminate, through sterilisation 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 by fit women was illegal in Nazi Germany.

Implementation methods

There are three main ways by which the methods of eugenics can be applied. One is mandatory

eugenics or authoritarian eugenics, in which the government mandates a eugenics program. Policies and/or legislation are often seen as being coercive and restrictive. Another is promotional voluntary eugenics, in which eugenics is voluntarily practiced and promoted to the

general population, but not officially mandated. This is a form of non-state enforced eugenics, using a liberal or democratic approach, which can mostly be seen in the 1900s. The third is

private eugenics, which is practiced voluntarily by individuals and groups, but not promoted to the general population.

Dysgenics

Research has suggested that in the modern world, the relationship between fertility and intelligence is such that those with higher intelligence have fewer children, one possible reason

being more unintended pregnancies for those with lower intelligence. Several researchers have argued that the average genotypic intelligence of the United States and the world are declining

which is a dysgenic effect. This has been masked by the Flynn effect for phenotypic intelligence. The Flynn effect may have ended in some developed nations, causing some to argue that phenotypic intelligence will or has started to decline.

Similarly, Richard Lynn has in the book Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern

Populations argued that genetic health (due to modern health care) and genetic conscientiousness (criminals have more children than non-criminals) are declining in the modern world. This has

caused some, like Lynn, to argue for voluntary eugenics. Lynn and Harvey (2008) suggest that designer babies may have an important eugenic effect in the future. Initially this may be limited to wealthy couples, who may possibly travel abroad for the procedure if prohibited in their own

country, and then gradually spread to increasingly larger groups. Alternatively, authoritarian states may decide to impose measures such as a licensing requirement for having a child, which

would only be given to persons of a certain minimum intelligence. The Chinese one-child policy is an example of how fertility can be regulated by authoritarian means.

Criticism

Doubts on genetic mutation triggered by inheritance

The first major challenge to conventional eugenics based upon genetic inheritance was made in

1915 by Thomas Hunt Morgan, who demonstrated the event of genetic mutation occurring outside of inheritance involving the discovery of the hatching of a fruit fly with white eyes from

a family and ancestry of the red-eyed Drosophila melanogaster species of fruit fly. Morgan claimed that this demonstrated that major genetic changes occurred outside of inheritance and

that the concept of eugenics based upon genetic inheritance was, to some extent, not completely scientifically accurate.

Diseases vs. traits

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 there is 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 in Africa where malaria is a common and deadly disease could indeed have extremely negative net consequences. On the other hand, genetic diseases like

haemochromatosis can increase susceptibility to illness, cause physical deformities, and other dysfunctions, which provides some incentive for people to re-consider some elements of eugenics.

Ethics

A common criticism of eugenics is that "it inevitably leads to measures that are unethical" (Lynn

2001). A hypothetical scenario posits that if one racial minority group is perceived on average less intelligent than the racial majority group, then it is more likely that the racial minority group

will be submitted to a eugenics program rather than the least intelligent members of the whole population. In addition eugenics advocates, as humans, wouldn't support a system that could recognise them as inferior, possibly leading to a bias against people of other ethnicities, religions

or other categorisations than they themselves are of. H. L. Kaye wrote of "the obvious truth that eugenics has been discredited by Hitler's crimes" (Kaye 1989). R. L. Hayman argued "the

eugenics movement is an anachronism, its political implications exposed by the Holocaust" (Hayman 1990).

Steven Pinker has stated that it is "a conventional wisdom among left-leaning academics that genes imply genocide". He has responded to this "conventional wisdom" by comparing the

history of Marxism, which had the opposite position on genes to that of Nazism:

But the 20th century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe in genes and denied that human nature was a meaningful

concept. Clearly, it's not an emphasis on genes or evolution that is dangerous. It's the desire to remake humanity by coercive means (eugenics or social engineering) and the belief that

humanity advances through a struggle in which superior groups (race or classes) triumph over inferior ones.

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 (e.g. the Dodo, Raphus cucullatus, of Mauritius) result in extinction due to increased vulnerability to disease, reduced ability to adapt to environmenta l 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. (Galton 2001, 48).

Proponents of eugenics argue 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.

Such people also argue that any appreciable reduction in diversity is so far in the future that little concern is needed for now. The possible reduction of autism rates through selection against the

genetic predisposition to autism is a significant political issue in the autism rights movement, which claims autism is a form of neurodiversity. Many advocates of Down syndrome rights also consider Down syndrome (Trisomy-21) a form of neurodiversity.

Heterozygous recessive traits

In some instances efforts to eradicate certain single-gene mutations would be nearly impossible.

In the event the condition in question was a heterozygous recessive trait, the problem is that by eliminating the visible unwanted trait, there still may be many carriers for the genes without, or

with fewer, phenotypic effects due to that gene. With genetic testing it may be possible to detect all of the heterozygous recessive traits, but quite possibly at great cost with current technology. Under normal circumstances it is only possible to eliminate a dominant allele from the gene pool.

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, one, from certain perspectives, may argue that the practicallity 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.

Supporters and critics

At its peak of popularity eugenics was supported by a wide variety of prominent people, including Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Theodore Roosevelt,

George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Linus Paulingand Sidney Webb. Many members of the American Progressive Movement supported eugenics, enticed by its scientific trappings and its promise to cure social ills. Its most infamous proponent and

practitioner was, however, Adolf Hitler who praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein

Kampf and emulated Eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in the United States.

The American sociologist Lester Frank Ward and the English writer G. K. Chesterton were early critics of the philosophy of eugenics. Ward's 1913 article "Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics"

and Chesterton's 1917 book Eugenics and Other Evils were harshly critical of the rapidly growing eugenics movement. Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and National Socialist Propaganda

Anthropobiology was used to support stereotyped views of Gypsies, Jews, Blacks, the mentally

ill, and physically handicapped people. Anthropobiology utilized anthropometry: the measurement and recording of "metrics" (different physical or mental factors) which could then be used to classify people by race or value. To create reproducible anthropometric results,

Hermann Werner Siemens developed a technique called "polysymptomatic similarity diagnosis ". This was initially associated with twin research, as such measurements would only be of value

if they were understood to be inheritable and independent of the environment.

Stellae of characteristics measured by anthropometry were grouped into distinct stereotypes. For example, "Jews" had a particular type of nose; "Blacks" had kinky hair; "Gypsies" were always criminals; etc. However, the work done at the KWI-A used as criteria to identify races, such as:

hair color and shape

skin color color of lanugo hairs

eye color freckles telangiesctasia

cornification in hair follicles tongue creases

blood group skulls (shape, capacity) facial characteristics

shape of the ear form of the hand

dactyloscopy (handprints, fingerprints) body type spine vertebrae types

Human race crossings Human internal organs:

o shape (heart) o stomach function o taste sensations

o anterior pituitary hormone o menarche and climate

o hardness of soft tissues

These stereotypes were primarily used to create propaganda support for the Lebensborn program; the sterilization program; the euthanasia program; genocide at concentration camps;

deportations; and medical experimentation done by other programs such as the Waffen-SS (low pressure experiments, hyper- and hypothermia experiments, etc.). For details, see the Doctors'

Trial, also known as the Nuremberg Medical Trial.

The purpose of the propaganda was to dehumanize those who were considered to be enemies of the Third Reich. Methods of dehumanization included the use of stereotypes in newspapers (Julius Streicher cartoons) and films such as Jud Süß (1940 film). At that time, films that were

very popular internationally, such as "Nosferatu" (directed by F. W. Murnau, starring actor Max Schreck), depicted dehumanized forms with very wan complexions, long noses and long ears,

and cadaverous body shapes, who drank blood.