Eugenics
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[edit] Definition
[edit] Is eugenics a pseudoscience?
Eugenics is sometimes described as a pseudoscience. It is perfectly true that the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century was rife with ignorance of genetics, crazy ideas about race, bogus arguments against miscegenation, weird apocalyptic scenarios of what would happen if people didn't listen to eugenicists, and a lot of bogus data.
Nonetheless, it is also perfectly true that humans have heritable variation, and a sufficiently immoral and coercive government could indeed breed its citizens for traits they approved of.
If an all-powerful dictator decided that the population should now and henceforward be blue-eyed, he could achieve this end by killing all the people who aren't blue-eyed. The strongest objectors to eugenics can't deny that this would work, nor is it the real cause of our objection: which is that such an action would be abominable.
A dictator planning a eugenic program on the basis of sound genetics (such as the fact that blue-eyed people are homozygous for the blue-eyed gene) would no more be a "pseudoscientist" than a terrorist practising germ warfare on the basis of sound microbiology (such as the fact that anthrax kills people). A monster, yes, a pseudoscientist, no.
[edit] Ethical eugenics
There are ethical practices with eugenic effects. For example, donors to sperm banks are given a genetic screening before they are permitted to donate. This doesn't just prevent one genetic illness in one child, but, carried out systematically and for a long time, must inevitably change the composition of the gene pool in small but real ways that a eugenicist would approve of. No-one seems to have any ethical objection to this practice, because no-one really supposes that being a sperm donor is an unqualified human right.
Some scientists are trying to develop methods for screening individual sperm. So far, it seems that they have only succeeded in differentiating between sperm carrying X and Y chromosomes, and cannot sift out the carriers of genetic illness. If they could achieve that for, let us say, sickle-cell anaemia, then a couple at risk could arrange for the woman to be inseminated with screened non-carrier sperm. This procedure is not romantic, but it is, we believe, ethically unobjectionable, and as with the screening of sperm donors, it would, if carried out systematically, make a progressive change in the gene pool.
It is, then, not impossible to take eugenic measures which do not conflict with the liberty of the individual, having beneficial effects both in the short and the long term.
[edit] History
[edit] Sparta
Plutarch records that among the Spartans:
- Whenever a child was born, it was taken to a council of elders for examination. If the baby was in any way defective, the elders dropped it into a chasm. Such a child, in the opinion of the Spartans, should not be permitted to live. [1]
Infanticide of unwanted newborn children was not uncommon in the ancient world, but the noteworthy point of the Spartan system is that the decision was taken by the State and on the grounds of physical fitness.
However, it is a fine point whether the Spartans were intentionally practicing eugenics as such. It is not clear from Plutarch's account whether the Spartans saw themselves simply as removing the unfit from their society one by one, or whether they had in mind the long-term improvement of their gene pool: though it seems likely that this point would have occurred to them.
[edit] Plato
Plato, an admirer of the Spartan polity, in his dialogue The Republic, makes it clear that he has drawn the analogy with the improvement of animal stocks:
- Socrates: And how can marriages be made most beneficial?--that is a question which I put to you, because I see in your house dogs for hunting, and of the nobler sort of birds not a few. Now, I beseech you, do tell me, have you ever attended to their pairing and breeding?
- Glaucon: In what particulars?
- Socrates: Why, in the first place, although they are all of a good sort, are not some better than others?
- Glaucon: True.
- Socrates: And do you breed from them all indifferently, or do you take care to breed from the best only?
- Glaucon: From the best [...]
- Socrates: And if care was not taken in the breeding, your dogs and birds would greatly deteriorate? (Plato's Republic, Book V[2])
Plato's proposed eugenic program was rather more whimsical than that practiced by the Spartans. His citizens are only to be allowed to breed at officially designated festivals. Opportunities to breed, and partners, will apparently be allocated by lot, but in fact the rulers of his state will secretly rig the lottery so as to produce only eugenic pairings.
[edit] Francis Galton
The term "eugenics" itself was coined by Sir Francis Galton: "eugenic" questions, as he defined them, were:
- [Q]uestions bearing on 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. (Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development [3])
[edit] Nazi eugenics
The Nazi program of eugenics involved the murder of tens of thousands of the people having, or judged to have, hereditary illnesses, and the involuntary sterilization of hundreds of thousands.
This atrocious program finally discredited the eugenics movement of the twentieth century. Perhaps this is mere guilt by association: however, it is arguable that there is no effective program of eugenics which would not be atrocious.
Milder, less murderous eugenicists confined themselves to distributing pamphlets arguing, for example, that short-sighted people shouldn't reproduce. They might, we think, have done that for a thousand years without significantly altering the composition of the gene pool, since in the end this approach requires the astigmatic, against all their instincts, to conclude that they are unworthy to have children. If coercive and inhumane methods are not used, it is hard to see what other methods could be successful.
[edit] Modern Eugenicists
A sample of modern eugenic thought can be found here:
- "This web page is dedicated to putting forth the view that to change the human condition we must change the innate nature of humans, that is, we must encourage the breeding of people with a higher intellect, people better able to understand what motivates them and who can eventually revolt against the subjugation by the state or the controlling elite."[4]
In short, this eugenicist wants to breed a master-race of people who share his wacky right-wing politics by selectively breeding for intelligence. We can see several reasons why this is not going to work.
[edit] Evolution and eugenics
Members of the eugenics movement attempted to associate eugenics with the theory of evolution in order to give eugenics spurious credibility. Creationists make exactly the same association in order to discredit evolution.
It is usually a good rule of thumb that when racists and creationists agree, they're wrong, and in this particular case, the fact is evident. The practise of eugenics rests only on the observation that you can breed humans as you breed dogs or horses, a fact which no creationist denies.
When Plato first proposed eugenics, he knew nothing of the theory of evolution, which would have conflicted with his so-called "Theory of Forms". But as we have seen, he drew his lesson from the breeding of animals:
- The principle has been already laid down that the best of either sex should be united with the best as often, and the inferior with the inferior as seldom as possible; and that they should rear the offspring of the one sort of union, but not of the other, if the flock is to be maintained in first-rate condition.(Plato's Republic, Book V [5])
Galton, we have no doubt, accepted the theory of evolution (and by a quirk of history, he was Darwin's cousin); but eugenics, as he defined it, was simply "the science of improving stock"; and so applicable by anyone who accepted that stock is capable of modification by selective breeding.
That latter-day prophet of eugenics, Adolf Hitler, was a staunch creationist (see the main article on Hitler and evolution) and explicitly rejected the origin of new species in his discussion of evolution:
- The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger. The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with which the individual specimens are endowed. (Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. xi).
Instead, he based his eugenics program, again, on the analogy of stockbreeding:
- The WELTANSCHAUUNG [world-view] which bases the State on the racial idea must finally succeed in bringing about a nobler era, in which men will no longer pay exclusive attention to breeding and rearing pedigree dogs and horses and cats, but will endeavour to improve the breed of the human race itself. (Mein Kampf, vol ii, ch. ii)
The fact that a eugenic breeding program is possible must be admitted both by the strictest Creationist and the most ardent Darwinian --- and by Nazi lunatics and Greek philosophers. The idea that eugenics is desirable appears neither in science textbooks nor in fundamentalist theology; it is a political proposition, not a scientific or religious one.
