With Good Reason Back to the Future: Eugenics

May 6, 2008

Last year marked the 80th anniversary of an infamous U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In May, 1927, the Court upheld the Virginia eugenics law that permitted the forced sterilization of "mental defectives," allowing the state to forcibly sterilize 19-year old Carrie Buck, who the state determined was feeble-minded, and who had a daughter out of wedlock. Writing for the court in the Buck v. Bell decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

While we look back with revulsion at Holmes's decision, we would have to understand that his was the prevailing sentiment at that time. It was the height of the eugenics movement in America, which emphasized the breeding of educated Caucasians as important for the nation, while discouraging the "socially inadequate" from procreating. Among the tangible outcomes of this popular movement was the forced sterilization of over 60,000 people in our country who were deemed socially "unfit" to reproduce.

The word "eugenics" is derived from the Greek eu-genes which means "well-born." It was coined by Sir Francis Galton, the father of eugenics. In his autobiography "Memories of My Life," he wrote that the first object of eugenics "is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit [sic], instead of allowing them to come into being. Eugenics [rests] on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock."

Galton's comments seem eerily on a par with the interests that lie behind cutting-edge biotechnology. Scientists have been screening embryos for years with a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This involves the biopsy of one or two cells from a developing embryo to test it for certain conditions. Only those embryos that meet the appropriate criteria might be selected for implantation, while the others would be destroyed. One recent example from the U.K. illustrates how far this has gone, where a clinic will screen embryos for a cosmetic condition that causes squinting, and if allowed by the British embryo authority, would screen for hair color, too (apparently, red hair can cause bullying, so, of course, best to avoid implanting those human embryos).

Now, I know it's a cliché-but history does repeat itself. What's really remarkable is how complacent we humans have become in this regard, even to the point of letting the fact become a cliché. The American eugenics movement of the 1920's and 30's was a national travesty. But many Americans-unaware of this history-seem to be getting quite comfortable with the new eugenics movement. Then it was considered a matter of sophistication; today it's a matter of fashion, commodity and comfort.

None of this, fortunately, is being lost on the American Association of People With Disabilities. Representatives wrote in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post:

Let's not foolishly believe that victims of eugenics are an artifact of history. So long as we speak in terms of good genes and bad genes, recognize a life with a disability as an injury, and allow health policies to value some lives over others, we continue to create human rights violations every day.

Pope John Paul II addressed head-on the potential danger that a new eugenics would emerge in the era of biotechnology when the drive for progress would come to cloud moral conscience:

Hypothetical benefits for humanity and for progress in research can in no way constitute a decisive criterion of moral goodness. Certainly such a criterion helps to weaken moral convictions about the human being and fosters the practice of discarding the persons affected by congenital handicaps who were subjected to a pre-implantation examination and an abusive use of prenatal screening. Many countries are committed to a selection of unborn children that is tacitly encouraged, and begin to practice a genuine eugenics and a deadening of conscience that seriously discriminates against people with congenital disabilities and those who welcome them.

Western peoples still by and large proudly conceive of themselves as the great defenders of human rights and dignity. But such a conception is more tenuous today than ever before, perhaps even an illusion. In day to day living, most westerners live in hot pursuit of satisfying their personal set of life preferences -comfort, health, and well-being topping the list. These are to be pursued in the manner that maximizes freedom of expression to the greatest extent possible.

True enough, such egocentricity does not completely displace noble sentiments and genuine concern for others, but by its very nature our culture of narcissism dilutes and distorts otherwise altruistic motivations.

In his encyclical The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II drew attention to the dangerous concoction that results when our culture of libertinage combines with a mentality that treats human life as an object and commodity:

[This is] a problem which exists at the cultural, social and political level, where it reveals its more sinister and disturbing aspect in the tendency, ever more widely shared, to interpret the above crimes against life as legitimate expressions of individual freedom, to be acknowledged and protected as actual rights ( EV , 18).

He also noted what a remarkable contradiction is occasioned by the still prevalent appeals to "rights" and "dignity" on the one hand, while on the other, such a large sector of our society seriously contemplates the deliberate destruction of human life for utilitarian purposes:

At another level, the roots of the contradiction between the solemn affirmation of human rights and their tragic denial in practice lies in a notion of freedom which exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way, and gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and service of them. While it is true that the taking of life not yet born or in its final stages is sometimes marked by a mistaken sense of altruism and human compassion, it cannot be denied that such a culture of death, taken as a whole, betrays a completely individualistic concept of freedom, which ends up by becoming the freedom of "the strong" against the weak who have no choice but to submit (EV , 19).

Behind every eugenics movement you can find a lust for power and dominance. This scourge is upon us once again. Our objective now must be to bring the full weight of historical memory to bear on all those who fail to see the connection between their current pursuits in biotech and the tragic past, and especially on all those others who just think the prospect of "designer babies" is cool!

NOTE: You can learn more about the American eugenics movement at our In Focus section on the topic, which includes an introductory commentary by Westchester Institute Senior Fellow, Fr. Peter Ryan, SJ.