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DEVELOPMENT OF EUGENICS MOVEMENT.
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Background; role of science & Darwin's theories. Ethical issues & negative aspects of using genetics to produce "better people." Dangers of manipulating human genes. Nazi experiments. Human Genome Project.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Background; role of science & Darwin's theories. Ethical issues & negative aspects of using genetics to produce "better people." Dangers of manipulating human genes. Nazi experiments. Human Genome Project.
Paper Introduction:
INTRODUCTION
The eugenics movement started at the end of the nineteenth century with the application of scientific methods to human behavior and even to then human organism itself. Eugenics is the study of human genetics and of methods to improve inherited characteristics, physical both and mental, of the race. Eugenicists analyze human beings to see what characteristics are to be promoted and what characteristics are to be eliminated and then encourage breeding accordingly. In terms of the evolution of society at large, social Darwinism refers to a kind of social eugenics. Critics from the first insist that human beings cannot be treated as animals and that neither human behavior nor human evolution can be reduced to such simplistic ideas about improving the stock. While eugenics in its early forms has
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In any case, as he repeats manytimes, Gould finds that the whole enterprise was flawed in its purpose,more political than scientific--to find a rationale for excluding certainimmigrant groups and for elevating others. His examiners had to process men rapidly and grade the exams immediately, so that failures could be recalled for a different test. It is foreseeable that some will pursue such technology despite its cost or legality, intent on providing all possible advantages-- genetic or otherwise--to offspring. Perhaps the greatest parental virtue, says Kaveny, is learning to accept the personhood of the individual children, learning to accept each child for who she is, learning to nurture that child and her unique talents and abilities to her fullest potential (Clarke 12). In his Inquiries into Human Faculty in 1883,Galton complained that those who possessed sufficient foresight and self-control to delay marriage, as advised by Malthus, were exactly the peoplewhose reproduction it was vital to encourage. Used carefully, it will increase health and human happiness. . The Nazis could combine active participation by a broad spectrum of German physicians, especially psychiatrists, with a secret plan emanating from the highest Party authority. Galton believed that abilityis determined by heredity and runs in families, so the early marriage andreproduction of members of such "thriving families" ought to be encouraged. Darwin's view wasstrong, so much so that Darwinian ideas were applied not only to biologicalphenomena but also to social theory and the newly created science ofpsychology. The fear is of being dominatedby a superior being, or a being who claims to be superior. Norton, 1979.Jones, Leslie. 2 . While eugenics in its earlyforms has fallen into disfavor, more recent discoveries about humangenetics threaten to revive the ideas of eugenics in a different form. Many people will want to use the technology toengineer children, making them smarter, better looking, and healthier, andwhile this might seem admirable, it raises ethical issues: The question goes to the heart of the vocation of parenthood, says Kaveny. http://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap 2.html.Gould, Stephen Jay. CharlesDarwin offered in his work a new paradigm for human development, a new viewof the cause of biological phenomena observed in nature. By doing so, science is raising new hopes andexpectations for the treatment of some of our most debilitating illnesseswhile at the same time raising profound challenges to what "natural"reproduction might look like in the future: The moral and even political implications of the new biotechnologies can get a little mind-boggling. New York: W.W. Eugenics is the study of human genetics and ofmethods to improve inherited characteristics, physical both and mental, ofthe race. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jonmarks/Eugenics.html. Early in thiscentury, some governments accepted the ideas of this supposedly scientificapproach and passed miscegenation laws and even instituted enforcedsterilization of the insane. Such effortsare attempts at proving a determinist perspective. . Some of the ideasutilized by those trying to measure human groups have been thoroughlydiscredited and appear foolish to us today, such as craniometry, whichtries to measure the skull in order to predict intelligence. These possibilities raise new ethical dilemmas to be analyzed andguarded against. In addition, any characteristicthat could be likened to an animal characteristic--such as the attempts toshow that inferior peoples would have a more posterior foramen magnum as doapes and lower animals--were attempts to show that the Caucasian race wasmore advanced because it was less like the animals. Will future generations of "naturals" then be lorded over by a genetically enhanced master class? When parents have such a profound role in the creation of a child, she worries that an expectation has been created that ultimately denies the personal integrity of the child--the child's equal dignity and liberty. This wasthe fallacy of social Darwinism as promoted by Galton and others. THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT Concerns about the uses to which the project might be put areincreasing as the $15 billion Human Genome Project (HGP) to identify the1 , genes in the human body nears completion, cracking the code that isthe very stuff of humanity. This is also seen in racial divisions to a greatextent. "Evolution and Ethics." In Darwin, Philip Appleman (ed.), 325-328. . Abnormalities such as hemophilia, albinism, and a number ofstructural abnormalities can be inherited, and there are hopes today thatgenetic screening can reduce their incidence ("Francis Galton and theEugenics Society"). He placed his emphasison the role of factors under social control that could either improve orimpair the qualities of futuregenerations. He thought that it was only by raising the average intellectual standardof the nation by one grade could the survival and expansion of the nationbe assured, and so his eugenics was nothing less than a program fornational survival (Jones 6-7). Davenport'sfriend Madison Grant was a wealthy New York lawyer, Yale graduate, and anardent amateur naturalist who helped found the New York Zoological Society,and he also introduced the eugenic ideals to mass audience in his best-selling The Passing of the Great Race (1916). Much of this had little to do with whatDarwin had achieved in On the Origin of Species, which was to explainbiological change in terms of cause and effect. It will influence every aspect of our culture. will profoundly change the practice of medicine over the next 3 to 4 years. Francis Galton introduced the term eugenics and is usually regardedas the founder of the modern science of eugenics. Some of this same effort derived from a misunderstanding ofevolution and the idea that evolution was tending toward higherintelligence and a larger brain cavity. SocialDarwinism took an almost mystical and religious belief in the forces ofnature, such as that of natural selection as the fundamental law of life,and combined it with a literal transfer of the laws of biology to thesocial and political arena. As human genetic engineering becomes possible, even many who aredeveloping these techniques are concerned about how they may be used on topof the changes the technology will bring even if used correctly: Human genetic engineering . Cause and effect in socialrelations was another matter. (Clarke 12).This raises the social fear that genetic engineering will create a newsocial class as well as a new human race. He defined his new word this way: "Eugenics is the study ofagencies under social control that may improve or impair the racialqualities of future generations, whether physically or mentally." Hewanted more than a study of the issue, though, and called for a practicalpolicy that would introduce the idea "into the national consciousness as anew religion" ("Francis Galton and the Eugenics Society"). H. New York: W.W. Gould refers to such studies as measuring intelligence as asingle quantity, which in fact it probably is not. Modern eugenics has been directed chiefly toward thediscouragement of propagation among the unfit (negativeeugenics) and encouragement of propagation among those whoare healthy, intelligent, and of high moral character (positiveeugenics). Eugenics continues to be promoted under new names, such as with geneticscreening by which prospective parents can be tested for thepresence of undesired allelomorphic forms of particular genesrather than depending on the merely statistical estimates of a few yearsago. Norton, 1981.Huxley, T.H. NEGATIVE ASPECTS Human genetic modification has been discussed for decades, but nowthat it is becoming a process that could be undertaken rather than a merespeculation, a number of fears have emerged, leading to efforts to curtailfurther research in this area. "The Eugenics Movement." 2 . Cathleen Kavenypoints out many of the dangers in this emerging technology and the ethicaldilemmas it raises. INTRODUCTION The eugenics movement started at the end of the nineteenth centurywith the application of scientific methods to human behavior and even tothen human organism itself. In terms of the evolution of society atlarge, social Darwinism refers to a kind of social eugenics. The Nazi Doctors. Huxley in 1893 with reference to aprevalent fallacy, the idea that Darwin said that plants and animals hadevolved in a progressive direction because of the struggle for existenceand the resulting "survival of the fittest," and that thus men in societymust follow the same process to achieve perfection (Huxley 326). Many ofthese efforts were denigrated for treating human beings like animals, andattempts to control human evolution through selective genocide by groupssuch as the Nazis made these ideas seem even more dangerous. But more than that, its effects will be felt far beyond medicine. Galton read his paper "Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims" in19 4 to a meeting of the Sociological Society held at the London School ofEconomics. Another group offered a specificevolutionary hypothesis for the biological nature of human criminalbehavior. One reason for criticism of Darwinism was the uses to which itwas put by some, as noted by T. Catholic (January 2 ), 12."A Cure That May Cost Us Ourselves." Newsweek (1 Jan 2 ), 74."Francis Galton and the Eugenics Society." Eugenics Homepage. Medical Gleichschaltung made that step possible. The Mismeasure of Man. A less physical approach is found in the attempts to measure IQ,and the argument over the value of this sort of measure continues to thisday. It is anextension of the situation that already exists with certain social classesseen as superior to others, thus justifying keeping the lower classesseparate in some ways. Another impetus for concern has been thedevelopment of cloning techniques for higher mammals, raising fears thathumans might be cloned and evoking ethical dilemmas related to thispossibility. Eugenics was a central tenet of Nazi Germany. Critics fromthe first insist that human beings cannot be treated as animals and thatneither human behavior nor human evolution can be reduced to suchsimplistic ideas about improving the stock. The eugenics movement has had many consequences. New York: Basic Books, 1986.Marks, Jonathan. SCIENCE AND EUGENICS Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin. Darwinism had a profound influence on Western society even as itremained controversial and rejected by segments of the population. Grant built on Davenport'sideas about genetics to produce a master plan for ending crime and poverty,along with a design for emptying the jails and balancing the budget, all byweeding out those who were considered unfit (Marks). The standard Darwinian ideas of struggle andcompetition were seen as the foundation for natural law and therefore ofsocial law along with a "religion" of nature. Eugenicists analyze human beings to see what characteristicsare to be promoted and what characteristics are to be eliminated and thenencourage breeding accordingly. Procedures varied so much from camp to camp that results could scarcely be collated and compared (Gould 2 1).Gould shows how each of the attempts at such measurements failed to come upto the necessary scientific standards. Stephen Jay Gould describes a number of early efforts at applyingeugenics, often as a means of classifying and even rejecting immigrants onthe basis of supposed intelligence or criminal tendencies. Notre Dame law professor and ethicist M. There was much dissension from Galton's paper, however, andsince the society proved quite unsuited to the role envisaged for it byGalton, he helped found the Eugenics Education Society in 19 7 (Jones 6).Galton always promoted a form of social Darwinism because he feared thathis own country was threatened with decline brought on by social classdifferentials in fertility. The characteristic mixture of terror and idealism could now concretize the principle of "life unworthy of life" and authorize the killing of both children and adults (Lifton 45).The Nazi's combined negative and positive eugenics by trying to eliminatethose they saw as debased while extolling the Nordic as an ideal nearinghuman perfection. He cited thepublication of Darwin's The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man as theevent which freed science from old ideas and pointed to somethingcompletely new. Early in this century, the most influential geneticist in America wasCharles B. Other efforts measuredbodies rather than skulls, and these efforts were also based on a vagueunderstanding of evolution, which Gould points out transformed humanthought in the nineteenth century. craniometry may measurethe shape of certain parts of the head, the size of the brain cavity in theskull, or some other characteristic which is then used as a predictor ofintelligence. Davenport, who taught at Harvard until 1899 before moving to theUniversity of Chicago briefly before founding the Carnegie Institution'sgenetics and evolution laboratories at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island.His major work was Heredity in Relation to Eugenics from 1911. Late in the nineteenthcentury, he coined the term eugenics as he studied heredity andintelligence. But if used unwisely, the genetic engineering of human beings could endanger everything we value--including who and what we are ("A Cure That May Cost Us Ourselves" 74). Genetic engineering naturally raises fears in minority and poorcommunities that this will only be another dividing point betweenthemselves and the dominant social group or class. "Social Darwinism Revisited." History Today 48 (1 August 1998), 6-8.Lifton, Robert Jay. SUMMARY Eugenics began in the era when science was first becoming acceptedand understood by the general public, which has long seen science aspromoting progress. . For instance, genetically re-engineering "designer babies" according to "desirable" traits will likely be a costly procedure-- particularly if it is legally prohibited--perhaps only affordable for the most wealthy and most powerful among us. Yet, eugenicslives on in different forms today as we are beginning to learn more aboutgenetics and more about how to manipulate human genes to produce betterhuman beings and to eliminate diseases that have threatened humans in thepast. Psychologicaltesting is another strain attempting the same sort of thing--to showthrough a specific measure the intelligence potential of a humanpopulation. NAZI EXPERIMENTS There was a mixture of pseudo-medical attitudes with political onesin the way the Nazis shaped social policies based on a belief in eugenics,as Lifton indicates when he notes: Sterilization policies were always associated with the therapeutic and regenerative principles of the biomedical vision: with the "purification of the national body" and the "eradication of morbid hereditary dispositions." Sterilization was considered part of "negative eugenics": subsequent ordinances also prohibited the issuance of marriage licenses in situations where either party suffered from contagious disease, had been placed under a legal guardian, was afflicted with significant mental disturbance, or fell into any of the categories of hereditary disease listed in sterilization ordinances (Lifton 42).The step taken was from preventing certain people from perhaps spreading ahereditary disease to viewing those same people as a hereditary disease: For a doctor, there is a large step from litigating spermatic cords or ovarian tubes, or even removing uteri, to killing or designating for death one's own patients. Works CitedClarke, Kevin. The struggle of human beingsin the cities was seen as a clear case of survival of the fittest, andsocial policies were developed in keeping with this idea of the struggleand of different groups in society belonging either at the top or thebottom of the heap, depending. One such effort referred to by Gould was that of Yerkes, and he notesthat the conditions were inadequate for the test: Yerkes's protocol was rigorous and trying enough. "Unnatural Selection." U.S. Eugenics tried to extend this idea to human evolutionand development, as if science could assure a better human being.
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