Eugenics and the Future of the Human Species
By Sam Vaknin

"It is clear that modern medicine has created a serious dilemma ... In the
past, there were many children who never survived - they succumbed to
various diseases ... But in a sense modern medicine has put natural
selection out of commission. Something that has helped one individual over a
serious illness can in the long run contribute to weakening the resistance
of the whole human race to certain diseases. If we pay absolutely no
attention to what is called hereditary hygiene, we could find ourselves
facing a degeneration of the human race. Mankind's hereditary potential for
resisting serious disease will be weakened."

Jostein Gaarder in "Sophie's World", a bestselling philosophy textbook for
adolescents published in Oslo, Norway, in 1991 and, afterwards, throughout
the world, having been translated to dozens of languages.


The Nazis regarded the murder of the feeble-minded and the mentally insane -
intended to purify the race and maintain hereditary hygiene - as a form of
euthanasia. German doctors were enthusiastic proponents of an eugenics
movements rooted in 19th century social Darwinism. Luke Gormally writes, in
his essay "Walton, Davies, and Boyd" (published in "Euthanasia Examined -
Ethical, Clinical, and Legal Perspectives", ed. John Keown, Cambridge
University Press, 1995):

"When the jurist Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche published
their tract The Permission to Destroy Life that is Not Worth Living in 1920
... their motive was to rid society of the 'human ballast and enormous
economic burden' of care for the mentally ill, the handicapped, retarded and
deformed children, and the incurably ill. But the reason they invoked to
justify the killing of human beings who fell into these categories was that
the lives of such human beings were 'not worth living', were 'devoid of
value'"

It is this association with the hideous Nazi regime that gave eugenics - a
term coined by a relative of Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Galton, in 1883 -
its bad name. Richard Lynn, of the University of Ulster of North Ireland,
thinks that this recoil resulted in "Dysgenics - the genetic deterioration
of modern (human) population", as the title of his controversial tome puts
it.

The crux of the argument for eugenics is that a host of technological,
cultural, and social developments conspired to give rise to negative
selection of the weakest, least intelligent, sickest, the habitually
criminal, the sexually deviant, the mentally-ill, and the least adapted.

Contraception is more widely used by the affluent and the well-educated than
by the destitute and dull. Birth control as practiced in places like China
distorted both the sex distribution in the cities - and increased the weight
of the rural population (rural couples in China are allowed to have two
children rather than the urban one).

Modern medicine and the welfare state collaborate in sustaining alive
individuals - mainly the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, the sick, and
the genetically defective - who would otherwise have been culled by natural
selection to the betterment of the entire species.

Eugenics may be based on a literal understanding of Darwin's metaphor.

The 2002 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say:

"Darwin's description of the process of natural selection as the survival of
the fittest in the struggle for life is a metaphor. 'Struggle' does not
necessarily mean contention, strife, or combat; 'survival' does not mean
that ravages of death are needed to make the selection effective; and
'fittest' is virtually never a single optimal genotype but rather an array
of genotypes that collectively enhance population survival rather than
extinction. All these considerations are most apposite to consideration of
natural selection in humans. Decreasing infant and childhood mortality rates
do not necessarily mean that natural selection in the human species no
longer operates. Theoretically, natural selection could be very effective if
all the children born reached maturity. Two conditions are needed to make
this theoretical possibility realized: first, variation in the number of
children per family and, second, variation correlated with the genetic
properties of the parents. Neither of these conditions is farfetched."

The eugenics debate is only the visible extremity of the Man vs. Nature
conundrum. Have we truly conquered nature and extracted ourselves from its
determinism? Have we graduated from natural to cultural evolution, from
natural to artificial selection, and from genes to memes?

Does the evolutionary process culminate in a being that transcends its
genetic baggage, that programs and charts its future, and that allows its
weakest and sickest to survive? Supplanting the imperative of the survival
of the fittest with a culturally-sensitive principle may be the hallmark of
a successful evolution, rather than the beginning of an inexorable decline.

The eugenics movement turns this argument on its head. They accept the
premise that the contribution of natural selection to the makeup of future
human generations is glacial and negligible. But they reject the conclusion
that, having ridden ourselves of its tyranny, we can now let the weak and
sick among us survive and multiply. Rather, they propose to replace natural
selection with eugenics.

But who, by which authority, and according to what guidelines will
administer this man-made culling and decide who is to live and who is to
die, who is to breed and who may not? Why select by intelligence and not by
courtesy or altruism or church-going - or al of them together? It is here
that eugenics fails miserably. Should the criterion be physical, like in
ancient Sparta? Should it be mental? Should IQ determine one's fate - or
social status or wealth? Different answers yield disparate eugenic programs
and target dissimilar groups in the population.

Aren't eugenic criteria liable to be unduly influenced by fashion and
cultural bias? Can we agree on a universal eugenic agenda in a world as
ethnically and culturally diverse as ours? If we do get it wrong - and the
chances are overwhelming - will we not damage our gene pool irreparably and,
with it, the future of our species?

And even if many will avoid a slippery slope leading from eugenics to active
extermination of "inferior" groups in the general population - can we
guarantee that everyone will? How to prevent eugenics from being
appropriated by an intrusive, authoritarian, or even murderous state?

Modern eugenicists distance themselves from the crude methods adopted at the
beginning of the last century by 29 countries, including Germany, The United
States, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Venezuela, Estonia, Argentina, Norway,
Denmark, Sweden (until 1976), Brazil, Italy, Greece, and Spain.

They talk about free contraceptives for low-IQ women, vasectomies or tubal
ligations for criminals, sperm banks with contributions from high achievers,
and incentives for college students to procreate. Modern genetic engineering
and biotechnology are readily applicable to eugenic projects. Cloning can
serve to preserve the genes of the fittest. Embryo selection and prenatal
diagnosis of genetically diseased embryos can reduce the number of the
unfit.

But even these innocuous variants of eugenics fly in the face of liberalism.
Inequality, claim the proponents of hereditary amelioration, is genetic, not
environmental. All men are created unequal and as much subject to the
natural laws of heredity as are cows and bees. Inferior people give birth to
inferior offspring and, thus, propagate their inferiority.

Even if this were true - which is at best debatable - the question is
whether the inferior specimen of our species possess the inalienable right
to reproduce? If society is to bear the costs of over-population - social
welfare, medical care, daycare centers - then society has the right to
regulate procreation. But does it have the right to act discriminately in
doing so?

Another dilemma is whether we have the moral right - let alone the necessary
knowledge - to interfere with natural as well as social and demographic
trends. Eugenicists counter that contraception and indiscriminate medicine
already do just that. Yet, studies show that the more affluent and educated
a population becomes - the less fecund it is. Birth rates throughout the
world have dropped dramatically already.

Instead of culling the great unwashed and the unworthy - wouldn't it be a
better idea to educate them (or their off-spring) and provide them with
economic opportunities (euthenics rather than eugenics)? Human populations
seem to self-regulate. A gentle and persistent nudge in the right
direction - of increased affluence and better schooling - might achieve more
than a hundred eugenic programs, voluntary or compulsory.

That eugenics presents itself not merely as a biological-social agenda, but
as a panacea, ought to arouse suspicion. The typical eugenics text reads
more like a catechism than a reasoned argument. Previous all-encompassing
and omnicompetent plans tended to end traumatically - especially when they
contrasted a human elite with a dispensable underclass of persons.

Above all, eugenics is about human hubris. To presume to know better than
the lottery of life is haughty. Modern medicine largely obviates the need
for eugenics in that it allows even genetically defective people to lead
pretty normal lives. Of course, Man himself - being part of Nature - may be
regarded as nothing more than an agent of natural selection. Still, many of
the arguments advanced in favor of eugenics can be turned against it with
embarrassing ease.

Consider sick children. True, they are a burden to society and a probable
menace to the gene pool of the species. But they also inhibit further
reproduction in their family by consuming the financial and mental resources
of the parents. Their genes - however flawed - contribute to genetic
diversity. Even a badly mutated phenotype sometimes yields precious
scientific knowledge and an interesting genotype.

The implicit Weltbild of eugenics is static - but the real world is dynamic.
There is no such thing as a "correct" genetic makeup towards which we must
all strive. A combination of genes may be perfectly adaptable to one
environment - but woefully inadequate in another. It is therefore prudent to
encourage genetic diversity or polymorphism.

The more rapidly the world changes, the greater the value of mutations of
all sorts. One never knows whether today's maladaptation will not prove to
be tomorrow's winner. Ecosystems are invariably comprised of niches and
different genes - even mutated ones - may fit different niches.

In the 18th century most peppered moths in Britain were silvery gray,
indistinguishable from lichen-covered trunks of silver birches - their
habitat. Darker moths were gobbled up by rapacious birds. Their mutated
genes proved to be lethal. As soot from sprouting factories blackened these
trunks - the very same genes, hitherto fatal, became an unmitigated
blessing. The blacker specimen survived while their hitherto perfectly
adapted fairer brethren perished ("industrial melanism"). This mode of
natural selection is called directional.

Moreover, "bad" genes are often connected to "desirable genes" (pleitropy).
Sickle cell anemia protects certain African tribes against malaria. This is
called "diversifying or disruptive natural selection". Artificial selection
can thus fast deteriorate into adverse selection due to ignorance.

Modern eugenics relies on statistics. It is no longer concerned with
causes - but with phenomena and the likely effects of intervention. If the
adverse traits of off-spring and parents are strongly correlated - then
preventing parents with certain undesirable qualities from multiplying will
surely reduce the incidence of said dispositions in the general population.
Yet, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. The manipulation of
one parameter of the correlation does not inevitably alter it - or the
incidence of the outcome.

Eugenicists often hark back to wisdom garnered by generations of breeders
and farmers. But the unequivocal lesson of thousands of years of artificial
selection is that cross-breeding (hybridization) - even of two lines of
inferior genetic stock - yields valuable genotypes. Inter-marriage between
races, groups in the population, ethnic groups, and clans is thus bound to
improve the species' chances of survival more than any eugenic scheme.


Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self
Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East.
He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review,
PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI)
Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central
East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com