We explain what eugenics is, its background, origin and history. Also, modern eugenics and the criticisms against it.
What is eugenics?
Eugenics or eugenics is the desire to manipulate genetic inheritance and artificial selection to “improve” or “enhance” the traits that future human generations will have. It is a form of social philosophy, often accused of being pseudoscientific.
Eugenics gained great importance in Western thought from the 19th century onwards, and Numerous acts of discrimination were ideologically supported in it and genocide. Eugenicist thought proposed that, through the control of heredity, we can aspire to stronger, healthier, more intelligent human generations or those with certain ethnic and/or aesthetic traits.
The philosophies of so-called social Darwinism applied Charles Darwin's findings on the origin of species and the survival of the fittest to political and social life. So It was proposed that reproduction should be allowed only under strict selection criteria denying it to those who did not fit the desired pattern, to whom death or forced sterilization was instead imparted.
Despite its controversial origins, much eugenicist thinking survives today, in modern scientific applications, which allow future parents varying degrees of genetic manipulation and artificial selection, to avoid bringing into the world offspring with serious genetic problems. This, naturally, without incurring the immoral practices of the past.
See also: Inalienable
Background of eugenics
The antecedents of eugenicist thought date back to antiquity itself, and can be traced in classic works such as Plato's “Republic” (c. 378 BC). There the philosopher defended the need to incorporate artificial selection into policies for the improvement of society.
This practice that It was carried out in its own way by the Spartan people whose educational model, heavily militarized, applied a strict eugenic policy: a commission of elders examined each newborn child to determine if it met certain standards of robustness and beauty.
If he did not do so, he was thrown from the top of Mount Taygetus, to the so-called Apothetas (“place of abandonment”) and only if he managed to survive on his own, could he be accepted into society. They also bathed newborns in wine, since at the time it was believed that this induced the child to have convulsions, which guaranteed that only the strong would survive from the start.
On the other hand, Spartan nurses were particularly cruel, raising each child without pampering or whims of any kind. From early on they were accustomed to being alone and not fearing the dark, all in order to harden them as much as possible and separate the strong from the weak.
Much later, the idea of eugenics appeared in City of the Sun (1632) by the Italian philosopher and poet Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639), a utopian work inspired by the Republic platonic. There he imagines a radical communist society, where private property is impossible and where the State guarantees that everyone has what they need, even a sexual partner, given that reproduction is studied for the purpose of improving the species.
Origin and history of eugenics
The term eugenics was coined in 1883 by the British explorer and natural philosopher Francis Galton (1822-1911), in his book Research on human faculties and their development.
However, he had already explored the idea in his previous texts “Hereditary talent and personality” (1865) and The hereditary genius (1869), in which, influenced by the reading of The origin of species by Charles Darwin, proposed that human civilization and its values only slowed down and hindered the advancement of the strongest races and better adapted, above the others.
According to Galton, in the same way that artificial selection was used to improve domestic animal species, it should be done with the human species, expecting similar results.
In his view, it was inconceivable that the least intelligent and least capable of human beings were the ones who reproduced the most. That is why policies had to be designed that made people understand the importance of thinking and planning reproduction in terms of the well-being of the species.
Born as a “science” (nowadays it is no longer considered as such), eugenics was supported by several of Darwin's descendants, who considered it close to his father's studies. It also had great defenders throughout the 19th century and early 20th century, such as Alexander Graham Bell.
In 1896, a eugenics movement was founded in the United States which prohibited marriages with any “epileptic, imbecile or weak-minded”, carried out forced sterilizations of “imbeciles”, and xenophobic and racist laws were applied against the incorporation of “inferior lineages” from other geographies. An example of such laws was the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act or Immigration Act of 1924.
Obviously, The largest eugenics movement in history was Nazism. Nazi “philosophy,” strongly influenced by eugenics and social Darwinism, proposed that the German people (actually the Aryan people, that is, the descendants of a supposed pure Proto-Indo-European people, whose existence today is put into question) doubt) was called to dominate the world.
Their superiority was supposedly due to their genetic greatness, which constituted the greatest treasure to preserve. Therefore, the “inferior races” had to not only refrain from mixing their genetics with German genetics, but they had to be exterminated to give up their resources to those who were stronger or more fit.
The application of these models of thought led to the genocide perpetrated against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and other groups during the Second World War in the extermination camps of the self-proclaimed Third Reich.
Modern eugenics
After World War II, eugenics continued to appear in various forms. On the one hand, in the form of forced sterilizations of people of races considered “inferior” or simply to poor people, by dictatorial regimes like Alberto Fujimori's Peru.
But, on the other hand, it opened the doors to more moral forms of application, although no less controversial, as part of early detection programs for genetic diseases which has improved enormously thanks to technological advances in genetics and medicine.
The term eugenics is rarely used for these types of policies, given its historical implications with Nazism. However, they are accepted forms of eugenics, subject to ethical and legal regulations.
Such is the case of the selection of viable zygotes in in-vitro fertilization, the amniosynthetic examination of fetuses in their first weeks and possible abortion in case of serious illnesses or problems that may put maternal health at risk. It is also included in forms of genetic diagnosis, which are not exempt from debate and criticism.
Criticisms of eugenics
The main criticisms of eugenics have to do with the decision about the lives of others, and with the ease with which prejudices can infiltrate in decisions in this regard.
On the one hand, no one in their right mind today believes that there is any truth in the pseudosciences of the 19th century or in the racist and xenophobic delusions of Nazism. But on the other hand, no parent would want to bring into the world a child who is sick, disabled, or has problems that are going to make their life miserable.
That's why, The line between what is considered acceptable and what is not acceptable can always be subject to debate. Should people be brought into the world with difficulties that will make their existence more difficult than it already is for everyone? What is a genetically “normal” person? Is it acceptable for a couple to reject their child because he or she does not have the eye color they would like?
These are questions that require bioethical debate and have been on the table since the deciphering of the human genetic code in the early 2000s.
Continue with: Biotechnology
References
- “Eugenics” on Wikipedia.
- “Brief history of eugenics” (video) at the University of Antioquia (Colombia).
- “Eugenics, Racism disguised as science” by Vicente Jiménez in El País (Spain).
- “Eugenics” in History.
- “Eugenics” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- “Eugenics (genetics)” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
