Eugenics

views updated

EUGENICS

Eugenics was an ideology that arose in the late nineteenth century to promote improving human heredity. It posed as a scientific enterprise, but combined ethical presuppositions and political action with research on human heredity. For example, there was no scientific way to determine what constituted "improvement." Progress and improvement, however, were the watchwords of many nineteenth-century intellectuals who often failed to recognize how such concepts can be culturally loaded. Indeed, many eugenicists supposed that health, strength, intellectual acuity, and even beauty were undeniably favorable traits and should be promoted in human reproduction. Another closely related ideology was that of Social Darwinism, which nevertheless has its own distinctive if interactive history. While Social Darwinism stressed natural selection and thus human competition, eugenics focussed on artificial selection. Though some eugenicists saw eugenics as a way to evade Social Darwinism, others were avid Social Darwinists.

Classic Eugenics

The basic idea of eugenics came to Francis Galton (1822–1911), the father of the eugenics movement, in the 1860s while reading Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. Galton claimed that Darwin's theory "made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in human thought generally" (Gillham 2001, p. 155). In 1869 Galton published his most famous book, Hereditary Genius, in which he traced the lineages of prominent men in British society in order to demonstrate that not only physical characteristics but also mental and moral traits were hereditary. Galton coined the phrase "nature and nurture" to describe the conflict between biological determinism and environmental determinism, and came down decidedly on the side of nature.

Galton's views on heredity not only drove him to engage in scientific research, but also motivated him to propose conscious planning to help speed up human evolution. He stated, "What nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly and kindly" (Gillham 2001, p. 328). He favored measures to encourage the "most fit" people to reproduce. This is called positive eugenics. However, he also advocated negative eugenics: restricting the reproduction of those deemed "inferior." He thought inferior people should be branded enemies of the state and "forfeited all claims to kindness" if they procreated. Further, he believed that "inferior races always disappear before superior ones" (Gillham 2001, p. 197). Galton, like subsequent eugenicists, stressed human inequality and devalued the life of those considered inferior. When Galton died, he left a bequest to endow a chair in eugenics at the University of London, which was filled by Karl Pearson (1857–1936), his hand-picked successor as leader of the eugenics movement in Britain.

The eugenics movement blossomed in the 1890s and early twentieth century, partly fueled by fears of biological degeneration. By the 1890s many Darwinists were concerned that some of the improvements of modern civilization were a mixed blessing. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), the leading Darwinist in Germany, already warned in the 1870s that modern medical advances allowed those with weaker physical conditions to survive and reproduce, while in earlier ages they would have perished without leaving progeny. Other Darwinists also warned that the weakening of natural selection by modern institutions would bring biological decline. However, while embracing Darwinian principles, eugenicists did not want to abandon scientific, technological, and medical progress. Rather they sought to escape the negative consequences by consciously controlling human reproduction.

Simultaneous with this fear of biological decline, many psychiatrists by the 1890s were abandoning earlier optimistic beliefs that they could provide cures for many mental illnesses. Instead, they began viewing mental illnesses as often hereditary and beyond influence. Many psychiatrists began to push for control of human reproduction as the most effective means to prevent mental illness. August Forel (1848–1931), a famous psychiatrist at Burghölzi Clinic in Zurich, began promoting eugenics in the late nineteenth century, and he decisively influenced many other psychiatrists and physicians. One medical student in Zurich who imbibed eugenics from Forel was Alfred Ploetz (1860–1940), who in 1904 began editing the first eugenics journal in the world. The following year he founded the Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene (Society for Race Hygiene), an organization dedicated to improving human heredity. He quickly recruited many leading scientists, psychiatrists, and physicians to the cause.

Eugenics in the Early Twentieth Century

In the ensuing two decades, eugenics organizations also formed in many other countries, not only in the United States and Europe, but also in Latin America and Asia. The prominent geneticist Charles Davenport (1866–1944) founded the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Springs Harbor, New York, which became one of the leading institutions in the United States promoting eugenics by compiling family medical histories. Many wealthy patrons, including Andrew Carnegie and John
D. Rockefeller, funded eugenics organizations.

Eugenics also stimulated the rise of birth control organizations. Indeed, one of the primary goals of the pioneers in the birth control movement—including Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) in the United States and Marie Stopes (1880–1958) in Britain—was to diminish the reproductive rates of those members of society they considered inferior. In 1919 Sanger stated, "More children from the fit; less from the unfit—that is the chief issue of birth control" (Paul 1995, p. 20). Nonetheless, most eugenicists opposed the easy availability of birth control, because they feared it would lead to a decline in natality rates among the upper and middle classes, which they wanted to increase. They wanted birth control, of course, but under the control of physicians making decisions in the interests of society, not freely available to individuals.

The eugenics movement had clout far greater than reflected by the small number of people in eugenics organizations, because its influence in the medical profession, especially among psychiatrists, was strong. In some countries the eugenics movement exerted enough influence to pass legislation aimed at restricting reproduction of individuals considered "defective." The first eugenics legislation in the world was a compulsory sterilization law passed by the state of Indiana in 1907. Other states followed suit, allowing doctors to sterilize patients who had various hereditary illnesses, especially mental illnesses. On the basis of these laws, from the 1920s to the 1950s, about 60,000 people were compulsorily sterilized in the United States. The Supreme Court upheld the right of states to sterilize those with hereditary illness in the Buck v. Bell case in 1927. Denmark was the first European country to enact a sterilization law in 1929, but it was voluntary until new legislation in 1934 made it compulsory in some cases.

Nazi Eugenics and Afterward

The Nazi regime passed the most sweeping eugenics measures in the world, because Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists were fanatical about trying to produce a healthy master race in Germany. In 1933 the Nazis passed a compulsory sterilization law that resulted in more than 350,000 sterilizations during their twelve years in power. In 1939 Hitler secretly ordered the beginning of a "euthanasia" campaign, killing 70,000 mentally handicapped Germans within two years. The Nazis also considered the mass killing of those of races they deemed inferior—especially Jews, but also Gypsies and others—part of their eugenics program, because they believed that this would improve the human race. Many German physicians, imbued with eugenics ideals, participated in the Nazi euthanasia program and the Holocaust.

Since the Nazi era many people have mistakenly associated eugenics with right-wing, reactionary politics. However, in its early phases, most eugenicists were progressive politically, and eugenics was popular in leftist circles. Most of the early German eugenicists were non-Marxian socialists or at least sympathetic with socialism. Many anarchists, such as Emma Goldman (1869–1940), promoted eugenics, as did most Fabian socialists in Britain. The Danish government that enacted the 1929 and 1934 sterilization laws was socialist. Many liberals and conservatives supported eugenics as well, so it cut across political lines.

Despite the movement's successes, many countries rejected attempts to enact eugenics legislation, and critics of eugenics arose, challenging its premises. The Catholic Church was the staunchest adversary of eugenics, and the pope issued an encyclical in 1930 opposing eugenics, especially measures such as compulsory sterilization. Catholics and some conservative Protestants recognized that eugenics contradicted the traditional Christian attitudes toward sexual morality, compassion for the handicapped, and human equality. However, most liberal Protestants jumped on the eugenics bandwagon, seeing it as a progressive, scientific movement. By the late 1920s many German Protestant leaders supported eugenic sterilization, and Protestants in the United States sponsored prizes for the best sermons on eugenics.

By the 1960s the eugenics movement seemed dead, and the term itself had negative connotations. Eugenics suffered from its association with Nazism, but this was only one factor. The decline of biological determinism in most scholarly fields, especially psychology and the social sciences, made people suspicious of the claims of eugenics. Also, the individualism of the 1960s, along with calls for reproductive autonomy, undermined the collectivist mentality of eugenics and its desire to control reproduction. As the abortion debate heated up in the 1970s, pro-life forces and pro-choice advocates both opposed eugenics, the former because they saw it as devaluing human life, and the latter because it violated reproductive freedom.

The New Eugenics

However, advances of medical genetics in the late twentieth century led to a "new eugenics." New reproductive technologies, including amniocentesis, ultrasound, in vitro fertilization, sperm banks, genetic engineering, and cloning, opened up new possibilities to control human fertility and heredity, especially because the human genome project has now mapped human DNA. Some proponents want to use these new technologies not only to rid the world of congenital disabilities, but also to produce "designer babies." Intense debates are raging in the early 2000s over "designer babies" and reproductive cloning, because most people consider these unethical interventions in reproduction. The legalization of abortion in most countries and the widespread practice of infanticide, even though illegal, are other factors fostering the new eugenics, because this allows parents the opportunity to decide whether they want a child with particular characteristics. The big difference between this new eugenics and the old eugenics is that in most countries the decision making about human heredity is in the hands of the individual (though physicians and society often apply pressure). However, in 1995 China passed a eugenics sterilization law, which was ostensibly voluntary; especially in light of that government's one-child policy, the pressure to abort fetuses deemed defective is great.

RICHARD WEIKART

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Broberg, Gunnar, and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds. (1996). Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Five scholars examine eugenics sterilization policies in twentieth-century Scandinavia.

Buck v. Bell, 274 US 200 (1927). This was the Supreme Court decision allowing compulsory sterilization for eugenic purposes.

Dikötter, Frank. (1998). Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects and Eugenics in China. New York: Columbia University Press. Discusses attitudes toward the disabled and eugenics in medical circles and its impact on governmental policy from the nineteenth century to the present.

Gillham, Nicholas Wright. (2001). A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Kevles, Daniel J. (1985). In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Berkeley: University of California Press. This is the best comprehensive survey of eugenics ideology and policy in the Anglo-American world.

Paul, Diane B. (1995). Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. The best brief survey of the eugenics movement, focussing primarily on the United States, but also touching on other countries.

Proctor, Robert. (1988). Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Proctor shows how the German medical community embraced eugenics and collaborated with Nazi eugenics policies, including sterilization and genocide.

Schneider, William H. (1990). Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Provides excellent coverage of the eugenics movement in France in the first half of the twentieth century.

Stepan, Nancy L. (1991). The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Stepan shows that medical elites in Latin America embraced eugenics, just as their counterparts in Europe and the United States.

Weikart, Richard. (2004). From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Demonstrates how the German eugenics movement (and Hitler) used Darwinian principles to devalue the life of the disabled and those of non-European races.

Weindling, Paul. (1989). Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Weindling shows that the collectivist and technocratic thrust of the German eugenics movement helped prepare the way for the authoritarian policies of the Nazi regime. This is the most detailed study of the German eugenics movement available in English.

Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics