Modern Genetic Science: A New Pathway to a Eugenic World?

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Futurism, Racial politics, Science and society, Society & Culture

Today hardly anyone advocates the ideology and practice of eugenics, not openly anyway and certainly not using the prejudicial language of the past. Which is not to say that the notion of eugenics is a buried and long-forgotten relic❈. The vocabulary of human biology and biotechnology these days is about human gene editing, genetic engineering, genetic modification, genetic enhancement, germline gene experimentation, gene therapy, the human genome, sociobiology, reprogenetics, a Brave New World of molecular cloning, “saviour siblings”, “donor eggs” and “designer babies”.

DNA

The scientists and technocrats who enthuse about scientific progress and future technology and in particular genetic engineering[1], tend to be “gung-ho” about the desirability of genetic intervention in human life which they see as an inevitable process◙. To them it equates with and even defines progress – the curative and preventative promise of medical genetics is for breakthroughs in a host of life-threatening diseases.

Designing a better baby?
For many geneticists and parents, the latent capabilities of human genetic engineering (HGE) is an enticing prospect, a chance for the realisation of new medical therapies to prevent and treat the multitude of diseases that plague contemporary society[2]. Put in these terms, something akin to a “motherhood statement”, few would at least in principle find grounds for objection. Naturally the vast majority of parents wish for a better future for their offspring and descendants, so leaving affordability aside for a moment, using biotechnology to eliminate the risks of genetic disease would appear to have broad community if not quite universal support. But as shown below, when you take a step beyond the fixing of genetic disorders and try to use that advanced science to augment your children’s physical or intellectual attributes it opens up a myriad of complex and perplexing dilemmas, both ethical and medical.

A world of environmental, manufacturing and agricultural panaceas
Aside from the controversial question of genetic manipulation there is already a range of successful genetic applications in society. There is the environmental role – genetically engineered bacterium can and is used to clean up oil spills (and for creating insulin to treat diabetics). Genetic science can reduce the human footprint on the environment. With the population of the globe predicted to rise by 2.4 billion in the next 34 yearsΔ, its advocates argue that biotechnology and genetic engineering can help address the inevitable and critical world food shortage … growing new crops and effecting pest control of existing food sources[3].

Pre-natal counselling and screening of foetal abnormalities
Pre-natal screening for embryo defects like Down syndrome, Trisomy 18 (Edward’s disease) and spina bifida, has a seductive lure for parental planners, these are already commonplace procedures for mothers in advanced societies. Human geneticists trumpet this as a boon to parental choice, allowing the family to produce a baby free of life-threatening and restricting conditions. Preimplantation genetic screening takes this a step further.

imageThe snowballing effect of genetic screening
IVF technology enables the screening of embryos for inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease or Tay-Sachs disease … many view this as the start of a continuum which could usher in an “era of designer babies”[4]. The market in this area has created a consumer-driven demand for “eugenic services”. IVF testing for mitochondrial DHA has been exponential … in 2011 there were 580,000 medical genetic tests in Australia, a 280% jump on the 2006 figure![5]. Currently we test for Down syndrome and similar defects, next might be Parkinson’s disease, beyond that? If given the green light there is potentially no end in sight … will they test with a view to eradicating autism? Down the track it might be dwarfism, even homosexuality?[6]. This may sound alarmist to some, but unchecked, it is plausible that gene tampering could ultimately infiltrate these areas.

This is the perspective of many detractors of genetic testing who question what the limits are and even if there are any limits to the relentless juggernaut of genetic research and experimentation. Some opponents of screening for genetic defects have described its ultimate purpose as “race cleansing”, echoing the fanatical purification goals of the discredited eugenics movements of the past. Human geneticists for their part proffer the reassurance that HGE has built-in safeguards that prevent excesses from occurring, that the entire process is highly regulated and intensely scrutinised to precisely stop it going too far[7]. Opponents refute this, highlighting the dangers and uncertainties of risky human experimentation … unpredictable effects of gene transfer, the effects of gene insertion on other genes, the chance of off-target mutations (unintentional edits to genomes such as occurred in recent Chinese CRISPR-Cas9 experiments on the genome), and other unknowns, all not properly understood at this time[8].

Genetic enhancement and the danger of a perfectibility fixation
Genetic engineering to detect embryonic abnormalities and erase them is widely accepted in the West, genetic enhancement (practiced as a matter of course in agriculture) for humans remains a much harder sell. Genetically modifying your future child to prevent, say, a detected autoimmune disease, is one thing, but screening with the purpose of altering your child’s appearance, eye colour, etc, making him or her taller, more intelligent, more athletic, etc. … the imperative of achieving a Stepford Wives world of perfectibility could take over. This would propel medical genetics into a whole different realm, a techno-eugenic future fraught with menace and worrying ethical implications[9].

The ethical or moral dimension
Ethical or moral objectors to HGE seem to divide along religious and non-religious lines. Many professing a religious faith argue that the practice runs counter to the “will of God”, whilst those of a secular disposition might view it as “tinkering with nature”. The genetic engineering detractors argue that humans are inviolable, endowed with individual rights, and that such interventions are unnatural and trample all over those rights[10]. Some academics with an interest in science ethics however dispute the merit of the ‘naturalness’ argument[11].

Geneticists and biotechnologists would characterise a call for a blanket ban on human genetic experimentation as a conservative, “knee-jerk” reaction which seeks to close off the door to scientific inquiry and medical advancement, but the obverse, an open slather, unchecked approach to genetic intervention seems an imprudent one, given the unknown consequences of gene editing and of venturing too deeply into a genetic minefield that is almost certainly irreversible.

imageConcerns with non-therapeutic abuse in genetics has a wide ambit: another peripheral issue pointing to likely future genetic manipulation lies in the realm of sport, an area already plagued by the increasingly widespread use of steroids for performance enhancement. The development of gene therapy has elevated the disturbing likelihood of gene doping – inserting or modifying DNA for the purpose of enhancing the performance of athletes. Gene doping is still in an experimental phase but is particularly concerning both to doctors and to Olympic administrators because it is hard to detect and it’s nature is unpredictable and potentially dangerous[12].

imageWhilst the possibility of misuse and harm of gene editing technology is a barrier for many, others opposing genetic manipulation from a humanist viewpoint and have called out the human genetics industry for discriminating against and undermining the dignity of the disabled and the mentally ill. Opponents say that there is a common element at the core of both eugenics and human genetic engineering – the devaluing of (some) human life. Contemporary geneticists, they say, start from the same philosophical standpoint as the old-style eugenicists: a view of the disabled and other “genetically challenged” people that is essentially negative and pessimistic, conveying the idea that they are extraneous and to be done away with. Many critics see these advocates of HGE as intolerant of those with genetic impairment, refusing to accept the disabled in particular for how they are (which is part of the diversity of the human condition)[13]. These detractors believe that the normalisation of human genetic modification would lead to an erosion of respect for the disabled.

A fundamental shift in the parent/child relationship?
Another objection to human gene policy revolves around its perceived adverse effect on the traditional bond between child and parent. Brendan Foht, from a conservative perspective, has hypothesised that in a situation where parents decide to dip into the gene pool to create the kind of offspring they want, the child becomes a product of his or her parents’ desires and wishes … their acceptance of and love for the child is provisional upon the child stacking up to that ‘wish-list’. This, Foht points out, upturns the optimal relationship in which the child is the beneficiary of his or her parents’ unconditional love[14].

Some opposed to the genetic engineering of humans have emphasised the absence of consent by future descendants, ie, the ethical issues raised by “altering the germline in a way that affects the next generation without their consent” (Francis Collins, US National Institute of Health). This objection has been dismissed as a nonsense by John Harris who contends that parents “have literally no choice but to make decisions for future people without considering their consent”, this happens every day, without it life would not function properly [15].

Proponents of HGE have made attempts to salvage the reputation of the new eugenics, eg, Nicholas Agar’s concept of Liberal eugenics which leaves the decision to the consumer (ie, the parents) rather than to public health authorities, thus avoiding (argues Agar) the repugnant consequences of past eugenics practices. But as Robert Sparrow has noted, any emphasis “on pre-determined genetics of future persons leads to assumptions about the relative worth of different life plans”[16].

The politics and economics of HME
Some opponents of HGE have focussed on the political and economic element: their argument runs, if genetic engineering was given free rein to intervene into the human sphere, the result would be free market eugenics, so that access to genetic modification or enhancement would come down to the ability to pay and inequalities within society would exacerbate. The fear is that in this scenario the elites of society would have a monopoly of both biological and financial control[17].

imageThe thorny issue of genetic engineering of humans, especially with its uncomfortable link with the pernicious effects of the eugenics movement of last century, remains a highly controversial one. Scientific advancements in biotechnology has created a receptive market for genetic screening for defective embryos, but the genetic enhancement of humans, with its Frankenstein-ish overtones, remains a bridge too far for most people in western democracies✥.

PostScript: Genetic Enhancement – Ask an expert
In December 2015 Washington DC hosted the ‘International Summit on Human Gene Editing’ in which scientists, bioethicists and other stakeholders from the US, the UK and China debated issues around the use of the human gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. The summit’s committee adopted a “precautionary principle” re the technology and resolved to avoid any unknown, unintended consequences. It acknowledged the value of CRISPR gene editing research as an aiding the knowledge of basic biology but advocated a cautious approach in its utilisation. It called for more research to be completed on the technology before any more ambitious applications were considered[18]. To date 40 countries have rejected human germline modification using gametes (genetically altered embryos)[19].

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
❈ which is not to say that there is no one today who advocates eugenics, eg, some elements of contemporary society couch their ideology in terms like ‘humanitarian’ eugenics, see ‘Future Generations’ (www.eugenics.net) which reproduces the work of pro-eugenics scientists such as Richard Lynn and Philippe Rushton. Similar sentiments are also apparent in the published work of Helmuth Nyborg
◙ this is at the core of the transhumanism philosophy, the belief that “the human species in its current form does not represent the end of (it’s) development”, and posits that continuous, radical change in science and technology will lead to that future (‘What is Transhumanism?’, www.whatistranshumanism.org)
Δ according to a 2015 United Nations DESA report
✥ cloning in particular remains the greatest taboo in medical genetics. A recent Pew study in the US found that the overwhelming number of its respondents oppose brain chip implants; surveys and polls in various western countries over the last 25 to 30 years have echoed this rejection of human cloning, G O Schaefer, ‘The future of Genetic Engineering is not in the West’, The Conversation, 2-Aug-2016, www.theconversation.com

[1] the science of altering living things by changing the information encoded in their DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), ‘Genetic Engineering’, (A Guide to the Future by Christopher Barnett), www.explainigthefuture.com
[2] human germline editing will decrease and even eliminate many serious genetic diseases, reducing human suffering worldwide, (Emeritus Prof. Harris), J Harris, ‘Pro: Research on Gene Editing in Humans must continue’, in ‘Pro and Con: Should Gene Editing be Performed on Human Embryos?’, National Geographic, www.nationalgeographic.com
[3] D Koepsell, ‘The Ethics of Genetic Engineering’ (A position paper from the Center for Inquiry, Office of Public Policy, Washington D.C.) August 2007, www.centerforinquiry.net
[4] F Nelson, ‘The return of eugenics’, The Spectator, 02-Apr-2016, www.thespectator.com.au
[5] S Saulter, ‘Trusting the Future? Ethics of Human Genetic Modification’ (Op-Ed), 6-May-2014, Live Science, www.livescience.com; R Gebelhoff, ‘What’s the difference between genetic engineering and eugenics?’, Washington Post, 22-Feb-2016, www.washingtonpost.com
[6] it is a matter of trust, their argument runs, Saulter, loc.cit. Proponents place much faith in the new, cutting edge gene-editing technology, CRIPR-Cas9, which is reputed to have a lower error rate than other technologies
[7] ‘Q & A about Techno-eugenics’, (HG Alert), www.hgalert.org; B P Foht, ‘The Case against HG Editing’, Nation Review, 4-Dec-2015, www.nationreview.com
[8] M Darnovsky, ‘Con: Do Not Open the Door to Editing Genes in Future Humans’ in ‘Pro and Con’, op.cit.; HG Alert, loc.cit.
[9] Moreover opponents of HGE see such modifications as unnecessary, C J Epstein, ‘Is medical genetics the new eugenics?’, Genetics in Medicine, (2003) 5, www.nature.com. A 36-nation survey by D C Wertz in the 1990s found that both patients and health care professionals held a pessimistic view of the disabled, D C Wertz, ‘Eugenics is alive and well: a survey of genetic professionals around the world’, Sci Context, 1998 Aut-Wint. 11(3-4), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
[10] HG Alert, loc.cit.
[11] Prof. Harris contends that what is ‘natural’ is not inherently good, diseases for example are natural with millions dying prematurely from them. Gene editing therapies, he says, could prevent these illnesses and deaths, Harris, op.cit.
[12] L A Pray, ‘Sport, Gene Doping, and WADA’, Scitable Mobile, (2008), www.nature.com; T Franks, ‘Gene doping: Sport’s biggest battle?’, BBC News, 12-Jan-2014, www.bbc.com
[13] HG Alert, loc.cit.
[14] Foht, op.cit.
[15] Harris, loc.cit.
[16] R Sparrow, ‘Liberalism and eugenics’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 89(3) 2011, www.philpapers.org
[17] David Koepsell has speculated that a monopolisation of power and wealth on the mechanisms of genetics could eventuate in a science fiction-esque future in which the human race is divided into two species, comprising ‘super-humans’ and ‘sub-humans’, Koepsell, op.cit.
[18] it concluded that editing the human germline would be ‘irresponsible’ without resolving the safety and efficacy issues, and without obtaining a “broad social consensus” on the technology’s use, T Lewis, ‘Hundreds of scientists just met in DC and had heated discussions about whether or not they should alter genes in human babies’, Business Insider Australia, 05-Dec-2015, www.businessinsider.com.au
[19] Darnovsky, loc.cit.

Nature Vs Nurture and the Unravelling of ‘Scientific Racism’

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Racial politics, Regional History, Social History, Society & Culture

By the mid 1930s the allure of “scientific racism” was on the wane in advanced western countries❈. Although scientists were in the thick of the movement both as eugenicists and as propagandists, significant numbers of scientists and politicians never bought the shonky scientific approach of the eugenics movement☫. Many in the science community never accepted the methodology for the eugenicists’ grand schemes[1]. Information on heredity was far from comprehensive in that era, the science was misguided and there was a vastly imperfect understanding of genetics, at best rudimentary, at the time. Eugenic hygiene organisations were unable to produce reliable statistics. As John Averell pointed out, “proof’ of research” in the field comprised “primarily statistical correlation within conveniently constructed ‘races’ rather than individual case studies to see if the desirable characteristics were actually inherited”[2].

Mendel's schema
href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/image-8.jpg”> Mendel’s schema[/
The scientific genesis of the 20th century eugenics movement was located in the rediscovered research of 19th century Austrian monk Gregor Mendel. Mendel experimented in plant hybridisation and his laws of inheritance based on the crossing of garden peas✥ were the foundation for the theories of eugenicists like American Charles Davenport. Davenport et al applied the Mendelian method to human traits such as eye colour which he argued was inherited (as the colour of Mendel’s pea plants were). The eugenicists employed an overly simplified dominant/recessive scheme to account for complex behaviours and mental illnesses, this was a fundamental flaw in their thinking (derived from ‘pedigrees’ based on Mendelian inheritance), a single-gene explanation of human characteristics and conditions. Contemporary science unequivocally accepts that these traits are in fact shaped by (many, many) multiple genes, ie, the existence of polygenic traits[3].

Although eugenics was portrayed by its adherents in the early 20th century as a “mathematical science”, a clinical method of predicting traits and behaviours and controlling human breeding, its drew criticism from scientific quarters on a number of levels. The ‘evidence’ was typically shoddy, such as the research into determining just who was to be classified as being ‘feeble’ and ‘unfit’ in society. The eugenicists relied often on subjectivity, second-hand accounts and hearsay to establish the lineages of the ‘undesirable’ gene pool (see PostScript 1), or on visible observable (physical) features (the resort to phrenology and the like). The theories of eugenics did not seem adequate to explain some traits, such as shyness – rather than being an immutable genetic condition, this could be subject to change over time (ie, some people grow out of shyness!). In addition eugenicists took no account of factors external to a person’s gene makeup in the categorisation of the ‘unfit’, such as his or her contracting a transmissible disease such as syphilis[4].

The scrutiny on eugenics, its growing characterisation as a pseudoscience unable to stand up to academic scientific rigour, prompted some proselytisers of eugenics to claim that eugenics was more than merely science, that it was tantamount to a new religion or moral code[5]. One of the eugenics practitioners who typified this was Alexis Carrel, an American-based French surgeon and Nobel Laurette biologist. Carrel’s eugenics was a strange mix of science, religion, clairvoyance and ultra right-wing politics … his extreme ideas were infused with an anti-materialist, holistic spiritual mysticism. In his 1935 international best-seller, Man, the Unknown, Carrel warned against the degenerative effect of modernity and outlined his notion of an autocratic utopia in which the dysgenic elements were eradicated from society[6].

The eugenics scene in Australasia mirrored Europe and America in questioning the correctness of the ‘science’. The scientific community although entrenched in the vanguard of the eugenic movement threw up its share of dissenters from within its ranks. One such was geographer Griffith Taylor who championed “racial hybridity” and cast serious doubts on the goal of race purity and its assumptions that underpinned eugenics. Moreover there was a lack of cohesion and camaraderie among the individual eugenicists who are often rivals of each other … this of itself did not make for a strong, lasting movement in Australia[7].

J B Watson, Behaviourist

The Behaviourist counterpoint:
The rise of behaviourism in the West as a valid analytical tool for explaining human nature was a counterweight to the biological determinism of eugenics whose advocates preached that biology was destiny. The behaviourist backlash against the persuasive eugenics ideology was led by pioneering American psychologist John B Watson▣ around the time of the Great War. Watson, rejecting Freudian concepts of the unconscious mind, or that mental states or ‘instincts’ were significant, arguing instead that observable behaviour was the key to explaining human traits and complex mental states. In doing so, Watson was also refuting the view that heredity played a role in this construct. For Watson, and for B F Skinner who later took up his mantle as a radical behaviourist, the environment, modelled behaviour, was the source of human change. The work of Watson and Skinner and other behaviourists undercut the eugenics movement’s singular reliance on nature by shifting the debate to the significance of nurture in the process[8].

PostScript 1: ‘Feeble’ family studies template
The belief of eugenicists that all social ills – poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, criminality, venereal disease, epilepsy – could be traced back to one genetic flaw, and that intelligence was determined by heredity, was shaped by seminal pioneering studies in the field. One of the most influential was by psychologist Henry Goddard (1912) who analysed the genetic pattern of one man’s lineage (known as “Martin Kallikak” – fabricated name derived from the conjunction of ‘kallos’ beauty and ‘kakos’ bad). ‘Kallikak’ produced two widely divergent types of families (one ‘good’, one ‘bad’), which despite being nurtured in two radically different environments, the patterns of which Goddard concluded was solely the result of heredity[9].

PostScript 2: Polygenism debunked
The polygenists accepted that the species had more than one origin (cf. monogenism – deriving from one, common ancestor). Morton (see FN 2 below) believed that races were arranged in order of intelligence … the fairer the skin the more intelligent. DNA evidence, tracing human markers, has disproved the theory by proving that all Eurasians, Americans, Austronesians, Oceanians and Africans, share the same, common ancestor[10].

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
❈ Scientific racism uses ostensibly scientific or pseudoscientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify racial inferiority or superiority, Scientific racism’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
☫ Scientific racism was denounced by UNESCO in a 1950 statement on race
✥ for what Mendel described as ‘factors’ (the “heredity unit”), the early eugenicists substituted the word ‘genes’
▣ Watson’s life reads like some kind of early 20th century Mad Men persona (influential ad man, marital infidelities, monumental falls from grace, self-exile, etc)

[1] for instance in the interwar period, Thomas Hunt Morgan, a Noble Prize winning evolutionary biologist, rejected the eugenicists’ inadequate methodology, ‘Eugenics in the United States’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
[2] this view prescribed a hierarchical order of races, an Anglo-Saxon ‘race’, a Nordic ‘race’, and so on down the line. Polygenists in the 19th century like Samuel G Morton contended that different races were in fact different species, each with separate origins, ‘Science: 1770s-1850s: One Race or Several Species’, RACE, www.understandingrace.org; J Averell, ‘The End of Eugenics … or is it?’, Melrose Mirror, www.melrosemirror.media.mit.edu
[3] ‘Mendelian genetics cannot fully explain human health and behaviour’, DNA from the beginning, www.dnaftb.org; ‘Rocky Road: Charles Davenport’, www.strangescience.net
[4] Eugenics and scientific racism had been described as “folk knowledge validated by scientific inference”, S A Farber, ‘U.S. Scientists’ Role in the Eugenics Movement (1907-39): A Contemporary Biologist’s Perspective’, Zebrafish, 2008: December; 5(4), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
[5] A H Reggiani, ‘Drilling Eugenics into People’s Minds’, in S Currell [Ed.],
Popular Eugenics, National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s
[6] ibid
[7] D H Wyndham, ‘Striving for National Fitness: Eugenics in Australia 1910s to 1930s’ (Unpub. PhD, Dept of History, University of Sydney, July 1996), www.kooriweb.org
[8] ‘Eugenics movement reaches its height 1923’, A Science Odyssey (PBS), www.pbs.org; ‘John B. Watson’, Wikipedia, www.em.n.wikipedia.org
[9] ‘Kallikak Family’, http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/356/Kallikak-Family.html
[10] ‘Scientific Justifications for Racism’ (Polygenism), www.sites.google.com

The Eugenics Movement in Australasia V: The Fate of the Social Movement after World War II

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National politics, Racial politics, Regional History, Social History, Society & Culture
BMA building, Sydney
BMA building, Sydney

Decline of eugenics in Australasia
Unlike the US the eugenics movements in Australasia failed to even make legislative inroads, let alone implement their theories with any measure of success. Mandatory sterilisation did have genuine community support – from eugenicists, the medical profession, the health bureaucracy, racial hygiene and feminist organisations – but its extreme agenda did not secure the acquiescence of the general public behind it. Moreover, Claudia Thame concluded in her 1974 paper that only a “small minority of zealots” in Australia (some members of the BMA – British Medical Association) held an extreme position on sterilisation[1]. Most practitioners of eugenics in the country tended towards the segregation approach.

Eugenics ideas continued to have some credence after World War II – although not legislated by state authorities, sterilisations continued to be performed on the disabled, especially those with an intellectual disability. Commonly in rural Australia this was done without proper consent (or only with the consent of a third party). Girls from impoverished backgrounds unfortunate enough to be chosen for sterilisation often were told they were having appendectomies. In an era of deinstitutionalisation the eugenic motive for sterilisation tended to be overridden by that of contraception. It was an easier alternative for medical authorities to resort to hysterectomies and tubal ligations than to spend money on educating disadvantaged parents on how to handle their children’s sexuality[2]. There remains a continuity with present practices❃.

1928 Mental Defectives Bill: New Zealand
ef=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/image-7.jpg”> 1928 Mental Defectives Bill: New Zealand[/cap
In New Zealand the 1928 Mental Defectives Amendment Bill was the eugenicists’ best legislative hope for Aeotearoa. It provided for the establishment of a national eugenics board and its sterilisation clauses came close to being law but failed to pass due to a combination of government doubts about the public support for sterilisation and the concerted political opposition to it from Peter Fraser and the Labour Party and intellectuals like university professors Thomas Hunter and Arthur Fitt[3]. Subsequently, the Act’s provision for the registration of mental ‘defectives’ was pursued by the state “without enthusiasm or notable result”[4].

As with Australia and other western countries the lack of legislative support for sterilisation did not prevent its continued ad hoc practice in NZ. Data on involuntary sterilisations of the disabled in postwar New Zealand is sketchy but the numbers of women involved are thought to be significant … like elsewhere, the eugenic motives of the prewar period have a diminished importance, in their place the demand for sterilisation is driven by the priority of managing the sexuality and reproductive capacity of disabled girls and women (also as “an adjunct to the management of bodily hygiene”)[5].

Many churches went along with the eugenics orthodoxy and some Protestant clergymen actually advocated eugenics✥. The Catholic Church however, with its large Irish-Catholic working class following in Australia as well as New Zealand, staunchly opposed eugenics on theological (moral) grounds (the Vatican condemned artificial methods of birth control which interfered with “natural reproduction”)✦. Another formidable institution with class-based objections to the goals of eugenics was the trade union movement. Although not operating as a unified opposition against the spread of eugenics, there were significant sections of organised labour who were concerned that laws affecting mental defectives would heavily target working class children and withheld their support for it[6]. There was considerable skepticism within the Australian and New Zealand working classes about eugenics, many on the left saw it as espousing “elitist definitions of unfitness”[7].

IQ tests continued to be fashionable in the 1950s & beyond: giving ‘scientific’ credence to the stigmatising of those in society labelled as “less intelligent” (Source: The Creativity Post)

By the 1950s in Australasia eugenics had become unfashionable and had fallen out of favour with the public at large … biologists and other scientists, distancing themselves from the discredited eugenics tag, were shifting their focus and energies to working in the dynamic and burgeoning field of human genetics.

⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛⇛
❃ incapacity for parenthood is still used as a valid justification by the Australian judiciary to authorise sterilisations – eg, the ‘burden’ of parents having to deal with the menstrual management of their disabled daughters, even in some cases where the girl was pre-menstrual!, ‘Fact Sheet: Forced Sterilisation – People With Disabilities Australia’, (C Frohmader, Women With Disabilities Australia, submission, 53rd Session of the Committee Against Torture, Geneva, Nov 2014)
✥ non-Catholic church support for eugenic aims in Australia and New Zealand was not as powerfully concentrated as it was in the United States
✦ practicing Catholics as a block tended to oppose eugenics, including writers of the faith such as G K Chesterton, Graham Greene and James Joyce

[1] C Thame, ‘Health and the State: the Development of Collective Responsibility for Health Care in Australia in the first half of the Twentieth Century’, (PhD dissertation, ANU, 1974)
[2] J Goldhar, ‘The Sterilisation of Women with an intellectual disability’, ‘Law and Society Conference’ (Brisbane, December 1990), www.austlit.edu.au
[3] T Taylor, ‘Thomas Hunter and the Campaign Against Eugenics, NZJH, 39(2) 2005
[4] M Finnane, ‘From dangerous lunatic to human rights?: the law and mental illness in Australian history’ in C Coleborne [Ed.], Madness in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum
[5] C Hamilton, ‘Sterilisation and intellectual disabled people in New Zealand – still on the agenda’, Kōtuitui: the New Zealand Journal Social Sciences Online, 7(2), Nov 2012
[6] S Garton, ‘Eugenics in Australia and New Zealand: Laboratories of Racial Science’, in A Bashford & P Levine [Eds.], The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics
[7] ibid.

The International Climate for Eugenics after 1945: Decline? Transformation? Redux?

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National politics, Regional History, Social History, Society & Culture

As egregiously bad as the atrocities committed by the German National Socialists under the guise of “eugenics science” were, it would surprise some to learn that it did not put a death knoll on the practice and advocacy of eugenics in western countries. After the war governments and some eugenicists tended to be a bit more circumspect in talking about the subject but in countries like Great Britain and the United States, rather than disappearing, eugenic ideas and (especially in the US) programs continued to flourish.

The British Welfare State and National “Social Efficiency”
Comparatively, Britain never remotely matched that the eugenics legislative zeal of the US, after WWII however UK policy-makers’ enthusiasm for and belief in eugenics remained high. In 1946 influential English macroeconomics guru John Maynard Keynes was still proclaiming that eugenics was “the most important and significant branch of sociology”[1].

The British Eugenics Society (BES) adopted a manoeuvrable position in the wake of the widespread discrediting of eugenics after the war. BES directed its efforts towards the “rebrand(ing) of race … by arguing that it remained a valuable concept for study” and dismissing the Nazi experience as an aberration which distorted and abused the concept of eugenics. The restrained, liberal stance taken by BES in the United Kingdom ensured the continued support for the Society of progressive and respected scientists like Julian Huxley and J B S Haldane[2].

imageClare Hanson characterises eugenics as less a science than a social and cultural movement, drawing its power from its “dissemination across a range of discursive fields”[3]. Hanson notes that eugenics played a key role in post-war British reconstruction, its ideas sustained and incorporated into the development of the country after 1945. The national efficacy goals of eugenics were visible in the Attlee Labour government’s endorsement of the ‘meritocratic’ ideal. Postwar education reform in the UK illustrates this: the division of secondary education into three strands – grammar, technical and modern – was a philosophical approach geared to the needs of social efficiency, not social justice. A further connexion with pre-WWII’s eugenics was the seminal roles in public policy in the postwar reconstruction and foundation of the welfare state played by eugenics advocates William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss[4].

America: controlling the reproduction of minorities
Across the Atlantic in the US there seems to have been broad support for sterilisation prior to WWII. This was inferred by two polls taken in 1937 … one by Fortune magazine found that 66% supported the existing sterilisation laws, the second, a Gallup poll found 84% in favour of sterilising the chronically mentally ill[5]. Eugenics programs continued to have a vitality after the war. Moreover in a number of states of the US there was a continuance (albeit a reduction in numbers) of forced sterilisations (over 64,000 American people were sterilised under eugenics legislation between 1907 and 1963[6]. The word ‘eugenics’ was removed or downplayed but eugenics ideas still circulated in public discourse (as in Britain) – in the 1950s it manifested in the emphasis placed on family values and child rearing (ie, concerns about the quality of the population). US eugenicists who had flourished in the 1930s reinvented themselves postwar as “genetic scientists” and “marriage counsellors”, some using the term “genetic counselling” to explain what they did[7].

Dr Gamble

One of the leading American eugenics propagandists was Dr Clarence Gamble (heir to the Procter and Gamble “Ivory Soap’ fortune). Gamble funded ‘Birthright’, a birth control organisation, and embarked on a sterilisation drive through the South and Midwest in the 1940s, having most success in North Carolina where he established a ‘showcase’ sterilisation program. Gamble had an intense personal involvement (and financial investment) in the compulsory sterilisation cause, spearheading a saturation campaign of national television ads. Significantly, eugenics activities in postwar America, in a shift from prewar, targeted minorities for remedial action (ie, sterilisations). Enforced sterilisation programs in California were directed primarily at Asians and Mexicans whilst the southern states’ preoccupation was with controlling the African-American population[8].

The end of eugenics? … or a new, ‘better’ form of eugenics by a different name?
As indicated above, revelations of the horrors of Nazi eugenics during the Third Reich and the news of the worse excesses of sterilisation in the US and elsewhere did not put an end to belief in the supposed efficacy of eugenics or to the practice itself. The term was in the main quietly sidelined but the thing itself is like Ulysses’ “bag of winds” or Pandora’s Box – once opened, it is virtually impossible to stop. The desirability of breeding better humans has continued to exercise the minds of the scientifically curious. Eugenics may have passed out of the lexicon (in any positive sense at least)❈ but interest in genetic arguments and ideas remain✥. Many in the scientific community agree with evolutionary theorist R A Fisher that “technically advanced civilisation is unsustainable without eugenics” (The genetical theory of natural selection. A complete variorum edition, 1930)[9].

Public opinion in Britain and America after the war, influenced by a growing recognition of civil and human rights of citizens, became increasingly disaffected with the illiberal idea of coerced sterilisation. Consequently the practice largely came to a halt in the US around the early to mid 1960s[10]. However isolated calls for ad hoc voluntary sterilisation continue to be voiced—often under the guise of “social protection”—regarding people labelled as “low IQ”, “mentally defective” or with large welfare-dependent families[11].

PostScript: A comparative look at the exceptionalism of Scandinavian eugenics
The pattern of legislation on eugenics in the Nordic countries was quite different to the experience of politicians in other western countries. At the height of the eugenics phenomena in the twenties and thirties, sterilisation and marriage bills had an easy passage into law in Scandinavia, with surprisingly little opposition. In the case of Sweden especially, the 1934 Act was not repealed until 1975, by which time there had been upward of 63,000 sterilisations performed on citizens deemed ‘unfit’ by the state to procreate (the great majority on women)回. Scandinavian historians have tended to attribute this to a combination of factors many of which were peculiar to the pheripheral region of North-eastern Europe. These include the rapid industrialisation and modernisation of towns from the late 19th century … the emerging secular and scientific nature of life in Scandinavia contributed to this easy acceptance. Other factors in the explanation for why there was general consensus with the eugenic objectives was the commonality of the Lutheran faith and culture and the relatively egalitarian character of the Scandinavian social structure[12].

Sweden’s eugenic practices stretched from the mid 1930s to the 1970s, with the targeted groups of people coming from the poor, of mixed racial quality or of non-Nordic stock. Often the victims were labelled as educationally ‘inferior’, their sin being that they had learning difficulties such as poor eyesight preventing them from reading the class blackboard[13].

Nils Roll-Hansen has pointed out that Scandinavian society was quick to reject the excesses and unscientific attitudes of eugenics (eg, in Nazi Germany), whilst not rejecting the basic ideas and beliefs of eugenics. The political structure inherent in the Nordic countries was considered conducive to the success achieved by proponents of eugenics. The dominant labour parties (especially the Swedish Social Democratic Party) elicited effectively co-operation from the labour organisations in implementing social policy (as part of the country’s “social contract”). Roll-Hansen has contended that the region’s liberal-democratic tradition with its stress on the rights of the individual ensured that the eugenic practices that were put in place were moderate only[14]. The unearthing of Roll-Hansen and Broberg’s ‘bombshell’ had a big effect on Scandinavians, especially the Swedes … in 1999 Sweden agreed to compensate victims of forced sterilisations, offering each individual affected up to 175,000 kronors[15].

┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅
❈ to be replaced with terms like “human genetic science” or “human genetic engineering”
✥ eradicating disease, lengthening the human lifespan, the human genome project, genetic enhancement, environmental and food applications, etc.
回 Sweden was the only one of the Nordic states with a national eugenics society

[1] V Brignall, ‘The eugenics movement Britain wants to forget’, New Statesman, 9-Dec-2010, www.newstatesman.com
[2] G Schaffer, Racial Science and British Society, 1930-1962. With the name ‘eugenics’ becoming a taboo word post-WWII the BES eventually changed its name to the Galton Institute … likewise in the US, the American Eugenics Society finally changed its name in 1973, becoming the more neutral-sounding Society for the Study of Social Biology
[3] C Hanson, Eugenics, Literature and Culture in Post-war Britain; S Garton, ‘Eugenics in Australia and New Zealand: laboratories of racial science’, in A Bashford & P Levine [Eds.], The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. Eugenics has also been described as a straight out political movement, a form of ruling class consolidation, M Quigley, ‘The Roots of the I.Q. Debate. Eugenics and Social Control’, PRA (Professional Research Associates), www.publiceye.org
[4] ibid.
[5] Also, the New York Times in 1933 opined that the US policy on sterilisations was “harmless and very humane”, P Levine, Eugenics: a Very Short Introduction
[6] states leading the way were California, Virginia and North Carolina, ‘Eugenics in the United States’, op.cit.
[7] L Ko, ‘Unwanted Sterilizations and Eugenics programs in the United States’, PBS, 29-Jan-2016 www.pbs.org; P Lombardo, ‘Eugenic Sterilization Laws’, in the Eugenics Archive, www.eugenicsarchive.org; Encyclopedia of American Social Movements, Ed. by I Ness (D Hoff, ‘Survival of Euugenics’). Genetic counselling had the same euphemistic usage in Britain after the war with the first genetic counselling clinic in the UK opening in 1946
[8] K Begos, ‘The American eugenics movement after World War II’ (3 parts), Indy Week, www.indyweek.com. Paul Ehrlich’s highly influential Population Bomb (1968) in advocating world population control derives its premise from eugenics thought and rhetoric
[9] F K Salter, ‘Eugenics Ready or Not’, Quadrant, 11-May-2015, www.quadrant.org.au
[10] although it has been revealed that as recently as the mid 1970s over 3,000 native American women were involuntarily sterilised by the IHO (the US Indian Health Service), G W Rutecki,’Forced Sterilization of Native Americans: Late Twentieth Century Physician Cooperation with National Eugenic Policies’, Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, 8-Oct-2010, www.cbhd.org
[11] ‘Compulsory Sterilization’, Wikipedia, www.em.n.wiki.org
[12] N Rolls-Hansen, ‘Conclusion: Scandinavian Eugenics in the International Context’, in G Broberg & N Rolls-Hansen [Eds], Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policies in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland
[13] ‘Sweden admits to racial purification’, The Independent,, 25-Aug-1997, www.independent.co.uk
[14] Rolls-Hansen, op.cit.
[15] ‘Sweden to reflect on eugenics past’, The Local (Sweden), 21-Dec-2005, www.thelocal.se