Kamari Haskins
Bioethics 345
Professor Pearson
24 October 2018
Eugenics
Imagine being able to walk inside a clinic and tell the doctors how you want your baby to look, just like you’re ordering food in a McDonald’s drive-thru. When some think of Eugenics, that’s the imagery that comes across their minds. Eugenics is the practice of selective breeding among a certain population. Some despise that idea of that happening and others wouldn’t mind if it did happen. The word is derived from the Greek meaning “well-born.” It came about when Francis Galton, known as the “Father of Eugenics”, developed the idea in the 1800s’s. His goal was to improve the human race by centering his attention to families with great achievement, such as a models, doctors, and judges. There are two different type of eugenics; positive and negative. Positive eugenics is breeding in desirable traits and the encouragement of people with those desirable traits to reproduce. Negative eugenics is the elimination of undesirable traits and preventing people with “bad traits” from reproduction. The idea of eugenics became popular and was displayed on media as a way to protect the future generations from the “unfit.” Unfit people were considered as people who were former criminals, had babies out of wedlock, prostitutes and more. Eugenics was also linked to racism. African Americans were known as “unfit” and because of this they were discouraged to have children, because people thought that their children would be a danger to others. In today’s society eugenics is discouraged because of its effects on human populations in the past. However, some think that eugenics is trying to sneak its way back into society. Eugenics is not morally permissible because it can potentially cause history to repeat itself, it promotes inequality, and the diversity of the human species will decrease.
One very important reason eugenics is immoral is because it could cause history to repeat itself. Eugenics was the reason for the Holocaust and U.S. sterilization movement, which have had a huge negative impact on the human population. There is a lot a bad people in this world that could establish new branches of science, such as Eugenics, to gain control. Hilter Adolf was one of those people and his acts left an unforgettable mark on history.
The Holocaust was a horrific historical event. It began in 1933 and lasted for over a decade, filling people across the world with terror and dread. Hitler Adolf was the concocter of the horrific event. Hitler’s effort was to make an “ideal” race. “Eugenic treatises for the educated and pamphlets for the masses were published in the hundreds of thousands. Madi¬son Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race (1916), with its argument for the ex¬ termination of all Africans and Jews, was an international bestseller; Hitler had a personal copy.” (pg.57, Ranft) He eliminated anybody who didn’t look like the “pure” race that he imagined. Blonde hair and blue eyes were two of the main traits that made a person apart of the “superior race.” During this period of history Jews and Germans were divided in efforts to make Germany “racially pure.” German’s were known as the superior race, while Jews, homosexuals, disabled and many more were discriminated against. Over the years, he hired many Nazi soldiers, or other people that had similar beliefs, to govern the streets of Germany. Jews were forced to wear yellow stars and it was a tactic to dehumanize them and single them out in a crowd. Millions of Jews and undesirables were sent to concentration camps where they were sent to hard work or killed. Others were sent to labs to be probed on like lab rats where they were forced to participate in gruesome experiments. The Nazi’s preformed several experiments such as the twin, sterilization, and bone, muscle, and nerve transplantation experiment. One popular experiment was the eye injections. Blue eyes were a popular trait of the superior race, so the Jews were forced get blue dye injected into their eyes. Most of the time the result of it was blindness. Many of the harsh experiments resulted in death, disability, and trauma. “There is the method of injecting air-bubbles into the blood stream: it is cheap, dean and efficient, producing clots, embolisms, and death within a few hours.” (pg.817, Fry) Hitler’s effort to ethnically cleanse the world resulted in over a million fatalities.
The U.S. sterilization movement was a period of history where forced sterilization was legal. A bill was proposed in 1849 to sterilize the “unfit.” People who were considered unfit were discouraged to reproduce and after the bill was proposed several of states started to approve it. It was funded by the government and in 1927, the sterilization of the disabled became constitutional. Latinos and African Americans were one the main targets of the sterilization, because they were considered “unfit.” Forced sterilization was a main example of negative eugenics.
“Eugenics grants “civilized men” (later eugenics call them the fit) total control of the “savage races” (the unfit). It is as simple as this: I say I am superior to you, so 1get to decide whether you are worthy of life. As to who these unfit people are, answers varied little. Anyone who was alcoholic, homeless, deaf, blind, criminal, illegitimate, short, feebleminded (sub-classified as idiots, imbeciles, and morons), non-white, orphaned, unemployed, tubercu¬lar, or epileptic or who masturbated ended up on someone’s unfit lists.” (pg.58, Ranft)
Another reason why the study of eugenics in America is immoral is because it promotes inequality. The purpose of eugenics is improving the human population by getting rid of imperfect traits. The technology to perform the procedures to take away undesirable traits is expensive. With the price of these procedures being so great, only those in the higher up tax bracket would be able to afford it. The rich will start to buy genes from celebrities, famous athletes, and Harvard graduates in the hope that their offspring will inherit the same traits. This will eventually cause the middle-and low-class individuals of society to feel left out. This will eventually cause a separation between the genetically engineered and the natural humans. “The kind of economic inequality that genetic alterations and technological enhancements could foster over multiple generations is huge. It could even split the human race: Various groups of trans humans who have been genetically and mechanically enhanced vs. regular humans like me and you who haven't.” (theweek.com, Aziz) The children of the wealthy will be born with desirable traits such as disease- free, 20/20 vision, and good social skills. The offspring who were not born with these “perfect” traits might be looked at and treated different as they grow up. This will cause a new reason to treat others unequally throughout the human population.
Diversity is a very important factor in human population. Eugenics will cause a major decrease in the diversity throughout the population. Diversity happens in a process called natural selection, which is the process when humans find a mate and reproduce without control technology. “The human race is diverse because of the diversity of the parents. But when new generation of humans are controlled genetically, it eliminates diversity and creates a unified type of race that is deemed perfect and superior.” (connectusfund.org) The absence of it will cause the genetic diversity in humans to decline. This will eventually interfere with future evolution. Evolution the change of humans over time to ensure that the strongest genes always carry on through time. Humans evolve to increase their probability of survival.
It has been argued that eugenics can however, be moral when it is used to prevent diseases. The engineering of an embryo’s genetic makeup can terminate the diseases that can make the child’s life hard. Murgia, a news reporter, suggested that although eugenics is thought of as immoral, it can be used to save lives. In other words, it can be used to keep prevent fetuses from future suffering of the disease later. For instance, if a fetus’s father has a trait for Hunter syndrome, they should be able to use technology to remove that gene from the child. It is understandable why the opposition argues that eugenics should be used if it is benefiting a fetus from future agony. Though it is true that eugenics is good when being used to prevent and get rid of diseases, it is overall immoral. Eugenics can give people the ability to control other humans. It can be used to reinvent a person genetic makeup and that can be easily taken advantage of.
Eugenics is a worldwide controversial topic and there is a variety of opinions on whether eugenics is moral or immoral. It raises a lot of ethical questions, because it gives people a lot of control over the human population. Americans should oppose the idea of Eugenics because it is immoral. It can cause a potential slippery slope of the past events in history, with examples such as the U.S. Sterilization movement and Holocaust. Eugenics also has encouraged inequality in America in the past and affects the process of natural selection and the diversity of humans which is needed for evolution and survival. In the future, additional research should be conducted on eugenics and limits should be set for how far humans and animals can be manipulated with.
Work Cited Page
Aziz, John. “Genetic Modification Could Lead to Inequality like We've Never Seen.” The Week – All You Need to Know about Everything That Matters, The Week, 22 July 2014, theweek.com/articles/445134/genetic-modification-could-lead-inequality-like-weve-never-seen.
Fry, Varian. “The Massacre of the Jews.” Scribd, The New Republican, 2018, www.scribd.com/doc/234772665/The-Massacre-of-the-Jews.
Lombardo, R. “ConnectUS.” Global Issues Blog, N.A., 21 July 2015, connectusfund.org/10-fundamental-pros-and-cons-of-eugenics#.
Murgia, Madhumita. “Eugenics Need Not Be a Dirty Word – Instead, It Could Be Lifesaving Technology.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 26 Oct. 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11956083/Eugenics-isnt-a-dirty-word.-Instead-could-be-lifesaving-technology.html.
Ranft, Patricia. “Eugenics and an Overlooked Rebuttal.” Human Life Review, vol. 44, no. 1, Winter 2018, pp. 56–62. EBSCOhost, proxy.lib.odu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=128949423&site=ehost-live&scope=site. (Target Article)