The Eugenics Movement and Eugenicide | A multifaceted analysis
“Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases: and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders. If by these and similar means the annual mortality were increased from 1 in 36 or 40, to 1 in 18 or 20, we might probably every one of us marry at the age of puberty, and yet few be absolutely starved.”— Thomas Malthus
Eugenics emerged as a philosophy that was mainly concerned with improving the quality of the population by promoting sexual reproduction between individuals seen to have ‘desirable’ traits and discouraging the heredity of socially ‘undesirable’ traits by prevention of procreation between people who were thought to possess them. The former is termed ‘positive’ eugenics while the latter is called ‘negative’ eugenics. A popular eugenics movement first developed in the United Kingdom, later spreading to other countries including the United States.
Notice how (probably) the single-most recurring symbolization of eugenics on Google has given in to one of the most degenerative plagues that have, and will ever, befall humanity; an eye-sore that never misses to entirely sabotage a grammar Nazi’s reading initiative: incorrect grammar, for crying out loud!
Origin
The term ‘eugenics’ was coined by Francis Galton, a distant relative of Charles Darwin. Sir Francis Galton was an English Victorian statistician, progressive, polymath, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, inventor, geographer, meteorologist, proto-geneticist and psychometrician. There was not in a world’s chance of his nothing-out-of-the-ordinary résumé making it through our trimming rounds but for the long list of obscure, wholesomely uninteresting words that abound it.
Francis had read Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection and wanted to apply the same principles in artificially selecting and propagating ‘desirable’ genes in the human population. Francis made a glaring assumption by considering good human qualities as being inherited genetically, an ideology that came to be known as genetic determinism.
Proponents of eugenics, the so-called eugenicists were successful in convincing the Carnegie Institution and other mainstream educational forums about the scientific validity of eugenics despite a dearth of empirical data in support of their claim. Eugenics became an academic discipline in reputed universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT). Many countries adopted eugenic policies in the attempt to improve the gene pool of the citizenry, which included marriage prohibitions, coerced sterilizations and abortions. Among the eminent supporters of this ideology were figures like Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger and John Harvey Kellogg.
Genocidal Eugenics | The justification of Nazi Policies
Genocidal Eugenics or Eugenicide commonly refers to the extermination of weak and ‘defective’ people to filter the gene-flow from the present generation to the next. Quite interestingly, it differs slightly from mainstream eugenics in taking a more radical approach for the removal of undesirable genes from the gene-pool of a country, and in focusing primarily on the differently-abled people, which were often seen as a burden on the resources of a nation. Eugenicide is synonymous with involuntary euthanasia to a great extent.
Eugenic policies in Hitler’s Germany were largely inspired by similar policies in the United States, particularly in the state of California. Hitler believed in racial superiority and purity; he was convinced that his Fatherland had been compromised through dysgenics, or the contamination of the Aryan genes. On July 14, 1933, the Nazi government issued its “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.” Meticulous German eugenic policymakers came up with a comprehensive list of prisoners, homosexuals and mentally and physically challenged children and adults, then seen as “beings of lesser worth,” “ballast existences,” “life unworthy of life,” or “useless eaters,” to be deleted from the hierarchy chain.
Consequently, large masses of listed individuals were rounded up and taken to involuntary euthanasia centres or concentration camps. Some ‘dysgenic’ citizens were surreptitiously killed in transportation buses by the release of poisonous gases stored in the bus engines. This episode of government-ordained killings came to be known as the Aktion T-4 Program.
With the defeat of Hitler’s Germany and the end of World War-II, the famous Nuremberg Trials were conducted in order to provide compensation to the afflicted countries and convict the war criminals. Eugenic principles were used to justify Germany’s stance in the war including the notorious Holocaust, albeit to little advantage.
Eugenics | Scientific validity and Ethicality dissected
The Eugenics movement, from the very beginning, was built on shaky scientific and ethical principles. Here we make an attempt to dissect the various aspects of the Eugenics Movement from an objective perspective:
- The very basis of the Eugenics Movement was the assumption that good human qualities are purely genetic in nature. It is important to make a carefully worded distinction here: all good qualities, personality traits, in particular, are not assuredly hereditary. Similarly, all ‘undesirable’ traits are not traceable to genetic roots. While certain qualities like intelligence have high heritability, implying that a large proportion of variations recorded in human intelligence has to do with genetics rather than environmental factors, many behavioural traits, on the other hand, show nearly equal heritability and non-heritability. Furthermore, most individuals of a particular species carry recessive traits, which may become dominant in subsequent generations notwithstanding genetic purity.
- Eugenic philosophies are often bent to become normative and political in establishing an acceptable criterion to identify and distinguish the ‘desirable’ from the ‘undesirable’ traits. With little to no possibilities of experimentation, there is always the risk of individual interpretations of what is ‘desirable’ in men entitledly warranting violations of people’s fundamental rights to equality and fair treatment. For example, it was ‘undesirable’ to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.
- Genetic homogenization of a population leads to loss of biodiversity. As a result of a shallow gene pool, organisms tend to be more vulnerable to disease and environmental change. Moreover, environmental change can cause previously beneficial traits to become liabilities in virtually no time. Therefore, the practice of eugenics might augment genetic mistakes, rather than reducing them.
Conclusion
While the intention of creating a Utopian World is noble in itself, several ethical compromises have to be made on the road to accessing it. It is important to note that the history of eugenics is smeared in blood; thus, by opting to continue the practice of eugenics, we risk an equally, or perhaps a bloodier future. It is equally critical to understand that the condemnation of certain social groups on the basis of an ‘undesirable’ trait that may be commonly observed in the members of those groups is, in fact, a by-product of ignorant and hasty generalization. For example, backwardness among the scheduled castes of India has a historical link. It is not a certificate of their inherent inferiority; rather, it is a window into their gruesome past. As the newer generations abandon caste-based stereotypes and strive to educate themselves, they represent a new possibility to look at ‘undesirable’ traits with a humane perspective: as natural, corrigible human shortcomings rather than immutable genetic implantations. Upliftment, not murder, should be the herald of Utopia.
Reader’s Takeaway
Originally published at populationcontrolweb.wordpress.com on August 28, 2017.
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