Defining Eugenics
Knee-jerk descriptions of possible genetic innovations as ‘eugenics’ are best avoided
The word eugenics is a strong pejorative. Its use today is highly politicised. Geneticists working to ameliorate or reduce the incidence of adverse conditions are sometimes accused of it. Whether a new therapy amounts to eugenics is a subjective matter; people are entitled to their opinions. But it is useful to understand two ideas central to most definitions.
The English polymath Sir Francis Galton, who founded the discipline of Psychometrics and coined such terms as correlation and nature versus nurture introduced there term eugenics to mean:
“the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a neater word and a more generalised one than viriculture, which I once ventured to use” (Inquires into Human Faculty and its development, 1883, pp24–25).
At the outset, then, Galton emphasised the science and not the politics. He was not entirely uninterested in governance but his fields were science and sums. It might not be unreasonable, however, to take his “all influences” as including the policy levers available to governments.
The policy misuse of Galton’s ideas about eugenics began in the US shortly after his death. Then of course The Holocaust followed in Germany. Some, though not all, of the genetic science implicit within eugenic ideas employed by these states was erroneous (through, for example, the tendency for politicians and some scientists to ignore the Hardy-Weinberg principle of which many scientists of the day were aware). And since genetic science was more or less conflated with eugenics until after World War Two, the field of genetics faced great peril in the reckoning which followed the war. In the period since World War Two, geneticists have generally (and understandably) been at pains to separate genetics from eugenics in the public mind.
Orthodox definitions from professional bodies today therefore give prominence to the role of the state. Eugenics is in this way often descibed as a social and political philosophy rather than simply the biological ideas Galton was emphasising. This implies that 21st century genetic therapies could not, of themselves, amount to eugenics.
Nevertheless some scientists, notably Nicholas Agar, have this century sought to disentangle the idea of the improvement of human stock from state action. These arguments have been extensively critiqued. Like many other people, Agar wishes to see parents able to ensure the best outcomes for their children without the state’s involvement other than deciding not to intervene through prohibitive legislation. He calls this liberal eugenics. This conception seems to rely on a benign understanding of eugenics in Galton’s image. Given The Holocaust’s defining function, however, Agar’s attempt to rehabilitate the word eugenics through inserting the positive sounding adjective liberal does appear overly optimistic.
My opinion on all this has changed, for what it’s worth. I used to find the position of the professional bodies and many scientists a little Machiavellian. I thought it would be better to use the term eugenics shorn of the state action imperatives in order to err on the side of caution when it came to public discourse on possible new therapies. If a thing has possible eugenic implications, then this should be clear from the start. Accordingly, I used the term Edugenics in my own doctoral thesis to this effect.
However, today there is a general trend in public discourse to disparage reason and rationality and to emphasise shouting loudly over social media. Politicians and research funders are often very influenced by such shouting. This, it seems to me, risks serious chilling effects on important and legitimate lines of scientific research. In this context, it seems far too easy to damn a legitimate line of genetic research by hurling the eugenics epithet at it. I realise now that my own use of Edugenics unintentionally but unfairly cast an aspersion upon scholars working in the field I was referring to. I would use a different term if writing about the same thing now.
Eugenics is, I think, best understood today in the context of the terrible 20th century political abuses of scientific ideas, some of which wilted under later testing. People should and do debate vigorously whether medical interventions made possible through new genetics research are or would be desirable or moral. But the terrible abuse by a minority of political leaders of early genetic science, unforseen by Galton, combined with how easy it is to use the term eugenics pejoratively about any therapy at issue, seem to me to point towards a best public understanding of eugenics as the state seeking to direct or facilitate the supposed improvement of human stock through genetic science.
