Issues in Population and Bioethics | Page 4

and decide who is to live and who is
to die, who is to breed and who may not? Why select by intelligence
and not by courtesy or altruism or church-going - or al of them together?
It is here that eugenics fails miserably.
Should the criterion be physical, like in ancient Sparta? Should it be
mental? Should IQ determine one's fate - or social status or wealth?
Different answers yield disparate eugenic programs and target
dissimilar groups in the population.
Aren't eugenic criteria liable to be unduly influenced by fashion and
cultural bias? Can we agree on a universal eugenic agenda in a world as
ethnically and culturally diverse as ours? If we do get it wrong - and the
chances are overwhelming - will we not damage our gene pool
irreparably and, with it, the future of our species?
And even if many will avoid a slippery slope leading from eugenics to
active extermination of "inferior" groups in the general population - can
we guarantee that everyone will? How to prevent eugenics from being
appropriated by an intrusive, authoritarian, or even murderous state?
Modern eugenicists distance themselves from the crude methods
adopted at the beginning of the last century by 29 countries, including
Germany, The United States, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Venezuela,
Estonia, Argentina, Norway, Denmark, Sweden (until 1976), Brazil,
Italy, Greece, and Spain.
They talk about free contraceptives for low-IQ women, vasectomies or
tubal ligations for criminals, sperm banks with contributions from high
achievers, and incentives for college students to procreate. Modern
genetic engineering and biotechnology are readily applicable to eugenic

projects. Cloning can serve to preserve the genes of the fittest. Embryo
selection and prenatal diagnosis of genetically diseased embryos can
reduce the number of the unfit.
But even these innocuous variants of eugenics fly in the face of
liberalism. Inequality, claim the proponents of hereditary amelioration,
is genetic, not environmental. All men are created unequal and as much
subject to the natural laws of heredity as are cows and bees. Inferior
people give birth to inferior offspring and, thus, propagate their
inferiority.
Even if this were true - which is at best debatable - the question is
whether the inferior specimen of our species possess the inalienable
right to reproduce? If society is to bear the costs of over-population -
social welfare, medical care, daycare centers - then society has the right
to regulate procreation. But does it have the right to act discriminately
in doing so?
Another dilemma is whether we have the moral right - let alone the
necessary knowledge - to interfere with natural as well as social and
demographic trends. Eugenicists counter that contraception and
indiscriminate medicine already do just that. Yet, studies show that the
more affluent and educated a population becomes - the less fecund it is.
Birth rates throughout the world have dropped dramatically already.
Instead of culling the great unwashed and the unworthy - wouldn't it be
a better idea to educate them (or their off-spring) and provide them
with economic opportunities (euthenics rather than eugenics)? Human
populations seem to self-regulate. A gentle and persistent nudge in the
right direction - of increased affluence and better schooling - might
achieve more than a hundred eugenic programs, voluntary or
compulsory.
That eugenics presents itself not merely as a biological-social agenda,
but as a panacea, ought to arouse suspicion. The typical eugenics text
reads more like a catechism than a reasoned argument. Previous
all-encompassing and omnicompetent plans tended to end traumatically
- especially when they contrasted a human elite with a dispensable
underclass of persons.
Above all, eugenics is about human hubris. To presume to know better
than the lottery of life is haughty. Modern medicine largely obviates the
need for eugenics in that it allows even genetically defective people to

lead pretty normal lives. Of course, Man himself - being part of Nature
- may be regarded as nothing more than an agent of natural selection.
Still, many of the arguments advanced in favor of eugenics can be
turned against it with embarrassing ease.
Consider sick children. True, they are a burden to society and a
probable menace to the gene pool of the species. But they also inhibit
further reproduction in their family by consuming the financial and
mental resources of the parents. Their genes - however flawed -
contribute to genetic diversity. Even a badly mutated phenotype
sometimes yields precious scientific knowledge and an interesting
genotype.
The implicit Weltbild of eugenics is static - but the real world is
dynamic. There is no such thing as a "correct" genetic makeup towards
which we must all strive. A combination of genes may be perfectly
adaptable to one environment - but woefully inadequate in another. It is
therefore prudent to encourage genetic diversity or polymorphism.
The more rapidly the world changes,