The eugenics movement came about at the time when the ideas of perfectionism and reform movements were rampant. It started with Francis Galton, who coined the term in 1883. He was a relative to the well known Charles Darwin, and likely saw "survival of the fittest" as a justification for natural selection being applied to humans. Galton saw two different kinds of humans; those considered desirable and those that were not so desirable. While he did not advocate for the outright elimination of these "undesirables", he did want to encourage the healthiest and fittest people to have more offspring for the good of humanity. His ideas were adopted to a varying degree, by Heinrich Himmler, who created Lebensborn living facilities for "desirable" SS women to receive good medical care and giving them subsidies for having a lot of children.
Sadly, eugenics would soon take a turn for the worse. Known as "negative eugenics", such tactics called for the forced sterilization or outright removal of "undesirables". Negative eugenics was based on animal husbandry and agricultural genetics, and a reaction to the failure of asylums and other methods. While the forced sterilization of people practiced in America was nowhere at the level of the Nazi's genocide of certain groups (Jews, the mentally and physically handicapped, gypsies, etc), it still demonstrates the influence eugenics had as a justification of violating people's rights and bodies. The practice was justified on criminals and the disabled because it was for their own benefit and allowed them to participate productively in society rather than be locked in a mental ward.
After WW2, the eugenics movement receded into history books. But in recent years, we can still see how people are still trying to manipulate genes. CRISPR, also known as Clustered Regularly Inter-spaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is a gene-modifier that is already being tested to 'resolve' mutations in humans. The consequences of this are not yet entirely known, so such developments should be approached with caution. This also brings up moral and ethical dilemmas similar to that of eugenics. Should we still be able to modify our children's genes? Or would doing so stigmatize and alienate other generations of people who possess "undesirable traits"? Would we just be normalizing able-ism and racism?
Sources:
https://www.broadinstitute.org/what-broad/areas-focus/project-spotlight/questions-and-answers-about-crispr
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay2text.html
https://issues.org/the-history-of-eugenics/
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I definitely do not think parents should be allowed to design their babies' looks, intelligence, athletic ability, etc. I think our diversity as a human race is necessary for society to effectively function, and if people are able to pick and choose what traits their kids have, we may lose people’s different talents, strengths, and perspectives. Also, allowing this would only benefit those who can afford it, furthering the gap between the poor and the rich. However, I do believe we should allow gene editing to remove genetic diseases. Not only will this benefit the next generation, but it will also protect the health of all future descendants. If we have the means to do that and eradicate certain diseases, I feel it would be unethical not to try. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612258/are-we-designing-inequality-into-our-genes/
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ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting because a lot of the things that you mentioned in your blog I wasn't aware about until now, it gave me a good insight of what you talked about due to the detailed things you said. I also don't agree on how parents thought they would be able to design their own baby I find that very wrong because they aren't allowing them to be themselves which is better than the parents making there own for there children. I also think this is wrong because people that are not able to afford this it would only benefit people with wealth they should just let everyone be themselves and show there own talents and not force anything.
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