Eugenics

Eugenics can be defined as an effort to selectively improve human hereditary traits through encouraging the reproduction of those possessing desirable genes and, conversely, restricting reproduction among individuals whose genetic makeup is considered undesirable. A more inclusive definition would also interpret this practice as a social, political, and economic philosophy, one perhaps most graphically illustrated by the rise of Nazism and the mass exterminations committed by the Third Reich. However, the genesis of this ideology can be ascribed to the preeminent scientific and philosophical minds of the 18th and 19th centuries. Its perpetuation in contemporary Western society is manifest in the practice of choosing the sex of an unborn child. The potential for eye color, hair color, athletic prowess, musical ability, and superior cognitive capacity to eventually be predetermined is an issue fraught with controversy. On one side of the conflict are those who see exciting new possibilities for technology, the economy, public health, citizenship, and moral standards of the intellectually distinguished increase in number. On the other side are those who predict a scenario in which new social strata would be formed, and in which the rights and privileges afforded the gifted would supersede those of marginalized populations, as well as those of the preponderance of humankind who do not meet the criteria for giftedness. This entry describes the history and influence of the concept of eugenics and the status of the eugenics controversy today.

Records of regulated human reproduction designed to eliminate the physically and mentally impaired from the population date back to ancient Greece and Sparta. In 1798, Thomas Malthus's theory of population growth laid the early foundations of the modern eugenics movement. In predicting that humankind's proliferation would cyclically outstrip food supply and result in famine, he proposed stabilizing population growth through sexual abstinence and delayed marriage among the poor and working classes, a method with the added benefit of containing transmission of genetic weakness.

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was significantly influenced by Malthus's work, in that Darwin viewed the process of natural selection as one conducive to the quality of the human gene pool. However, the phrase survival of the fittest is attributed to the English philosopher and Darwin contemporary Herbert Spencer, who borrowed from evolutionary theory in contending that the social order operated according to a natural selection dynamic and that public assistance programs for the poor represented impediments to this process. Social Darwinism arose from this equating of material success with fitness, and financial hardship with genetic qualities undesirable in the human species.

Francis Galton's coining of the term eugenics in 1889 ushered in a new science, one devoted to the improvement of humanity through selective mating. In an era when Mendelian genetic experiments revolutionized the scientific community, Galton proposed a statistical relationship between success and accomplishment (or lack thereof) and heredity, one uninfluenced by environmental factors. He maintained that the future of society lay in positive eugenics, which promoted the breeding of humans based on their superior fitness, and did not endorse controlling the reproduction of dysgenic individuals.

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