Cloning and the new eugenics

It's ba-aack.

Eugenics, the ideology that seeks to improve humankind by manipulating our collective gene pool, is making a comeback. Not only is this pernicious utopianism regaining respectability, but with the advent of computers and recent breakthroughs in bioscience, a "new eugenics" would be far more robust and effective than the "old eugenics" ever was.

Eugenics originated with the English mathematician and statistician, Francis Galton. A cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton believed that heredity governed human talent and character just as it does eye coloration and facial features. In 1865 he proposed that society adopt the selective breeding techniques of animal husbandry as a means to improve society. He later coined the term eugenics, which means "good in birth," to identify the cause.

In its boom years of the 1920s and 1930s, eugenics developed into a very influential social and political movement in the United States, Canada, England, and Germany. In the U.S. alone, eugenics theory was taught in more than 350 American universities and appeared in more than 90 percent of high school biology textbooks. Eugenics societies were formed throughout the country and academic journals proliferated. Philanthropic foundations, such as the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations embraced the movement wholeheartedly, financing eugenics research and policy initiatives. Many of the political, cultural, and arts icons of the day-including Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Margaret Sanger-- were proud eugenicists.

Eugenicists took two distinct approaches to implementing their theories. Believers in "positive eugenics" sought to persuade men and women possessing "worthy" traits to intermarry and procreate liberally in order to strengthen the human gene pool. (Four children per marriage was thought to be the minimum number necessary to maintain a given stock.) There were even prizes awarded to large families exhibiting the best eugenic traits.

Positive eugenics perniciously undermined human equality by claiming that some humans were inherently better than others. But its evil twin, "negative eugenics," was even worse. Believing that eugenic marriages would be insufficient to hold back the rising tide of "unfit" humanity, negative eugenics sought to prevent those with "undesirable" traits from procreating at all: Under the spell of eugenics, more than 30 states passed laws that resulted in 60,000 innocent Americans being forcibly sterilized. Matters were even worse in Germany: not only did the government sterilize hundreds of thousands of people, but the eugenics movement provided intellectual justification for the euthanasia Holocaust circa 1939-1945, during which German doctors murdered more than 250,000 disabled infants, children, and adults.

Horrified by the bloodshed and oppression, the West turned away from eugenics. Branded a "pseudo-science," eugenics was pronounced stone-cold dead-and good riddance to it.

But eugenics wasn't really dead; it was merely hibernating. Memories of the Holocaust faded and religious faith waned as reverence for naked science increased and researchers unlocked many of the mysteries of life at the molecular level. For many, the belief in the sanctity of human life became passe. These events reached into the eugenics grave and like the evil alien in Stephen King's It, the beast stretched, yawned, and began to stir.

The trouble started in the early 1970s: only thirty years after the euthanasia Holocaust killing genetically "unfit" babies once again became a topic of conversation among the bioethics elite and scientific intelligentsia. For example, Nobel Laureate James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA helix, declared in 1973, "No one should be thought of as alive until about three days after birth," adding that parents would then be "allowed the choice" to keep their baby or "allow" their child to die if his or her genetics did not pass muster. Similarly, in 1978 his research partner Francis Crick was quoted in media reports as opining "No newborn should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment" and that "if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to life."

Such views, while still shocking in the 1970s, are perceived by many today as worthy topics of calm, respectful debate. Consider the example of Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer, who argues that an infant has no more right to live than a fish does because neither is a "person."

Singer is the world's best known advocate of infanticide. He justifies baby-- killing as a way of increasing overall happiness in society. Knowing that he wouldn't get far calling for permission to kill "normal" infants-no matter how much unhappiness such infants might be perceived to cause-Singer cynically focuses his assault on the sanctity and equality of human life by promoting eugenic infanticide (my term) of disabled infants. For example, in his philosophy primer Practical Ethics, Singer wrote:

When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of the happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if the killing of the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others it would . be right to kill him ....

True, Singer and others of his ilk do not spout hatred from the rooftops about unfit masses overwhelming respectable folk, as their intellectual predecessors did in the past. Rather, they promote infanticide with passive prose as an impersonal utilitarian tool to reduce suffering. But that is just the same old evil in a different suit. It is intrinsically eugenic in that it assumes that some human lives have greater value than other human lives, and further, that we can deny some the right to life while preserving it for others. Illustrating how high the tide has already risen, Singer should be an intellectual outcast-but instead, he was rewarded for his views a few years ago by receiving from Princeton University a coveted tenured chair in bioethics.

As if this weren't worrisome enough, along comes human cloning. Human cloning is explosively controversial. Most agree that "reproductive cloning" (cloning to produce live-born infants) should be banned, at least for now. But we are currently arguing heatedly over whether cloning should be permitted for research purposes.

Usually, the cloning debate focuses on whether it is moral to create human clones, destroy them, and then harvest their embryonic stem cells for use in future medical therapies. Less discussed-but just as urgently in need of our attention-is the prospect that research cloning would open the door to ultra eugenics-the genetic redesign of our progeny. As pro-cloner Princeton biologist Lee M. Silver wrote in Remaking Eden, "Without cloning, genetic engineering is simply science fiction. But with cloning, genetic engineering moves into the realm of reality."

Here's why: To learn how to genetically engineer human life, scientists require a "control" human gene system upon which to experiment, using the same basic starting material again and again to test different techniques. (The control system would consist of many identical clone embryos created with DNA from the same donor.) Researchers would experiment on these embryos to learn which genes control which functions, how genes interact, and to develop modifying techniques to produce specified genetic alterations in a future baby's makeup. Should they succeed, scientists would be ready to present a genetically modified infant to the world as a fait accompli and ask: Shouldn't we drop "Luddite" bans and permit parents to endow their children with (in Silver's snake-in-the-garden phrase) a "special genetic gift" (like enhanced intelligence)? The next sound you'd hear would be the pistol shot starting the "Oklahoma land race" to ultra eugenics.

Of course, this is not to say that eugenics doesn't have a certain siren-song appeal. Eugenicists promote cloning as leading to cures for geneticallybased diseases. But there are moral approaches we can pursue toward achieving that deeply desired end. Moreover, the price for permitting eugenic cloning would be exorbitant. "Cloning," wrote Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, the creators of cloned-sheep Dolly, "will affect all aspects of human lifethe things that people can do, the way we live, even, if we choose, the kinds of people we are. Those future technologies will offer our successors a degree of control over life's processes that will come effectively to seem absolute." (My emphasis.)

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Not only would ultra eugenicists promote improved health but also the right of prospective parents to have so-called "designer babies" engineered and processed to obtain selected attributes, e.g., high I.Q.s, greater strength, superior athletic ability, lovelier faces, taller statures, etc. Indeed, in multiple books and articles, bioethicists already argue that parents should have an almost unlimited right to "enhance" their offspring through genetic engineering-a license that University of Texas bioethicist John A. Robertson, in a telling phrase, calls "the fabricator's procreative liberty."

What would this mean? In a world of ultra eugenics, simply being a human baby would no longer suffice. In order to compete, our offspring would have to be modified into hyper-humans, beings engineered to make them "better" than the unenhanced; in other words, the first members of a new master race. The new eugenics, it seems, is not much different from the old eugenics.

"Not true!" neo-eugenicists exclaim. The old eugenics led to despotism primarily because it was governmentally enforced, not because eugenics theory is wrong. The new eugenics, these advocates claim, would actually promote freedom because it would be a "laissez faire" system where "choice" and the marketplace ruled rather than government fiat.

Ignoring for the moment that there are already calls within bioethics for laws mandating genetic screening of fetuses, and assuming for the sake of argument that the government would keep its paws out of the new eugenics, the argument that "choice" would prevent oppression ignores a crucial truth about human culture: Peer pressure and social coercion have far more power to control our behavior than do the government and the law.

That being so, ultra eugenics would lead to social fascism and peer despotism. Ponder these points: Many parents intertwine their own egos with the successes or failures of their children. Considering the awful competitiveness exhibited by some soccer moms and dads, the phenomenon of the "stage mother," and the lengths to which some parents go to assure their children's enrollment in the best schools, imagine the competition that would develop to produce the "best" genetically enhanced babies. Like some surrealistic game of keeping up with the Joneses, the race to breed ever more intelligent, beautiful, and talented children would grow progressively more extreme.

Professor Silver predicts as much in Remaking Eden, in which he forecasts the development of a neo-caste system that would eventually divide the human race between the betters with genetic enhancements-the "GenRich"-and inferior normal humans called "Naturals." Silver believes that the superior GenRich would ultimately gain control of "all aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment industry, and the knowledge industry," while the inferior Naturals would be consigned to "low-paid service providers or working as laborers." If he is right, there would be far more slavery than freedom in such a society.

A remade Eden would also spark a negative eugenics pogrom against those deemed to possess inferior genes. When bioethics patriarch Joseph Fletcher looked into his crystal ball in the 1970s, he envisioned an era of genetic "quality control" in which "carriers" of "undesirable" genetic traits would be identified and oppressed. For example, he supported an idea first posited by Linus Pauling that genetic "carriers should wear a small tattoo on their foreheads as Indians wear caste marks." Along these same lines, one of the pioneers of in vitro fertilization, Dr. Bob Edwards, suggested in 1999 that "we are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children." He further suggested that in the future it will be a "sin" for parents "to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease."

Should such attitudes become widely shared-not an unlikely prospect, considering how successful old eugenicists were in popularizing their agenda-imagine the pressures on parents to prevent "inferior" babies from entering the world. And imagine the discrimination that could arise against those deemed genetically deficient who were born: shunning, denial of health insurance, lost educational opportunities, difficulty gaining meaningful employment, and perhaps even the chance to fall in love and marry.

As ultra eugenics accelerated, fewer and fewer "genetically inferior" humans would make it through gestation. Embryos are already eugenically selected for implantation or rejection at IVF clinics while expectant parents are often pressured to terminate pregnancies when prenatal testing discloses the presence of Down's or other genetic anomalies. The same fate would likely await embryos or fetuses found to have genetic predispositions to diseases such as breast cancer, Alzheimer's, and mental illness. Moreover, as our knowledge about the interaction of genes increased, unborn life found to possess non-health-related "undesirable" traits might also be rejected. These unfortunates might include those diagnosed as having a propensity toward obesity, homely features, alcoholism or other addictive behaviors, homosexuality, undesirable stature, poor athletic ability, low intelligence, criminal or other anti-social behavior, etc.-the list could go on for pages.

Had such a world existed in years past, considering his destined deafness Beethoven might not have been allowed to be born. If Lincoln was bi-polar or had the genetic condition known as Marfan's syndrome, as some have speculated, he might well have been "selected out" in favor of an embryo likely to have a less troubled nature. For that matter, we might have lost Winston Churchill when his genetic screeners warned his parents that he would have a predisposition for alcoholism. Similarly, Julius Caesar might not have been born had his patrician father learned that his son would have epilepsy.

And think about the everyday people whose absences, due to genetic screening, would make our lives less full: The wise-cracking waitress with the club foot who makes Saturday morning breakfasts such a joy; the teacher whose students laugh behind her back at her speech impairment only to discover later that she changed their lives; the developmentally-disabled man whose loving nature makes him the community favorite; the wise grandparent who nurtured and mentored his grandchildren and then died too young of genetically-caused colon cancer.

Aldous Huxley wrote of his prophetic novel, "The theme of Brave New World is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals." Eugenics is evil because its selfevident truth holds that all men are not created equal. Such thinking objectifies the lives of disfavored individuals, leading with the force of gravity to a fundamentally unjust society. Should the new eugenics ever take hold, the dysfunction described in Brave New World will seem mild by comparison.

Wesley J. Smith is the author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America (Encounter Books). His next book will be A Consumer's Guide to Brave New World.

Copyright Human Life Foundation, Incorporated Winter 2002
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