Eugenics (//; from Greek εὐγενής eugenes “well-born” from εὖ eu, “good, well” and γένος genos, “race”)[2][3] is the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population.[4][5] It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics), and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics).[6]
History
The idea of eugenics existed previous to the existence of the word eugenics; for example, William Goodell (1829-1894) advocated the castration and spaying of the insane.[8][9] However, eugenics as a modern concept was originally developed by Francis Galton. Galton had read his half-cousin Charles Darwin‘s theory of evolution, which sought to explain the development of plant and animal species, and desired to apply it to humans. Galton believed that desirable traits were hereditary based on biographical studies.[10] In 1883, one year after Darwin’s death, Galton gave his research a name: eugenics.[11] Throughout its recent history, eugenics has remained a controversial concept.
Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities, and received funding from many sources.[13] Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenists with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York. Eugenic policies were first implemented in the early 1900s in the United States.[14] It has roots in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States.[15] Later, in the 1920s and 30s, the eugenic policy of sterilizing certain mental patients was implemented in other countries, including Belgium,[16] Brazil,[17] Canada,[18] Japan, and Sweden.[19]
The scientific reputation of eugenics started to decline in the 1930s, a time when Ernst Rüdin used eugenics as a justification for the racial policies of Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, in Sweden the eugenics program continued until 1975.[19] In addition to being practiced in a number of countries, eugenics was internationally organized through the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations. Its scientific aspects were carried on through research bodies such as the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, the Cold Spring Harbour Carnegie Institution for Experimental Evolution, and the Eugenics Record Office. Its political aspects involved advocating laws allowing the pursuit of eugenic objectives, such as sterilization laws. Its moral aspects included rejection of the doctrine that all human beings are born equal, and redefining morality purely in terms of genetic fitness. Its racist elements included pursuit of a pure “Nordic race” or “Aryan” genetic pool and the eventual elimination of “less fit” races.
As a social movement, eugenics reached its greatest popularity in the early decades of the 20th century. At this point in time, eugenics was practiced around the world and was promoted by governments, and influential individuals and institutions. Many countries enacted[28] various eugenics policies and programmes, including: genetic screening, birth control, promoting differential birth rates, marriage restrictions, segregation (both racial segregation and segregation of the mentally ill from the rest of the population),compulsory sterilization, forced abortions or forced pregnancies, and genocide. Most of these policies were later regarded as coercive or restrictive, and now few jurisdictions implement policies that are explicitly labelled as eugenic or unequivocally eugenic in substance. The methods of implementing eugenics varied by country; however, some early 20th century methods involved identifying and classifying individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women, homosexuals, and racial groups (such as the Roma and Jews in Nazi Germany) as “degenerate” or “unfit”, the segregation or institutionalization of such individuals and groups, their sterilization, euthanasia, and their mass murder. The practice of euthanasia was carried out on hospital patients in the Aktion T4 centers such as Hartheim Castle.
A Lebensborn birth house in Nazi Germany. Created with intention of raising the birth rate of “Aryan” children from extramarital relations of “racially pure and healthy” parents.
By the end of World War II, many of the discriminatory eugenics laws were largely abandoned, having become associated with Nazi Germany.[30] After World War II, the practice of “imposing measures intended to prevent births within [a population] group” fell within the definition of the new international crime of genocide, set out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[31] The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union also proclaims “the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at selection of persons”.[32] In spite of the decline in discriminatory eugenics laws, government practices of compulsive sterilization continued into the 21st century. During the ten years President Alberto Fujimori led Peru from 1990 to 2000, allegedly 2,000 persons were involuntarily sterilized.[33] China maintains its forcible one-child policy in order to reduce population size and dysgenic fertility,[34] and in 2007 the United Nations reported forcible sterilisations and hysterectomies in Uzbekistan.[35] During the years 2005–06 to 2012–13, nearly one-third of the 144 California prison inmates who were sterilized did not give lawful consent to the operation.[36] In 2013, under Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government acknowledged use of Depo-Provera on Ethiopian Jews without their knowledge or consent.[37][38]
Developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century are raising numerous questions regarding the ethical status of eugenics, effectively creating a resurgence of interest in the subject. Some, such as UC Berkeleysociologist Troy Duster, claim that modern genetics is a back door to eugenics.[39] This view is shared by White House Assistant Director for Forensic Sciences, Tania Simoncelli, who stated in a 2003 publication by the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College that advances in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) are moving society to a “new era of eugenics”, and that, unlike the Nazi eugenics, modern eugenics is consumer driven and market based, “where children are increasingly regarded as made-to-order consumer products.”[40] In a 2006 newspaper article, Richard Dawkins said that discussion was inhibited by the shadow of Nazi misuse, to the extent that some scientists would not admit that breeding humans for abilities was at all possible, but in his view this was not physically different from breeding domestic animals for traits such as speed or herding skill. He felt that enough time had elapsed to at least ask just what the ethical differences were between breeding for ability versus training athletes or forcing children to take music lessons, though he could think of persuasive reasons to draw the distinction.[41]
Some, such as Nathaniel C. Comfort from Johns Hopkins University, claim that the change from state-led reproductive-genetic decision-making to individual choice has moderated the worst abuses of eugenics by transferring the decision-making from the state to the patient and their family.[42] Comfort suggests that “[t]he eugenic impulse drives us to eliminate disease, live longer and healthier, with greater intelligence, and a better adjustment to the conditions of society; and the health benefits, the intellectual thrill and the profits of genetic bio-medicine are too great for us to do otherwise.”[43] Others, such as bio-ethicist Stephen Wilkinson of Keele University and Honorary Research Fellow Eve Garrard at the University of Manchester, claim that some aspects of modern genetics can be classified as eugenics, but that this classification does not inherently make modern genetics immoral. In a co-authored publication by Keele University, they stated that “[e]ugenics doesn’t seem always to be immoral, and so the fact that PGD, and other forms of selective reproduction, might sometimes technically be eugenic, isn’t sufficient to show that they’re wrong.”[44]
Nazi eugenics were Nazi Germany‘s racially based social policies that placed the improvement of the Aryan race or Germanic “Übermenschen” master race through eugenicsat the center of Nazi ideology.[1] Those humans were targeted who were identified as “life unworthy of life” (German: Lebensunwertes Leben), including but not limited to the criminal, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle, insane, and the weak, for elimination from the chain of heredity. More than 400,000 people were sterilized against their will, while 275,000 were killed under Action T4, a “euthanasia” program.[2][3]
Origins in the wider European/U.S. eugenics movement[edit]
After the eugenics movement was well established in the United States, it was spread to Germany. California eugenicists began producing literature promoting eugenics and sterilization and sending it overseas to German scientists and medical professionals.[4] By 1933, California had subjected more people to forceful sterilization than all other U.S. states combined. The forced sterilization program engineered by the Nazis was partly inspired by California’s.[5]
The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.[4][6]
Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:
“You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.”[7]
Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws.[8] In 1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany (scheduled on the anniversary of Hitler’s 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty), to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on the “science of racial cleansing”. Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterwards, he proudly shared the award with his colleagues, remarking that he felt that it symbolized the “common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics.”[9]
Hitler’s views on Eugenics[edit]
Collection bus for killing patients
Adolf Hitler read racial hygiene tracts during his imprisonment in Landsberg Prison.[10] He thought that Germany could become strong again only if the state applied the principles of racial hygiene and eugenics to German society.[citation needed]
Hitler believed the nation had become weak, corrupted by the infusion of degenerate elements into its bloodstream.[11] These had to be removed quickly. He also believed that the strong and the racially pure should be encouraged to have more children, and that the weak and the racially impure should be neutralized by one means or another.[citation needed]
The racialism and idea of competition, termed social Darwinism in 1944, were discussed by European scientists and also in the Vienna press during the 1920s. Where Hitler picked up the ideas is uncertain. The theory of evolution had been generally accepted in Germany at the time but this sort of extremism was rare.[12] In 1876, Ernst Haeckel had discussed the selective infanticide policy of the Greek city of ancient Sparta.[13]
In his Second Book, which was unpublished during the Nazi era, Hitler praised Sparta, adding that he considered Sparta to be the first “VölkischState”. He endorsed what he perceived to be an early eugenics treatment of deformed children:
“Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses.[14][15]“
Nazi eugenics program[edit]
In organizing their eugenics program the Nazis were inspired by the United States’ programs offorced sterilization, especially on the eugenics laws that had been enacted in California.[16]
The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, proclaimed on July 14, 1933, required physicians to register every case of hereditary illness known to them, except in women over 45 years of age.[17] Physicians could be fined for failing to comply.
In 1934, the first year of the Law’s operation, nearly 4,000 persons appealed against the decisions of sterilization authorities. A total of 3,559 of the appeals failed. By the end of the Nazi regime, over 200 Hereditary Health Courts (Erbgesundheitsgerichte) were created, and under their rulings over 400,000 persons were sterilized against their will.[18]
Nazi eugenics institutions[edit]
The Hadamar Clinic was a mental hospital in the German town of Hadamar used by the Nazi-controlled German government as the site of Action T4. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927. Hartheim Euthanasia Centrewas also part of the euthanasia programme where allegedly disabled individuals were killed by the Nazis. The first method used involved transporting patients by buses in which the engine exhaust gases were passed into the interior of the buses, and so killed the passengers. Gas chambers were developed later and used pure carbon monoxide gas to kill the patients.[citation needed] In its early years, and during the Nazi era, the Clinic was strongly associated with theories of eugenics and racial hygiene advocated by its leading theorists Fritz Lenz and Eugen Fischer, and by its director Otmar von Verschuer. Under Fischer, the sterilization of so-called Rhineland Bastards was undertaken. Grafeneck Castle was one of Nazi Germany’s killing centers, and today it is a memorial place dedicated to the victims of the Action T4.[citation needed]
Identification[edit]
The Law for Simplification of the Health System of July 1934 created Information Centers for Genetic and Racial Hygiene, as well as Health Offices. The law also described procedures for ‘denunciation’ and ‘evaluation’ of persons, who were then sent to a Genetic Health Court where sterilization was decided.[19]
Information to determine who was considered ‘genetically sick’ was gathered from routine information supplied by people to doctor’s offices and welfare departments. Standardized questionnaires had been designed by Nazi officials with the help of Dehomag (a subsidiary of IBM in the 1930s), so that the information could be encoded easily onto Hollerith punch cards for fast sorting and counting.[20]
In Hamburg, doctors gave information into a Central Health Passport Archive (circa 1934), under something called the ‘Health-Related Total Observation of Life’. This file was to contain reports from doctors, but also courts, insurance companies, sports clubs, the Hitler Youth, the military, the labor service, colleges, etc. Any institution that gave information would get information back in return. In 1940, the Reich Interior Ministry tried to impose a Hamburg-style system on the whole Reich.[21]
Nazi eugenics policies regarding marriage[edit]
After the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg racial laws which allowed Aryans to marry only each other, it became compulsory for both marriage partners to be tested forhereditary diseases in order to preserve the perceived racial purity of the Aryan race. Everyone was encouraged to carefully evaluate his or her prospective marriage partner eugenically during courtship. Members of the SS were cautioned to carefully interview prospective marriage partners to make sure they had no family history of hereditary disease or insanity, but to do this carefully so as not to hurt the feelings of the prospective fiancee and, if it became necessary to reject her for eugenic reasons, to do it tactfully and not cause her any offense.[22]
Meanings and types[edit]
The modern field and term were first formulated by Francis Galton in 1883,[45] drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin.[46][47] Galton published his observations and conclusions in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development.
The origins of the concept began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance, and the theories of August Weismann. The word eugenics is derived from the Greek word eu (“good” or “well”) and the suffix -genēs (“born”), and was coined by Galton in 1883 to replace the word “stirpiculture“, which he had used previously but which had come to be mocked due to its perceived sexual overtones.[49] Galton defined eugenics as “the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations”.[50] Galton did not understand the mechanism of inheritance.[51]
Eugenics has, from the very beginning, meant many different things.[citation needed] Historically, the term has referred to everything fromprenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization and euthanasia.[citation needed] To population geneticists, the term has included the avoidance of inbreeding without altering allele frequencies; for example, J. B. S. Haldane wrote that “the motor bus, by breaking up inbred village communities, was a powerful eugenic agent”.[52] Debate as to what exactly counts as eugenics has continued to the present day.[53] Some types of eugenics deal only with perceived beneficial or detrimental genetic traits. These types have sometimes been called “pseudo-eugenics” by proponents of strict eugenics.[citation needed][who?]
The term eugenics is often used to refer to movements and social policies influential during the early 20th century.[citation needed] In a historical and broader sense, eugenics can also be a study of “improving human genetic qualities”. It is sometimes broadly applied to describe any human action whose goal is to improve the gene pool.[citation needed] Some forms of infanticide in ancient societies, present-day reprogenetics, preemptive abortions, and designer babies have been (sometimes controversially) referred to as eugenic.[by whom?] Because of its normative goals and historical association with scientific racism, as well as the development of the science of genetics, the western scientific community[according to whom?] has mostly disassociated itself from the term “eugenics”, although one can find advocates of what is now known as liberal eugenics.[citation needed] Despite its ongoing criticism[by whom?] in the United States, several regions[according to whom?] globally practice different forms of eugenics.
Edwin Black, journalist and author of War Against the Weak, claims eugenics is often deemed a pseudoscience because what is defined as a genetic improvement or a desired trait is often a cultural choice rather than a matter that can be determined through objective scientific inquiry.[54] The most disputed aspect of eugenics has been the definition of “improvement” of the human gene pool, such as what is a beneficial characteristic and what is a defect. This aspect of eugenics has historically been tainted with scientific racism.
Early eugenists were mostly concerned with perceived intelligence factors that often correlated strongly with social class. Some of these early eugenists include Karl Pearson and Walter Weldon, who worked on this at the University College London.[10] Many eugenists took inspiration from the selective breeding of animals (where purebreds are often striven for) as their analogy for improving human society. The mixing of races (or miscegenation) was usually considered as something to be avoided in the name of racial purity. At the time, this concept appeared to have some scientific support,[by whom?] and it remained a contentious issue until the advanced development of genetics led to a scientific consensus that the division of the human species into unequal races is unjustifiable.[citation needed]
Eugenics also had a place in medicine. In his lecture “Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics”, Karl Pearson said that everything concerning eugenics fell into the field of medicine. He basically placed the two words as equivalents. He was supported in part by the fact that Francis Galton, the father of eugenics, also had medical training.[55]Eugenics has also been concerned with the elimination of hereditary diseases such as hemophilia and Huntington’s disease. However, there are several problems with labeling certain factors as genetic defects. In many cases, there is no scientific consensus on what constitutes a genetic defect.[citation needed] It is often argued[by whom?] that this is more a matter of social or individual choice. What appears to be a genetic defect in one context or environment may not be so in another. This can be the case for genes with aheterozygote advantage, such as sickle-cell disease or Tay-Sachs disease, which in their heterozygote form may offer an advantage against, respectively, malaria andtuberculosis. Although some birth defects are uniformly lethal, disabled persons can succeed in life.[citation needed] Many of the conditions early eugenists identified as inheritable (pellagra is one such example) are currently considered to be at least partially, if not wholly, attributed to environmental conditions.[citation needed] Similar concerns have been raised[by whom?] when a prenatal diagnosis of a congenital disorder leads to abortion (see also preimplantation genetic diagnosis).
Eugenic policies have been conceptually divided into two categories. Positive eugenics is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the genetically advantaged; for example, the reproduction of the intelligent, the healthy, and the successful.[56] Possible approaches include financial and political stimuli, targeted demographic analyses, in vitrofertilization, egg transplants, and cloning.[57] Negative eugenics aimed to eliminate, through sterilization or segregation, those deemed physically, mentally, or morally “undesirable”.[56] This includes abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning.[57] Both positive and negative eugenics can be coercive; abortion for fit women, for example, was illegal in Nazi Germany.[58]
Implementation methods[edit]
According to Richard Lynn, eugenics may be divided into two main categories based on the ways in which the methods of eugenics can be applied.[59]
- Classical Eugenics
- Negative eugenics by provision of information and services, i.e. reduction of unplanned pregnancies and births.[60]
- “Just say no” campaigns.[61]
- Sex education in schools.[62]
- School-based clinics.[63]
- Promoting the use of contraception.[64]
- Emergency contraception.[65]
- Research for better contraceptives.[66]
- Sterilization.[67]
- Abortion.[68]
- Negative eugenics by incentives, coercion and compulsion.[69]
- Incentives for sterilization.[70]
- The Denver Dollar-a-day program, i.e. paying teenage mothers for not becoming pregnant again.[71]
- Incentives for women on welfare to use contraceptions.[72]
- Payments for sterilization in developing countries.[73]
- Curtailment of benefits to welfare mothers.[74]
- Sterilization of the mentally retarded.[75]
- Sterilization of female criminals.[76]
- Sterilization of male criminals.[77]
- Licences for parenthood.[78][79]
- The LaFollette’s and Westman’s plans. Hugh LaFollette argued that the parents unfit to rear children should not have children, and all couples should be required to obtain a licence certifying their competence in child rearing before they are permitted to have children. John Westman repeated LaFollette’s arguments and added few details to the proposal.[80]
- An effective parent licensing plan according to Richard Lynn. Lynn argued that to have an effective licensing program, reversible sterilization methods should be used.[81]
- Positive eugenics.[82]
- Financial incentives to have children.[83]
- Selective incentives for childbearing.[84]
- Taxation of the childless.[85]
- Ethical obligations of the elite.[86][clarification needed]
- Eugenic immigration.[87]
- New Eugenics
- Artificial insemination by donor.[88]
- Egg donation.[89]
- Prenatal diagnosis of genetic disorders and pregnancy terminations of defective fetuses.[90]
- Embryo selection.[91]
- Genetic engineering.[92]
- Gene therapy.[93]
- Cloning.[94]
Dysgenics[edit]
Research has suggested that in the modern world, the relationship between fertility and intelligence is such that those with higher intelligence have fewer children, one possible reason being more unintended pregnancies for those with lower intelligence. Several researchers have argued that the average genotypic intelligence of the United States and the world are declining which is a dysgenic effect. This has been masked by the Flynn effect for phenotypic intelligence. The Flynn effect may have ended in some developed nations, causing some to argue that phenotypic intelligence will or has started to decline.[95][96][97]
Similarly, Richard Lynn argued that genetic health (due to modern health care) and genetic conscientiousness (criminals have more children than non-criminals) are declining in the modern world. This has caused some, like Lynn, to argue for voluntary eugenics.[98] Richard Lynn and John Harvey suggest that designed babies may have an important eugenic effect in the future. Initially, this may be limited to wealthy couples, who may possibly travel abroad for the procedure if prohibited in their own country, and then gradually spread to increasingly larger groups. Alternatively, authoritarian states may decide to impose measures such as a licensing requirement for having a child, which would only be given to persons of a certain minimum intelligence. The Chinese one-child policy is an example of how fertility can be regulated by authoritarian means.[96]
Criticism[edit]
Doubts on traits triggered by inheritance[edit]
The first major challenge to conventional eugenics based upon genetic inheritance was made in 1915 by Thomas Hunt Morgan, who demonstrated the event of genetic mutationoccurring outside of inheritance involving the discovery of the hatching of a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) with white eyes from a family of red-eyes. Morgan claimed that this demonstrated that major genetic changes occurred outside of inheritance and that the concept of eugenics based upon genetic inheritance was not completely scientifically accurate. Additionally, Morgan criticized the view that subjective traits, such as intelligence and criminality, were caused by heredity because he believed that the definitions of these traits varied and that accurate work in genetics could only be done when the traits being studied were accurately defined.[100] In spite of Morgan’s public rejection of eugenics, much of his genetic research was absorbed by eugenics.[101][102]
Diseases vs. traits[edit]
While the science of genetics has increasingly provided means by which certain characteristics and conditions can be identified and understood, given the complexity of human genetics, culture, and psychology there is at this point no agreed objective means of determining which traits might be ultimately desirable or undesirable. Some diseases such as sickle-cell disease and cystic fibrosis respectively confer immunity to malaria and resistance to cholera when a single copy of the recessive allele is contained within the genotype of the individual. Reducing the instance of sickle-cell disease in Africa where malaria is a common and deadly disease could indeed have extremely negative net consequences.
However, some genetic diseases such as haemochromatosis can increase susceptibility to illness, cause physical deformities, and other dysfunctions, which provides some incentive for people to re-consider some elements of eugenics.
A common criticism of eugenics is that “it inevitably leads to measures that are unethical”.[103] Although historical examples of misused or misunderstood eugenics may have existed, this argument sounds like a slippery slope fallacy.[104] A hypothetical scenario posits that, if one racial minority group is perceived on average less intelligent than the racial majority group, then it is more likely that the racial minority group will be submitted to a eugenics program rather than the least intelligent members of the whole population. H. L. Kaye wrote of “the obvious truth that eugenics has been discredited by Hitler’s crimes”.[105] R. L. Hayman argued that “the eugenics movement is an anachronism, its political implications exposed by the Holocaust”.[106]
Steven Pinker has stated that it is “a conventional wisdom among left-leaning academics that genes imply genocide”. He has responded to this “conventional wisdom” by comparing the history of Marxism (which had the opposite position on genes) to that of Nazism:
But the 20th century suffered “two” ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn’t believe in genes and denied that human nature was a meaningful concept. Clearly, it’s not an emphasis on genes or evolution that is dangerous. It’s the desire to remake humanity by coercive means (eugenics or social engineering) and the belief that humanity advances through a struggle in which superior groups (race or classes) triumph over inferior ones.[107]
Original position, a hypothetical situation developed by American philosopher John Rawls, has been used as an argument for eugenics.[108][109][110] On the other hand, there have been counterarguments to point that accepting Rawls’ philosophy does not necessitate or justify eugenics.[111]
Genetic diversity[edit]
Eugenic policies could also lead to loss of genetic diversity, in which case a culturally accepted “improvement” of the gene pool could very likely—as evidenced in numerous instances in isolated island populations (e.g., the Dodo, Raphus cucullatus, of Mauritius)—result in extinction due to increased vulnerability to disease, reduced ability to adapt to environmental change, and other factors both known and unknown. A long-term species-wide eugenics plan might lead to a scenario similar to this because the elimination of traits deemed undesirable would reduce genetic diversity by definition.[112]
Proponents of eugenics argue that, in any one generation, any realistic program should make only minor changes in a fraction of the gene pool, giving plenty of time to reverse direction if unintended consequences emerge, reducing the likelihood of the elimination of desirable genes. Such people also argue that any appreciable reduction in diversity is so far in the future that little concern is needed for now.[113] The possible reduction of autism rates through selection against the genetic predisposition to autism is a significant political issue in the autism rights movement, which claims that autism is a form of neurodiversity.
Heterozygous recessive traits[edit]
In some instances, efforts to eradicate certain single-gene mutations would be nearly impossible. In the event that the condition in question is a heterozygous recessive trait, the problem is that, by eliminating the visible unwanted trait, there still may be many carriers for the genes without, or with fewer, phenotypic effects due to that gene. With genetic testing, it may be possible to detect all of the heterozygous recessive traits. Under normal circumstances, it is only possible to eliminate a dominant allele from the gene pool. Recessive traits can be severely reduced, but never eliminated unless the complete genetic makeup of all members of the pool was known, as aforementioned. As only very few undesirable traits, such as Huntington’s disease, are dominant, it could be argued from certain perspectives that the practicality of “eliminating” traits is quite low.[citation needed]
There are examples of eugenic acts that managed to lower the prevalence of recessive diseases, although not influencing the prevalence of heterozygote carriers of those diseases. The elevated prevalence of certain genetically transmitted diseases among the Ashkenazi Jewish population (Tay–Sachs, cystic fibrosis, Canavan’s disease, andGaucher’s disease), has been decreased in current populations by the application of genetic screening.[114]
Supporters and critics[edit]
At its peak of popularity, eugenics was supported by a wide variety of prominent people, including Winston Churchill,[115] Margaret Sanger,[116][117] Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells,[118] Norman Haire, Havelock Ellis, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Robert Andrews Millikan,[119] Linus Pauling,[120] and Sidney Webb.[121][122][123] Its most infamous proponent and practitioner was Adolf Hitler, who praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf and emulated eugenic legislation for the sterilization of “defectives” that had been pioneered in the United States.
The American sociologist Lester Frank Ward,[125] the English writer G. K. Chesterton, the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas,[126] and Scottish tuberculosis pioneer and author Halliday Sutherland were all early critics of the philosophy of eugenics. Ward’s 1913 article “Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics“, Chesterton’s 1917 book Eugenics and Other Evils, and Boas’ 1916 article “Eugenics” (published in The Scientific Monthly) were all harshly critical of the rapidly growing movement.[127] Sutherland identified eugenists as a major obstacle to the eradication and cure of tuberculosis in his 1917 address “Consumption: Its Cause and Cure”,[128] and criticism of eugenists and Neo-Malthusians in his 1921 book Birth Control led to a writ for libel from the eugenist Marie Stopes. Several biologists were also antagonistic to the eugenics movement, including Lancelot Hogben.[129] Other biologists such as J. B. S. Haldane and R. A. Fisher expressed skepticism that sterilization of “defectives” would lead to the disappearance of undesirable genetic traits.[130]
Some supporters of eugenics later reversed their positions on it. For example, H. G. Wells, who had called for “the sterilization of failures” in 1904,[118] stated in his 1940 book The Rights of Man: Or What are we fighting for? that among the human rights he believed should be available to all people was “a prohibition on mutilation, sterilization, torture, and any bodily punishment”.[131]
Among institutions, the Catholic Church was an early opponent of state-enforced eugenics.[132] In his 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI explicitly condemned eugenics laws: “Public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects; therefore, where no crime has taken place and there is no cause present for grave punishment, they can never directly harm, or tamper with the integrity of the body, either for the reasons of eugenics or for any other reason.”[133]
Psychologist Geoffrey Miller argues that 21st century Chinese eugenics may allow the Chinese to increase the IQ of each subsequent generation by five to fifteen IQ points, and he further states that, after a couple of generations, it “would be game over for Western global competitiveness.” Miller advises that Westerners put aside their “self-righteous” Euro-American ideological biases and learn from the Chinese.[134]
Although many cartograms have been made over the decades, a Reddit user called TeaDranks created a cartogramwhich compared, the nations of the world to their respective populations; sometimes altering the size of the continent or country to make-way for a larger or smaller population.
Paul Breding, cartographer, created the older map in 2005.
Susanne Posel 
Alex Infohub 