- What is eugenics?
- Background of eugenics
- Origin and history of eugenics
- Modern eugenics
- Criticism of eugenics
We explain what eugenics is, its antecedents, origin and history. Also, modern eugenics and criticism against it.
What is eugenics?
Eugenics or eugenics is the desire to manipulate the inheritance genetics and artificial selection to "improve" or "enhance" the traits that future generations will have human. It is a form of social philosophy, often accused of pseudoscientific.
Eugenics gained great importance in Western thought from the 19th century on, and numerous acts of thought were ideologically based on it. discrimination and of genocide. Eugenic thinking proposed that, through inheritance control, one can aspire to stronger, healthier, more intelligent human generations or with certain ethnic and / or aesthetic traits.
The philosophies of so-called Social Darwinism applied the findings of Charles Darwin on the origin of species and the survival of the fittest for political and social life. Thus it was proposed that reproduction It should be allowed only under strict selection criteria, denying it to those who do not fit the desired pattern, to whom instead the death or forced sterilization.
Despite its controversial origins, much of eugenic thinking survives today, in modern scientific applications, which allow future parents to varying degrees of genetic manipulation and artificial selection, to avoid bringing offspring with serious genetic problems into the world. This, naturally, without incurring the immoral practices of the past.
Background of eugenics
The antecedents of eugenicist thought dates from the antiquity itself, and can be traced back to such classics as Plato's "Republic" (c. 378 BC). There the philosopher defended the need to incorporate artificial selection into the improvement policies of the society.
This practice was carried out in their own way by the Spartan people, whose highly militarized educational model applied a strict eugenic policy: a commission of elders examined each newborn child to determine if it met certain standards of robustness and beauty.
If not, it was thrown from the top of Mount Taygetus, at the so-called Apóthetas ("Place of abandonment") and only if he managed to survive on his own, could he be accepted in society. They also bathed newborns in wine, since at the time they had the belief that the child was thus induced to have seizures, which ensured that only the strong survived from the outset.
On the other hand, the Spartan nurses were particularly cruel, raising each child without pampering or whims of any kind. They used to be used early to be alone and not fear the dark, all in order to harden them to the maximum and separate the strong from the weak.
Much later, the idea of eugenics appeared in Sun City by the Italian philosopher and poet Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639), a utopian work inspired by the Republic platonic. There imagine a society communist radical, where the private property it is impossible and where the Condition guarantees that everyone has what they need, even a sexual partner, since the reproduction It is studied for the purpose of improving the species.
Origin and history of eugenics
The term eugenics was coined in 1883 by the British natural philosopher and explorer Francis Galton (1822-1911), in his book Research on human faculties and their development.
However, the idea had already been explored in his previous texts "Hereditary Talent and Personality" and The hereditary genius , in which, influenced by the reading of The origin of species of Charles Darwin, proposed that human civilization and its values they only slowed down and hindered the advancement of the strongest and best-adapted races, above all others.
According to Galton, in the same way that artificial selection was used to improve species of domestic animalsIt had to be done with the human species, expecting similar results.
In his view, it was inconceivable that the least intelligent and least capable of the Humans they were the ones who reproduced the most. That is why policies had to be designed that would make people understand the importance of thinking and planning reproduction in terms of the welfare of the species.
Born thus as a "science" (nowadays it is no longer considered as such), eugenics was supported by several of Darwin's descendants, who considered it close to the studies of their father. It also had great advocates throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Alexander Graham Bell.
In 1896 a eugenics movement was founded in the United States that outlawed marriages with any "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded", carried out forced sterilizations of "imbeciles", and laws were applied xenophobic Y racist against the incorporation of "inferior lineages" from other geographies. An example of such laws was the Law of immigration Johnson-Reed or Immigration Act of 1924.
Obviously, the greatest eugenic movement in history was constituted by Nazism. Nazi "philosophy", strongly influenced by eugenics and social Darwinism, proposed that the German people (actually the Aryan people, that is, the descendants of a supposedly pure Proto-Indo-European people, whose existence today is put into doubt) was called to dominate the world.
His superiority was supposedly due to his greatness genetics, which was the greatest treasure to preserve. Therefore, the "inferior races" not only had to refrain from mixing their genetics with the German, but they had to be exterminated to give up their resources to those who were stronger or fitter.
The application of these models of thought led to the genocide perpetrated against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and other groups during the WWII in the extermination camps of the self-styled III Reich.
Modern eugenics
After World War II, eugenics continued to appear in various forms. On the one hand, in the form of forced sterilizations of people of races considered "inferior" or simply poor people, by dictatorial regimes such as Alberto Fujimori's Peru.
But, on the other hand, it opened the doors to more moral forms of application, although not less controversial, as part of programs for the early detection of genetic diseases, which has improved enormously thanks to technological advances in genetics and medicine.
The term eugenics is rarely used for these types of policies, given its historical implications with Nazism. However, they are accepted forms of eugenics, subject to ethical and legal regulations.
Such is the case of the selection of viable zygotes in in-vitro fertilization, of the amniosynthetic examination of the fetuses in their first weeks and possible abortion in case of serious diseases or problems that may put maternal health at risk. It is also included in forms of genetic diagnosis, which are not without debate and criticism.
Criticism of eugenics
The main criticisms of eugenics have to do with the decision on the life of others, and with the ease with which prejudices they can infiltrate decisions about it.
On the one hand, no one in their right mind believes today that there is anything true in the pseudosciences of the 19th century or in the racist and xenophobic delusions of Nazism. But on the other hand, no parent would like to bring into the world a sick, disabled or troubled child that will make life miserable.
Therefore, the line between what is considered acceptable and not acceptable can always be up for debate. Should people with difficulties be brought into the world who will make them existence harder than it already is for everyone? What is a genetically "normal" person? Is it acceptable for a couple to reject their child because they do not have the color of eyes that they wish?
These are questions that require debate bioethical and that are on the table since the decipherment of the genetic code human in the early 2000s.