Eugenics

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through social intervention. The goals have variously been to create more intelligent people, save society resources, lessen human suffering and reduce health problems. Proposed means of achieving these goals most commonly include birth control, selective breeding, and genetic engineering. Critics argue eugenics has been applied as a pseudoscience, that it has a potential for objectifiying human characteristics and note that historically it has been a means whereby social thinking culminated in coercive state-sponsored discrimination and human rights violations, even genocide.

Criticism

Pseudoscience

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 and culture, there is no scientific means of determining which characteristics might be ultimately desireable or undesireable. Hence, since eugenics must be taken as a study of social policy, if eugenics is mistakenly applied as a science it can be called a pseudoscience, a term which refers to any field that isn't scientific but is sometimes erroneously regarded as such.

Related Topics:
Genetics - Pseudoscience

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Objectification of hereditary traits

Some critics have argued, often on ethical grounds, that eugenic attitudes and practices may objectify human hereditary traits, placing too much emphasis or value on arbitrary characteristics rather than considering the individual as a whole. Objectification has also been raised as a concern in the medical treatment of patients in general.http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_medicine_and_allied_sciences/v058/58.3sadowsky.html

Related Topics:
Objectify - Medical

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Tom Shakespeare, a bioethicist and disability advocate, has argued that the new genomics "does not mark a radical departure" from the eugenic attitudes of the past (2002: 8-10), and that "the real problems of disabled people are social arrangements, not their impairments" http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/disabilityresearch/pdf/PublicLecturePapers00.pdf.

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Slippery slope

A commonly advanced criticism of eugenics is that, evidenced by its history, it inevitably leads to measures that are unethical (Lynn 2001). H. L. Kaye wrote of "the obvious truth that eugenics has been discredited by Hitler's crimes" (Kaye 1989). R. L. Hayman argued "the eugenics movement is an anachronism, its political implications exposed by the Holocaust" (Hayman 1990).

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Steven Pinker has stated that it's "a conventional wisdom among left-leaning academics that genes imply genocide." He responds to this by comparing the history of Marxism, which had the opposite position on genes as Nazism:

Related Topics:
Steven Pinker - Marxism

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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.http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/tbs/media_articles/2002_10_30_upi.html

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Richard Lynn argues that any social philosophy is capable of ethical misuse. Though Christian principles have aided in the abolition of slavery and the establishment of welfare programs, he notes that the Christian church has also burned many dissidents at the stake and waged wars against nonbelievers in which Christian crusaders slaughtered large numbers of women and children. Lynn argues the appropriate response is to condemn these killings, but believing Christianity "inevitably leads to the extermination of those who do not accept its doctrines" is unwarranted (Lynn 2001).

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Genetic diversity

Eugenic policies could also lead to loss of genetic diversity, in which case a culturally accepted improvement of the gene pool may, but wouldn't necessarily, result in biological disaster due to increased vulnerability to disease, reduced ability to adapt to environmental change and other factors both known and unknown. This kind of argument from the precautionary principle is itself criticized.

Related Topics:
Genetic diversity - Gene pool - Precautionary principle

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Counterarguments

One website on logic has used the statement "Eugenics must be wrong because it was associated with the Nazis" as an example of the association fallacy. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html

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