The word eugenics, as we know it, originated in 1883 from Francis Galton, cousin to Charles Darwin. It comes from the Greek word, eugenes, meaning “good birth.” Galton was the first to introduce the concept of studying and manipulating the various factors that produce “superior” humans. His ideas were largely influenced by the emerging rationale during the Industrial Revolution that “superior” races and classes were simply born smarter and innately more active. Thus, he encouraged “positive eugenics” in Great Britain by proposing that “welfare and mental asylums,” which helped the “inferior,” be eradicated to prevent them from outreproducing the “superior.” Though his efforts gained no traction in Britain, they led to a frenzied exploration of the concept in the United States.
The two largest American eugenics proponents were Harry Laughlin, a former teacher, and Charles Davenport, one of the biologists who introduced Mendelian genetics to the U.S. Davenport began the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) and recruited Laughlin, who reached out to him about his interest in animal breeding, to be the superintendent. Together, they collected data on many families and worked out which “inherited” traits were favorable and unfavorable. They greatly influenced early 20th century public policy with their research and leadership. Laughlin served on the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization and created policies of “immigration restriction” and selective sterilization that prevented most immigrants from entering the U.S. and led to similar state-based sterilization laws. Davenport’s data and research with ERO received lots of public attention and also influenced states’ standards of sterilization. ERO later became the Department of Eugenics with the Station for Experimental Evolution.
In American society, at first, the eugenics movement presented as “fitter family” competitions where families were judged on their possession of “desirable” traits by their communities. Later, this transformed into widespread efforts to prevent “unfavorable” traits from passing onto future generations with multiple states signing forced sterilizations into law. The first was in Indiana in 1907, which sterilized imprisoned women with mental disabilities. Other states rapidly followed with their own laws that used the “research” conducted by institutions, such as ERO, to create vague definitions of who was “unfit” to reproduce. Virginia passed its own law in 1924. As thousands of people were being forced, sometimes unknowingly, under the knife, officials began rationalizing the sterilizations as “protecting vulnerable women from unwanted pregnancy”; ultimately, however, the goal of eugenics at this time was to eliminate the economic and social costs incurred by physically or mentally non-ideal people and favor Anglo-Saxons. Towards the end of sterilizations, around 60,000 people had been sterilized, most of whom were female, non-White, poor, imprisoned, or immigrants from countries beyond North and West Europe.
In 1933, Nazi Germany passed the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring based very similarly off of the sterilization laws established in the United States. However, the primary difference is a greater and blatant pro-Nordic (or pro-Aryan) supremacy spotlighted in the German law. The law first targeted mentally ill people, the physically disabled, alcoholics, and those considered of “mental deficiency.” Later, it evolved into the T4 Euthanasia Program, which directly killed those that were mentally and physically disabled and “deemed incurable.” The goals of Nazi Germany were much like the U.S.’s in that sterilization was used to limit the burdens on society of containing inassimilable individuals, but it evolved into extreme favorability for Nordic ethnicities via lethal means.
After the atrocious application of American-developed eugenics, the concept fell quickly out of popularity in the U.S. Over the decades until the 1980s, states repealed their sterilization laws, with Virginia repealing its own in 1974. Many former eugenics proponents questioned its scientific integrity and considered it separate from genetics while others went into population studies. Eugenics as a science fell into obscurity until 1994, when Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein released The Bell Curve, which linked IQ discrepancies between Whites and Blacks in American society to hereditary traits. By this time, “eugenics” became a taboo term associated with racism and classism that the wider scientific community did not associate with genetics.
In 2012, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier published a paper on how the unique ability of bacteria to cut through and restructure sequences of its DNA as an adaptive characteristic can be simplified and applied to the DNA of other organisms, known as CRISPR-Cas9. This finding has been applied to many trials that have improved or fixed errors in genes in human cells that cause physical diseases such as hemophilia, HIV-1 infection, and Huntington’s Disease. However, in light of these successes, some researchers are aiming to develop CRISPR-Cas9 for the purpose of “enhancing” human genes to higher physical and mental capacities, raising ethical questions among other geneticists. Moreover, the development of reproductive technologies are allowing for genetic selectivity of human embryos. Geneticists wonder if there would be equal access to such tools and how these changes may affect future generations. This subject is referred to as “new liberal” or “modern” eugenics.
The basis of eugenics from its oldest definition is to manipulate human genes to produce the “fittest” offspring, which has historically been vaguely defined. It has most often been used to justify racist legislation and analyze data without true scientific considerations. Before the tools of the 21st century, 20th century eugenics-based policies could only be carried out by limiting or preventing reproduction of those deemed “unfit.” However, with CRISPR-Cas9 and the fast-developing future of genetic manipulation of those currently living and those to be born, who can easily say where the line should be drawn? Based on the negative views of how eugenics has been used before, how does the apparent rise in the ideas of modern eugenics differ, if at all?
A possible interpretation of modern eugenics is the increased selectivity of donated eggs and sperm. In an article about donors from Ivy League schools whose donations are highly coveted, donors and buyers are interviewed about their motivations on the matter. Selectivity of some sperm and egg banks are extremely precise, and compensation is often dependent on intellectual and ethnic background. For example, the egg donation company A Perfect Match typically gives a first-time donor “about $15,000” and gives those with traits in high demand such as “Jewish, East Asian, and Indian ancestry … $25,000,” and sperm and egg bank ads typically target Ivy League students, promising them more compensation. This phenomenon represents a newer ideal of genetics in the United States, one where different physical traits and innate intellectualism are favored. However, this is similar to previous eugenics because the desirable phenotypes are associated with innate intellectualism, and the belief that smarts are entirely genetically linked is likewise misguided.
American development from old eugenics towards modern eugenics yields new ideas and moral understanding, yet, modern eugenics also draws from old misconceptions of genetics. In the past, eugenics has been used to focus on societal improvement and justify the acts carried out to support it. Today, eugenics may come from the preferences of families and their investments in the success of their children. The consequences of openly implementing eugenics policies in the United States were dire; the consequences of the current obsession with perfect children and the world they will create are yet to be assessed.