Reprogenetics: Law, Policy, and Ethical Issues

1 On Drawing Lessons from the History of Eugenics

On Drawing Lessons from the History of Eugenics C H A P T E R O N E Almost every discussion of social issues in reprogenetics identifies eugenics as a central concern. Of course, there are other sources of unease at the prospect of modifying the genome either to treat disease or to enhance physical , mental, or behavioral characteristics. For example, critics also fear that such interventions rest on dubious scientific assumptions, entail unacceptable risks, distort parent-child relations, and exacerbate social inequality. But perhaps their most persistent and passionate accusation is that reprogenetics is a form of eugenics. A particularly striking feature of such discussions is how often the participants invoke history. The typical analysis of social issues in reprogenetics— irrespective of whether its perspective is optimistic or gloomy—is accompanied by a commentary on the history of the eugenics movement. These accounts tend to be remarkably similar. Despite having widely varying agendas , both celebrants and skeptics tell essentially the same tale. The standard narrative features racists and reactionaries—often Nazis—and policies that are “negative” (that is, they are aimed at preventing or discouraging some people from reproducing), mandated by legislation, and coercively enforced. In these obligatory historical synopses, eugenic policies were based on “pseudoscience .” The exemplar of these policies is compulsory sterilization. Why are the accounts so ubiquitous and uniform? One reason is banal. Those who speak and write on social issues in genetics feel compelled to say something about the history of eugenics, if only to demonstrate that they are D I A N E B . PA U L aware of it and sensitive to its implications. But few commentators are likely to be specialists in the subject. Indeed, the virtual interchangeability of so many of their accounts suggests that authors often learn from reading each other. The similarity is in any case not explained by the fact that there is only one history to relate, and that the authors are simply faithful to the facts. For the standard account is highly selective. Its particular features are explained by the interests they serve both for admirers and for critics of developments in reprogenetics. But although its appeal is understandable, such a narrow version of the past provides little useful guidance—and indeed, may seriously mislead—as we consider if and how to regulate in this domain. EUGENICS VOLUNTARY AND UTOPIAN Although the typical narrative of eugenics emphasizes brutal measures of state control, we could certainly tell another story. After all, most eugenics was not overtly coercive, and some of its leading advocates specifically repudiated compulsory measures. Britain, where the modern movement was founded in the 1860s by Francis Galton, never adopted a mandatory sterilization law, and even the campaigns to legalize voluntary sterilization were defeated. Moreover, Galton himself held that “the possibility of improving the race of a nation depends on the power of increasing the productivity of the best stock. This is far more important than that of repressing the productivity of the worst” (1909, 24). Those who agreed with him tended to favor “positive ” eugenics, which, instead of discouraging or preventing reproduction by the wrong people, employed methods, such as propaganda or financial subsidies , to promote reproduction by the right people. After all, the success of efforts to encourage some people to have more children required the subjects’ active cooperation. But even much negative eugenics has relied on education, persuasion, or simply individuals’ assumed self-interest. Many birth control advocates argued that middle-class women already had access to contraceptive information and devices, whereas poor women (assumed to be hereditarily inferior) did not. Such leading figures as Margaret Sanger in the United States and Marie Stopes in Britain assumed that if poor women only had the means to do so, they would limit their births for their own social, economic, and health reasons, thus obviating any need for coercion (Gordon 1990; Kline 2001; Paul 1995, 91–96). Moreover, negative measures aim at preventing further deterioration, not at creating something new. Yet much of the contemporary worry about 4 D I A N E B . PA U L genetic manipulation focuses on its more ambitious possibilities, especially the potential to transform human nature (for example, Fukuyama 2002; Habermas 2003; McKibben 2003; Sandel 2004; Somerville 2003). That worry has been prompted, or at least intensified, by recent enthusiastic claims that we can and should radically redesign ourselves. Thus, in the last...