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The Eugenic Thinking of IQ-ists and Criminologists
3200 words
In 1969, Arthur Jensen published a bombshell article in the Harvard Educational Review titled How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? in which he argued that compensatory education has failed (e.g., Headstart) and it, therefore, should be abandoned. Jensen was a big proponent against school integration due to his research on IQ (Tucker, 2002). Tucker (1998) also argued, “that the supposed significance of the genetic influence on IQ has invariably reflected a particular ideological view of the purpose of education and its relation to the state that is rooted in conservative political thought.” Such ideological leanings of the IQ-ists have been well-noted (Tucker, 2002; Saini, 2019).(Though it should be noted that school integration didn’t cause any negative effects for whites and had many positive effects for blacks, see Nazaryan and Johnson, 2019). Note how the revival of “racial differences in intelligence” in the mainstream occurred after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Such ideological leanings have been incipient in ‘intelligence’ testing since its inception.
IQ-ists
In any case, what was the ultimate goal of such research into racial/class differences in “intelligence”? The original application of what eventually became tests of “intelligence” were to (1) identify those with learning disabilities and (2) shoe-horn people into jobs “for” them—what Binet called his “ideal city.” When IQ tests were brought to America and translated from French to English by Henry Goddard in 1911 and then again by Lewis Terman in 1916. Goddard was hesitant to force sterilization, but he did believe that those his tests designated as “feeble-minded” should not be allowed to bear children.
Proponents of IQ emphatically state that it’s not a “measure of superiority” and that it’s only the critics who believe that, with no evidence for the claim. However, if one reads Jensen’s earliest writings on IQ, they would see that Jensen did, in fact, believe that heritability could estimate one’s “genetic standing” (Jensen, 1970) and that if we continue our welfare policy that we would lead a group toward “genetic enslavement” (Jensen, 1969). Jensen ran with racists, so there is a possibility that he himself held similar types of views to the people he ran with. The following quotes show Jensen’s eugenic thinking:
“Is there a danger that current welfare policies, unaided by eugenic foresight, could lead to the genetic enslavement of a substantial segment of our population?” – Jensen, 1969: 95, How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?
“What the evidence on heritability tells us is that we can, in fact, estimate a person’s genetic standing on intelligence from his score on an IQ test.” – Jensen, 1970, Can We and Should We Study Race Difference?
“… the best thing the black community could do would be to limit the birth-rate among the least-able members, which of course is a eugenic proposal.” – A Conversation with Arthur Jensen, American Reinnasance, 1992
In a review of Raymond Cattell’s Beyondism, Richard Lynn stated:
“What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the populations of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of “phasing out” of such peoples.”
I don’t see how he’s not calling for genocide—genocide is the systemic killing of a specific group of people. Eugenic methods are one way to accomplish this. Richard Lynn’s father was a eugenicist, signing his name to a manifesto which asked the question of how the genetic constitution of the world could be improved, per Lynn (see Interview with a pioneer, American Reinassance). Lynn continues:
My father’s interests did give me an early appreciation of the importance of genetics, although I think I would have adopted this position anyway since the evidence is irrefutable for a strong genetic determination of intelligence and educational attainment and a moderate genetic determination of personality. More importantly, my father served as a role model for scientific achievement and has given me the confidence to advance theories that have sometimes been controversial.
Lynn stated that he is “very pessimistic” about the future of the West, due to the immigration of individuals from low IQ countries who have a higher birthrate than Westerners along with the supposed dysgenic fertility that American white women are facing. (See Lynn, 1996, 2001 for a discussion and look into these views.) In Dysgenics, Lynn (1996: 2) writes that he hopes “To make the case that in the repudiation of eugenics an important truth has been lost, and to rehabilitate the argument that genetic deterioration is occurring in Western populations and in most of the developed world.”
Raymond Cattell was also one who believed that certain people should (voluntarily) be sterilized. He created a religion called “Beyondism” in an attempt to accomplish this goal, his research, in fact, served his eugenic and political beliefs (Tucker, 2009). Compassion was seen as evil to Cattell, which is one major way it strays from other religions. Presumably, one is compassionate to those less fortunate and, therefore, the compassion would help one who Cattell deems “genetically inferior” and so compassion is evil since it leads to the propagation of those Cattell deems less fit. Cattell also stated that, from the perspective of Beyondism, the propagation of ‘genetic failures’ is “positively evil” (Tucker, 2009: 136). He also coined the term ‘genthanasia’ which was “phasing out” a “moribund culture … by educational and birth measures, without a single member dying before his time” (Cattell, quoted in Tucker, 2009: 146).
William Shockley “reasoned” that if the problems that blacks face in America are hereditary, then by attempting to halt the reproduction of blacks, there would be less racism against them. Well if there are few people to be racist against, then there would be less racism against those people. Shocking. Further, Shockley wanted to enstate what he called a “Voluntary Sterilization Bonus Plan” where individuals with IQs below 100 would, with each single point below 100, be given $1000—although the plan was never implemented (Hilliard, 2012: 50). He also wanted to institute a sperm bank of ‘geniuses’ (whatever that means) but, he was never told, women did not want the sperm of Shockley’s short, balding self (he was 5’6” weighing 150 pounds)—although he had a ‘high IQ’ (he was rejected as being one of Terman’s Termites)—they wanted the sperm of taller, good-looking men, regardless of their IQ (Hilliard, 2012: 20).
It is worth noting that Shockley precedes Jensen’s thinking on race and IQ—Jensen was in the audience of one of Shockley’s talks in the late ’60s hearing him talk about racial differences in IQ. Psychology was Jensen’s second choice; his first was to be a symphony conductor. Hilliard (2012: 51) describes this:
“When Shockley addressed a meeting of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in the late 1960s, one member of the audience drawn to his discourse was Arthur R. Jensen, a psychologist who taught at the University of California–Berkeley. Jensen, who had described himself as a “frustrated symphony conductor,” may have had his own reasons for reverencing Shockley’s every word. The younger psychologist had been forced to abandon a career in music because his own considerable talents in that area nevertheless lacked “soul,” or the emotional intensity needed to succeed in so competitive a profession. He decided on psychology as a second choice, carrying along with him a grudge against those American subcultures perceived as being “more expressive” than the white culture from which he sprang. Jensen received his bachelor’s degree in that field from the University of California– Berkeley in 1945.”
Shockley even disowned his son for dating a Costa Rican woman since it would “deteriorate their white gene pool” while describing his children as a “considerable regression”, even though they had advanced degrees. He blamed this ‘genetic misfortune’ on his wife who did not have as high educational attainment as he did (Hilliard, 2012: 49). This man greatly influenced Jensen—and it seems to show in his first writings on IQ—what eventually kicked off the ‘IQ debate’ (which is frivolous) back in the late 1960s. (James Thompson has said that Shockley wouldn’t talk to anyone if he didn’t know their IQ—presumably, because he did not want to talk to anyone ‘lower’ than he. The idiotic ‘thinking’ of eugenic IQ-ists.
Shockley was involved in a car accident, and received a head injury, with colleagues noting that his views on race and eugenics came about after his car accident (Hilliard, 2012: 48). So, it can rightly be argued that if Shockley would never have gotten into a car accident then he would have never had the views he did on race and IQ, meaning that he would not be speaking for Jensen to be in the audience to then eventually write his infamous 1969 paper. So, the current revival of the race-and-IQ debate can be said to be due to Shockly’s influence on Jensen, which is due (in some way) to head injuries sustained during a car accident.
IQ-ists speak of a “genetic deterioration”, what is termed “dysgenics” (the opposite of eugenics). Professor Seymour Itzkoff published The Decline of Intelligence in America (Itzkoff, 1994), arguing that the decline in our country’s “intelligence” is the cause of our economic and political woes. And, while he does not outright discuss eugenics in the book, he states that higher IQ people are not having children and so the national IQ is decreasing—a dysgenic effect. He is also a recipient of funding from the Pioneer Fund, published in Mankind Quarterly, and was one of the 52 signatories of Mainstream Science on Intelligence (Gottfredson, 1997).
The Decline of Intelligence in America was The Bell Curve before The Bell Curve. Itzkoff argued policy proscriptions, including encouraging certain people to breed and certain people not to breed (eugenics without calling it eugenics). Itzkoff stated that welfare policy is one reason why our “intelligence”—as a nation—has declined (see also Jensen, 1969; Lynn, 2001). Itzkoff (1994: 195) states that “Those at the bottom should be humanely persuaded, with generous gifts if deemed appropriate but for one generation only to refrain from conceiving and having children.” So his views are a mixture of Jensen’s, Shockley’s and others. Itzkoff advocates for both positive and negative eugenics for black Americans. I have not seen any IQ-ist discuss Itzkoff’s writings; I will do so in the future.
Philosopher and IQ-ist Jonathon Anomaly (see Winegard, Winegard, and Anomaly, 2020) has a paper in which he ‘defends eugenics’, even stating what we ‘should’ (cautiously) do about public policy in relation to eugenic ideas. He speaks of “undesirable genetic endowment“, while couching his “moral obligation to produce children with the best chance of the best life” (Anomaly, 2018) “through mechanisms of prenatal screening, enshrined in the principle of procreative beneficence and our responsibility to not pass along an “undesirable genetic endowment” (Love, 2018: 4). (See my arguments to discourage such research here and here.) Presumably, like Itzkoff (1994), such policies will be concentrated on the lower classes, of which minority populations are the majority. Robert Wilson (2019), author of The Eugenic Mind Project writes that Anomaly (2018) fails to argue for eugenics, mischaracterizes eugenics, mischaracterizes the scientific consensus, simplifies and misleads on the history, is careless about race and IQ, appealing for moral principles, and no substance linking demography, eugenics and policy recommendations. Anomaly could hardly contain his negative eugenist views; his views being akin to more traditional, negative forms of eugenics” (Wilson, 2019: 74).
In any case, IQ tests were used as a vehicle for sterilization and barring immigrants into America in the 1920s (Swanson, 1995; Gould, 1996; Wilson, 2017; Dolmage, 2018). In his book The Eugenic Mind Project, Wilson (2017) discusses standpoint eugenics—how eugenic policies affected people and their own personal experiences with eugenic policies. In the book, Wilson argues that, to the eugenicists, there are different ‘sorts’ of people that can be distinguished from others. Wilson (2017: 48) writes:
This was not, however, the way of human betterment favored by the applied science of eugenics and that continues to forms [sic] a key part of The Eugenic Mind. Instead, historically eugenicists typically followed Galton in emphasizing that quality was not equally distributed in the kinds of human populations that are regulated by governmental policies and jurisdictional legislation. More specifically, they thought of such populations as being composed of fundamentally distinct kinds of people, with some kinds being of higher quality than others. Some of these sorts of people were to be improved through eugenic policies that encouraged their own reproduction; others were to be eliminated over generational time. The goal of intergenerational human improvement within the eugenics movement was thus achieved by increasing the proportion of higher-quality people in future generations, and this could be achieved in two ways under eugenic logic. Thus, eugenicists historically advocated ideas, laws, policies, and practices either that aimed to maximize the reproduction of higher-quality people—positive eugenics—or that aimed to minimalize the reproduction of lower-quality people. Or both.
A hallmark of The Eugenic Mind, says Wilson, is the distinction between the ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’. Thus, those deemed ‘unfit’ would be sterilized as they are different ‘kinds’ of people. Eugenics is seen as an applied science and so, it attempts to achieve certain goals—the propagation of the ‘fit’ and elimination of the ‘unfit.’ The first IQ tests were constructed with class, so that the test scores mirrored current racial/class divisions, justifying the social hierarchy (Mensh and Mensh, 1991). Thus, using the ‘science of IQ’, we could then identify ‘feeble-minds’ and therefore select them out of the gene pool. What really would be going on here is not selecting out ‘low IQ people’ but selecting out those of lower classes—one of the main reasons these types of views sprang up. A trait was ‘eugenic’ if it fit “folk knowledge characteristic of people” (Wilson, 2017: 70).
Criminology
Eugenic-type thinking also had its beginnings in criminality, right when the first IQ tests were being constructed by Binet in 1905 (Kuhar and Fatović-Ferenčić, 2012). Lombroso’s thesis of hereditary criminality also gave American eugenicists the platform for sterilization of criminals (Applegate, 2018: 438). But early eugenicists were more concerned over white female ‘morons’ and white lower-status, promiscuous white women being coerced and segregated in order to prevent them from breeding, it even being suggested by “one or two scientists” that the women should live on a farm performing menial tasks and should be sterilized; the eugenicists wanted state control of heredity (Applegate, 2018: 439). Mexican-American men and women were even sterilized in the 1900s (Lira, 2015). Such beliefs seem to be baked-in from political and social prejudices; not any basis in ‘science.’
Eugenicists wished for state control over the “propagation of the mentally incompetent,” whether through mental illness or disability. Ultimately, these beliefs would lead not only to forced detention and isolation, but also to regular affronts to human life and dignity. (Applegate, 2018: 442)
But Dr. Sullivan, the medical officer of Holloway Prison in The Eugenics Review stated that “Criminals, looked at from the eugenic standpoint, cannot be put into any single category; some of them, probably most of them, are of average stock, and become criminal under the influence of their milieu; they do not directly interest the eugenist” (Sullivan, 1909: 119-120). The “hyperincarceration of blacks” is also argued to be eugenic in nature (Oleson, 2016; Jones and Seabrook, 2017). Such race-based segregation, argues Oleson, significantly depresses the birthrate of affected groups—racialized minorities (socialgroups taken to be races, e.g., ‘Hispanics‘ and blacks). So since minority populations are overrepresented in prison and they are less likely to procreate, it then follows that such arguments like Oleson’s (2016) has some weight to it. So this then would have eugenic effects over generational time. Even today, America is still sterilizing prisoners, so, it seems, the legacy of the 20th century has yet to let up.
… the penal code is a eugenic instrument, although until today, it has been without consciousness of this function. And following the results of eugenic science, it can tomorrow widen or narrow the circle of crimes in the end of conducing to the physical and psychic improvement of the race. (Battaglini, 1914)
Hitler, noticing the American sterilization laws and the Immigration Act of 1924, instituted eugenic policies on this basis—yes, the Nazi eugenic movement was largely taken from the then-existing social policy in America at the time. Pioneer Fund president Henry Laughlin, who used data from IQ tests in front of Congress to bar certain immigrants from the United States (Swanson, 1995; Dolmage, 2018). The Nazis and Americans had extensive contact with each other, while Germany modeled their sterilization law after Henry Laughlin’s laws for sterilization in US states (Cornwell, 2001; Black, 2003; see Allen, 2004; Lelliot, 2004; and Weikart, 2006 for reviews; Wittmann, 2004). But it is worth noting that Hitler was not a Darwinian (Richards, 2012, 2013). Hitler’s laws in the early 1930s on eugenics “may have had some resemblance to the most extreme of American state’s laws” (Wittmann, 2004: 19), since he was observing the eugenic programs implemented by certain states (eugenic laws were never federally mandated).
Conclusion
The IQ-ist thinking that IQ tests ‘measure’ intelligence led to eugenic policies and the sterilization of criminals and those with low IQs. Jensen and Shockley were the forefronts of bringing IQ-ism back into the picture, and they both had eugenic views (Shockley being way more radical than Jensen, but it is clear that Shockley was his influence here and that, without Shockley, IQ-ism may not have had the sway it does today. The IQ-ist ideology that has led to eugenic thinking and social policies, race and ‘intelligence’ has been there since its inception and it is clear that it still exists today (Chitty, 2007). Most of the big-name IQ-ists have, either explicitly or implicitly, stated things that can be construed in a eugenic way, and thusly, the main goal of the IQ-ist program is revealed: limit the birthrates of the lower classes, which are mostly minorities.
The eugenics movement in America—which then influenced Nazi policy—was not built on science, nor was it political (even though it aimed to be “applied science”; Wilson, 2017), it was a political movement which was erected to control social groups thought to be inferior to the higher-ups (Quigley, 1995). The link between eugenic thinking and IQ-ism in its history go hand-in-hand and some IQ-ists, even today, still advocate for such social policy based on the results from IQ tests (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994; Itzkoff, 1994).
Such prescriptions from IQ-ists for what ‘should be’ done with low IQ people speak to their bias in the matter. One of the great IQ-ists, so revered, Arthur Jensen was very implicit in his views in the late 1960s and early 70s about what should be done for the black population in America. His predecessors, too, had the same type of eugenic beliefs which then influenced their thoughts and values on crime and ‘intelligence.’ This game that IQ-ists have been playing has been going on for over 100 years; and with the advent of new genetic technology, the IQ-ists can continue their eugenic games, attempting to prevent ‘certain people’ from having children.
These tests, originally devised to correlate group’s places on the social hierarchy, cannot be ‘used for good’, as the point of its inception was to justify current class hierarchies as ‘genetic and immutable.’ These psychologists and criminologists leave their fields of inquiry and then attempt to influence public policy using clearly biased tests, as the history of the field has shown since its inception in the early 1900s. These are yet more reasons why IQ testing should be banned, as no good can come from believing that a group or individual is ‘less intelligent’ than another. The eugenic thinking of IQ-ists and criminologists feed off each other, with the IQ-ist ideas being the catalyst for the eugenic policies that followed.
Eugenics
2750 words
Yesterday on Twitter, biologist of The Selfish Gene (Dawkins, 1976) fame Richard Dawkins set off a firestorm on Twitter with a tweet about eugenics (since it just so happened to be Galton’s birthday yesterday).
Deploring the idea means we should not do it—what ‘value’ would there be in breeding humans to jump higher or run faster? Such ideas and the push for them is the mask for eugenic policies—eugenics can and will slip in through the back door using current technologies.
Adapting an argument from Walter Glannon in Genes and Future People (Glannon, 2001: 109):
Where case (A) is CRISPR modifications; case (U) is eugenics; and (B), (C), … (N) are intermediaries.
(1) Case (A) is acceptable.
(2) But cases (B), (C), … (N) … are unacceptable.
(3) Cases (A) and (U) are assimilable, so they are differences in degree, which fall along a continuum of the same type.
(4) If case (A) is permitted, then it will lead to a precedent to allow case (U).
(5) Permitting case (A) will cause cases (B), (C), (N), and … .
(6) Thus, case (A) should be impermissible.
Glannon (2001: 109) rejects (3) stating that “treatment and enhancement are different in kind, not merely degree, and they can correspond to distinct aims that can be articulated.”
Glannon (2001:110) rejects (5) also, stating that “if case (a) is not relevantly similar to cases (b) through (n), then it is unlikely that (a) would cause (b) through (n) to occur. Hence premise (5) is false as well.” (See Govier, 1985 for these argument forms as well, mainly the feasibility argument.)
The problem with his rejection of (3) is that differences of degree can combine to become significant. So if case (A) is similar to (B)-(N), then, since differences of degree can combine to become significant, then allowing (A) will lead to (U) down the line.
… all treatments are enhancements (though not all enhancements are treatments), and … not all ehancements are, by definition alone, ethically unacceptable. (Baylis, 2019: 59)
But if the treatments (which are all enhancements) will, eventually, lead to the psychological slippery slope to accepting eugenics, then we should not do it. “Yea, the treatments were fine. Now they want to prevent this group from doing X and that group from doing Y—what’s the big deal? It’s similar to enhancement, is it not?”
If it is fine to fix a mutation in a gene in a somatic cell, then why not edit the germline so that that individual’s future kin won’t be subjected to that? It would be a waste of time—and money—to keep editing the same family’s somatic cells when they can just edit the germline and get it over with, right?
Now, some may cry “Slippery slope fallacy!” But just crying “Fallacy!” at me does not cut it—one must show that (U) does not follow from (A) and (B)-(N).
The argument provided above is a psychological slippery slope argument. Psychological slippery slope arguments—different from a logical slippery slope argument, where once a first step is taken, one is logically committed to taking subsequent steps unless there are logical reasons to avoid taking such steps—which is based on probability, that is, they are inductive. A psychological slippery slope argument is where once one practice is accepted, similar practices, too, will be accepted as they see no significant difference between them. So accepting one practice, psychologically prepares one to accept another, so we are looking at what may happen, not what the rules and logic of the assertion entail logically.
So if we allow X (gene therapy, negative eugenics) then we will ride down the slippery slope to Y (positive eugenics, genetic enhancement).
When Dawkins says that eugenics ‘works’, what does that mean? That it is possible to attempt to select for certain traits in non-human animals, then it is, therefore, possible for humans? I don’t know who (sanely) can deny this—in theory—but how would it work in practice? Whether it’s state-mandated eugenics (like, for instance, policing who has babies with who) or attempting gene editing in humans, we do not know what would occur in the future (we don’t know what environments would look like in the future so how would we select for traits that would be beneficial in an unknown environment?). Though, I can see eugenicists attempting to use some shoddy GWAS data, such as ‘Look at Hill et al (2019), these genes are associated with high-income, so if we edit/add them then others will have the ability for high-income too!’ (The high-income genes must be doing really well for the rich, as the world’s 2,153 billionaires own more wealth than 4.6 billion people—60 percent of the world’s population.)
Dawkins, though, seems to be forgetting a few things:
(1) When humans breed animals and attempt to select for certain traits, the environments are as uniform as possible.
(2) What would it mean to ‘work’? Is it independent of ideological/moral questions? If, and only if, there could be a definition of ‘favorable result’, or ‘success’ that is divorced from value could eugenics ‘work’ and be a ‘success’ or ‘favorable result.’
(3) Eugenics is a value-laden ideology. Science is—supposedly—value-free. So by that definition, eugenics is not science, it is a social movement.
Humans selectively bred dogs from wolves, and now we have the gamut from big and tall, to short and fat and short and small with many different phenotypes in between. But look at the pugs. We breed them for the flatter, ‘cuter’ face but what does that do for them? Pugs have what is called “Brachycephalic airway obstruction syndrome (BAOS) or Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome (BOAS) occurs in all breeds with significant brachycephaly. Brachycephaly is abnormally short head shape (compared with the ancestral, natural, head shape of dogs) with, in some cases, greatly shortened upper jaws and noses.” This can lead to asphyxiation of the dog. What do ya know? Something unintended (possible asphyxiation) occurred due to what we selected for (shorter heads, flatter faces). Who’s to say what would happen if we attempted to select for ‘income genes’ (or whatever else) in humans?
Even prenatal screening can be used to get eugenics in through the back door (Thomas and Rothman, 2016; also see Duster, 2003). I have argued—for and against—the use of PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) back in 2018. I have also covered eugenic laws in America and throughout the world during the 20th century. Allowing (A) will lead us right back to (U)—where were in the 20th century. Selecting against or for certain traits/genes may lead to unintended consequences (like the breathing problems that pugs have). So, why should we do things to humans if we don’t know the consequences of what we are selecting for or against?
Wilson (2017: 46) describes how value-laden eugenics is, stating that it is not “merely theoretical”, nor “primarily mathematical”:
Identifying eugenics as applied science may be thought to imply very little, saying only that eugenics does not fall under the contrasting mythical category of “pure science.” But the labeling of eugenics as applied science should be taken not so much to register a location on the putative divide between pure and applied science as to distinguish eugenics from a certain idealization of scientific inquiry. It signals three things that eugenics is not, and never was: it is not merely theoretical, not primarily mathematical or statistical, and not value-free.
First, eugenics is not merely theoretical, in the sense of being concerend primarily with abstract or idealized conditions (cf. theoretical physics or theoretical biology). It is focused on, and very motivated by, perceived problems in real-world human populations and their solution.
Second, eugenics is not primarily mathematical or statistical in nature, however much it may at times draw from or rely on mathematical techniques or results. Galton himself was an accomplished mathematician, inventing several statistical techniques, such as the quantified idea of a standard deviation and the use of regression lines in statistics, which remain with us today. Galton’s most prominent successors in the United Kingdom—Karl Person and Ronald Fisher—were also statistically sophisticated innovators who led a biometric wing to the eugenics movement. While the quantitative measures of both individuals and populations has played an important role in the short history of eugenics, much eugenic work bears no closer relationship to the underlying statistics than does the bulk of contemporary, biological, cognitive, and social sciences.
Third, eugenics is not value-free science, and doesn’t purport to be: it is deeply and often explicitly value-laden. I want to take a little more time to explain this dimension to the applied nature of eugenics, for doing so will take us to some core aspects of eugenics as a mixture of applied science and social movement.
[…]
First, the evaluative judgments that The Eugenic Mind rests on go well beyond those for traits, behaviors, and characteristics whose desirability or undesirability can be properly taken for granted. Second, eugenic thinking presumes that there are more desirable and more undesirable—better or worse—kinds or sorts of people. For this reason, the primary way in which eugenics has sought to improve the quality of human lives over generational time has been for advocating for ideas and policies that promote there being a greater proportion of better kinds or sorts of people in future generations.
To illustrate the first of these points, many eugenic policies were either explicitly stated in terms of, or implicitly relied on, a positive valuation of high intelligence and a negative valuation of low intelligence, especially as measured by standard IQ tests, such as the Stanford-Binet. While this positive valuation od intelligence is still widely shared in our society when expressed abstractly, as a part of science that aims to inform and shape what sorts of people there should be in future generations, it is a value judgment that is significantly more questionable than that concerning avoiding pain and suffering. Eugenic thinking and practice also rested on assessments of a broader range of personality and dispositional tendencies—for example, clannishness, cheerfulness, laziness, honesty, criminality—not only whos transmissibility across generations was considered controversial but whos very existence as intrinsic traits and tendencies has never had substantial scientific support.
Likewise, turning to the second point, the eugenic thinking that informed immigration policy in the United States following the First World War held that people of different races or ethnicities were differentially desirable as immigrants coming into the country. This differential valuation was applied to groups such as Poles, Greeks, Italians, Jews, and Slavs. Thus, eugenic immigration policies aimed to promote the influx of immigrants who were viewed as more desirable in nature, and to restrict the immigration of those deemed to be of inferior stock. We now question whether such groups of people are properly thought of as more or less desirable sorts of people to produce future generations of American nationals. But we also rightly wonder whether these are sorts of people, in the relevant sense, at all.
The eugenicists of the 20th century advocated laws, policy, ideas, and practices to ensure that the ‘right people’ would have more children (positive eugenics) while, at the same time, aiming to lower the birth rates of the ‘wrong people’ (negative eugenics) or both.
Connecticut, for instance in 1896, enacted a law stating that no man or woman who is epileptic or feebleminded could marry or live together if the woman is under 45 years old. Indiana, in 1907, passed sterilization laws for criminals, rapists, and those with incurable diseases. And by 1914, at least half of the states in America barred marriages if one of the participants had a mental defect. The SCOTUS case Buck v. Bell made the sterilization of the ‘feebleminded’ constitutional in 1927 with more than 30 states participating, to different degrees, by the 1930s. Then by the 30s, more than 12000 sterilizations were carried out, with at least 7500 occurring in California; then by the 60s, more than 63000 sterilizations were carried out in America. (See Alexander, 2017 for references.)
Eugenic policies can be used for either wing of politics—right, left, or center. Quoting Alexander (2017: 69):
Sterilisation was seen as progressive and an obvious responsibility for a state-organised society with a social conscience. A Swedish doctor writing in 1934 stated that ‘[t]he idea of reducing the number of carriers of bad genes is entirely reasonable. It will naturally be considered within the preventative health measures in socialist community life’ (Burleigh, 2000, p. 366). Sterilisation laws in Sweden stayed in place until the 1970s. Based on a solid biological basis in the power of nature over nurture, eugenics represented the rational response of progressive science-based state control in the light of the social problems contributed by the unfit and the feeble-minded. The Nobel prize-winning Marxist geneticist Herman Muller (1890-1967) declared to the Third International Congress of Eugenics in 1932 ‘[t]hat imbeciles should be sterilized is unquestionable’. In 1935, Muller envisaged that, through selective breeding, within a century most people could have ‘the innate qualities of such men as Lenin, Newton, Leonardo, Pasteur, Beethoven, Omar Khayyam, Pushkin, Sun Yat Sen, Marx, or even to possess their varied faculties combined’ (Muller, 1936, p. 113).
Lastly, here is a story of a girl who survived eugenics:
In this landmark legal case decided in 1996 by Madame Justice Joanne Veit, eugenics survivor Leilani Muir successfully sued the province of Alberta for wrongful confinement and sterilization relating to her admission to and treatment at the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives in Red Deer, Alberta, from 1955 until 1965. As a child of ten, Leilani had found herself swept up by the eugenics movement. After being institutionalized, Leilani was sterilized putatively in accord with the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta, a law that was in place in the province until 1972. That provincial law, one of only two enacted in Canada’s history, authorized the eugenic sterilization of individuals whose recommendation for sterilization by the medical superintendents of provincial institutions or other state authority figures had been approved by a four-person committee known informally as the “Eugenics Board.” The legal wrongfulness of both Leilani’s institutionalization/confinement and her sterilization that was established in Muir v. Alberta drew attention to many problematic features of how eugenics was practiced in the province, including how the Eugenics Board did its work.
[…]
Leilani was distinctive, and admirably so as I got to know her better, but not different in the way one might expect, given her history. She was, to put it in terms of a concept that structures our perceptions of human variation, as normal as can be. Yet Leilani had been institutionalized at a school for mental defectives for an extended period of time as a child, teenager, and as a young adult; she had also been classified as a “moron”—a term whose colloquial familiarity now might make it surprising to some to learn that it was invented barely 100 years ago by the eugenicist and psychologist Henry Goddard to pick out “higher grade” mental defectives. Classified as a higher-grade mental defectives, Leilani was sterilized putatively in accord with the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta. And all of that had further, unexpected, and devastating consequences for Leilani’s post-institutional life.
How did this happen? Leilani was certainly different from the educated, upwardly mobile, middle-class people who populated my snug university surroundings. But she wasn’t that different from the less-educated, often class-stagnant, working-class people with whom I grew up. And, it turned out, she was not different from the many hundreds, if not thousands, of others who were subjected to the very same laws in Alberta. How does this kind of thing happen? (Wilson, 2017: 20, 22)
I don’t know why Dawkins said that it’s one thing to oppose eugenics on “ideological, political, moral grounds”; whether or not it ‘works’ and is a ‘success’ (see caveats above) is irrelevant. As the moral/political arguments against eugenics (and any supposed precursors) outweigh any arguments for ‘utility’. Starting with negative eugenics/gene therapy can and will lead to modification/eugenics. State-mandated? Maybe not. But the attempt to take away choice from an unborn human (on, say, what he wants to do in life, if a parent is trying to ‘select for’ a certain trait or quality that supposedly will lead him down the path to doing X)? Definitely.
Eugenics is morally wrong. Anything that may lead to the slippery slope of eugenics is, then, by proxy, morally wrong. The psychological slippery slope argument provided proves this. The claim that eugenics can ‘work’ implies that our genes are US—that our genes make us who we are (e.g., Plomin, 2018). This is the cost of our gene-worshipping society. Instead of worshipping God, we now worship the gene—the gene god—thinking that our ‘destiny’ is in our genes and that if we choose certain genes—or certain people with the certain genes—then we can guide our society and evolution into something ‘good’ (whatever that means).
Just as traditional thought placed biological forms in the mind of God, so modern thought finds ways of endowing genes with ultimate formative power. (Oyama, 1985)
Shockley and Cattell
2500 words
William Shockley and Raymond Cattell were some of the most prolific eugenicists of the 20th century. In that time, both men put forth the notion that breeding should be restricted based on the results of IQ testing. Both men, however, were motivated not by science—so much—as they were by racial biases. Historian Constance Hilliard discusses Shockley in her book Straightening the Bell Curve: How Stereotypes About Black Masculinity Drive Research on Race and Intelligence (Hilliard, 2012: Chapter 3), while psychologist William H. Tucker wrote a book on Cattell and the eugenic views he held called The Cattell Controversy: Race, Science, and Ideology (Tucker, 2009). This article will discuss the views of both men.
Shockley
When Shockley was 51 he was in a near-fatal car accident. He was thrown many feet away from the car that he, his wife and their son were in. Their son escaped the accident with minor injuries but Shockley had a crushed pelvis and was in a body cast for months in the hospital. Hilliard (2012: 20) writes:
Chapter 3 details Shockley’s transformation from physicist to modern-day eugenicist, preoccupied with race and the superiority of white genes. Some colleagues believed that the car accident that crushed Dr. Shockley’s pelvis and left him disabled might have triggered mental changes in him as well. Whatever the case, not long after returning home from the hospital, Shockley began directing his anger toward the reckless driver who maimed him into racial formulations. His ideas began to coalesce around the notion of an inverse correlation between blacks’ cognition and physical prowess. Later, in donating his sperm at the age of seventy to a sperm bank for geniuses, Shockley suggested to an interviewer for Playboy that women who would otherwise pay little attention to his lack of physical appeal would compete for his cognitively superior sperm. But the sperm banks’ owner apparently concealed from Shockley a painful truth. Women employing its services rejected the sperm of the short, balding Shockley in favor of that from younger, taller, more physically attractive men, whatever their IQ.
Shockley was a short, small man, standing at 5 foot 6 inches, weighing 150 pounds. How ironic that his belief that women would want his “cognitively superior sperm” (whatever that means) was rebuffed by the fact that women didn’t want a small, short balding man and wanted a young, attractive man’s sperm irrespective of their IQ. How funny, these eugenicists are.
Shockley’s views, of course, were not just science-driven. He harbored racial biases against certain groups. He disowned his son for marrying a Costa Rican woman, stated that his children had “regressed to the mean”, and stated that while stating that the so horrible misfortune of his children’s genetics were due to his first wife since she was not as academically inclined as he. Hilliard (2012: 48-49) writes:
Shockley’s growing preoccupation with eugenics and selective breeding was not simply an intellectual one. He disowned his eldest son for his involvement with a Costa Rican woman since this relationship, according to Professor Shockley, threatened to contaminate the family’s white gene pool. He also described his children to a reporter “as a significant regression” even though one possessed a PhD from the University of Southern California and another held a degree from Harvard College. Shockley even went as far as to blame this “genetic misfortune” on his first wife, who according to the scientist, “had no as high an academic achievement standing as I had.”
It’s funny because Shockley described himself as a “lady’s man”, but they didn’t want the sperm of a small, balding manlet (short man, at 5 foot 6 inches weighing 150 pounds). I wonder how he would have reacted to this news?
This is the mark of a scientist who just has intellectual curiosity on “cognitive differences” between racial groups, of course. Racial—and other—biases, of course, have driven many research programmes over the decades, and it seems that, like most “intelligence researchers” Shockley was privy to such biases as well.
One of Shockley’s former colleagues attributed his shift in research focus to the accident he had, stating that the “intense and (to my mind) ill-conceived concentration on socio-genetic matters occurred after a head-on automobile collison in which he was almost killed” (quoted in Hilliard: 2012: 48). Though we, of course, can’t know the reason for Shockley’s change in research focus (from legitimate science to pseudoscience), racial biases were quite obviously a driver in his research-shift.
Hilliard (2012: 47) claims that “had it not been for the near fatal car accident [that occurred to Shockley] … the twentieth century’s preoccupation with pairing cognition and physical attributes might have faded from view. It much not have been so much the car crash as the damage it did to Shockley’s sense of self that changed the course of race science.” Evidence for this claim comes from the fact that Jensen was drawn to Shockley’s lectures. Hilliard (2012: 51-52) writes:
Jensen, who had described himself as a “frustrated symphony conductor,” may have had his own reasons for reverencing Shockley’s every word. The younger psychologist had been forced to abandon a career in music because his own considerable talents in that area nevertheless lacked “soul,” or the emotional intensity needed to succeed in so competitive a profession. He decided on psychology as a second choice, carrying along with him a grudge against those American subcultures perceived as being “more expressive” than white culture from white he sprang.
So, it seems that had Shockley passed away, one of the “IQ giants” would have not have become an IQ-ist and Jensenism would not exist. Then, maybe, we would not have this IQ pseudoscience that America is “obsessed with” (Castles, 2013).
Cattell
Raymond B. Cattell is one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. Tucker (2009) shows how Cattell’s racial biases drove his research programs and how Cattell outlined his radical eugenic thoughts in numerous papers on personality and social psychology. Tucker describes Cattell’s acceptance of an award from the APA. However, the APA then got word of Cattell’s views and what drove his research a few days before Cattell was to fly to Hawaii to accept the award. It was said to the APA that Cattell harbored racist views which drove his research. Cattell even created a religion called “Beyondism” which is a “neo-fascist contrivance” (Mehler, 1997) in which eugenics was a part, but only on a voluntary basis.
Cattell titled a book on the matter A New Morality from Science: Beyondism (Cattell, 1972). It’s almost as if he’s saying that there can be a science of morality, but there cannot be one (contra Sam Harris). Cattell, in his book, thought of how to create a system in which ecologically sustainable eugenic programs could be established. He also published Beyondism: Religion from Science in 1987 (Cattell, 1987). Cattell’s eugenic beliefs were so strong that he actually created a “religion” based on it. It is indeed ironic, since many HBDers are religious in their views.
Tucker (2009: 14) was one of two psychologists to explain to the APA that “this was not a case of a scientist who, parenthetically, happened to have objectionable political opinions; Cattell’s political ideology and his science were inseparable from each other.” So the APA postponed the award ceremony for Cattell. Tucker (2009: 15) demonstrated “that [Cattell’s] impressive body of accomplishments in the former domain [his “scienctific” accomplishments] was always intended to serve the goal of the latter [his eugenic/political beliefs].”
Cattell’s religion was based on evolution. A believer in group selection, he claimed that racial groups were selected by “natural selection“, thusly being married to a form of group selection. Where Beyondism strayed from other religious movements is interesting and is the main point of Cattell’s new religion: compassion was seen by Cattell as “evil.” Tucker (2009: 136) writes:
Cattell finally published A New Morality From Science: Beyondism, a 480-page prolix tome describing his religious thought in detail; fifteen years later Beyondism: Religion from Science provided some elaboration of Beyondist principles. Together these two books constituted the most comprehensive statement of his sociomoral beliefs and their relation to social science. Despite the adjective in the title of the earlier volume, Beyondism showed no significant discontinuity from the “evolutionary ethics” of the 1930s. If anything, the intervening decades had made all the traditonal approaches to morality more contemptible than ever to Cattell. “The notion of ‘human rights'” was nothing more than “an instance of rigid, childish, subjective thinking,” and other humanistic principles “such … as ‘social justice and equality,’ ‘basic freedom’ and ‘human dignity,'” he dismissed as “whore phrases.” As always, conventional religion was the worst offender of all in his eyes, one of its “chief rasions detre [sic]” being the “succorance of failure of error” by prolonging the duration of genetic failures—both individuals and groups—which, “from the perspective Beyondism,” Cattell called “positively evil.” In contrast, in a religion based on evolution as the central purpose of humankind, “religious and scientific truth [would] be ultimately reducible to one truth … [obtained] by scientific discovery … therefore … developing morality out of science. Embodying this unified truth, Beyondism would be “the finest ways to spend our lives.”
So intergroup competition, to Cattell, was the mechanism for “evolutionary progress” (whatever that means; see my most recent essay on the matter). The within-group eugenic policies that Beyondism would put onto racial groups was not only for increasing the race’s quality of life, but to increase the chance of that race’s being judged “successful” in Cattell’s eyes.
Another main tenet of Beyondism is that one culture should not borrow from another, termed “cultural borrowing”. This separated “rewards” from their “genetic origins” which then “confused the process of natural selection between groups.” So Beyondism required the steady elimination of “failing” races which was essential if the earth was “not to be choked with … more primitive forerunners” (Cattell, quoted in Tucker, 2009: 146). Cattell did not use the term “genocide”, which he saved only for the literal killing off of the members of a group; he created a neologism called “genthanasia” which was the process of ““phasing out” a “moribund culture … by educational and birth measures, without a single member dying before his time” (Cattell, quoted in Tucker, 2009: 146). So, quite obviously, Beyondism could not be practiced by one individual; it needed groups—societies—to adhere to its tenets for it to be truly effective. To Cattell, the main draw of Beyondism was that intergroup competition was a necessary moral postulate while he used psychological data to parse out “winners” and “losers.”
Cattell was then put on the Editorial Advisory Board of Mankind Quarterly, which was formerly a journal populated by individuals who opposed civil rights and supported German National Socialism. Cattell, though, finally had a spot where he could publish his thoughts in a “journal” on what should be done in regard to his Beyondism religion. Tucker (2009: 153) writes:
… in an article titled “Virtue in ‘Racism’?” he offered an analysis similar to Pearson’s, arguing that racism was an innate “evolutionary force—a tendency to like the like and distrust the different” that in most cases had to be respected as ” a virtuous gift”; the mere fact that society “has had to battel racism” was for Cattell “sufficient evidence that an innate drive exists.” And rather than regarding such natural inclination as a “perversion,” the appropriate response to racism, in his opinion, was “to shape society to adjust to it,” no doubt keeping groups separate from each other.
One of Cattell’s colleagues—Oliver Robertson (a man who criticized Hitler for failing)—wrote a book in 1992 titled The Ethnostate: An Unblinkered Perspective for an Advanced Statecraft in which he detailed his plan for the balkanization (the division of one large region into many smaller, sometimes hostile, ones) which was Cattellian in nature. It seemed like The Ethnostate was just a whole bunch of Cattell’s ideas, packaged up into a “plan” for the balkanization of America. So he wanted to divide America into ethnostates. Recall how Cattell eschewed “cultural borrowing”; well so did Robertson. Tucker (2009: 166) writes:
Most important of all, in the competition between the different ethnostates each group was to rely solely “upon its own capabilities and resources,” prohibited from “borrowing” from more complex cultures advancements that “it could not create under its own power” or otherwise benefitting from outside assistance.
[…]
A critique of Cattell’s ethical system based in part on his involvement with others espousinig odious opinions naturally runs the risk of charging guilt by association. But the argument advanced here is more substantative. It is not merely that he has cited a long list of Far Right authors and activists as significant influences on his own work, including arguably the three most important English-speaking Nazi theorists of the last thirty years—Pearson, Oliver, and Robertson. It is that, in addition to citing their writing as support for his own ideology, Cattell has acknowledged their ideas as “integrable”—that is, compatible—with his thought; expressed his gratitude for their influence these ideas have had on the evolution of Beyondism; graced the pages of their journals with his own contributions, thus lending his considerable prestige to publications dedicated to keeping blacks in second-class status; registered no objection when schemes of racial balkanization were predicated expressly on his writing—and indeed edited a publication that praised such a scheme for its intellectual indebtedness to his thought and called for its implementaion; and provided a friendly interview to a periodical [American Rennaisance] directly advocating that constituonally protected rights be withheld from blacks. This is not guilt by association but rather guilt by collaboration: a core set of beliefs and a common vision of an ethnically cleansed future, and that his support for such a society has lent his academic prominence, consciosuly and deliberately, to their intolerable goals. (Tucker, 2009: 171)
Conclusion
The types of views these two men held, quite obviously, drove their “scientific aspirations”; and their racial biases permeated their scientific thought. Shockley’s sudden shift in his thought after his car accident is quite possibly how and why Jensen published his seminal article in 1969 which opened the race/”intelligence” debate back up. Shockley’s racial biases permeated into his familial life when his son married a Costa Rican woman; along with his thoughts on how his children “regressed to the mean” due to his first wife’s lack of educational attainment shows the kind of great guy that Shockley was. It also shows how his biases drove his thought.
The same with Cattell. Cattell’s religion Beyondism grew out of his extreme racial biases; his collaboration with National Socialists and those opposed to desegregation further shows how his political/racial beliefs drove his research. Beyondist propaganda stated that evolutionary “progress” occurred between competing groups. So this is when Robertson pretty much took all of Cattell’s ideas and wrote a book on how America will be balkanized into ethnostates where there would be no cultural borrowing. Further, he stated that the most appropriate response to racism was to shape society to adjust to racism, rather than attempt to eliminate it entirely.
The stories of these two men’s beliefs are why, in my opinion, we should know the past and motivations of why individuals push anything—no matter what type of field it is. Because biases—due to political beliefs—everywhere cloud people’s judgment. Although, holding such views was prevalent at the time (like with Henry Goddard and his Kallikak family (see Zenderland, 1998).
Is Diet and Exercise Eugenic?
1550 words
Eugenics can be defined as “the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.” Though, in his book Genetic Ethics: An Introduction, Farrelly (2018: 30) cites Bertrand Russel’s definition of eugenics. Eugenics is “the attempt to improve the biological character of a breed by deliberate methods adopted to that end.” So, eugenics does not have to be ‘bad’, if it is morally justifiable and defensible, if they treat all people as free and equal (which most eugenic movements in the past have not done. See my article Eugenics and the State for a history of eugenics and the policies that arose from it.)
Dieting (defined as “what one eats”, not the other commonly-used definition “when one is in caloric restriction under TDEE”) and exercise change the expression of genes in the genome. For example, mature skeletal muscle can adapt to numerous stressors—indeed, if it could not, then we would not be able to choose to gain (or lose) muscle mass. Exercise induces the activity of certain genes (Vissing, Anderson, and Schjerling, 2005). One study on endurance athletes showed that there are pronounced effects of gene expression on exercised and non-exercised muscles (Catoire et al, 2012). One study showed that the ingestion of glucose during exercise decreases the gene expression of genes associated with fatty acid metabolism (Civitarese et al, 2005). Numerous epigenetic changes are also induced by exercise (Ntanasis-Stathopoulos, Tzanninis, and Koutsilieris, 2013). Miyamoto-Mikami et al (2018) showed that young men who participated in high-intensity intermittent exercise training showed that 79 genes had an elevated expression whereas 73 genes were significantly reduced.
Williams and Neufer (1996) show that long-term responses in regard to adaptations in regard to a specific exercise “require changes in gene expression, mediated by changes in the rate of transcription of specific genes and in the rate of synthesis of
specific proteins.” Further, diet and exercise can change the transcriptional properties of skeletal muscle, which induce further physiological changes (Hargreaves and Cameron-Smith, 2002). There is even preliminary evidence that diet and exercise affects the epigenome over several generations (Barres and Zierath, 2016). Since changes occur to the epigenome due to environmental stressors, and exercise is an environmental stressor, it follows that exercise, too, can change the epigenome.
People visit the gym to change their biology. Since people visit the gym to change their biology, are they involved in “self-eugenics”? I would say yes, going with the definition from Russell quoted above. That one wants to change their biology means that they are most likely not currently happy with the way their biological phenotype currently is. So they visit the gym, begin a diet (defined here as “caloric restriction”) in order to change their biological phenotype since they are not happy with it. Methods like diet and exercise seek to improve the biological character of a breed through deliberate methods, and so, fall under the umbrella of “eugenics.”
But there is a difference between this type of “eugenics” and methods commonly thought of when “eugenics” are discussed. “When eugenic measures exemplify moral and epistemic virtue rather than vice, they are morally obligatory rather than simply morally permissible” (Farrelly, 2018: 42). Prescribing (a sensible) diet and exercise to a populace can and will improve their health; further, educating people on the right and wrong things to eat (“right and wrong things to eat” in regard to their current goals) and how these things we eat affect our physiology is not morally objectionable nor is it coercive.
Think of the eugenic policies I discussed in my article on eugenics and the State. The policies discussed (such as forced sterilization, infanticide, forced contraceptive measures, and selective breeding) are immoral: the State is attempting to force its ideals on the populace, and so it can be argued that it is immoral since individual autonomy is taken away (or attempted to be taken away). On the other hand, prescribing diet and exercise is not eugenic in this manner: it’s just a prescription, what one should do if they would like to live their life to the highest quality. This includes staying away from highly processed and refined foods (carbs) and other, “non-natural” foodstuffs. This is only a suggestion based on the current state of nutritional knowledge; if one wants to live the best-possible life then they should diet and exercise.
On the other hand, we can take a State-measure and, using the definition in this article from Russell, can say that this measure is eugenic, but its similarities to what is being argued here is irrelevant, since I am arguing for education, not forcing people to do something (though I will state my views on this matter at the end, which I still honestly think about since it conflicts with some of my views.)
Back in the beginning of this decade, then-mayor of NYC Michael Bloomberg “proposed [a] regulation that would bar food service establishments from selling certain sugary drinks in containers larger than sixteen ounces” in an effort to “reduce the city’s obesity rate.” When this law was proposed, I was all for it. People cannot make decisions for themselves, because when they do, they make the “wrong” (in regard to, what I would assume to be what people try to achieve—a healthy lifestyle) decisions, and so, I thought that a policy like this was a good idea, because who the hell needs a 64 oz. Big Gulp soda (which could have up to 700 kcal in the cup) from 7-11? Why would someone need to down almost 2 liters of soda in one go? Note that, I would assume, the individual would not be caught dead drinking out of a 2-liter bottle of soda (though I have seen quite a lot of people do so, even early in the morning). But there is no problem using the cup since its size is kind of deceptive—deceptive in the manner that it does not look like the 2-liter bottle of (family-sized) soda.
I loved this proposal when it was announced. It would, I thought, attempt to address one aspect of our obesity problem (since nearly 40 percent of all of the added sugars we consume come from sugary drinks). Back then, I was more libertarian in my politics, but I thought that the policy was a good idea, even though it conflicted with my views on politics. I now do not believe we should take these types of measures—I believe that education is sufficient, along with getting rid of food deserts which hamper the ability of those in those deserts to get access to good, high-quality food (which affects certain races over others; National Research Council, 2009).
The view held by Bloomberg, and now current NYC mayor Bill Deblasio, is an example of a policy that would take away one’s choice to drink what they would like. Bloomberg’s rationale was that, if people wanted more of the drink, then they can go over and refill their cup so that they can see what and how much they are actually drinking. This, on its face, is sensible. If one wants to drink the same amount they would have drank in, say, a 64 oz. Big Gulp, they can keep refilling their cup in order to get the same amount of liquid they would have gotten in the bigger cup. But, what if someone wants a 64 oz. Big Gulp? What about a 128 oz. Ultra Big Gulp? A 256 oz. Super Ultra Big Gulp? Is there anywhere we should draw this line? Should we?
In any case, I have shown that exercise and diet is “eugenic” in the sense of Russel’s definition. But it is not “eugenic” in the sense of, in my opinion, what most people mean when they discuss “eugenics”: taking away one’s individual autonomy to do what they want, forcing them to do something. (Though, they are not being told they cannot drink sugary drinks, they are being told that there is a size limit on how big their cup is; they would be forced to drink a sugary drink in a small cup.)
Bloomberg’s proposed measure is quite obviously eugenic since it “attempt[s] to improve the biological character of a breed by deliberate methods adopted to that end.” Is the health of the populace more important than individual autonomy to be able to buy their 256 oz. Super Ultra Big Gulp? Or is one’s ability to freely drink their 256 oz. Ultra Big Gulp more important? If it can be shown that this policy would reduce the number of obese people in the City, should it be attempted?
These are important (moral) questions to answer. I am honestly undecided here; this issue is incredibly complex. Though, we do know one thing: exercise and diet is “eugenic” in Russel’s sense, and the measures exemplify moral and epistemic virtue so it is not like “State-forced” eugenics of old. Whether or not there is a negative connotation to “eugenics” depends on whether or not it pursues sound and morally justifiable aims. Therefore, though prescribing diet and exercise is eugenic since they both influence the epigenome and gene expression (along with it falling under Russel’s definition of eugenics), it is not eugenic in a negative sense, since there are sound and morally justifiable aims in prescribing diet and exercise to the population at large.
Eugenics and the State
2450 words
The history of eugenics is intertwined with the history of genetics. The term “genetics” was established in 1905 by William Bateson. Half a century previously, Francis Galton coined the term “eugenics”, which is Greek for “well-born” or “good genesis”, though Galton did not attribute the genesis of the idea to the Greeks. Eugenic history began with the ancient Greeks, and, of course, is still around today. However, today we have technology that was previously not able to be conceptualized due to past people’s knowledge. This article will give a brief overview of eugenics throughout history up to the modern day.
Eugenics in ancient Greece
The idea of eugenics was first formulated by Aristotle. Aristotle imagined a rigged lottery (of course those who drew tickets did not know the lottery was rigged). The reasoning for rigging the lottery was simple: they could prevent so-called undesirable people from breeding while promoting births for people they want to breed. Plato only wanted those in the Greek upper-classes to mate (what was termed the “guardian class), men aged 25 and women aged 20—so they can birth children in their primes.
After the children were born, they were taken from their parents and held in special nurseries. Children who were Bron defective were” hidden away”, which could be a euphemism for infanticide (a form of which was reportedly practiced in Sparta where they left newborns at the city limits so the weak could die and the strong could live). Fit young men who chose not to breed had to pay a fine which went to the temple of Hera which was based on their class.
Aristotle had similar views to Plato. He, too, wanted the State to be in charge of the birthing process. He wanted both sexes to marry at their primes, in his eyes, aged 37 for men and 18 for women, while performing infanticide on babies born with deformities and aborting children if couples have too many. (See Galton, 1998 for a review of eugenic policies in ancient Greece.) (See also Genetics and the Decline of Sparta.)
The argument for autonomy
A simple argument can be erected against any and all State coercion to do something: the argument for the rejection of State authority (Wolff, 1970). The argument can be formulated thus:
P1. We have a higher-order interest in autonomy.
P2. If something promotes our higher-order interests, we have a duty to do it.
C1. We have a duty to be autonomous (modus ponens, P1, P2).
P3. If we have a duty to be autonomous, then autonomy requires that we decide what to do with ourselves.
C2. We should decide what to do for ourselves (modus ponens, C1, P3).
P4. If we accept the authority of others, then we are not autonomous.
C3. We should not accept the authority of others (modus tollens, C1, P4).
P5. If we accept the authority of law, then we accept the authority of others.
C4. We should not accept the authority of the law (modus tollens, C3, P5).
The argument is about rejecting State authority as a whole, but, of course, we can substitute. “If we accept the authority of [law X in regard to eugenic policy P] then we accept the authority of others[‘ thoughts of what to do with our lives]”. Thus we should disallow State eugenic policies.
Eugenics in ancient Rome
Like most other ancient civilizations, the ancient Romans practiced abortion and infanticide. Archaeological analyses uncovered a well, and in the well were dozens of little skeletons, implying that the Romans disposed of the babies of prostitutes (these were found in bordellos) because they were unwanted.
The Romans “deemed people with disabilities as sub-human“, with the abandonment of the baby being standard practice—which lends more credence to the baby wells of the Romans in the bordellos.
Eugenics in China
The Chinese Maternal and Infant Health Care Law states that if the screening of an embryo reveals that the couple in question has a chance of birthing a defective baby then they should agree to take contraceptive measures (see Guo, 2006 for a review). Further, if they already married then they must take long-term contraceptive measures. These measures are supported in China, since they have about 50 million disabled persons (see MacKeller and Bechtel, 2016).
Eugenics in Germany
The ideology of eugenics was present in Germany long before Hitler came to power. It was written about by numerous authors, including Nietzsche. “The first chair of eugenics was given in 1923 at the University of Munich to the geneticist Fritz Lenz” (MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016). Lenz promoted ‘racial hygeine’—he wanted Nordic traits to proliferate over others traits. He eventually joined the National Socialist party in 1937. The Nazis sterilized about 350,000 people between 1934 and 1939. This, then, led to the construction of a euthanasia program in 1939 called the “T-4 program”—‘Tiergartenstrasse 4″. The order allowed physicians to grant so-called ‘mercy killings’ to those deemed incurable as gauged by the current medical technologies. All euthanasia programs, however, were halted once word got out to the general German public. The National Socialists, thus, practiced both negative eugenics (selecting against people who they deemed unfit to have children) and positive eugenics (selecting for people who they deemed fit to have children).
The horrors of WWII Germany, though, caused great revile in every aspect of any kind of genetic modifications/selecting against/for any traits in humans. After the defeat of the Axis powers, in general, the public’s attitudes towards eugenics sharply changed.
In reaction to Nazi abuses, postwar politicians and members of the scientific community denounced the notion of any inherent inequality between human individuals.
[…]
After the Second World War, however, there was a significant drop of eugenic sterilizations of those with mental disabilities in response to a decline in support for eugenic policies as a whole. (MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016: 37-38)
Eugenics in Norway
In Norway, sterilization was first mentioned in 1927. They eventually enacted a law in 1934 based on the facts that parents could not look after their children and hereditary diseases. This continued all the way up until 1977, when the rights of the individual in question were considered. Though, unlike WWII Germany, there was no State-sanctioned eugenic policy, and each case was taken on a case-by-case basis.
Between the years 1934 and 1977, about 41,000 people were sterilized, with a majority consenting to the practice—about 75 percent were enacted on women (MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016: 39). However, between the years of 1943-1945, a law for the protection of the race was enacted in Norway while the Germans occupied the country—which was removed from law after Nazi Germany fell. However, in 1977, sterilizations changed from a way to control the people to a means of one’s ability to choose to limit their own reproduction.
Eugenics in Sweden
Sweden was the only Nordic country to have a national eugenics society. One of the leaders in eugenic thinking in Sweden in the early 1900s Arthur Engbert thought that we register pedigrees of our dogs and horses, so why not do so for ourselves (Swedes). Sweden, like Norway, enacted a sterilization act in 1934, though it only addressed sterilizations without the consent of the person; they did it to people who were legally incompetent. However, in 1941, this act was widened to include individuals with heritable physical disabilities. Women could also, of course, choose to sterilize themselves if they had too many children.
Thus, from 1935, when sterlizations were often being undertaken for eugenic reasons until 1975 when they were generally considered for medical reasons and the legislation was eventually overturned, Sweden sterlized nearly sixty-three thousand persons. Up to a quarter of these persons were mentally disabled. Though there was never a systematic sterilization program of mentally disabled individuals on the basis of political descisions or administrative instructions, the sterilizations seemed to develop on their own in the context of what was allowed. More than 90 per cent of these procedures were undertaken on women, but many individuals considered as having an antisocial way of life also felt the effects of somewhat coerced sterlizations. (MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016: 41)
Eugenics in the Soviet Union
Eugenics in the Soviet Union started with the biologists Aleksandr Serebrovskii in 1929. He recommended that artificial insemination be introduced to the populace in order to control who gives birth and who does not. He wrote (quoted in MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016: 41):
With the current state of artficial insemination technology…one talented and valuable produce could have up to one thousand children…In these conditions, human selection would make gigantic leaps forward. And various women and whole communes would then be proud…of their success and achievements in this undoubtedly most astonishing field — the production of new forms of human beings.
However, Stalin did not take to these proposals since, in his eyes, these types of eugenic policies contradicted Marxist ideology by claiming that human characters were determined by biology and not social/environmental ‘realities’. This, then, led to the deaths of many geneticists in the Soviet Union. (There are many good books on this matter, though my favorite is Lysenko’s Ghost.)
Eugenics in the United Kingdom
Sybil Gotto founded the Eugenics Education Society (EES) in 1907 in the UK to voice his concerns of the lower classes outbreeding the higher classes—what was perceived as a demographic problem. Francis Galton was the first Chair of this Society. So the EES proposed to prevent lower classes from breeding and promoting only breeding for the middle and higher classes, which would improve the whole society by excising the lower classes and replacing them with middle and upper classes. (There has to be a ‘bottom’ everywhere; so there still would exist ‘lower classes.’)
Winston Churchill was even quoted as saying persons in Britain “should, if possible, be segregated under proper conditions so that their curse diet with them and was not transmitted to future generations” (quoted in MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016: 43). After Churchill stated this, three years later, the UK Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 was established, and people deemed idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded or morally defective were detained in an effort to control the breeding of the population.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990 was considered as allowing ‘soft’ forms of eugenics, it was stated that people would abort for even minor physical anomalies. Though, of course, this did end up occurring, lending credence to said ‘fears.’
Eugenics in America
Finally, the eugenics movement really became ‘scientific’ in America in the late 1800s to early 1900s. In fact, the first recorded eugenic experiment took place in America, at the so-called Perfectionist Community in Oneida, New York. The leader of this community was named John Noyes—a radical Christian, who believed that Christians had a moral responsibility to promote ‘moral perfection.’ He was influenced, of course, by Darwin and Galton. Between the years of 1869 and 1879, Noyes organized a campaign to get the so-called best to propagate. Members chosen to propagate were chosen on the basis of characters like ‘intelligence’, physical traits, and, of course, the commitment to Noyes’ vision (of a utopia). Fifty-eight children were born, but the project was soon abandoned.
Numerous US states passed laws barring certain people from marriage—imbeciles, epileptics, or those with feeble-minds. (See, for example, this article on Connecticut eugenic policies.) The Connecticut law was, in fact, the first eugenic policy passed in the country. These types of policies even were used to prevent immigration into America (see Dolmage, 2018 for a review).
Further, during the first 70 years of the 20th century, “eugenic policies affected up to sixty-four thousand Americans. But this happened primarily through measures such as forced sterilization. The 1907 Compulsory Sterilization Law of Indiana was the first to enact such legislation, though the public at large, was generally unaware of the initiative. According to this law, every institution that housed ‘confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists and imbeciles’ could authorize medical personnel ‘to perform such operation for the prevention of procreation’. This legislation was replicated by other states to such an extent that, by 1927, an estimated twenty-four states had enacted similar laws. Of these, the state of California was one of the most active, performing 4,636 sterilizations and castrations between 1907 and 1925, reaching a total of 9,930 by 1935″ (MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016: 46-47).
Then in 1927, a woman named Carrie Buck challenged the state of Virginia when a physician said that her sterilization would be for the ‘good of society.’ The high court of Virginia denied her claim, so she took it to the SCOTUS—known as Buck v. Bell. SCOTUS went 8-1 against Buck, saying that Buck “was a threat and danger to the genetic stability of society” (MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016: 47). So, the highest Court in the Land sided with the physician and not the woman. Eugenic policies were hardly opposed until 1974, with the case Relf v. Weinberger. The case came about due to to “the malicious, undesired sterilization of sisters Mary Alice and Minnie Reif” (MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016: 47). In the ruling, it was stated that mentally competent adults had to give their consent to sterilization, but this did not become standard until 1981.
Ultimately, formal acknowledgment of the ethically unacceptable abuse of sterilizations in the United States only came in 2003.
The international influence of American eugenic policies shpould not be underestimated. The Nazi government regularly cited a publication that touted favorable results of the sterilization policy in the state of California as evidence that wide-reaching sterilization programs were both feasible and humane. At the Nuremberg trials following the Second World War, Nazi administrators accused of war crimes actually justified the mass-sterilization of hundreds of thousands of people in less than a decade by referencing the United States success as their inspiration. (MacKellar and Bechtel, 2016: 47-48)
Conclusion
Eugenic thinking has been with us at least since the ancient Greeks and the idea has mutated over the times with different types of policies and measures each society has taken to ensure that their ‘genetic hygiene’ was as good as possible.
Eugenic thinking is, of course, still around today. Most recently, the Chinese using CRISPR—on twin girls—to create the first genetically modified humans, who were born this month. It is important to note that these claims have not been verified by other scientists nor have they been published yet. I am not too surprised at the outrage of this—if it did indeed happen (many people are skeptical that it did). I know some will say ‘Ethics don’t matter when the Chinese don’t care about ethics and look at what they’re doing!!!’ (If they truly did do this.) However, just because people disregard something doesn’t mean it does not exist. (The scientist, He Jiankui, is currently under investigation amidst questions of whether or not what he supposedly did was ethical and legal.)
Understanding the history of eugenics—the hows and whys—can prevent us from repeating past mistakes.
(For some info on the supposed Chinese gene-edited baby, see China’s gene-edited babies will push bioethics into a dark new era and A Sobering Moment for thoughts on the supposed gene-editing.)
NotPoliticallyCorrect 