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Is eugenics—the movement for improving human characteristics by controlling heredity—reviving? No more than two decades ago, such a revival would have seemed extremely improbable. Eugenics was almost universally condemned as a horrifying example of science run amok, conjuring up grotesque images of Nazi death camps and "euthanasia" centers, where German physicians murdered millions in an attempt to fulfill Hitler's dreams of a racially pure breed of Germans, free from genetic "defects."
Other factors had also contributed to the decline of eugenics in the mid-twentieth century. By the 1960s, the social sciences and psychology had for the most part rejected biological determinism, which exerted a powerful hold on many intellectuals in the early twentieth century. Social scientists in the 1960s placed far greater emphasis on the power of the environment to shape individuals and their character. The civil-rights campaign and the women's movement brought intense pressure against all forms of biological determinism. The new emphasis on reproductive freedom that accompanied the abortion-rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s dealt a further blow to eugenics. Progressives, who earlier in the century promoted government measures to control reproduction, were now appalled by eugenics legislation of the early twentieth century, such as compulsory sterilization of the mentally handicapped. Individual choice supplanted responsibility to society in reproductive matters.
In Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects, and Eugenics in China, Frank Dikotter explains that the trajectory of eugenics in twentieth-century China has roughly paralleled developments in the rest of the world. Despite the popularity of eugenics among physicians and intellectuals in early twentieth-century China, after the success of the Communist revolution in 1949 eugenics lost official approval. Chinese Communists, like their Soviet counterparts, rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of Lysenkoism—that is, a neo-Lamarckian view of heredity holding that organisms can pass to their offspring traits acquired through environmental influences. China was thus in step with the rest of the world in rejecting eugenics in the 1960s and 1970s (though not necessarily for all the same reasons).
Despite considerable opposition, eugenics is experiencing a comeback today, and not only in China. Memories of the abuses of Nazi Germany or of compulsory sterilization in the United States and several countries of Europe are less vivid. Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have made biological determinism intellectually respectable again, despite intense op position in some circles. Finally, abortion is now seen by many as a valid way to select human traits; mentally or physically handicapped fetuses often never see the light of day. New reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization and amniocentesis, have emerged in the past decades, slowly accustoming us to some forms of artificial selection of humans. The Human Genome Project is currently mapping all the genetic information contained in human DNA; the prospects for both good and ill are enormous.
To be sure, eugenics is still controversial, and many still fear the specter of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where technocrats supervised the biological engineering of human beings, who were manufactured in assembly-line fashion to fit into their intended niche in society. Some of these fears were expressed in an issue of Time magazine (Jan. 11, 1999) featuring a discussion of recent advances in genetic technology. But other articles in that issue of Time actually promoted eugenics: Robert Wright, a popularizer of evolutionary psychology, argued that since eugenics is already a reality we cannot evade (he merely assumes this without argument), the government should subsidize eugenics for the poor to avoid social stratification that will allegedly be caused by unequal access to genetic technologies. Even more remarkable than his suggestions is his frank use of the notorious term eugenics to describe his proposals. This was still unthinkable just a decade ago.
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