Liberal Eugenics - History

History

The term "liberal eugenics" does not necessarily indicate that its proponents are social liberals in the modern sense. The term refers to any ideology of eugenics which is inspired by an underlying liberal theory but also to differentiate it from the authoritarian state eugenic programs of the first half of the 20th century, which were associated with coercive methods to decrease the frequency of certain human hereditary traits passed on to the next generation. The most controversial aspect of those programs was the use of "negative" eugenics laws which allowed government agencies to sterilize individuals alleged to have undesirable genes.

Historically, eugenics is often broken into the categories of positive (encouraging reproduction in the designated "fit") and negative (discouraging reproduction in the designated "unfit"). Many positive eugenic programs were advocated and pursued during the early 20th century, but the negative programs were responsible for the compulsory sterilization of hundreds of thousands of persons in many countries, and were contained in much of the rhetoric of Nazi eugenic policies of racial hygiene and genocide.

Liberal eugenics is conceived to be mostly "positive", relying more on reprogenetics than on selective breeding charts to achieve its aims. It seeks to both minimize congenital disorders and enhance capacity, traditional eugenic goals. It is intended to be under the control of the parents exercising their procreative liberty while guided by the principle of procreative beneficence, though the substantial governmental and corporate infrastructure required for reprogenetics may limit or steer their actual choices.

Because of its reliance on new reprogenetic technologies, liberal eugenics is often referred to as "new eugenics", "neo-eugenics", the portmanteau term "newgenics", or "techno-eugenics". However, these terms may be misleading since current or future authoritarian eugenic programs do or could also rely on these new biotechnologies.

Eugenicist Frederick Osborn laid the intellectual groundwork for liberal eugenics as early as the 1930s when he was the director of the Carnegie Institution for Science. Osborn argued that the public would never accept eugenics under militarized directives; rather, time must be allowed for "eugenic consciousness" to develop in the population. Accordingly, eugenic consciousness did not have to be aggressively and intentionally micro-manufactured; instead, it would develop as an emergent property as capitalist economy increased in complexity.

Osborn argued that all that was needed was to simply wait until a specific set of social structures (a consumer economy and the nuclear family) developed to a point of dominance within capitalist culture. Once these structures matured, people would act eugenically without a second thought. Eugenic activity, instead of being an immediately identifiable, repugnant activity, would become one of the invisible taken-for-granted activities of everyday life (much like getting a vaccination).

Bioethicist Joseph Fletcher greatly contributed to liberal eugenic thought in 1974 when he described an alternative to "reproductive roulette". A key goal of liberal eugenics would thus be to reduce the role of chance in reproduction. His visions soon became a reality when effective human in vitro fertilisation became possible in 1978. Modern interest in liberal eugenics is believed to have increased ever since. Currently, genetic testing such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, have been developed to allow for embryos carrying congenital disorders to be discarded.