From Chance to Choice: Genetics & Justice, by Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, & Daniel Wikler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Reviewed by John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe
"Modern technology guided by a primitive moral sense can produce horrific results." Ç p. 306
In 1996, Daniel Wikler announced at a meeting of the International Association of Bioethics that he and three colleagues were planning a book on eugenics, and he outlined it briefly. Modern eugenics, he asserted, is benign, unlike Nazi eugenics, the master race mentality that led to the death camps. I spoke with him about it, and was dismayed to understand that he was planning to compare modern "positive" eugenics with Nazi "positive" and "negative" eugenics. That is, he had no intention of discussing current population control. I urged him to reconsider. He did not, and the book is scholarly nonsense.
After World War II, the eugenics movement changed. An officer of the Eugenics Society in England called for a new policy which he (not his critics) called "crypto-eugenics." The principal tool of crypto-eugenics was to be Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood began in the offices of the Eugenics Society, and stayed there for many years. The work of the organization was to provide birth control for the dysgenic. And yet the book asserts that "the movements' offices were shut down" (p. 39). This is simply false.
In 1952, Planned Parenthood and the Population Council were funded, founded and staffed by eugenicists. The eugenics movement was alive and thriving, still working to get rid of unwanted populations, albeit without open warfare. How do Wikler et al. deal with the troubled history of these quite visible and influential organizations? They just ignore reality, opting for craven silence.
The book's presentation of the history of eugenics prior to the war is faulty as well. The book notes that the Catholic Church opposed eugenics in principle decades before the rest of the world turned against it, and "was virtually the only institution to do so." But, the authors assert, "this was of a piece with its opposition to abortion and contraception." This is ignorant bigotry. The Catholic Church at that time was defending unions, promoting health care, urging national welfare programs, and protecting immigrants. The Church opposed eugenics because Jesus Christ defended the poor. There is simply no excuse for overlooking this obvious fact; eugenics diatribes were full of attacks on the Church for its sentimental devotion to the poor, for promoting charity that thwarted natural selection.
This misreading of history is central to the book's thesis, that the eugenics movement can be purified if we can learn from the little errors of the past and not violate "reproductive freedom." Reproductive freedom was not the issue; the issue was whether the government would prevent births among the poor. If you state the experience of history accurately, you are less likely to overlook today's campaigns to limit births forcibly, as in China.
The book "considers five answers to the question, Why was eugenics wrong?" Oddly, the five answers do not include the answer given by the opponents of eugenics. The central criticism was -- and is -- that eugenics embodies a false anthropology. Man is not shaped by nature and nurture, with the proportions to be determined. Rather, according to the constant opponents of eugenics, man is shaped by God's creative generosity, and by our free response.
The book mangles the history of eugenics, twists the work of eugenics' opponents, and fails to address the massive reality of negative eugenics today. It is a hothouse work, to be read and appreciated by a small group of people who do not see a need to engage their opponents in honest and vigorous debate.
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