Has eugenics been "disproven"?

Great Debates
1

Frequently, when textbooks refer to eugenics, they make a big show of referring to it as “discredited” and having “no scientific basis.” Now, it’s quite likely that early theories about eugenics - such as using it to reduce criminality or reliably breed geniuses - are incorrect, and it was misused by some groupts (racists, mainly) for political purposes, but that is true of any developing science. Neither has it been experimentally disproven, as no useful large-scale experiments based on eugenic theories have been conducted (Try getting an NIH grant for that!).

Given that we now know that many desirable traits, such as intelligence and strength, have some degree of heritability, and that many diseases, including mental illness, are likewise at least partly genetic in origin, can we truthfully claim that eugenics has been discredited? It is obviously politically tainted by its association with Nazism and racism, but these are political matters that have no bearing on its scientific validity.

2

I haven’t seen the actual texts that claim eugenics to be discredited, but I’m guessing that they might mean in the “extreme” sense. That is, something along the lines of, “eugenics can lead to a crime-free world.”

The whole Nature vs. Nurture debate shows that there is a lot of validity to the influence of genetics in behavior. So I doubt that anyone can claim eugenics to be completely discredited.
LilShieste

3

Doing a quick Google on “eugenics discredited”, brings up a lot of sites that appear to claim the subject as discredited solely from an ethical standpoint.

Does anyone have any sites/cites that claim it to be discredited on a scientific basis? (So I can try to form a counter-argument.) :slight_smile:
LilShieste

4

From the textbook Statistics for Psychology, page 457: "[Francis Galton] wanted to understand how criminals and genius were produced so that science could improve the human race by encouraging governments to enforce eugenics - selective breeding for intelligence, proper moral behavior, and other qualities - to be determined, of course, by the eugenicists (Eugenics has since been generally discredited).

On page 556: “Unfortunately, [Karl Pearson] was a great fan of eugenics, the ‘improvement’ of the human race through selective breeding.”

Fairly dismissive, although it’s unclear whether it’s for scientific or political reasons.

5

I think that the reason that eugenics is disproven is because most of its advocates were attempting to go beyond the limits of traits that are geuninely inheritable. Eugenics would probably work if you were targeting things like diabetes or red hair*. But if you’re trying to eliminate things like crime or poverty, a breeding program isn’t the right tool for the job.

In addition, most eugenic programs end up going overboard. They start out by saying “let’s encourage the voluntary selection of good traits” but usually slide down the slippery slope of eliminating undesirable traits, compulsory paticipation, sterilization programs, and genocide.

*To avoid any flames, I’m not saying red hair (or diabetes) is an undesirable trait - I’m just using them as examples of generally inheritable traits.

6

In my mind, the number of fucking worthless idiots that I know who grew up in mansions with doctor/lawyer parents is enough to disprove eugenics.

7

One thing you have to understand about eugenics is that it when it was an active movement it was closely associated with pseudoscientific racism. To most (not all) early eugenicists, “eugenics” meant “discourage negroes and other inferior races from breeding.”

That kind of thinking does seem to influence the modern American anti-immigration movement, although to what extent is controversial; it’s not the kind of thing most dare to mention out loud.

I was very interested in eugenics when I was a teenage genius. It gave me great pleasure to contemplate culling the stupid (and even the average) from the gene pool. :wink: I’d be surprised if no other Dopers have felt the same way at one time or another.

8

I think it depends on how you define “disproven”. If you mean “Eugenics is a good idea for governments to implement”, then yes, history has shown that wrong, unfortunately. If you mean “Can you breed or maintain desireable traits into people, or bad ones out of them”, then no, it hasn’t; it’s been done. For example, I recall reading about a Jewish sect that has a high incidence a a particular genetic disorder ( I don’t recall which ), which has for many years tested it’s children for the disease and forbidden couples who both has the gene to marry. Result : they have a far lower incidence of that disease that groups that don’t do that. They also haven’t killed or sterilized people in the process.

As I see it, the problem isn’t eugenics as such, but the mixture of eugenics and government. The Jews in my example can’t go overboard to the degree a government would, without being stopped, so they don’t. So, they get the benefits, without the crazyness that seems to infect governments that try even the most reasonable versions of eugenics. Government eugenics programs remind me of a line I’ve heard about Communism; “It’s a great idea. In another species, it might actually work.” If I thought that a governement was actually likely to implement eugenics in a reasonable, ethical fashion, ( like advising or paying people with bad recessive genes not to marry each other, say ), and that they wouldn’t go overboard, I’d strongly recommend eugenics programs. As it is, history has shown that it won’t work out that way.

9

Eugenics in the form of selective breeding will be obsolete once the science of genetic engineering reaches a certain level. And that will open a whole new can of political, social, and ethical questions.

10

The problem is that you are begging the question. You ask whether eugenics has been discredit scientifically, which implies that it was ever credited scientifically. I have yet to see any form of eugenics that was scientific.

Your own examples refer to eugenics as utilising “science [to] improve the human race by encouraging governments to enforce eugenics” or “‘improvement’ of the human race through selective breeding.”. That isn’t science, it’s a use of science. There is no scientific standard by which an individual or society is ‘improved’, that’s purely a subjective personal judgement.

Honestly, asking whether eugenics has been scientifically discredited is like asking whether Dadaism or Communism have been scientifically discredited. No, they haven’t because it it is outside the scope of science. It may well be that the specific scientific claims of those fields have been rejected but the fields themselves aren’t amenable to scientific analysis because they are artistic and social movements.

If eugenics was simply the utilisation of selective breeding to produce/eliminate specified triats in a population that would be scientifically valid. The problem is that I have never seen eugenics utilised in that manner. Rather it was inevitably touted as a way of ‘improving’ a population without ever clearly specifying what phenotype constituted an improvement. That is why it never had any scientific credibility (which is not to say that many scientists didn’t support it).

The classic example always brought up these discussion is Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had “desirable traits, such as intelligence and strength”. In fact the man was genius and immensely strong. The reason he was a genius appears to be that he suffered from Marfan’s Syndrome, a genetic disease that frequently manifests with high intelligence and strength but is also a debilitating disease of the connective tissues. Der Trihs also mentions a Jewish community breeding out a genetic disorder. But if the disorder was Tay Sachs (which seem likely) then they have also managed to elminate a genetic trait which is believed to confer major benefits in terms of disease resistance.

This is why eugenics was never scientific: it never stated a falsifiable hypothesis. “improvement of the human race through selective breeding” isn’t falsifiable, it is a motherhood statement, one that people feel they can’t argue with. Would such people say that the human race would have been improved is Lincoln had never existed? Or Einstein? It’s quite astounding how many great figures have been victims of or suspected carriers of some sort of genetic disease. Yet that would seem to be the inevitable result of eugenics. Instead eugenecists skirted such issues and as such ensured their position was never scientifically credible.

So in summary, I have yet to see any form of eugenics that hasn’t been scientifically discredited simply because they were never scientific, they were social/political movements that were never phrased in scientific terms. If you want to ask whether science could be utilised to achieve some form of eugenic goal then the answer is “sometimes”. If you want to ask whether science can be utilised to “improve the human race” by enhancing “desirable traits, such as intelligence and strength” then your question isn’t phrased in a scientific manner and so isn’t scientifically credible. In fact the question is so vague it doesn’t make much sense at all. What forms of strength and intelligence, measured by whom, in what way, and enhanced at what cost? I’m sure I could enhance strength and intelligence by increasing the prevalence of Marfan’s in the population and increasing obesity, but is that really what eugenicists mean when they talk about improving the population? The problem of course is that eugenicists never stated in any scientifically valid way exactly what their hypothesis was, and so the concept of eugenics was simply never credible scientifically.

11

Didn’t Lincoln also battle with depression?

12

I imagine that most dog breeders would not find such a question especially vague or senseless.

13

I suppose with humans as with any animal you could breed for specific traits. Thoroughbred race horses can run a mile very fast. However, they have a number of physical and mental characteristics that would be anti survival without the continued care of experts.

The set of overall characteristics that lead to superior performance in the varied challanges of living in society are probably too complex to be selected for by any planned breeding program.

We don’t know enough now to do it and it’s probable that we can’t learn enough.

14

That is because what is desirable in dog breed is very rigidly defined. Pedrigee breeds have breed standards and anything outside of those standards is undesirable and anything not linked ot the standard is considered neutral. Working breeds have desirable triats determined by what the breeder wants them to be able to do, which is a very narrow range of behaviours.

In contrast a brief list of desirable traits in humans include an ability to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and die gallantly (apologies to R. Heinlein).

That is why the question is meaningful when applied to dogs and meaningless when a applied to humans. It has been possible to improve the dalmation breed at the expense of making them retarded or to improve the boxer breed by making them incapable of reproducing without assistance because dogs have a very narrow defintion of improvement. It is trivially easy to look at two dogs and say which is an improvement on the parents and which has the most desirable triats.

In contrast when applied to humans it is so vague as to be meaningless because humans don’t have a rigid standard of acceptability or a narrow range of required triats. Albert Einstein wasn’t an improvement on Larry Flint or Abraham Lincoln and none were an improvement on Tiger Woods or Groucho Marx. Trying to say which of those men has the most desirable traits is ludicrous, and if we can’t say which traits are desirable then how can we possibly select for them?

And that is the main reason why eugenics failed to meet the basic standards of science. The vast majority of eugencist ideas were restricted to vague desicriptions of improvement without ever actually explaining what constitutes an improvement in a human being or population. Those few that did try to explain what was an improvement in any sort of objetcive way immediately strayed into psuedoscience by never explaining how to deal with cases like Lincoln, by proposing eugenic solutions to things like criminality and poverty which have no significant or sommon genetic component. They also never explain how to cope with the fact that human genetics is a zero sum game and that selecting for artistic intelligence or social intelligence seems to reduce logical intelligence and vice versa. How is eugenics scientific if they are proposing improvement when both obedience and an ability to think freely are desirable triats in humans? What are we selecting for, obedience or independence?

As I said, the eugeneicst ideas I have seen were never actually scientific to begin with and so couldn’t really be disproven scientifically. They could only be debunked as psuedoscientiifc, which is entirely different.

15

Exactly what I was trying to say in my last post, only much more concise. In additoon not only are they too complex to be selected for they are are often anithetical. Being indiependent and a free thinker is desirable in humans, but so is being a team player and obedient. Being passive and mild-tempered is desirablem but so is being aggressive and assertive. Being artistic and seeing a situation in terms of its emotional impact is absolutely essential for human survival, but the so is being ruthlessly logical and seeing a situation in terms of objective physical impact. Being tall and strong is beneficial, but so is being short and slight.

And so on and so forth. For any desirable trait in humanity the opposite trait is precisely as desirbale. Even if all these traits do have a genetic basis how the hell do we select for antagonistic traits simultaneously?

16

The notion that many traits have genetic inheritence as their principal determinant is by no means disproven. Acceptance of this is nearly universal at the level of individuals, although resistance to the idea of “nature over nuture” rises in proportion to the size of the population being mentioned. You won’t get much heat for saying Joaquin was born smart and athletic, and you might even get by with saying his whole family was born smart and athletic. Start talking about a smart and athletic population, or (God help you here) a smart and athletic race, and adherents to the Religion of Equality (“There cannot be fundamental differences among human populations not explainable by circumstance or poor science”) will be on you as if you had just hopped into bed with Adolph.

It follows from genetically inheritable traits that the human family could be deliberately bred into population groups which possess the tendency toward the expression of those traits. Think dog breeds as an approximate example. Whether such populations would be an improvement (the driver behind “eugenics”) over the degree of hybridization and genetic variation that exists now would be subject to significant interpretation. Again, one might consider trying to decide which dog breed is “superior” and why.

For the forseeable future, it’s unlikely that any effort at eugenics will be carried out on a broad scale. In most developed countries–the ones who could best pull off trying it–it would be culturally unacceptable to do so.

Until and unless it is tried “scientifically” it’s pretty hard to say it’s been discredited as a means of producing “better” humans.

It’s purely my personal opinion, but my gut says we’ll be better off encouraging the human equivalent of mutts than purebreds. I don’t like dogs in general, but my disinterested observation is that mutts are superior.

17

If you have genetic characteristics that you feel are a detriment to the greater good of the race, then you should certainly feel free to practice eugenics yourself. The problem is that no one actually actively promotes that particular implementation methodology. Generally, folks want some other person to practice eugenics, so as to make their own descendants the inheritors of a better world.

So, it falls to the eugenicists to make the hard choices, and to appoint the genetically superior and inferior. Oddly enough, they generally tend to consider themselves to be superior, although they vary somewhat more on who is inferior. Very rich people are never considered inferior, of course. If they were, they could hire more qualified eugenicists, and have the criteria adjusted to a more rational view.

Tris

18

I think you’ve gone a little overboard here. What about a genetically based resistance to cancer? Would you argue that a propensity towards cancer is equally desirable?

19

:rolleyes:

Sorry, there’s just no other response. Godwins Law, poisoning the well and a pre-emptive ad hominem in a single sentence.

But as with the eugenicists themselves you have evaded the real issue and instead indulged in begging the question. How can this be tried scientifically when your proposal simply isn’t scientific? For this to be scientific it has to be objectively falsifiable, and vague standards like “the ‘improvement’ of the human race” are niether objective nor falsifiable.

In short, there is no need to discredit it scientifically because it isn’t scientific. If it is discredited at all it is simply as psuedoscience. Saying as you have that somehting that is psuedoscientific can only be deiscredited when it is tried scientificallyis an oxymoron.

Obvisuly that isn’t true. Obvisously there are many fields where the purpose bred animals will be superior because thay have been bred for that purpose. This is where the eugencists always start to go astray as well, defining “superior”.

Fair point.

But while I’m no cancer expert I think that you may be surprised. The reason why animals get cancer is because of a stuff up in growth regulation. If we removed all propensity towards cancer there may well be major negative ramifications, which is presumably why such a trait has never evolved. IOW while a propoensity towards cancer may be negative a propensity towards not getting cancer may be equally negative.

20

I suppose there may be a point to be had here in general. Maybe bulldogs’ snouts are anti-survival, and maybe you could think of some other examples and have a valid point.

I’m thinking not so much when you are talking about thoroughbreds.

Horses have basically evolved to run fast. That’s what they do. Thoroughbreds are pretty much descendants of three Arabian stallions, the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerly Turk that were interbred with larger horses. What you end up with is a pretty impressive mix.

Arabians have been bred for thousands of years, and the domesticated stock tends to do quite well if released into the wild as they are bred for stamina, strength and intelligence. The larger european stock gave it the ability to carry more weight and maybe added a little hardiness.

300 years of selective breeding of thoroughbreds has led to no countersurvival type traits that I’m aware of. In fact, the breed is pretty well noted for its flexibility and adaptability. Thoroughbreds have been used in dressage, hunting, three-day eventing, driving, roping and rodeo. It is hard to find a more versatile breed.

They seem to do fine in the wild, and you’re sure to find some thoroghbred blood in many wild herds (though they cease becoming thoroughbreds when allowed to breed freely.)

What are these countersurvival traits?