Positive and negative eugenics. Eugenics in the modern world

The term " eugenics“was first proposed by the English naturalist F. Galton in 1883, meaning by it the doctrine of “good generation”, or “good birth”.

F. Galton saw ways to improve people by encouraging and restricting certain marriages.

Among the progressive public in the 20-30s of the current century, a sharply negative attitude towards this section of science developed. This was due to the fact that fascism, in order to justify wars and the robbery of peoples, based its ideology on racial “theory”, and the means of its implementation was the so-called “racial hygiene”. Racial theory proceeded and proceeds from a completely false idea of the genetic determination of the spiritual and intellectual superiority of some races and peoples over others. Moreover, this theory assumes that the cause of material and social inequality among one people is the genetic inferiority of the disadvantaged classes.

As is known, racial theory was the worldview of every exploiting class in all eras of social development. With its help, they tried to explain the inequality of people even within one nation by reasons supposedly independent of the people themselves - biological inequality. In fact, humanity throughout the globe represents one species, Homo sapiens, which has equally probable hereditary potencies in relation to species characteristics. This is due to the following reasons:

humans are of monophyletic origin;
Since the beginning of civilization and the development of social production, too little time has passed (in the evolutionary sense) for large genetic differences to occur in determining the intellectual properties of people in the process of their settlement;
with the development of civilization, panmixia increases and the number of isolates decreases; in particular, European peoples represent the most panmictic population, and therefore closed populations - races, isolates - are especially unlikely;
As class society developed within each nation and state, not only the ruling classes changed, but also their specific carriers of heredity - people.

The observed differences in skin color, hair shape, body and skull structure (dolichocephals, brachycephals), the structure of the hemoglobin molecule, blood groups, etc. are a specific reflection of genetic drift in individual genes, but not in genotype. in general. This is confirmed by the complete fertility of mestizos of any human race, the complete similarity of the karyotype, the similarity in blood groups, the identity of the structure of the brain and other characteristics.

Thus, there was and is no scientific basis for racial theory. Fascism does not preach eugenics as a science, but racial hygiene, the purpose of which is the destruction of socially undesirable people.

The culture and level of human development are directly determined by the level of development of productive forces and the method of production. For these reasons, different peoples have differences in the accumulation of individual experience, generalized in the culture of a particular people. If we compare a moderately educated person of our time with those of the 19th, 18th, and even more so the 17th centuries, we cannot help but admit that the former has incomparably more information about nature than the latter. However, it has been proven that during the 8-12 generations since then, no significant genetic changes have occurred in relation to the structure and function of the brain in the human population. At the same time, the role of natural selection continuously decreased, and panmixia increased.

The development of civilization, the accumulation and transfer of knowledge from generation to generation are accomplished using the mechanism of signal heredity. The accumulation of individual experience through knowledge of nature and influence on it is carried out through two systems of functional coding of acquired individual experience: the oral and printed word. It is this mechanism of transmission of individual adaptation, which is based on the mechanism of conditioned reflex activity, that has acquired special significance in the accumulation and transmission of culture, in human behavior and psyche. In the process of accumulating individual human experience, unlike animals, the leading role was played by social production, that is, the activity of people themselves.

Fundamental errors were made in the doctrine of eugenics, and the term itself was discredited. However, we consider it necessary to restore this section of science, clearing it of pseudoscientific husk.

Man arose through the process of evolution. This process has been going on, is going on and will continue to happen in the future. However, the mechanism of evolution of intelligent humans is sharply different from the mechanisms of evolution of animals and plants. As man began to master nature and expand his ability to influence it, that is, he began to create the conditions of his life himself, the role of natural selection in human evolution began to decline. However, this does not mean that the action of natural selection will ever completely cease. All those natural factors, the regulation of which man has not mastered, for example, some infectious diseases, biotic and abiotic environmental factors, will affect human evolution.

What characterizes human evolution? Firstly, due to the reduction in the action of natural selection, the vectorial nature of human evolution will be removed and its pace will slow down; secondly, as civilization develops and national and other barriers are removed in a classless society, hybridization of peoples will occur, i.e., general global panmixia will be realized, and in connection with this, the role of the random moment in evolution will decrease.

In order to manage the evolution of mankind, scientifically based regulation is required. This requires a special science - eugenics, the subject of which would be the study of the ways and methods of the characteristics of human evolution, which is fully feasible only in conditions of social and economic equality of people. In a class society, the implementation of eugenic measures is limited, since the full realization of the hereditary potentials of people, positive for society, is impossible.

Eugenics should be a synthetic science based on the achievements of the study of human biology: genetics, physiology, anatomy, psychology, embryology, biochemistry and the success of mathematics. At the same time, extrapolation of biological laws to human evolution must be consistent with the laws of social development.

Eugenics must create integrated research methods based on the methods of different disciplines. These may include methods of population genetics, sanitary and demographic statistics, medical genetics and other sciences. Eugenics methods will improve as testing of human genetic potency expands and deepens.

Some biologists are inclined to abandon the term "eugenics", replacing it with anthropogenetics or medical genetics. It's hard to agree with this. Medical genetics, which studies hereditary diseases, their etiology and treatment, is only a particular branch of anthropogenetics, which studies the genetic patterns of inheritance of human properties, both normally and in pathology, without touching on human evolution. Eugenics should study human evolution and ways to get rid of unfavorable hereditary factors that burden humanity. The success of eugenics will depend on the level of civilization and organization of society.

Having rejected all social distortions of scientific foundations, eugenics should exist and develop as a science based on accurate biological and genetic knowledge. Its development can be especially successful in a socialist society, since only with the material equality of people can full care for the spiritual and physical health of a person be ensured. However, it would be a deep mistake to believe that every person is equally capable of any kind of activity. Each person has his own genotype and, naturally, not every genotype equally determines abilities in music, mathematics or sports. Intellectual abilities are determined by the functioning of the brain. They are determined hereditarily, just like any other properties of the body. To identify all the genotypic capabilities of a person, education and training adequate to the genotype are required. Due to the inadequacy of educational conditions in society, huge intellectual reserves are lost, which must be used.

Since experiments on human reproduction are impossible, it becomes necessary to search for other ways to control the evolution of the human race. The conditions for this are:

social and economic equality of people, providing the opportunity for all genotypes to realize their hereditary potential;
protecting humans from the action of mutagens that cause hereditary and congenital diseases;
development of methods for preventing the occurrence of hereditary and congenital diseases and their treatment;
establishing optimal learning conditions, transferring knowledge and skills from generation to generation and improving memory;
compilation of pedigrees of families burdened with hereditary disease; their registration and medical examination through medical genetic institutions;
medical and genetic consultations for those getting married;
raising the cultural level of the entire society.

Thus, the task of eugenics is to find ways to protect a person from being burdened by hereditary diseases, to find methods for optimal implementation of the genotype in the choice of professions, to improve the biological education of the person himself and to solve other problems related to the improvement of human society. At the same time, the growth of the culture of man himself as a member of society will be an important factor in his biological progress.

In human society, forced selection is impossible, but, thanks to reasonable activity, the person himself will come to realize the need to take into account hereditary factors. The deeper his knowledge in the field of anatomy, physiology and heredity, the more diverse and harmonious his requirements for the free choice of a partner will be.

Man must rule not only over nature, but also over himself, for the responsibility of each person to society must increase.

Eugenics (from the Greek word Eugenes- purebred, noble) - a doctrine that calls for fighting the phenomena of degeneration in the gene pool of Humanity through selection in relation to people. The very first ideas about eugenics were first presented to the public in 1865 by the English psychologist F. Galton in the article “Hereditary Talent and Character,” in which he proposed studying phenomena that could improve the mental abilities, physical health and talent of future generations. The term “eugenics” was introduced by him much later - in 1883. F. Galton himself defined eugenics as a science that studies factors that improve the innate qualities of races.

Eugenics and population reduction programs

Positive and negative eugenics

There are so-called “positive eugenics” and “negative eugenics”. However, the line between them is very arbitrary.

Positive eugenics focuses on promoting the reproduction of people with a genetic code uncontaminated by hereditary diseases, as well as people with high intelligence.

In negative eugenics, greater attention is paid to stopping the reproduction of physically or mentally disabled people, as well as people with dangerous hereditary diseases.

Negative eugenics was widely implemented: in many countries of the world, “scientifically based” sterilization of people declared undesirable in a particular society quickly gained popularity.

For example, in Germany these were Jews and Gypsies declared inferior, representatives of other political parties who pose a threat to the political system, mentally ill people, as well as homosexuals; in the USA, sexual perverts and communists were subjected to sterilization and castration; similar methods were used in Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland and Estonia.

History of the eugenics movement in Russia

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Eugenics

Eugenics experienced its dawn at the beginning of the 20th century, but after the Second World War this doctrine began to be put on a par with such concepts as: “fascism”, “death camps”, “cruel medical experiments”, “mass extermination of people”, “crime against Humanity". Because of this, this teaching fell under a kind of social taboo for several decades.

In the modern world ( whose current population is approximately equal to the number of people who lived at all times before the 21st century) the doctrine of eugenics is gaining new popularity, since with population growth the problem of hereditary diseases is acquiring an impressive scale: the percentage of genetically healthy people is critically decreasing.

Main problems of eugenics

It is known that at first each person is a fertilized egg, which develops into a human being in accordance with the rigid genetic code embedded in it. After birth, a person enters a social environment, which also has a serious formative effect on him. The question of what a person is: a product of upbringing or a product of a random set of chromosomes does not have a clear answer. In this regard, the main problems of eugenics come down to three questions:

What are the goals of eugenics?
What exactly is eugenics intended to change in human heredity?
In what ways can people's heredity be changed?

Another serious problem of eugenics is the ethical problem, because by developing drugs that prolong the lives of people with dangerous diseases and people with disabilities, preserving the lives of premature children and children with serious genetic mutations, which, thanks to the achievements of modern medicine, will be able to give birth to offspring, Humanity is weakening its gene pool. That is, the principles of humanism that protect the right to life of any person to some extent contribute to the degeneration of the human race and the disappearance of man as a species. Most disagreements in society arise when discussing abortion, euthanasia, experiments with fertilized eggs, and human cloning. Moreover, all the processes mentioned can be attributed to powerful methods of selection, and therefore eugenics.

Major achievements of eugenics

Genetic counseling for future parents– is becoming increasingly widespread in civilized countries. It consists of analyzing the heredity of both future parents and calculating the degree of risk of getting sick offspring. At this stage of development of genetics, with a high degree of probability, it is possible to assess the risk of developing such hereditary diseases as hemophilia, anemia, heart disease, some types of cancer, etc. After undergoing a genetic examination, intended parents can: decide not to have children together at all; receive confirmation of good genetic health and high chances of having healthy offspring; obtain information about diseases that their joint child may be born with, and possibly prevent serious consequences at an early stage in the development of the disease;
A diagnostic examination of the fetus recommended by doctors using modern technologies (for example, ultrasound), analyzes and genetic tests, which allows to identify severe forms of pathology (absence of limbs, malformations of internal organs, Down syndrome, etc.) and terminate pregnancy in the early stages;
Development– development of methods for getting rid of genetic diseases and improving the genetic code by introducing corrected genes into it.

Legal documents

Since the doctrine of improving heredity and the methods by which they try to improve it constantly causes controversy in society, it is not surprising that many international documents have been adopted designed to protect society from the negative consequences of these methods and avoid the repetition of terrible mistakes.

Thus, in 1964, the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association on ethical principles of scientific medical research involving human subjects was adopted. In 1997, UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on the Genome and Human Rights, and in 2005 – the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and the Declaration on Human Cloning.

However, many more similar documents have been adopted in different countries, some of which prohibit genetic experiments and cloning, others allow them for scientific purposes.

It should be noted that no legal documents can stop scientific progress (except perhaps slow it down), and the knowledge obtained as a result of impartial scientific experiments with heredity (even if all moral and ethical standards are observed) will traditionally lead to the creation of new methods for improving human life , and to ways to worsen and destroy this life.

The future of eugenics

Unfortunately, the original goal of eugenics, set by its founder: “to improve the innate qualities of races,” was not achieved, and the use of forced sterilization and euthanasia of millions of people completely undeserving of such a fate, justified by “scientifically based” concern for future generations, forever denigrated this at first completely undeserving implying nothing bad teaching. At the moment, due to the rapid development and impressive successes of genetics, the doctrine of negative eugenics is becoming a thing of the past. And who knows, but perhaps very soon, the era of positive eugenics is coming.

Few ideas have done more harm to humanity in the last 120 years than those of Sir Francis Galton. Galton became the founder Eugenics science– evolutionary pseudoscience, which is based on the theory of survival of the fittest individuals. The consequences of eugenics as a science today have been ethnic cleansing, abortions to get rid of defective offspring, killing of newborns, euthanasia, and the selection of unborn children for scientific research. So who is Galton? What is eugenics science, and what harm does it cause to humanity?

Francis Galton - founder of the science of Eugenics

Photos of Darwin courtesy of TFE Graphics, Hitler and Galton Wikipedia.org.

Francis Galton (pictured above right) was born in 1822 in Birmingham into a Quaker family. He was the maternal grandson of Erasmus Darwin and thus a cousin of Charles Darwin (pictured above left). For almost his entire adult life, Galton was as much an agnostic and opponent of Christianity as Darwin.

By the age of one and a half he already knew the alphabet, at two he could read, at five he recited poetry by heart, and at six he discussed the Iliad. In 1840, Galton began studying medicine at Cambridge University, and then mathematics. However, due to a nervous breakdown, he was content with a modest bachelor's degree, which he received in January 1844. That same year, his father died, and Galton inherited such a fortune that he did not work and did not need funds for the rest of his life.

Wealth gives young Galton free time, as well as the opportunity for “entertainment” and amateur studies in various sciences. In particular, he travels through southwest Africa, exploring large areas. For these studies, in 1853 he was awarded membership in the Royal Geographical Society, and after another 3 years - in the Royal Scientific Society. Also in 1853, Galton married Louise Butler, the daughter of the headmaster of Harrow School.

Galton, as an amateur scientist, was distinguished by boundless curiosity and inexhaustible energy. He is the author of 14 books and over 200 articles. His inventions include a “silent” whistle for calling dogs, a printing device for a teletype, as well as various instruments and techniques for measuring intelligence and parts of the human body. In addition, he invented a synoptic map and was the first to scientifically describe the phenomenon of anticyclones.

Relationship with Charles Darwin

The publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 undoubtedly marked a turning point in Galton's life. In 1869 he wrote to Darwin: “The appearance of your Origin of Species brought about a real turning point in my life; Your book freed me from the shackles of old prejudices [i.e. that is, from religious views based on evidence of intelligent design] as from a nightmare, and for the first time I gained freedom of thought.”.

From Knott D.K. and Gliddon D.R. Indigenous races of the Earth, D.B. Libbincott, Philadelphia, USA, 1868

Galton “was one of the first to realize the significance of Darwinian theory for humanity”. He believed that a person inherits from his ancestors character, talents, intelligence, as well as the lack of these qualities. According to this view, the poor are not hapless victims of circumstance; they have become poor because they are at a lower stage of biological development. This contradicted the prevailing opinion in scientific circles that all such qualities of a person depend on his environment - on where and how he was brought up.

Galton believed that people, like animals, can and should be selected, seeking to improve the breed. In 1883, he coined the word “eugenics” (from the Greek “eu” “good” + “genes” - “born”), with which he christened the science of Eugenics, which studies ways to improve the physical and intellectual qualities of a person.

Galton's views left no room for the existence of the human soul, God's grace in the human heart, the right to be different from others, or even human dignity. In his first article on the subject, Eugenics as a Science, published in 1865, he denied that man's mental faculties were endowed by God; denied that humanity has been cursed since the fall of Adam and Eve; viewed religious feelings as “nothing more than evolutionary adaptations that ensure the survival of humans as a biological species”.

A pseudoscientific illustration of the so-called evolution of human “races.”

This illustration shows, by suggesting similarities with chimpanzees, that the black races have evolved less successfully than the white ones.

Even the well -known evolutionist Stephen Jay Gouold noted that in this figure the skull of chimpanzees is specially increased, and the jaw “Negro” is too forward to show that the “blacks” occupy an even lower place than monkeys. This illustration was taken not from racist literature, but from the leading textbook of the time. Ardent evolutionists today try to avoid social implications in their ideas, but history shows otherwise.

Galton wrote the following about the meaning of original sin: “According to my theory, [this] shows that man was not at a higher level of development and then descended, but, on the contrary, quickly rose from a lower level... and only recently, after tens of thousands of years of barbarism, humanity has become civilized and religious".

In the book “Hereditary Genius” ( Hereditary Genius 1869) Galton develops all these ideas of the science of eugenics and suggests that a system of arranged marriages between men of aristocratic origin and rich women will ultimately “bring out” a people whose representatives will be more talented than ordinary people. When Charles Darwin read this book, he wrote to Galton: “In some respects you have converted her zealous opponent, for I have always maintained that, except for complete fools, people are not very different from each other intellectually; they are distinguished only by diligence and hard work..." Galton's science of eugenics undoubtedly helped Darwin extend his theory of evolution to humanity. He does not mention Galton in On the Origin of Species, but refers to him at least 11 times in The Descent of Man, 1871.

In the first half of the 20th century, three International Congresses on eugenics as a science were held - in 1912, 1921 and 1932. They brought together leading experts in the science of eugenics from the UK, USA, Germany, France, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Kenya, Mauritius and South Africa. Celebrities who held eugenetic views before World War II include Winston Churchill, economist John Maynard Keynes, science fiction writer H.G. Wells, and US presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge.

In 1901, Galton was awarded the Huxley Medal from the Institute of Anthropology, in 1902 he received the Darwin Medal from the Royal Scientific Society, in 1908 the Darwin-Wallace Medal from the Linnean Society, and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford awarded him honorary degrees; in 1909 he was knighted. Despite these “honors,” Galton in life was not the best example of the truth of his own judgments. He was plagued by prolonged bouts of illness, and his good intellectual pedigree was not enough for him and his wife to produce children of their own who would inherit his name and qualities. Galton died in 1911, and according to his will, his funds were used to support the Department of Science of Eugenics and the Galton Eugenetics Laboratory at the University of London.

Eugenics as a science in action

Based on materials from Wikipedia.org

The idea of improving the physical and intellectual qualities of humanity as a whole may seem admirable at first glance. However, the means of achieving this goal in the recent past included not only increasing the birth rate of worthy offspring from carefully selected parents (the "positive science of eugenics"), but also reducing the birth rate of people "the least fit", who, according to theorists of eugenics science, may be detrimental to the improvement of humanity (“negative science of eugenics”). For example, by 1913, a third of American states (and, since the 1920s, most of all states) had passed laws requiring the forced sterilization of prisoners deemed by officials to be the “least fit.” As a result, approximately 70,000 people became victims of forced sterilization: criminals, the mentally retarded, drug addicts, beggars, the blind, the deaf, as well as patients with epilepsy, tuberculosis and syphilis. In Lynchburg, Virginia alone, over 800 people underwent this procedure, and isolated cases of sterilization continued into the 1970s. ,

In Germany, Hitler's government in 1933 issued a decree on forced sterilization not only of prison prisoners and hospital patients, but everyone German citizens with “undesirable” characteristics. So he wanted to protect the “superior Aryan race” from “pollution” due to mixed marriages.

Subsequently, surgical intervention was supplanted by a more radical solution to the problem of “useless mouths” - outright genocide. Between 1938 and 1945, the Nazi murderers killed over 11 million people considered inferior, unworthy of life, as documented in the Nuremberg Trials. The victims included Jews, Protestants, blacks, gypsies, communists, the mentally ill and amputees.

It was nothing more than rabid Darwinism: the extermination of millions of people, branded “unadapted and inferior,” by those and for the glory of those who considered themselves “superior and adapted.”

The key idea of Darwinism is selection. The Nazis believed they had to control the selection process to perfect the Aryan race. Galton's naive concept of "eugenic utopia" degenerated into a nightmare of Nazi mass murder and ethnic cleansing.

Unfortunately, the ideas of racial superiority and the science of eugenics did not die with the fall of Hitler's regime. The writings on eugenics as a science by Galton, H. G. Wells, Sir Arthur Keith and others, as well as the early work of modern sociobiologists such as E. O. Wilson of Harvard, laid the foundation for the views of the notorious American racist David Duke, who opposed blacks and Jews.

The science of Eugenics in the 21st century

After World War II, the word “eugenics” became a dirty word. Now adherents of the science of eugenics began to call themselves specialists in “population biology,” “human genetics,” “racial politics,” etc. Journals were also renamed. The Annals of Eugenics became the Annals of Human Genetics, and the quarterly Eugenics became the Bulletin of Sociobiology. But today, more than sixty years after the Holocaust, the murderous ideas engendered by Galton's eugenics as a science are once again alive and well, cloaked in the lab coat of medical respectability.

Today, doctors routinely kill people created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) through abortion, euthanasia, murder of newborn children, and through embryonic stem cell research.

A. Abortion is a legacy of the science of eugenics

According to the English Daily Mail, "women are increasingly killing their own unborn children because of non-life-threatening injuries, such as deformed feet or cleft palates," and "children with Down syndrome are now more likely to be killed than they are allowed to to be born." Dr Jacqueline Lang from London Metropolitan University said: “These figures are very characteristic of the eugenetic tendencies of a consumer society - to get rid of anomalies at any cost" According to Nuala Scarisbrick, a life insurance specialist in the UK, “This is outright eugenics. Defective people are actually told that they should not have been born. It's scary and disgusting". Scientists estimate that 50 million abortions occur worldwide every year. That's one abortion for every three births. Thus, every child in the womb has, on average, a one in four chance of being deliberately killed.

B. Murder of newborns - eugenics science is to blame

China is known for its forced population policy of no more than one child per family. In practice, most families want a boy, so if a girl is born, her life is in danger. Sometimes this sinister principle is adhered to even before the birth of the child. In India, it is customary to find out the sex of the unborn child, and the vast majority of abortions occur on girls. In light of these facts, feminist support for abortion appears depressingly paradoxical.

Handicapped babies are also at risk. "Ethicist" Peter Singer advocates legalizing the killing of children under a certain age. He writes: “Killing a disabled baby is not ethically equivalent to killing a human being. Very often there is nothing wrong with this at all.”.

B. Euthanasia is a consequence of Eugenics as a science

In May 2001, the first country to legalize euthanasia was Holland; the law came into force in January 2002. In Belgium, euthanasia was allowed until May 2002, and then legalized. It is allowed in Switzerland, Norway and Colombia.

Eugenics as a science - conclusion

Of course, not all evolutionists are murderers, and Francis Galton may not have imagined that his theories would lead to the murder of so many millions of people, let alone the killing of defenseless babies in the womb. However, such actions are entirely consistent with the doctrine of evolution - in particular, with the idea of the survival of the fittest as a result of their destruction of the weakest. Actions are a consequence of beliefs. Jesus said: “A bad tree bears bad fruit, but cannot... bear good fruit.”(Matthew 7:17–18).

Contrary to the deadly philosophy of eugenic science, every person is of eternal value to God; everyone was created "in the image of God" (Genesis 1:26–27). In addition, God specifically prohibits murder (Exodus 20:13) and the deliberate killing of innocent people. In fact, God loves humanity so much that he sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to save our souls from sin (John 3:16–17) and to transform us, making us “conformed to the image of His Son” when we let us believe in Him (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18). The Second Person of the Trinity took on human nature in Jesus (Hebrews 2:14) and became the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), thus becoming the (blood) Redeemer (Isaiah 59:20) of humanity descended from the first Adam.

1

And the Darwinists of that time insisted on Scopes's right to teach from such a textbook!

Links and notes:

Perhaps the most frequently asked question about the Holocaust genocide, which relied on eugenics, is the question: “How could this happen?” In MGM's 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg, about the trial of four Nazi war criminals, one of the defendants pleads to presiding judge Dan Haywood (played by Spencer Tracy): “These people—millions of people—I couldn't have known. that it will come to this! You have to believe me!” Heywood's response was eloquent: "It came to this the first time you sentenced a man to death, knowing that he was innocent."

Likewise, today's killing of innocent unborn children because eugenicists consider them less perfect than others began the first time a doctor agreed to kill a child with a mutilation in the womb. The rest is history.

1. Based on the third Nuremberg trials. There were 13 of them in total.

Links and notes:

Cowan, R., Sir Francis Galton and the study of heredity in the nineteenth century, Garland Publishing Inc., New York, USA, p. vi, 1985.

In the history of science, on the issue of the relationship between biological and social factors in the individual development of a person, or in his ontogenesis, there are a variety of points of view. Thus, the German biologist E. Haeckel, who did a lot to establish Darwin’s teachings, believed that the development of man and society is determined mainly by biological factors, and the engine of social development and human evolution is the struggle for existence and natural selection. Therefore, the emergence of social Darwinism, which stands on precisely such a point of view, is often associated precisely with the name of Haeckel.

Charles Darwin's cousin, F. Galton, first formulated the principles of eugenics in 1869. He proposed studying influences that could improve the hereditary qualities (health, mental abilities, talent) of future generations. At the same time, progressive scientists set humane goals for eugenics. However, her ideas were often used to justify racism, as happened with fascist racial theory. The final public disgust from the idea of improving the human race occurred after full-scale euthanasia of defectives. In Germany, where eugenics became part of the official ideology of the ruling National Socialist regime.

In Nazi Germany (1933-1945), sterilization and killing were used in relation to “inferior persons”: the mentally ill, homosexuals, gypsies. This was followed by their extermination, as well as the total extermination of the Jews.

Nazi eugenics programs, which were carried out as part of preventing the degeneration of the German people as representatives of the "Aryan race"

Thus, Galton in 1870, in his book “Hereditary Genius,” asserted the superiority of the northern (Nordic) race of people (including mental), as well as whites over blacks. He believed that representatives of a superior race should not marry representatives of a backward race. Galton was a racist and considered Africans inferior. In his book Tropical South Africa he wrote: “These savages are asking for slavery. Generally speaking, they have no independence; they follow their master like a spaniel.” “The weak nations of the world must inevitably give way to the nobler varieties of humanity...” He also believed that the poor and sick were unworthy of having offspring.

In modern science, many problems of eugenics, especially the fight against hereditary diseases, are solved within the framework of medical genetics.

However, to this day, works appear that talk about genetic differences between races, about the inferiority of blacks, etc., i.e. it is concluded that IQ is determined primarily by heredity and race. In fact, the most serious and thorough research shows that the characteristics of the genotype are manifested not at the racial, but at the individual level. Each person has a unique genotype. And the differences are due not only to heredity, but also to the environment.

In modern literature, there are two different approaches to solving the problem of the role of social and biological factors in individual human development.

The second point of view is that all people are born with the same genetic inclinations, and upbringing and education play the main role in the development of their abilities. This concept is called pansociology. When considering this problem, it should be borne in mind that in the individual development of a person there are two periods - embryonic and post-embryonic. The first covers the period of time from the moment of fertilization of a female egg by a male sperm until the birth of the child, i.e. period of intrauterine development of a human embryo (fetus).

“In the embryonic period,” writes academician N.P. Dubinin, “the development of the organism occurs according to a strictly fixed genetic program and a relatively weak (through the mother’s body) influence of the surrounding physical and social environment.” Already at the earliest stage of embryo development, the implementation of the genetic program received from the parents and enshrined in the DNA chromosomes begins. Moreover, the development of the human embryo and embryos in other vertebrates is very similar, especially in the early stages. And the long-lasting similarity between human and monkey embryos indicates their phylogenetic relationship and unity of origin.

Each person is a carrier of a specific, individual set of genes, as a result of which, as already mentioned, he is genetically unique. The properties of a person, like other living beings, are largely determined by the genotype, and their transmission from generation to generation occurs on the basis of the laws of heredity. An individual inherits from his parents such properties as physique, height, weight, skeletal features, skin, eye and hair color, and chemical activity of cells. Many also talk about inheriting the ability to do mental calculations, a penchant for certain sciences, etc.

Today, the dominant point of view can be considered the one that claims that it is not the abilities themselves that are inherited, as such, but only their inclinations, which are manifested to a greater or lesser extent in environmental conditions. The genetic material in humans, like in other mammals, is DNA, which is found in chromosomes.

The chromosomes of each human cell carry several million genes. But genetic capabilities and inclinations are realized only if the child, from early childhood, is in contact with people, in an appropriate social environment. If, for example, a person does not have the opportunity to study music, then his innate musical abilities will remain undeveloped.

The genetic potential of a person is limited in time, and quite strictly. If you miss the deadline for early socialization, it will fade away before it has time to be realized. A striking example of this can be seen in the numerous cases when infants, by force of circumstances, ended up in the jungle and spent several years among animals. After their return to the human community, they could no longer fully catch up, master speech, acquire fairly complex skills of human activity, and their mental functions developed poorly. This indicates that the characteristic features of human behavior and activity are acquired only through social inheritance, through the transmission of a social program in the process of upbringing and training.

Baltic Federal University. Immanuel Kant

Abstract

Eugenics as a science

The work was completed The work was checked

5th year student

Kostarev I.V. Feshchenko

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Kaliningrad 2012

Introduction………………………………………………………..

Chapter 1. Historical aspect……………………………………

Formation of the eugenic concept…………..

Development of eugenics………………………………………………………

Eugenics in Germany……………………………….

Eugenics in Russia…………………………………..

Chapter 2. The structure of eugenics………………………….

Chapter 3. Key problems of eugenics………………

3.1. The cons……………………..

3.2. Pros………………………………..

Introduction

“What nature does blindly, slowly and mercilessly, man can do cautiously, quickly and humanely... It is his duty to work in this direction”

Sir Francis Galton. 1

The end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries surprised humanity with the accumulation of an amazing number of achievements in science and technology, which awakened so many hopes for the realization of what in the past seemed like a fantasy. Techniques for diagnosing a child before birth, complete decoding of the human genome, surrogacy with subsequent manipulation of embryos, genetic diagnostics before conception and insertion, gene therapy, cloning, etc. For the first time, a set of tools is placed in the hands of man, which fits well with the concept of “eugenics.” However, this term is so burdened with negative historical memories that their opponents associate these new means only with them, transferring to modern times some of the negative consequences of the eugenic movements of a century ago. Nevertheless, public interest in this topic has been inexorably increasing in recent years. So let's try to figure it out.

Chapter 1. Historical aspect.

Formation of the eugenic concept.

The term “eugenics” (from the Greek words “eu” - good and “genos” - genus) was first proposed in 1883 by the prominent English anthropologist, psychologist and founder of biometrics Francis Galton. This is the definition of eugenics he then gave: “The study of influences subject to social control that can improve or worsen both the physical and mental qualities of future generations.” 2 And at the same time, he added that at the first stage, issues related to this will be subject to purely scientific development, and things will not go beyond the propaganda of eugenic ideas. At the second stage, it will be possible to take a number of practical measures and issue relevant laws. Finally, in the third stage, such laws will become unnecessary because all people will realize the need for eugenic rules. Galton was not the first to raise the question of the possibility or duty to act deliberately to influence the process of human reproduction.

In the 4th century BC. Plato in his Republic raised a number of eugenic questions in the spirit of Galton, preaching both positive eugenics, stimulating the birth rate of the best gifted, and negative eugenics, limiting the birth rate of those considered inferior. If Plato was the first to clearly formulate eugenic ideas, then according to classical historians, Lycurgus, three centuries earlier, was the first to implement them in his reform of Spartan society. Infanticide was not alien to either Greek or Roman society.

Thus, the state appropriated to itself the functions of the “father of the family,” who in Athens and Rome strictly implemented these eugenic measures in his family clan: especially gifted people were accepted into the clan, and the untalented were expelled. Abortion and murder of children by mothers were condemned not for moral reasons, but because this violated the inalienable right of the head of the family.

The responsibility of the state in terms of birth control was also envisaged by such utopians as Thomas More and Tomaso Campanella. The latter, in particular, was of the opinion that reproduction should be the responsibility of the state and not of individuals.

The accumulation of biological knowledge and the development of evolutionary theories (first Lamarck's theories on the inheritance of acquired characteristics, then Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection) involuntarily forced humanity to think about the processes taking place in its own evolution. So, in 1857, Gobineau published his essay “Essay on the Inequality of Human Races,” which laid the foundation for the proof of the superiority of the Aryan race over others and the threat of the gradual disappearance of racially superior groups due to mixing, which will lead to the decline and possibly the death of the civilized world.

Opposing the role of the state as a benefactor, Malthus criticized social security laws back in 1798 in his First Essay on Population. Based on the false argument that food production grows in arithmetic progression and population grows in geometric progression, he believed that these laws promote population growth without providing them with the means of subsistence, so that the poor, unproductive members of society will have to be supported by its dynamic and capable members. Malthus's criticism was initially directed against Christian charity.

Development of eugenics.

In 1900, eugenics gained popularity. The name "Eugene" suddenly became fashionable, people quickly became fascinated by the idea of artificial selection, and eugenics meetings began to take place all over Britain. The rapid influence of authoritarian philosophy meant that in Germany, even more than in England, biology was mixed with nationalism. But at that moment all this remained more of an ideology than a practice. However, the focus of debate soon shifted from encouraging the "eugenic" breeding of the best to prohibiting the "antigenetic" breeding of the worst. “The worst” soon came to mean “the mentally defective,” which included alcoholics, epileptics, criminals, and the mentally ill. Many prominent biologists, supporters of eugenics, acted as consultants to the governments of various countries on issues of emigration, abortion, sterilization, psychiatric care, education, etc.

In 1907, the Eugenics Education Society was founded in London. Eugenics received widespread support from such representatives of the British intellectual elite as Havelock Ellis, C. P. Snow, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. In particular, Shaw wrote that “reason no longer allows us to deny that nothing but a eugenic religion can save our civilization from the fate that has befallen all previous civilizations.” 3

When World War I broke out, eugenicists helped the U.S. Army develop intelligence tests and recruited widely after the war. In the 1920s, they played a major role in the tripling of the number of hospitalized dementia patients. Their undoubted merit is the enormous growth in outpatient treatment. As for sterilization, contrary to popular belief, there were less than half of eugenicists who supported this measure.

The first law on forced sterilization was passed in 1907 in the state of Indiana (USA). Sterilization was permitted on genetic grounds. Later, similar laws were passed in almost thirty US states. Much of American enthusiasm for eugenics grew out of anti-emigrant sentiment. During the period of rapid emigration from eastern and southern Europe, it was easy to incite paranoia that the "best" Anglo-Saxon genes would be diluted by the worst. Racist sentiments also played an important role. Overall, America sterilized more than 100,000 people before World War II. 4 For comparison: in India, twenty million people were sterilized from 1958 to 1980; in China, between 1979 and 1984, about thirty million women and ten million men. 5

But although America was the first, other countries maintained the tradition. Sweden has sterilized 60,000 people. Canada, Norway, Finland, Estonia and Iceland have introduced and used forced sterilization in their legislation.

Eugenics in Germany.

The ideas of eugenics had a significant influence on the formation of fascist racial theory. German specialists in the field of eugenics introduced the concept of “genetic health” of the nation, and also developed a specialized branch of preventive medicine - “racial hygiene”. In 1933, the “Law for the Protection of Offspring from Genetic Diseases” was passed, the application of which led to more than 350,000 cases of forced sterilization before the collapse of Nazi Germany. Genetic counseling in Nazi Germany was a requirement to obtain permission to marry. By 1938, the first reports from Germany were leaked, from which it became clear for the first time what forced sterilization meant in practice. Eugenicists in other countries unequivocally condemned Hitler's racism and anti-Semitism. At the International Eugenics Conference in Edinburgh in 1939, British and American eugenicists criticized the racist nature of eugenics in Germany. 6

The National Socialist state took control of the country's scientific institutions and generously funded departments of "racial purity" in German universities. Some German eugenicists could not resist the temptation to move from vague projects of social change to concrete action. Otto von Verschuer became the true ideologist of Nazi crimes. His Racial Biology of the Jews was published in 1938 in Hamburg. Six weighty volumes permeated with ideas of anti-Semitism were published under the auspices of the state. Verschuer does not use the word “eugenics,” but considers his arguments essentially eugenic. It is advantageous for a man-hater to claim that his arguments are based on the achievements of science, and not dictated by base feelings.

The charges against National Socialist eugenics are as follows: 1) it served as the basis for the forced sterilization law of July 1933; 2) she sanctified with her authority the Nazi euthanasia program - September 1939; and 3) she prepared the persecution and then mass extermination of Jews and Gypsies. However, we should not forget that the official German eugenics community condemned such radical measures, which were often not even eugenic.

After World War II, the ideas and practice of eugenics were long discredited, largely due to the activities of the German fascist political system.

Eugenics in Russia.

One of the pioneers and popularizers of eugenics in Russia was Professor Yu.A. Filipchenko (1882-1930), an outstanding scientist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, author of the first Russian course on genetics, head of the university department and creator of the laboratory, reorganized in 1933 into the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences USSR. Professor Filipchenko was the author of several fundamental studies on heredity, its variability, as well as works on general biology, experimental zoology and relevant textbooks.

In 1920 in Moscow at the Institute of Experimental Biology, headed by N.K. Koltsov, a department of eugenics was opened and the Russian Eugenics Society was organized, the chairman of which was also N.K. Koltsov; he was also the editor-in-chief of the Russian Eugenics Journal published by this society. Outstanding geneticists A.S. took an active part in the activities of the society. Serebrovsky and Yu.A. Filipchenko, anthropologist V.V. Bunak, prominent doctors A.N. Abrikosov, G.I. Rossolimo, D.D. Pletnev, People's Commissar of Health N.A. Semashko, M. Gorky was sympathetic to this society. Soon branches of the Russian Eugenics Society opened in Leningrad, Kyiv, Odessa, and Saratov.

At that time, the activities of eugenic strongholds in the Soviet Union were aimed mainly at obtaining information about human heredity by collecting the genealogies of outstanding writers, artists, and scientists. It was assumed that the study of their ancestors and descendants would shed light on the hereditary transmission of abilities and talents.

For example, N.K. Koltsov tried to trace the inheritance of the talent of the writers M. Gorky and L.M. Leonov, singer F.I. Chaliapin, poets S. Yesenin and V.S. Ivanov, biologist N.P. Kravkova and others. Extensive studies of this kind were also carried out by other Russian eugenicists. As a result, N.K. Koltsov came to the following conclusion: “The genealogies of the nominees we examined clearly characterize the wealth of the Russian masses with valuable genes.”

Similar conclusions were made by other domestic experts. At the same time, N.K. Koltsov and his colleagues, in contrast to some foreign geneticists of that time who neglected the role of environmental factors in human development, emphasized the importance of these factors.

So, N.K. Koltsov wrote: “It would be a crime on the part of eugenics to underestimate the importance of social hygiene, physical culture and education.”

In addition, Russian scientists were wary of radical eugenic measures. The general mood of Russian eugenicists is most accurately conveyed by the words of T.I. Yudina: “I consider sterilization not immoral, but a premature measure.” 7 As E.I. rightly noted. Kolchinsky, after all, “for the founders of eugenics in Russia, it was primarily the field of genetics and biomedical research. They were skeptical about the idea that there were some eugenically valuable groups in human society that could be cloned on a mass scale.” 8

By the end of the 20s, the eugenics movement in the USSR began to decline and gradually disappeared completely. The Russian Eugenics Society and its branches, the Russian Eugenics Journal ceased to exist, and the eugenics laboratories were closed. The same departure from eugenics occurred in the views of the most progressive foreign scientists, who had previously been keen on eugenics, but were now disillusioned with it. This was due to two reasons.

Firstly, in the late 20s - early 30s, first in some Western countries, and then in the USSR, scientific work on human genetics, in particular, in its most important section - medical genetics, began and began to rapidly develop. In the scientific literature, reports began to appear about the point nature of inheritance of various monogenic (caused by a mutation of only one gene) congenital deformities and other congenital human pathologies, moreover, those whose manifestation does not depend on the external conditions of the child’s development, for example, dwarfism (chondrodystrophy), bleeding (hemophilia ), deaf-muteness, color blindness (color blindness), six-fingeredness and others. It was found out whether the defect being studied is dominant or recessive, whether it is due to a mutation of a gene localized in the sex chromosome or in an autosome, etc.

These works showed the inconsistency of the methods of studying heredity used by the founders of eugenics - Galton and his closest followers (Pearson's laboratory); after all, they all did not yet know the laws of heredity established later. This became especially obvious when geneticists proved that many hereditary characteristics of a person, primarily those relating to his mental abilities, are not monogenic, but polygenic, i.e., determined by the interaction of several genes, and the manifestation of these genes in the phenotype is very large degree depends on the conditions in which the child grew up, developed and was brought up.