A humanitarian problem, not a scientific one
he had identified the central flaw in the whole eugenic project. This was not that it was based on faulty science, nor that it was impractical, but that it was fundamentally oppressive and cruel, because it required the full power of the state to be asserted over the rights of the individual.
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This brief history of eugenics leads me to one firm conclusion. What is wrong with eugenics is not the science, but the coercion. Eugenics is like any other programme that puts the social benefit before the individual’s rights. It is a humanitarian, not a scientific crime.
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Many modern accounts of the history of eugenics present it as an example of the dangers of letting science, genetics especially, out of control. It is much more an example of the danger of letting government out of control.
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- Individual choice vs state coercion
genetic screening is about giving private individuals private choices on private criteria. Eugenics was about nationalising that decision to make people breed not for themselves but for the state. It is a distinction frequently overlooked in the rush to define what ‘we’ must allow in the new genetic world. Who is ‘we’? We as individuals, or we as the collective interest of the state or the race?
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