As you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Francis Galton did not dream of breeding a “new race” when he presented the new science of eugenics to the public. Thanks to the Nazis, the reputation of eugenics was so tarnished that the word itself continues to be a dirty word. Meanwhile, this science could save people from illness, suffering and even death itself...

And how well it all started!

At first, eugenics was received with a bang. The most outstanding people at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries willingly stood under the banner of the new science, which declared its task to improve the human race and prevent human suffering. “Because of congenital defects, our civilized human race is much weaker than that of animals of any other species, both wild and domesticated... If we spent a twentieth of the effort and money spent on improving the breed of horses and cattle in improving the human race , what a universe of genius we could create!” Bernard Shaw, Herbert Wells, Winston Churchill, and Theodore Roosevelt readily agreed with these reasonings of Francis Galton. And how can you disagree? Everything in a person should be perfect! Chekhov's thought lives, but does not win, encountering human imperfection. For each of us is imperfect. Look around, and you will probably notice how “unequally, unequally” nature has endowed everyone: some have been blessed with excellent brains, but have saved on health, while others have been blessed with an unusually attractive appearance, but have also been given a vile character. That’s why I admire people who combine beauty, kindness, intelligence, and strength at once. There are few of them. I would like more...

Actually, the ancients began to think about improving the human race. The same Plato (428-347 BC) in his famous “Politics” spoke about the need for state intervention in regulating marriages, explained exactly how to select spouses in order to produce physically strong children with outstanding moral principles. A famous “selection center” in ancient times was Sparta. There, babies, deprived of the physical qualities necessary for future warriors, were simply thrown off the cliff without any extra thought. It is absolutely pointless to criticize or condemn the Spartans today: such were the morals of that society, where boys were born for only one purpose - to replenish the army. By the way, this goal was achieved: and today everyone remembers that “in a healthy body there is a healthy mind, one Spartan is worth two”...

The best of the best

Years flew by, centuries passed, and mere mortals were still tormented by their own imperfections and wondered how nice it would be to live surrounded by completely pleasant people, both externally and internally... And while they were suffering from Manilovism, scientists were thinking about how to achieve this on practice.

So, the first person to take this issue seriously was the English scientist - geologist, anthropologist and psychologist Sir Francis Galton. A piquant biographical detail: Sir Francis was a cousin of Charles Darwin and ardently supported his theory of evolution. Being an aristocrat, Galton did not go far for research materials, but began to study the genealogies of the famous noble families of England. He tried to establish patterns of inheritance of talent, intelligence and strength. Then, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, it was generally fashionable to engage in all kinds of selection and selection. The fact that Gregor Mendel’s laws on the inheritance of traits were rediscovered played a role. Galton did not remain aloof from new and old trends. He reasoned that since the selection of the best breeding animals is necessary to obtain a new breed, then the targeted selection of married couples should bear fruit. Moreover, it seemed so simple: in order for healthy, beautiful and talented children to be born, it is necessary that the best of the best become their parents! Actually, that’s why the new science was called eugenics, which translated from Greek means “the birth of the best.” Here is what Galton himself said on this subject: “We define this word to designate a science which is by no means limited to the question of proper mating and marriage laws, but, mainly in relation to man, studies all the influences that improve the race, and these influences tend to be strengthened, and all influences which worsen the race are tended to be weakened.” Notice! There is not a word here about the need to breed “eugenically valuable populations.” And yet, very soon a split emerged in the eugenics society. And that's why. Any breeder knows: in order to develop a new, improved breed, about 95% of the “source material” - animals, birds, seeds, etc., etc. must be culled. The main postulate of any selection: the worst (weak) should not participate in reproduction . It was this pitfall that eugenics stumbled upon. This is where the new science collided head-on with human ethics and morality.

Split

It seemed to the most ardent adherents of the new science that it was not enough to improve the hereditary qualities of a person using only genetic principles. It is this kind of eugenics that is called positive. But eugenics, which was later called negative, received support in society. Her followers decided that for the sake of preserving humanity as a whole, it was necessary to prevent the birth of offspring from people with mental and physical disabilities, alcoholics, drug addicts, and criminals. Here, as an excuse, it is worth noting that in the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, a completely civilized and enlightened society was seized by the fear of degeneration. Newspapers regularly reported on the growing number of mentally ill people and other “damage” to human nature - mental, physical and moral. The data was confirmed by science. In this light, the ready-made solution for the improvement of humanity as a species, offered by negative eugenics, seemed more than acceptable.

Indian method

The United States was the first to dare to fight the degradation of humanity. In 1904, Indiana passed and implemented a sterilization law. “Inferior” individuals such as alcoholics, the mentally ill and repeat criminals were forcibly sterilized. Actually, the name of the state gave the method the name Indian. I must say, it turned out to be very popular: one way or another, but in 26 years it was tested in another forty states.

What was the Indian method? Nothing to do with medieval horrors.

By and large, it can even be called humane: the man’s seminal ducts were simply cut. That is, he could be sexually active, but lost the ability to reproduce. All socially unreliable elements had to undergo a similar procedure. “Dodgers” were mercilessly punished: jailed for three years or fined $1,000. And negative eugenics itself was popularized in all available ways: films were made, books and articles were written, special institutions were created...

With this approach, “unusable human material” was practically excluded from the reproduction process. One problem: as a rule, people who were unable to achieve social success were considered “unhealthy”. There was a substitution of concepts: with eugenics they tried to heal the “ulcers of society” - poverty, alcoholism, vagrancy, crime and prostitution.

Crazy? Castrate!

The “eugenic” issue was approached differently in the Nordic countries. Beginning in the late 1920s and 1930s, governments in Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Finland pursued a deliberate policy of sterilizing the mentally disabled. As in the USA, they were sterilized, thereby depriving them of the possibility of transmitting harmful genes.

What is noteworthy is that everywhere the law on sterilization was adopted with a bang. No one—neither the public, nor scientists, nor doctors*—saw anything reprehensible in it, and therefore did not oppose it. Thus, in an atmosphere of complete consensus, a mentally retarded child, after appropriate testing, could easily be taken to a closed institution. Do you want your child back? Kindly sterilize it. The same procedure was followed with adults. They were simply informed that you were sick and therefore it was decided that you should be taken care of... And such patients, as a rule, had nowhere to go. Of course, the issue of ill health of a particular individual was determined by a special commission. But who was on that commission? And when and how! The fate of some “patients” was decided by the ministries of health, while the fate of others was decided by ordinary doctors, and sometimes even a pastor, together with representatives of the guardianship and/or public education authorities. So the “reliability” of the conclusions in most cases, presumably, was doubtful... But then for some reason no one thought about it. In Scandinavia, everyone was so carried away by the idea of ​​​​improving society through castration that at the end of the 1930s they were ready to follow the path of the United States and begin sterilizing prostitutes, tramps and all other “predisposed to antisocial behavior”...

A new breed of people

Everything changed dramatically in 1933, when the National Socialists came to power in Germany. Actually, it was the Nazis who hammered the last nail into the coffin of eugenics, beginning to justify the racial policy of the Third Reich with its help. All “non-Aryans” were recognized as “subhumans” and in order to improve “the breed of people were subject to destruction...

As for the much-loved sterilization, in Germany it took on a truly unprecedented scale: in 1942 alone, more than a thousand people were sterilized - and this was among the civilian population. The number of victims of eugenics in prisons and concentration camps was in the tens of thousands. Nazi doctors practiced new methods of sterilization on prisoners - radiation, chemical, mechanical, etc., etc. In essence, these were sophisticated tortures. Then, at the Nuremberg trials, the Nazi “researchers” were recognized as executioners. And a taboo was placed on innocent eugenics...

Geneticist is man's friend

Actually, no one has officially lifted this taboo. And yet, positive eugenics is now beginning to make a comeback. For all research related to human DNA is nothing more than manifestations of eugenics. What, for example, does deciphering the human genome provide? You can find out what hereditary diseases a person is predisposed to and prevent them. Example?

Yes please! In the United States, children with amaurotic Tay-Sachs idiocy were often born among Ashkenazi Jews. This is a hereditary metabolic disease that affects the child’s nervous system. As a result, the baby is doomed to an early death. But the situation changed after Ashkenazi representatives began to be tested for this pathology. In the case where both spouses were carriers of the “sick” gene, fetal studies were carried out during pregnancy. And if it turned out that the embryo suffered from Tay-Sachs disease, the pregnancy was simply terminated.

Or rather, they gave parents a choice: to leave the sick child or not. The most common answer was: “No!” They refuse to continue pregnancy, as a rule, even in cases where the child is diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb. In America, for example, more than 90% of fetuses that receive such a terrible verdict are aborted.

Meanwhile, a child suffering from Down syndrome can be born even to completely healthy parents. No one is immune from this. So, in theory, today you should visit a geneticist before conceiving a child. Especially if serious illnesses were observed in families on the paternal or maternal side. Medical genetic counseling will make it clear: are you taking risks when deciding to have a baby, or are your fears zero? In this way, you can insure yourself against many problems in the future.

In the USA, England, Sweden and Finland, future parents are already being offered to examine the karyotype - a set of chromosomes - in advance in order to identify the presence of possible chromosomal rearrangements and reduce the risk to nothing... What is this if not eugenics? What is this if not human improvement? What is this if not deliverance from suffering? What is this if not humanism?

When we hear the word “eugenics” (the study of ways to improve a person’s hereditary properties), we most often think about the policy of the Third Reich, aimed at exterminating the “children of darkness” represented by representatives of “lower” races. In Nazi Germany, the law “On the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” came into force on July 14, 1933. To implement this law, special “hereditary health courts” were created, which consisted of two doctors, a judge and a chairman. According to the verdict of this court, men and women whose bad heredity was considered established were subjected to a violent operation that prevented the possibility of childbearing. Total from 1934 to 1937 197,419 people were sterilized. The crimes of the Nazis are well known to everyone. However, it is rarely stated in the media that eugenics was a common practice in many countries of that era. Thus, in the USA, eugenics was supposed to serve social goals, eradicate alcoholism, prostitution, and hereditary mental illnesses. In the Soviet Union, the emphasis was on the formation of a new human generation, “homo sovieticus.” Different countries pursued different goals. These were completely different forms of one scientific phenomenon.

Propaganda poster in Germany

Eugenics in its modern sense originated in England, its “father” was Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. It was Galton who coined the term eugenics. He intended to make eugenics, which, in his opinion, confirmed the right of the Anglo-Saxon race to world domination, “part of the national consciousness, like a new religion.”

However, eugenic practices existed many centuries before Galton. 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.

Francis Galton

Lycurgus, three centuries earlier, was the first to embody this in his reform of Spartan society. The state, represented by senior advisers (ephors), decided who was not worthy to belong to the “society of equals.” Infanticide was not alien to either Greek or Roman society. Seneca agreed that “we destroy deformed offspring and drown weak and abnormal newborns.” Thus, the state appropriated to itself the functions of the “father of the family,” who in Sparta 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.

What heredity is was poorly understood in ancient times and people constantly argued about what it depended on. In the rational medicine of Hippocrates in the 5th century BC. The idea of ​​panspermia appears, which became widespread in the Greek world. It made possible the assumption of the progressive improvement of the people on the basis of selection for the reproduction of the best specimens.

According to Plato, “semen comes from all parts of the body, from healthy - healthy, from sick - sick. Therefore, as a rule, bald fathers have bald sons, fathers with blue eyes have sons with blue eyes, and cross-eyed fathers have cross-eyed sons; the same applies to the rest of the figure.”

Ideas about heredity continued to be preached in the late Middle Ages, which led to the development of the doctrine of temperaments, according to which character and mental abilities depended on which of the four main temperaments predominated: choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine or melancholic.

These are just a few examples of the many eugenics projects that have been carried out throughout human history. Galton's eugenics program was quickly recognized by Victorian society at the end of the 19th century, and later by the whole world. It included not only previous attempts to achieve similar goals, but also a huge number of unrelated factors.

Eugenics in the USA

At the beginning of the twentieth century. earlier emigrants from northern Europe saw themselves overwhelmed by waves of immigrants from the European East and South. This for American society looked like a clear threat that the influx of new immigrants would lead to a decrease in the average intellectual level of Americans and to the spread of various vices such as alcoholism, crime and prostitution.

American eugenics was largely based on the widespread and arbitrary use of intelligence tests developed by Alfred Bene to determine “the mental level that each individual can achieve according to the type of chromosomes in the germ cells.” Strict immigration laws were developed based on these tests, especially after the passage of the Immigration Act, which severely restricted the entry of persons not belonging to the “Nordic race” and introduced programs of forced sterilization of the hereditarily defective.

The first law in the United States regulating the right of citizens to marry is considered to be an act adopted in 1895 in Connecticut. The document covered people defined in it as “epileptics, imbeciles and feeble-minded people.” If we were talking about women, then the restrictions applied only to those of them who were under 45 years old - it was believed that starting from this age the female body almost completely lost its ability to reproduce.

However, the law did not contain a ban on entering into marriage as such. Moreover, the document still provided for the possibility of cohabitation of “second-class” people, but only with the permission of their guardians. Otherwise, the bride and groom were simply denied a marriage certificate. If blacklisted citizens still managed to get married, they faced a prison sentence of up to three years. Those who helped them circumvent the law could end up behind bars for five years and also receive a fine of a thousand dollars.

Similar laws were passed in many other states in subsequent years. Basically, they mentioned the same categories of citizens as in Connecticut, but there were some differences. For example, in Georgia and a number of other states, restrictions were imposed on “idiots and crazy people,” and laws passed in Indiana and Ohio also applied to “heavy drunks.” In rare cases, “forbidden” categories were determined on the basis of social rather than medical characteristics. Thus, the authorities of Delaware did not allow marriages between low-income people, and the law in Virginia prohibited white people from creating families with representatives of other races.

Procedural nuances could also differ from each other. In Nebraska, to more effectively suppress illegal marriages, the authorities created registries of “defective” citizens in advance. They were helped to do this by a rule that obligated employees of schools, hospitals and other public institutions to report those suspected of dementia. In New Hampshire, “second-class” marriages were allowed if the participants were sterilized.

Along the way, in many states, special institutions were created for undesirable elements. In essence, these were psychiatric hospitals and a kind of colony for people with mental and, less often, physical disabilities. However, the definitions of dementia and other deviations were so vague that those who were simply distinguished by extravagant habits also fell under them. The condition for leaving such institutions was often the same sterilization, and patients of these institutions were especially actively subjected to such operations with the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929: a sharp reduction in the financial capabilities of the state coincided with an increase in the number of patients.

However, sterilization as a method of controlling unwanted genes was used not only as a forced measure to relieve the burden on colonies for the mentally ill. In a number of states, laws depriving “second-class” people of the opportunity to leave offspring were adopted as independent acts based on eugenic research.

The first state where sterilization received legislative support was Indiana: the corresponding act was adopted in 1907. Moreover, some researchers claim that this law is the first of its kind in the world. Its “target audience” was declared to be idiots and imbeciles, as well as repeat criminals and rapists. Later, in 1927, the scope of the law was somewhat narrowed: now the law applied only to the insane, feeble-minded and epileptics. Sterilization was applied to these groups in the state until approximately 1974. During this time, about 2.5 thousand people were deprived of the opportunity to leave offspring.

As with marriage restrictions, the forced sterilization laws passed in more than 30 states generally targeted roughly the same categories of citizens, who could be broadly divided into two groups. The first of these included people who were determined to be genetically defective based solely on medical characteristics. It included the already mentioned madmen, feeble-minded people, epileptics, imbeciles and idiots.

The second group consisted of citizens recognized as socially unreliable; Moreover, their deviant behavior was considered the result of bad heredity. On the one hand, these were criminals, on the other hand, people who were diagnosed with various kinds of sexual disorders. These included, in particular, homosexuals, as well as women recognized as intemperate and indiscriminate when choosing sexual partners. In addition, this category also included the poor, which sometimes included representatives of racial minorities.

Medical examination of Mexican immigrants at the border

In general, if you look at the statistics, it was women who were sterilized more often. The proportion of women sterilized was particularly high among African Americans; one of the most active campaigns against them was waged in North Carolina. The authorities believed that black women, due to their natural inclinations, were less able to control their sex lives, which, in their opinion, led to the uncontrolled expansion of black families. By sterilizing them, in addition to eugenic goals, the authorities also pursued financial goals, reducing the base of potential applicants for social benefits. Similar policies were pursued towards the Native American population.

The widespread practice of sterilizing people who were “unfit” to bear children lasted until about the mid-1960s, when the anti-eugenics vote reached a critical level. However, in some states its supporters continued to maintain influence subsequently. Thus, in Montana, operations were performed until 1972, in North Carolina and Indiana - until 1973 and 1974, and in Virginia and Oregon - until 1979 and 1983, respectively. The largest number of operations was performed in California: from 1909 to 1964, more than 20 thousand people there lost the opportunity to have children.

The Carnegie Institution was at the cradle of the American eugenics movement, establishing a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. Millions of cards with the data of ordinary Americans were stored here, which made it possible to plan the methodical liquidation of families, clans and entire nations. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated among American legislators, social services, and national associations.

After eugenics took hold in the United States, a campaign was launched to impose it in Germany. This was largely facilitated by Californian eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and distributed them among German officials and scientists. At the dawn of the Third Reich, American eugenicists welcomed the achievements of Hitler and his plans as the logical conclusion of their many years of research.

Californian eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda materials for distribution in America. They also staged Nazi science exhibitions, such as the one at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in August 1934. In addition to providing a plan of action, America funded scientific institutes working on eugenics in Germany.

After World War II, it suddenly turned out that eugenicists did not exist in the United States and never had existed. Biographers of celebrities and politicians did not mention the interest of their “heroes” in this philosophy, and sometimes did not remember it at all. Eugenics has ceased to be a subject in colleges, although some argue that its ideas continue to exist in modified forms.

Eugenics in Russia and the USSR

The term "eugenics" became common in Russia beginning in 1915. Francis Galton's Hereditary Genius had been translated forty years earlier, and new ideas in Western medicine and biology gradually took hold in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as did Darwin's theory of evolution. , which has been much debated.

Many works of Russian psychiatrists and neurologists were devoted to the problems of degeneration: insanity, crime, psychopathology and alcoholism. The 1917 revolution and the subsequent civil war became a decisive period for young researchers. The new regime was confident that it would be able to improve the human condition through scientific progress. Materialism and Marxist scientificism did not in any way contradict the eugenic ideal.

In November 1920, the Russian Eugenics Society was created, with Koltsov becoming its chairman. In the same year, the Russian Eugenics Journal began publication; it was published three times a year until the early 1930s. This journal raised the same topics that Western eugenicists dealt with: demography, crime, sterilization, analysis of the heredity of mental and nervous diseases (schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychoses), epilepsy, alcoholism, syphilis and a tendency to violence, the practical organization of statistical and anthropological analysis etc.

Soon the scientists split. Some, like Koltsov, did not hesitate to publish articles about the “higher mind” of party members and the need for them to pass on this “higher mind” to their numerous offspring. Others, like Filipchenko, who was first expelled from the eugenics movement in 1926, insisted on studying the genealogy of the bourgeois elite of the old regime.

In the mid-20s. a new generation of Marxist scientists (Volotsky, Serebrovsky) set out to transform eugenics into a purely Bolshevik science. There were three items on the agenda: sterilization, improving hygienic conditions and increasing the fertility of “outstanding” individuals. In 1923, Volotsky published a book, Raising the Vitality of the Race, in which he called on Soviet Russia to urgently adopt a sterilization program. His proposal was met with hostility by some scientists who rallied around Filipchenko in Leningrad. Ultimately, it was not moral, but demographic arguments that forced the Soviet authorities to abandon sterilization; in the country, the death rate exceeded the birth rate, so eugenic measures were not at the time.

In 1926, geneticist A.S. Serebrovsky founded, together with Solomon Levit, the Bureau of Human Health and Heredity. To this end, Serebrovsky proposed creating a sperm bank and developing a wide program of artificial insemination: “One talented and efficient producer can thus have 1000 children. Under such conditions, human selection will make a leap forward.”

But the eugenics program came up against the first five-year plan (1929 - 1933), when Stalin gained a foothold in power. This was the era of continuous industrialization and collectivization of the country, the first political processes, famine, patronage of science and discrediting of bourgeois specialists. The Eugenics Society was dissolved in 1930.

In the Great Soviet Encyclopedia in 1931, eugenics was called a “bourgeois science” suspected of “fascism.” The Eugenics Society disappeared, giving way to the “Laboratory of Racial Research”, founded in Moscow in March 1931. This laboratory outlined a number of research programs in collaboration with German scientists who sent expeditions to Transcaucasia. A remarkable fact: in March 1933, the Hitler regime allowed the continuation of German-Soviet cooperation, approved in April by the Soviet People's Commissariat of Health. Only in 1938 did the Germans recall their scientists. In addition to this union of two regimes in the field of race, Soviet eugenics survived Stalin's reforms, changing its name. She became a “medical geneticist.”

Eugenics in Sweden

Sweden was the first country in the world where a state institute of racial biology arose. And the idea did not come from Germany. The struggle for racial purity unfolded here, in northern Europe, quite independently. The only difference between the Swedish welfare society and the Nazis was that the Swedes had been doing it longer.

In accordance with the letter of the law, residents of the country who were recognized by health or social welfare authorities as mentally or racially inferior were subject to sterilization. To be included in this category, it was enough to show a “persistent learning disability” or to have an appearance that did not meet the recognized standards of the Swedish nation. When the technology was debugged, they decided to expand the list of signs of inferiority and included “asociality” in it.

For most Swedes, the procedure for sterilizing mentally handicapped people was as natural as the rules of the road. The operations stopped for the same reason they started. The global trend has changed. The mentally ill are no longer treated as second-class citizens. It has become generally accepted that their desire to be full members of society should be welcomed and encouraged. About the laws of the 1930s. in Sweden they tried to forget, but looking at the representatives of their nation, the homogeneity of the types is striking. The Racial Purity Law in Sweden was repealed only in 1976. Between 1935 and 1976, more than 63,000 people were sterilized under the Racial Purity Law.

Since the late 20s. XX century Eugenic excesses in democratic countries, based on class or racial theories, began to be criticized, including by the leaders of the eugenics movement themselves. They reached their peak in the 1940s, when, after the end of World War II, the undeniable atrocities committed by the Nazis based on the tenets of eugenics became known. Many of the criticisms have been confirmed by modern knowledge of genetics and heredity.

Nowadays, they try to avoid the very term “eugenics”, as it has a negative connotation due to the dark memories of history. Today, new scientific achievements are combined with a political refusal to carry out any practical experiments with the population or to introduce changes into the gene pool of the population. These goals are considered reprehensible, and in practice they turn out to be unrealistic. This is proven by population genetics, based on the current level of its knowledge. But who knows where science will turn tomorrow...

Definition of eugenics.

Eugenics is a science based on the theory of survival of the fittest. Eugenics is a logical continuation of Darwin's theory of the evolution of species, only for humans. Eugenics is the study of human selection to improve human hereditary characteristics. The word Eugenics comes from the Greek “eu” - good + “genes” - born.

Founder of eugenics.

The founder of this science was Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton, an amateur scientist and inventor; he wrote a book on Eugenics, “Hereditary Genius.”

(Photo by Francis Galton)

The main idea of ​​eugenics.

A person inherits from his ancestors the level of intelligence, positive or negative character traits and physical features, abilities and talents. And this does not depend on the influence of his environment, as other scientists of that time believed. For example, the rich are rich not because they received an inheritance or created wealth through their labor, but because, according to their genes, they are at a higher stage of development. Eugenics is the study of how to improve humans intellectually and physically through selective breeding, like animals, to improve the “breed.”

Applications of Eugenics.

Positive eugenics - increasing the birth rate of more highly evolved offspring from "perfect" parents who have been carefully selected.

Negative eugenics is the reduction of the birth rate of people with physical or intellectual disabilities, people with disabilities and other “unfit for survival”, which cause irreparable harm to the development of humanity.

Consequences of the emergence of eugenics ideas.

In the 1920s, most American states legalized forced sterilization of prisoners. 70,000 people were forcibly sterilized: criminals, the mentally retarded, drug addicts, beggars, the blind, the deaf, as well as patients with epilepsy, tuberculosis and syphilis.
In Sweden in 1935-1976, 60,000 citizens expected the same thing.

The genocide in Germany in 1933 was the sterilization of not only prisoners, but also all Germans with “undesirable characteristics.” 1938 - Hitler destroyed 11 mil. people who did not meet the requirements for the "purity" of the Aryan race.

(Photo of child's race assessment)

The consequences of eugenics today.

Abortion is the killing of an unborn person with a physical disability, such as a cleft palate, bowed feet, or a missing limb, or a mental disability, such as Down syndrome. According to statistics, every year 50 mil. abortions. Of the three embryos, only two survive. This is global legalized murder.

China has a policy of no more than one child per family, which means that all defective fetuses and even born babies are in danger, but not only that. Many Chinese families want a boy, which means that even healthy girls are at risk; many abortions fall on them.

Euthanasia is the deliberate termination of the life of a terminally ill person in order to relieve him of suffering. This procedure is based on the fact that a person has the right to take the life of himself or others for “justifiable” reasons. Whether euthanasia is legal is a separate topic.

Exposing eugenics.

Eugenics, as a science, rejects the existence of a person’s soul, the right to life, having flaws, it rejects the unique design of each person, equating everyone to the same standard. People are not gods to decide who lives and who dies. In addition, eugenics is based on the idea that man improves over time and can develop himself. But this is not true, the Bible says so. After the Fall, humanity gradually degrades mentally and physically, and people are unable to overcome the destruction of themselves without God. A striking example of this is the existence of death. But there is a way out of this situation. For God, the life and soul of every person is priceless, He prohibits the killing of any person, and therefore He decides Himself to save a person from destruction. Jesus Christ is the only way for the restoration of the human soul and hope for eternal life in a new body, free of defects.

Baltic Federal University. Immanuel Kant

Essay

Eugenics as a science

The work was completed The work was checked

5th year student

Kostarev I.V. Feshchenko

__________________ _________________

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 deciphering 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. Thus, 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 a 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, less than half of eugenicists 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 THE 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.

Greek eugenes - thoroughbred). A system of beliefs about the possibility of improving a person’s hereditary qualities through selection and control over the transmission of hereditary factors. For a long time, Europe was an arena for the activities of obscurantists and reactionaries who used pseudoscientific formulations to cover up the carrying out of genocide (mass extermination of representatives of other races and the sick in Nazi Germany). However, a humane, progressive application of E’s ideas is also possible. In particular, the positive role of medical genetics and genetic consultations is undeniable.

Eugenics

A selective breeding program for the purpose of "improving" human abilities through careful selection and transfer of hereditary characteristics. The idea of ​​eugenics was considered impractical, immoral and generally outdated.

EUGENICS

Eugenics is the science that deals with the improvement of the human race based on the principles of genetics. The main object of this study is the identification and, if possible, elimination of hereditary human diseases.

EUGENICS

The study of patterns of human heredity with the goal of improving the species through selective breeding. Positive eugenics focuses on encouraging individuals with "desirable" traits to reproduce, while negative eugenics focuses on preventing individuals with "undesirable" traits from producing offspring (often using unethical procedures such as forced sterilization). Unfortunately (or should we say fortunately), no agreement was reached on what characteristics would be desirable to perpetuate. Since the founding of the discipline by Francis Galton in the 19th century, eugenicists have not been able to free themselves from their own ethnocentrism.

Eugenics

from Greek eugenes - good kind) - the doctrine of hereditary human health and ways to improve it. The principles of E. were first formulated by F. Galton in 1869 in his book “The Heredity of Talent.” The term itself was proposed by him in 1883. Interest in eugenic ideas was especially significant in the first quarter of the 20th century. Progressive scientists (F. Galton, G. Meller, N.K. Koltsov, Yu.A. Filipchenko) set humane goals for E.: first of all, the study of human hereditary qualities and the creation of conditions for increasing the birth rate of people with favorable hereditary inclinations. This direction of E. is called positive. However, eugenic ideas were also used for other purposes - birth control for people with mental illness, people prone to alcoholism, crime, etc. For these purposes, a number of countries in Europe and America passed laws on forced sterilization and immigration restrictions (negative eugenics). The ideas of negative E. were used to justify discrimination and racism (for example, in Nazi Germany), which discredited E. as a scientific discipline and led to the refusal to use the term “E.” In modern science, many problems of positive E. are solved within the framework of human genetics and medical genetics.

Eugenics

The doctrine of the hereditary prerequisites for individual human development, the conditions and patterns of inheritance of giftedness and talent (F. Galton). In fact, it is a reflection of the solution to the eternal question of the role of environment and heredity in the development of genius and talent towards the predominance of the second. With the help of E., racists try to substantiate the pattern of racial and national inequality from a biological point of view.

Eugenics

Greek eugenes - purebred) - F. Galton's theory (1870) about the possibility of improving the human species by methods of selective reproduction (for example, sterilization, obstacles to childbearing by persons with signs of degeneration, artificial marriages, etc.). Positive eugenics focuses on encouraging the procreation of individuals with desirable, adaptive traits, while negative eugenics focuses on preventing children from parents with undesirable traits or inherited disease traits. In the United States, from 1905 to 1980, twenty states passed laws prohibiting persons with mental disabilities, epilepsy and criminal tendencies from having children, and about 8,000 people were sterilized. The generally humane goals of eugenics were thoroughly discredited by people with very specific views on what a person should be and what should be the ways to improve his nature. Thus, the straightforward Hitlerite Nazis created at one time a special institute for the reproduction of “Aryans”, but the experience of its activities turned out to be completely disappointing: purebred males and selected females after mating produced, contrary to expectations, thin and sickly offspring. Currently, in connection with the amazing achievements of genetics, more advanced technologies have appeared, for example, genetic engineering, cloning, but very complex problems, including ethical ones, stand in the way of their practical use, excluding “social terror”.

Eugenics

from Greek eugenes - purebred) - 1) selection of racial properties based on ideology (where one human race with special phenotypic and general properties is proclaimed above all others), which does not recognize either the principle of equality or the principle of personalism. In history, E. has served as an ideological basis for violence against some minorities, and is now practically used in some artificial insemination technologies and in recommending abortion if human embryos do not meet acceptable “general conditions”;

2) an influential scientific direction of the first half of the 20th century, within which the task was set of improving the hereditary characteristics of the human population (physical and intellectual). E.'s methods were aimed at stopping the genetic degeneration of humanity associated with the development of medicine and social support of individuals, as a result of which the effect of natural selection was weakened. Within the framework of negative E., the idea of ​​depriving defective citizens (alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, etc.) of the opportunity to procreate and pass on “unworthy” genes by inheritance is advocated. Within the framework of positive education, the task is set to provide advantages for the reproduction of the most gifted (physically and intellectually) people. In recent decades, genetics has begun to develop again in connection with the rapid progress of molecular genetics, cloning, and other biomedical research, requiring that ethical and sociocultural factors of intervention in hereditary programs be taken into account and that they be regulated and controlled based on the benefit of the human population.