Eugenics is a dirty word that conjures up disturbing images of a dark
Victorian past. Eugenicists were convinced that societal ills such as poverty
and prostitution were simply the result of bad heredity鈥攁nd that a smart
society would prevent such people from breeding. The movement began in the late
19th century, after Charles Darwin mooted the idea of natural selection. It was
Darwin鈥檚 cousin, Francis Galton, who coined the term 鈥渆ugenics鈥�, meaning 鈥渢he
science of producing sound offspring鈥濃�攚hich could mean anything from
encouraging healthy, bright people to have more children, to sterilising
鈥渄efectives鈥�. Galton realised that working out how traits were inherited would
be more difficult in humans than in sweet peas, but that didn鈥檛 stop him from
迟谤测颈苍驳鈥攕别别 www.tsd.jcu.edu.au/hist/stats/galton.
Not everyone is satisfied that the eugenics movement is dead and buried.
The DNA Learning Center at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, has just
posted over a thousand photographs and documents chronicling the American
eugenics movement at http://vector. cshl.org/eugenics. The aim is to get people
thinking about 鈥渟imilarities between eugenics and our current preoccupation with
the implications of the Human Genome Project.鈥� But be warned: the site is far
from gentle. It includes 鈥渄efective鈥� family trees and numerous calls for the
forced sterilisation of 鈥渙rphans, ne鈥檈r-do-wells, tramps, the homeless and
辫补耻辫别谤蝉鈥�.
l These days, we can detect unwanted genes in single cells taken from very
early human embryos and decide whether or not to implant them. Take the case
(www.nhgri.nih.gov/About_NHGRI/Dir/Ethics/pre.html) of the couple screening an
embryo for severe combined immune deficiency, in which sufferers often need bone
marrow transplants to survive. The couple already have a daughter with SCID. But
not only do they want to make sure their next child doesn鈥檛 suffer from it, they
also want its bone marrow to be compatible with the older child, so it can be a
donor. The levels of ethical complexity rapidly become mind-boggling.
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