What is eugenics?

Anything good is liable to be ruined by what extremists do in its name, and thin ends of wedges become thick ends. It happens to religions, dreams of utopias, freedom and justice, and what people do with our most marvellous inventions. Well-meaning Francis Galton invented the word 'eugenics' to mean 'well-born' or born well, but bears some responsibility for linking it in the public mind with abuses of human rights, because his suggestions of possibilities of forced sterilisation or elimination of the 'less worthy' have been so abominably taken up.

Today undreamt of developments in what humans can do make the idea of promoting eugenics, 'good-born', once more relevant. There is unprecedented meddling with human biology, with bionics, genetic manipulations, cryonics, stem-cell research and forms of cloning, and new philosophies that go beyond humanism to 'transhumanism' and other risks to our humanity. These are dreams or nightmares that can only be produced with the financial and scientific dedication of a highly developed society. While these are being carried on by elites, other people elsewhere face enormous social and environmental problems, with unsustainably growing populations, devastated earth, and global malignity in wars that are fuelled by the developed world's massive research and profits in how to kill. At exactly the same time as human beings are behaving as if we were gods of life and death, human stupidity seems at a peak.

How oxymoronic can it be for military research to be provided with almost bottomless funding to develop wired-up soldiers and robot warriors that can replace live ones - while ordinary human beings remain stupid. Where can we find super-intelligence being devoted to no more war?

The Eugenics Society and its successor, the Galton Institute, which was renamed because of the Nazi meaning given to Eugenics, are widely maligned in web-sites and articles as seeking malignant ends through underhand means that are cloaked as benevolent. Some of this enmity comes from opposers of family planning and of permitting abortion as a last resort. Others believe that the Galton Society and allied conspirators ignore the dangers that may follow when science and technology are applied to modify the essence of what human beings are. 'Improving the human race' is still perceived as inevitably linked with ethnic cleansings and genocides to get rid of the undesirable. 'Evolutionary genocide' and 'Racial abyss' are among the terms that come up on Google trawls.

However, there are problems with laisser-faire attitudes to reproduction, and with beliefs such as that humans should not interfere in God's right to decide who is conceived, regardless of congenital or environmental handicaps. Multitudes of people are conceived with little chance in life constitutionally or environmentally.

It seems to me that Eugenics in its intended positive sense must establish clear affirmations of three human rights: -- The right of the living to exist, the right to reproduce, and the right of the living to the best possible chances of health, care and social justice, so that every child born that is capable of life does not face suffering or disability.

The right of the living to exist means that there is no genocide, no ethnic cleansing, and no claims that anyone's life is worth less than anyone else's. No war, no capital punishment, and no starvation. These rights place ethical priorities for the already-alive that any opposers of contraception or abortion must surely rate more highly than their concerns for the unconceived and the unborn.

The right to reproduce should be clearly stated. As world population surges out of control from six billion now to eight or ten billion by 2050 barring catastrophes, the right to have one child each (that is, two children per couple) can be regarded as fair and preferably established by a UN convention. That would remove any bases for fears or claims of genocide about all attempts to stabilise and eventually naturally reduce unsustainable populations. In countries with high child mortality, this right can be a minimum right, to allow for tragedies, so that there may be up to four children per couple. In other countries already with assured life for babies, one child each may be the maximum that the State can justifiably assist.

The right of adults to reproduce requires the concomitant right for every child, everywhere, to have the best possible chances of health, care and social justice.

What is to be done when a child is born with severe disabilities and continual suffering that our present knowledge cannot help, and which can lay upon a family a permanent burden it may not be able to bear? This issue can never be resolved in any easy way. There are arguments about 'thin ends of wedges' and the loss of potential Beethovens. But as a clinical child psychologist I have seen the later consequences of some 'heroic' medical efforts that saved severely damaged infants, and seen doctors regretting their earlier pride at brilliant rescues. 'Let be' can be more humane than hubris at what medicine can do to make the severely damaged surivive for a horrible existence. Let those who criticise a family's decision to 'let nature take its course', take and rear such a child themselves.

Millions more children are urgent cases to help. These are the children who miss out on their rights to love, care and social justice. Surely it must be made absolutely clear, that no adult or teenager has a right to casually beget or conceive children they do not want. They have no right to produce more than one child if they do not or cannot give their children these basic rights. Societies have obligations to ensure these basic rights to all children, and to support parents in being able to give that care. It is in their interests to do so. Societies pay a very high financial and social cost for all their members who are unnecessarily psychologically deprived and disturbed. Individuals pay the price in misery and helplessness.

Have parents still a right to reproduce when they deliberately continue self-destructive behavior such as drug abuse or alcoholism, risking babies born damaged or with developmental problems? There is an ethical and a practical question of whether the child's right is above the adults. Principles must not be made a 'thin end of a wedge', to judge 'Your children would not be as privileged as mine, so you deserve none.'