Eugenics

EUGENICS. - Name used for the first time in 1833 (Eugenics) by Francis Galton, distinguished English statesman (1822-1911), to indicate (according to his most recent [1904] definition) «the study of the agents that, under special control, can improve or worsen the racial qualities of future generations, both physically and psychically».

Conceived thus, eugenics has a vast programmatic framework and draws its content and its principles partly from genetics, partly from the social sciences, demonstrating the sense of responsibility that living generations should have toward future generations.

I. NOTIONS

E. is based on eugenics, or "the science that advocates the improvement of man by means of an opportune selection of matings" (Gianferrari and Cantoni), so as to diminish the reproduction of individuals considered dysgenic or antisocial and to favor, instead, that of individuals held to be bearers of desirable qualities. The development of such qualities must, however, be assisted by the improvement of environmental conditions (eugenics, hygiene).

The term e. may, for some scholars, be interpreted as a synonym of racial hygiene, according to the expression proposed by Phoix.

Galton had previously defined e. as "the science that deals with all the influences that improve the innate properties of a race and bring them to develop for the greater benefit of the community." This, perhaps, might explain why some consider e. a synonym of eugenics and others, instead, assign to the two different terms different meanings and extensions; why, according to some, e. is a pure science and, according to others, an applied science; why some derive it etymologically from the Greek adjective ἀβγανής = of good descent and others from the noun ἀβγάνια = good race; why some, for eugenic ends, regard the action of hereditary factors as prevalent and others the action of environmental factors.

Galton himself, having studied 977 biographies (1865-69), arrived at the conclusion that the success of individuals depends for the most part on their hereditary characters; and he confirmed this opinion of his later (1874) after the genealogical study of 180 personalities. As proof of the prevalent action of hereditary factors over environmental ones, the example of the Negroes and whites of America is customarily adduced: although living in equal environmental conditions, they are nonetheless quite different from one another.

On the contrary, the study of certain pairs of monozygotic twins - which, as is known, have an identical gene patrimony, deriving from the fertilization of one and the same egg cell - has brought out differences manifested in the course of their lives that would not be explained if the action of environmental factors were excluded. Analogous deductions can be drawn from a study by E. Jold and E. H. Cluver (1941), South African physicians, on 32 young people known as "poor whites": they presented no serious illnesses but suffered from colds, rheumatism, migraines, were dull and slow, could not find employment, being regarded by employers as "poor white trash." Admitted to an institution and subjected to suitable nourishment, to gymnastic and recreational exercises, a great improvement was observed in their general condition and in their mental agility. It may therefore be held that individual differences are determined by hereditary factors which can, however, be improved or worsened by favorable or unfavorable environmental conditions that would attenuate the absolute meaning of the Horatian verse: "naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurrent" (Epist., I, 10, 24).

II. AIMS AND MEANS OF EUGENICS

At the Second Congress of eugenics, held in New York in September 1921, four sections were distinguished with the following groups of topics: a) human heredity; b) the factors that influence the human family, its fertility and marriage selections; c) racial differences with particular regard to the unnatural associations created by political and national boundaries, the problem of hybrids (advantages and disadvantages), morbidity and psychology; d) eugenic applications in relation to the State, society, and education; the results of eugenics in sociology, economics and the destiny of nations.

According to Jennings (1930), "the misfortunes of the world and the relative remedy lie fundamentally in the different hereditary constitutions of human beings. Some men are strong, healthy, wise, virtuous. Others are weak, deficient, sick, immoral, criminal, and it is these who cause the misfortunes of the world. Laws, customs, education, material conditions are creations of men and reflect their fundamental nature. Trying to correct these is simply treating the superficial symptoms. To go to the root of the misfortunes one must produce a better human race: one that does not contain inferior types. When a better race holds the reins and the affairs of the world, laws, customs, education, material conditions will take care of men themselves. Good and wise men will make a good world."

The means employed for eugenic purposes can be grouped into two large groups that could be considered as two different approaches: that of coercive and non-coercive means aimed at reducing the procreative contribution (negative eugenics) and that of means aimed at encouraging and increasing the procreative contribution of desirable individuals (positive eugenics), to which means must be added all those directed at the improvement of the environment which constitute the field of action of eugenics.

Prophylactic norms and provisions protecting maternity and infancy, labor, individual health, etc., also have eugenic and euthenic purposes.

In negative eugenics the coercive means to be exercised through the promulgation of laws include: a) marriage restrictions: prohibition of marriages between blood relatives and relatives by marriage up to a certain degree (v. CONSANGUINEITÀ), prohibition of marriage for the mentally ill (deficient, insane), epileptics, syphilitics, habitual criminals. Some of these restrictions are in force in almost all civilized nations. In China marriages between individuals with the same surname are prohibited, and similarly among certain Indian tribes of North America and among aborigines of Australia; b) segregation through admission to suitable institutions: a preferable but very expensive means; c) the compulsory premarital certificate of eugenic fitness for marriage. Such a provision is in force in Argentina, Chile, Denmark, Ecuador, Germany, Yugoslavia, some of the United States of America, Sweden, Turkey. In Norway and in some North American states the certificate is replaced by a sworn declaration of the betrothed and their relatives; d) sterilization achieved by surgical means consisting in the removal of the ducts (the deferent duct for the man and the fallopian tubes for the woman) that must be traversed by the sexual cells to reach the procreative act. The intervention (which in males can be performed with local anesthesia and is less serious than in females), not affecting the sexual glands, entails no modification of the secondary sexual characteristics or of the sexual instinct.

This means, used for the first time (1907) in the State of Indiana (U.S.A.) for the defective, was adopted for the mentally retarded, the psychopaths, and criminals in other North American states, in a few of which even castration (removal of the sexual glands) is legal.

In Europe sterilization has been adopted in Switzerland (Canton of Vaud, 1928), Denmark (1929), Sweden (1934), Germany (1934). Here the most extensive sterilization experiment was carried out, since in 1934 - according to Wolf's statistics - (cited by De Toni) - from 180,000 to 200,000 individuals were sterilized for the following infirmities: congenital mental weakness, schizophrenia, circular insanity, hereditary epilepsy, Huntington's chorea, hereditary blindness, severe hereditary physical deformities and, in certain cases, chronic alcoholism.

All coercive means that impair the physical integrity of the individual - scientifically much debated because pathological heredity is not always of a fatal character - are contrary to juridical, moral and religious principles (Encyclical Casti Connubii of Pope Pius XI, 1930).

Non-coercive means include: birth control, a form of neo-Malthusianism, based on anti-conceptive practices, very widespread in the Anglo-Saxon countries; so-called "trial marriage," legal but limited in time; "companionate marriage," legal but with limitation of births and, in case of infertility, with the possibility of divorce (these means too are all immoral and condemned by the Church) and finally eugenic education which, by disseminating notions about hereditarily transmissible diseases, places man before his responsibilities without impairing the dignity of his person.

For positive eugenics, means have been suggested that are not all in conformity with juridical and moral principles. Among these, for example, polygamy, permission for the fertile spouse to procreate with a third person, etc.

Considered advisable, instead, are the means capable of creating a eugenic conscience in the masses by disseminating religious, moral, sexual and hygienic education, associated possibly with measures of a social and economic character, such as incentives for early marriage, benefits for large families, marriage loans, adequate provisions for celibacy, etc.

III. BRIEF HISTORICAL NOTES ON EUGENIC MEASURES

Measures with a eugenic purpose, in the form of religious precepts or legislative provisions, existed in antiquity as well.

Pre-nuptial chastity and the obligation of marriage - forbidden, however, between blood relatives - were prescribed among the Indians, the Hebrews and the Greeks; the Romans considered marriage a moral obligation; bachelors had no right to inherit and paid taxes. The Spartan laws of Lycurgus were particularly harsh: celibacy was considered a shameful offense to the point that bachelors were publicly derided by women, stripped naked; women, especially young wives of old husbands, could procreate with strong and handsome males; newborns judged healthy and beautiful, upon reaching the age of 6, passed into the care of the State to receive a rigid education for military purposes, while those afflicted with deformities or deemed weak were hurled from Mount Taygetus, victims of misguided aesthetic and social principles.

In Athens too, weak infants were abandoned. Infanticides for propitiatory purposes were practiced by the Phoenicians, the Philistines, the Moabites, the Carthaginians (De Toni). Among the Romans, down to the Augustan era, the father was free to acknowledge his children or not: especially if weak or deformed, they could be killed, abandoned or sold. On the other hand, laws protecting infancy (punishment of infanticide and the obligation to raise children, however begotten, at the expense of the parents or the State) existed among the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the Hebrews.

Caesar and Augustus promulgated laws by which monetary rewards and benefits were granted to prolific fathers.

Such provisions gained greater impetus and vigor under Constantine, after the advent of Christianity which, together with Roman law, later influenced the promulgation of laws protecting infancy among the peoples who invaded the territories administered by Rome.

The Mohammedan religion too encourages marriage and prolificacy, though it permits marriage between cousins, polygamy and concubinage.

In the Middle Ages, moreover, there arose in various countries, especially through the work of religious, certain foundling hospitals (the first in Europe being that founded in 787 by the Milanese archpriest Dateo [De Toni]), charitable institutions, praiseworthy for affirming the principle of protecting the lives of little ones, but defective from the practical-organizational standpoint because -

through ignorance of the most elementary rules of hygiene - mortality among the inmates was extremely high.

Slowly and sporadically, hygienic principles then made ever greater headway from the doctrinal point of view and, subsequently, the concepts of heredity. Mention may be made here of the physician Aldobrandino da Siena (13th century), Vittorino da Feltre (15th century), Thomas More (16th century), Tommaso Campanella (18th century) and, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Paré, Morel, Charles Darwin, Lamarck, Mendel and finally Francis Galton, with whom the dissemination of the new ideas began.

IV. THE EUGENIC MOVEMENT IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

As has been seen, Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, must be considered the father of eugenics in the modern sense. To him is due the founding (1903) at the University of London of the first eugenics laboratory, named after his death the "Galton Eugenics Laboratory," whose direction was entrusted to Pearson. In 1908, again in England, the first society was founded: the "Eugenics Education Society," and in 1912 the first international congress was held there.

From England the movement spread to Sweden (especially through the work of Lundborg), where two institutes were founded at the Universities of Uppsala and Lund; to America — where the greatest number of institutes and associations exist, among them the "Eugenics Record Office," the "Eugenics Section of the American Breeders' Association," which was given the greatest impetus during the secretaryship of D. B. Davenport, who can today be considered one of the most authoritative assertors of the importance of eugenics, etc. — to Norway, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Holland, France, Russia, Hungary, Portugal, and Switzerland.

In Italy in 1912, on the initiative of Giuseppe Sergi, within the Roman Society of Anthropology, a committee for eugenic studies was constituted, of which the following were members: G. Sergi, S. De Sanctis, C. Artom, C. Gini, L. Mangiagalli, A. Nicofaro, M. Saffiotti.

In 1920, on the initiative of E. Pestalozzi, C. Gini and C. Artom, the "Italian Society for the Study of Genetics and Eugenics" was founded, and in Milan, at whose University a special teaching course was established, the first two Italian Congresses of Eugenics were held in 1924 and 1929.

Venerando Correnti

V. PASTORAL MEDICINE

It must be acknowledged that eugenics has a good intention and a morally good end, when it seeks to discover the laws that govern the reproduction of the individual and the development of the species; to reduce, nullify or at least counterbalance the causes of physical and mental decline and of premature death; to halt diseases of social diffusion and the spread of unhealthy habits that undermine the human species; to work for the rehabilitation and elevation of the physical and social aspect of marriage. However, those aspects and manifestations of negative eugenics must be denounced and condemned which, disregarding the mixed nature of man or, within it, the preponderant value and the most absolute rights of the spirit, propose or implement systems that violate human freedom and dignity.

The coercive regulation of marriage, sterilization, birth control, artificial insemination of the zootechnical type, eugenic abortion, the killing of the chronically disabled and of the sick presumed incurable (v. EUTHANASIA), even with the good intention of wishing to free the individual and society from the burden of need, disease and suffering, are means in conflict not only with Catholic morality, but often even with the natural law itself. For this reason, the Catholic Church (repeatedly in bloody conflict with civil laws promulgated by the secular nationalism of certain States or with particularistic moralities upheld by certain dissident religious confessions) has always condemned and still condemns certain forms of negative eugenics, harmful to the natural rights of man (the right to life and to procreation), contrary to respect for and the integrity of the human person (sterilization, castration), and to the primary ends and the juridical, natural and canonical characteristics of marriage (birth control, artificial insemination in its broadest form). The unlawfulness of all these means is explained under the individual entries.

Turning to a more particular critique, in the first place every reservation is raised regarding the assumption of eugenics, that improving the conditions of the physical health of humanity corresponds without further ado to making it morally better, whereas experience very often shows that physical betterment does not go hand in hand with moral betterment.

In fact, while admitting that for a normal development of our ethical life a minimum basis of integrity, potentiality and physiological tranquility of the physical structures of our organism is necessary, particularly of those that bioregulate it (nervous system, endocrine apparatus), the essential factor of progress, of ascent, of moral perfection is the free determination of the will toward the good. Not only that, but intelligence itself is often unbound from the necessity of the individual's physical worth, and not rarely one sees vast and virile intellects freed from the constraints of a very deficient organism; society would have been deprived of their light if, with the principles of eugenics applied to the utmost, their worth had been shown to be wanting by the standard of development, of good proportions, of the physiological equilibrium of their bodily mass.

In the second place, on the subject of the medico-moral contribution, one must sift the scientific legitimacy of the practical applications of eugenics, seeing whether certain postulates and methods of its negative developments are not, besides immoral, also antiscientific. The question is asked, that is, whether in reality from an objective study of facts one must not conclude that theories - the so-called laws of heredity, the mainstay of many advocates of eugenics to the utmost - rather than true and proper laws in the absolute and scientific sense of the word, are hypothetical, provisional, modifiable frameworks of phenomena whose essence is unknown, susceptible to many exceptions and therefore devoid of that absolute normative value that one would wish to give them in practice.

And in reality, an objective critique, while on the one hand showing the limitedness and relativity of today's knowledge of the phenomena of heredity, demolishes on the other the current notion that hereditary means fated and inevitable, something in no way modifiable by the environment. In this way, not only in the name of morality, but also in the light of science, one can condemn the aberrations of materialistic eugenic naturalism, and nourish the broadest hopes of improving the human species by virtue of the self-selective and self-purifying tendencies proper to the reproduction of individuals rather than by the eugenic suppression of tainted lineages.

Morgan's chromosome theory attributes (v. GENETICS) the transport and determination of hereditary characters to "genids" or "genes," which do not behave individually as unique factors of a given character, but regulate its reappearance by collaborating in complex and numerous combinations; probably more than fifty genids, systematized in different chromosomes, contribute to the reappearance in the descendant of a hereditary trait which, at times, also requires the concurrence of cytoplasmic genids, that is, located, instead of in the chromosomes, in the cell plasma. One can thus glimpse the enormous complexity of the mechanism that regulates the reappearance of a hereditary character. On the other hand, alongside the fact of the necessity of so great a number of concurring factors, stands that of the vast diversion and the rendering useless of large masses of genids in the phenomenon of "meiosis" or maturation mitosis of the sexual elements, whereby the ovum or the spermatozoon, ready for fertilization, find themselves having lost half of their chromosomes and therefore of their hereditary baggage. It is held that in the human species, in the fusing of the two gametes, there is only one chance in 1996 that in the fertilized ovum, from which the new organism will develop, the entire hereditary patrimony of one of the parents may be found gathered together again! It should also be remembered that the chain of genids in the chromosomes is double, so that a defective genid can be compensated by a healthy one placed parallel to it. And furthermore, one should remember the very small number of offspring proper to human families, against the enormous number of spermatozoa (several hundred million per emission) and the multiplicity of ova (about 450 from puberty to menopause) that take no part in reproduction. On such phenomena, of a vastness and a scope not easily conceivable, the so-called "self-purification of heredity" (Kleist) finds its basis, whereby one may witness, in the span of a few generations, the disappearance of pathological taints that are transmitted with the characteristics of recessiveness, if the tainted subject unites with a healthy one.

One also bears in mind the decreasing geometric progression (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc.) by which the patrimony of the ancestors diminishes in the children in relation to the maturation mitosis, compensated, in the act of fertilization, by the reacquisition of chromosomes of a different nature brought by the other parent. This is Galton's "law of ancestral hierarchy," whereby each parent gives to the child half of his own hereditary characters, equal to a quarter of those received from his own parents, to an eighth of those of the grandparents, and so on. Even if, in practice, such a law does not correspond with the mathematical rigor with which it is formulated, in broad outline it proves true, and in reality it happens that the smaller the probabilities that a morbid character reappears in a descendant, the more distant it is in the series of ascendants.

In this regard, one should reflect here on the great number of ancestors each of us has (55,324 already at only the 16th generation); from this, while on the one hand it is demonstrated how many providential crossings and renewals contribute to the formation of our hereditary patrimony, on the other hand the practical futility appears of the program of purifying the species to the utmost from hereditary diseases, if one considers the hundreds and thousands of times that individuals must necessarily have intermingled consanguineously among themselves. Anyone wishing to follow the inflexible rules of negative eugenics would have to ban every marriage or impose mass sterilization on humanity! This is so particularly since many diseases transmissible to offspring, for example mental ones, behave as recessive characters, whereby the defective genes are carried by apparently healthy individuals and the coercive measure is capable only of striking the manifestly ill, not the hidden carriers of the character. It has been calculated that, by this route, in the case of the mentally deficient, to reduce the proportion relative to normal persons from 1:1000 to that of 1:100,000 by sterilizing the manifestly afflicted, 68 generations are necessary, that is to say approximately 2,000-3,000 years!

Another element that strongly affects the absoluteness of the so-called laws of heredity is the phenomenon of "mutation" (v.), a sudden variation of the germ plasm, whereby a new character appears in the individual or one already existing is substantially modified. The phenomenon of mutation invalidates the asserted immutability of the hereditary laws and shows how the environment can influence the ultimate constitution of the "gene" and modify a hereditary character.

But, alongside the concern about the hereditary repetition of morbid taints, one must not forget the grave harm that can infiltrate into the offspring through those diseases which, having nothing to do (for example, alcoholism, syphilis) or only partially (tuberculosis, through the element of organic predisposition) with heredity, are capable of inflicting the gravest damage on the germ ("blastophthoria" of Forel), on the embryo or on the fetus during the period of intrauterine life, giving rise to defective individuals, in spite of every best condition of eugenic union.

With regard to eugenics, the study of the manner in which certain mental illnesses behave with respect to transmissibility to offspring is of great practical importance; in fact, in the norms for the application of coercive forms of negative eugenics laid down in certain legislations (in particular, the list of diseases subject to sterilization according to the German law of July 1933 should be remembered), the particular targets are oligophrenia or feeble-mindedness (v.), schizophrenia (v.), affective psychoses (v.), and hereditary epilepsy (v.). For these too, in large part, the general criticisms raised in this entry against the exaggerated, exclusivistic acceptance of the laws of heredity hold true. The belonging of most of these forms to the recessive type, the possibility of non-similar repetition of the form and the tendency toward attenuation in descendants, the great importance that environmental causes and blastophthoric factors often play in them, the results obtainable through a prudent neuropsychic hygiene—all these attenuate their presumed "progressive hereditary perniciousness" (Morel) and bring new elements unfavorable to the antiscientific unreasonableness of the dictates of negative eugenics.

Catholic thought on eugenics is reaffirmed with clarity and precision in the encyclical of Pius XI, Casti connubii of 31 December 1930 (AAS, 22 [1930], pp. 539-592); and in the two decrees of the Holy Office of 21 March 1931 (ibid., 23 [1931], pp. 118-19) and of 24 February 1940 (ibid., 32 [1940], p. 73). Cf. also the Association mariage chrétien, L'Église et l'eugénisme, Paris 1930.

Giuseppe de Nismo