EUGENICA. – A term first used in 1833 (Eugenics) by Francis Galton, the distinguished English statesman (1822–1911), to indicate (according to his latest [1904] definition) “the study of the agents which, under special control, can improve or worsen the racial qualities of future generations, both physically and psychically.”
Thus conceived, e. has a broad programmatic scope and derives its content and principles partly from genetics and partly from the social sciences, demonstrating the sense of responsibility that living generations ought to have toward future generations.
I. NOTIONS
E. is based on eugenics, or “the science that advocates the improvement of man by means of an appropriate selection of matings” (Gianferrari and Cantoni), so as to reduce the reproduction of individuals considered dysgenic or antisocial and, instead, to encourage that of individuals believed to possess desirable qualities. The improvement of environmental conditions must, however, also contribute to the development of these qualities (eugenics, hygiene).For some scholars, the term e. may be interpreted as a synonym for racial hygiene, according to the expression proposed by Phoix.
Galton had previously defined e. as “the science concerned with all the influences that improve the innate qualities of a race and cause them to develop for the greater benefit of the community.” This might perhaps explain why some regard e. as synonymous with eugenics, while others assign different meanings and scopes to the two terms; 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, while others derive it from the noun ἀβγάνια = good race; and why, for eugenic purposes, some consider the action of hereditary factors predominant, while others emphasize the action of environmental factors.
Galton himself, having studied 977 biographies (1865–69), concluded that the success of individuals depends to a very large extent on their hereditary traits; and he subsequently confirmed this opinion (1874) after a genealogical study of 180 distinguished persons. As evidence of the predominant action of hereditary factors over environmental ones, the example is commonly given of American Blacks and whites who, although living under equal environmental conditions, are nevertheless quite different from one another.
Conversely, the study of certain pairs of identical twins—which, as is known, have an identical genetic endowment, deriving from the fertilization of the same egg cell—has highlighted differences that emerged during their lives and could not be explained if the action of environmental factors were excluded. Similar conclusions may be drawn from a study by E. Jold and E. H. Cluver (1941), South African physicians, of 32 young people known as “poor whites” (poor whites): they did not suffer from serious illnesses but were afflicted by colds, rheumatism, and migraines; they were sluggish and slow, and could not find employment, being regarded by employers as “poor white trash” (poor white trash). Admitted to an institution and given a suitable diet, as well as gymnastic and recreational exercises, they showed a great improvement in their general condition and mental agility. It may therefore be held that individual differences are determined by hereditary factors, which may nevertheless be improved or worsened by favorable or unfavorable environmental conditions that would mitigate the absolute meaning of Horace’s 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 subjects: a) human heredity; b) the factors influencing the human family, its fecundity, and marital selection; 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 world’s calamities and their remedy fundamentally reside in the various hereditary constitutions of human beings. Some men are strong, healthy, wise, and virtuous. Others are weak, deficient, sick, immoral, and criminal, and it is these who cause the world’s calamities. Laws, customs, education, and material conditions are the creation of men and reflect their fundamental nature. Seeking to correct these is simply to treat the superficial symptoms. To reach the root of the calamities, it is necessary to produce a better human race, one that does not contain inferior types. When a better race has taken the reins and affairs of the world into its hands, laws, customs, education, and material conditions will take care of those very men. Good and wise men will make a good world.”
The means employed for eugenic purposes may be grouped into two large categories, which could be regarded as two different approaches: coercive and non-coercive means aimed at reducing reproductive contribution (negative eugenics), and means aimed at encouraging and increasing the reproductive contribution of desirable individuals (positive eugenics). To these means must be added all those directed toward improving the environment, which constitute the field of action of eugenics.
Eugenic and euthenic aims are also served by prophylactic regulations and protective provisions concerning maternity and childhood, labor, individual health, etc.
In negative eugenics, the coercive means to be exercised through the promulgation of laws include:
a) marital restrictions: prohibition of marriage between blood relatives and relations by marriage up to a certain degree (v. CONSANGUINEITÀ), and prohibition of marriage for the mentally ill (the deficient and insane), epileptics, luetics, and 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 the same is found among certain Indian tribes of North America and among Aboriginal peoples of Australia;
b) segregation through admission to suitable institutions: a preferable but very costly means;
c) the mandatory premarital certificate of eugenic fitness for marriage. This provision is in force in Argentina, Chile, Denmark, Ecuador, Germany, Yugoslavia, some of the United States of America, Sweden, and Turkey. In Norway and in some North American states, the certificate is replaced by a sworn declaration from the engaged couple and their relatives;
d) sterilization achieved through surgical means consisting in the removal of the ducts (the vas deferens in the man and the fallopian tubes in the woman) through which the sex cells must pass in order to reach the stage of procreation. The procedure—which in males can be performed under local anesthesia and is less serious than in females—does not affect the sexual glands and therefore entails no modification of the secondary sexual characteristics or of the sexual instinct.
This method, used for the first time (1907) in the State of Indiana (U.S.) for the mentally defective, was adopted for the feebleminded, psychopaths, and criminals in other North American states, in a few of which even castration (removal of the sexual glands) is legally permitted.
In Europe, sterilization was adopted in Switzerland (Canton of Vaud, 1928), Denmark (1929), Sweden (1934), and Germany (1934). Here the most extensive experiment in sterilization was carried out, with, in 1934—according to Wolf’s statistics (cited by De Toni)—between 180,000 and 200,000 individuals sterilized for the following disorders: congenital mental deficiency, 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 the subject of much debate, since pathological heredity does not always have a fatal character—are contrary to juridical, moral, and religious principles (Enel. Casti Connubii of Pope Pius XI, 1930).
Non-coercive means include birth control (Birth-control), a form of neo-Malthusianism based on contraceptive practices, widespread in Anglo-Saxon countries; the so-called “trial marriage,” legal but limited in time; “cameralesque marriage,” legal but involving limitation of births and, in the event of infertility, the possibility of divorce (these means too being all immoral and condemned by the Church); and finally eugenic education which, by disseminating knowledge about diseases transmissible by heredity, places man before his responsibilities without diminishing the dignity of his person.
For positive eugenics, means have been suggested that do not all conform to juridical and moral principles. Among these are, for example, polygamy, permission for a fertile spouse to procreate with a third person, etc.
Instead, the means considered advisable are those suited to creating a eugenic consciousness among the masses by disseminating religious, moral, sexual, and hygienic education, possibly associated with social and economic measures such as incentives encouraging early marriage, assistance for large families, marriage loans, appropriate provisions concerning celibacy, etc.
III. BRIEF HISTORICAL NOTES ON EUGENIC MEASURES
Measures for eugenic purposes, in the form of religious precepts or legislative provisions, also existed in antiquity.Premarital chastity and the obligation to marry—though marriage between blood relatives was forbidden—were prescribed among the Indians, the Jews, 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 disgraceful offense, to the point that the woman publicly mocked the unmarried men, who were stripped naked; women, especially young wives of old husbands, could procreate with strong and handsome males; newborns judged healthy and beautiful, once they reached the age of six, were taken under the responsibility of the State to receive a strict education for military purposes, whereas those affected by deformities or considered weak were hurled from Mount Taigetus, victims of misunderstood aesthetic and social principles.
In Athens too, weak infants were abandoned. Infanticide for propitiatory purposes was practiced by the Phoenicians, the Philistines, the Moabites, and the Carthaginians (De Toni). Among the Romans, until the Augustan period, the father was free to acknowledge or not acknowledge his children: especially if they were weak or deformed, they could be killed, abandoned, or sold. On the other hand, laws protecting childhood (punishment of infanticide and the obligation to raise children, however conceived, at the expense of the parents or the State) existed among the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Jews.
Caesar and Augustus promulgated laws by which monetary rewards and benefits were granted to prolific fathers.
These provisions gained greater impetus and force under Constantine, after the advent of Christianity, which, together with Roman law, subsequently influenced the promulgation of laws protecting childhood among the peoples who invaded the territories administered by Rome.
The Mohammedan religion likewise encourages marriage and prolificacy, while permitting marriage between cousins, polygamy, and concubinage.
In the Middle Ages, moreover, various countries saw the establishment, especially through the efforts of religious people, of several foundling homes (the first in Europe being that founded in 787 by the Milanese archpriest Dateo [De Toni]), charitable institutions, commendable for affirming the principle of protecting the lives of little children, but defective from a practical and organizational standpoint because—for lack of knowledge of the most elementary rules of hygiene—the mortality rate among the inmates was extremely high.
Slowly and sporadically, hygienic principles then gained increasing ground from a doctrinal point of view, followed subsequently by the concepts of heredity. Mention may be made here of the physician Aldobrandino da Siena (13th century), Vittorino da Feltre (15th century), Tommaso Moro (16th century), Tommaso Campanella (18th century), and, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Paré, Morel, Carlo Darwin, Lamarck, Mendel, and finally Francia Galton, with whom the dissemination of the new ideas began.
IV. THE EUGENIC MOVEMENT IN THE VARIOUS COUNTRIES
As has been seen, Francia Galton, a cousin of Carlo Darwin, must be considered the father of eugenics understood in the modern sense. To him is owed the foundation (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, likewise in England, the first society was founded: «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 exists, among them the «Eugenics Record Office» and the «Eugenics Section of the American Breeders' Association», which received its greatest impetus during the secretaryship of D. B. Davenport, who may today be regarded as one of the most authoritative advocates 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, a committee for eugenics studies was established within the Società romana di antropologia; its members were: 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 «Società italiana per gli studi di genetica ed e.» was founded, and in Milan, at whose University a special course of instruction was established, the first two Italian Congresses of eugenics were held in 1924 and 1929.
BIBL. F. Galton, Eugenics, its Definition, Scope and Aims, Sociological Papers, Londra 1904-1909; H. S. Jennings, The Biological Basis of Human Nature; Baur, Faber, Lenz, Mraubliche Erlebnisse, 4ª ed., Monaco 1936; G. De Toni, Fascicoltura, in Minerva medica, Torino 1939; H. Newman Hackett, Exaltation, Genetics and Eugenics, 3ª ed., Chicago 1944, 7ª rist. 1947; L. Gianferrari e G. Cantoni, Manuale di genetica, 2ª ed., Milano 1945; E. C. Colin, Elements of Genetics, 2 ed., Philadelphia 1946. Venerando Correnti
See MEDICINA PASTORALE. – It is proper to acknowledge in eugenics a good intention and a morally good purpose when it seeks to discover the laws governing the reproduction of the individual and the development of the species; to reduce, eliminate or, at least, counterbalance the causes of physical and mental decline and premature death; to halt socially prevalent diseases and the spread of unhealthy habits that undermine the human species; and to work toward the restoration and elevation of the physical and social aspects of marriage. Those aspects and manifestations of negative eugenics must, however, be denounced and condemned which, disregarding the mixed nature of man or the preponderant value and most absolute rights of the spirit within him, 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, and the killing of chronically impaired persons and patients presumed incurable (v. EUTANASIA), despite the good intention of wishing to free the individual and society from the burden of want, illness, and suffering, are means contrary not only to Catholic morality but often even to natural law itself. For this reason, the Catholic Church—repeatedly and bloodily in conflict with civil laws promulgated by the secular nationalism of certain states or with particularistic moral systems upheld by certain dissident religious confessions—has always, and still does, condemned certain forms of negative eugenics that injure the natural rights of man (the right to life and procreation), are contrary to respect for and the integrity of the human person (sterilization, castration), and conflict with the primary purposes and juridical, natural, and canonical characteristics of marriage (birth control, artificial insemination in its broadest form). The illicit nature of all these means is explained under the individual entries.
Turning to a more particular criticism, one must first reserve judgment concerning the position of eugenics that improving the conditions of humanity’s physical health necessarily makes it morally better, whereas experience very often shows that physical improvement does not proceed in accord with moral improvement.
Indeed, while admitting that the normal development of our ethical life requires a minimum basis of integrity, potentiality, and physiological tranquility in the physical structures of our organism, particularly in its bioregulatory structures (the nervous system and the endocrine apparatus)—an essential factor in moral progress, ascent, and perfection—and the free determination of the will toward the good, it must also be acknowledged that intelligence itself is often independent of the individual’s physical condition. Not infrequently, one sees broad-minded and vigorous intellectuals ranging far beyond the confines of a highly deficient organism; society would have been deprived of their light if, by applying the principles of eugenics to the extreme, their worth had been assessed according to the development, good proportions, and physiological balance of their bodily mass.
Secondly, with regard to the medical and moral contribution, the scientific legitimacy of the practical applications of eugenics must be examined, to determine whether certain postulates and methods of its negative developments are not, besides being immoral, also unscientific. The question is whether, in reality, an objective study of facts leading to theories should not conclude that the so-called laws of heredity, the bulwark of many advocates of eugenics pursued to the extreme, are, more than genuine laws in the absolute and scientific sense of the word, hypothetical, provisional, and modifiable frameworks for phenomena whose essence is unknown, open to many exceptions and therefore lacking the absolute normative value that practice would like to assign to them.
This is in fact an objective criticism: while, on the one hand, it reveals the limitations and relativity of present-day knowledge concerning the phenomena of heredity, on the other it demolishes the prevailing notion that hereditary means fatal and inevitable, something in no way modifiable by the environment. Thus, not only in the name of morality but also in the light of science, the aberrations of materialistic eugenic naturalism can be condemned, and the broadest hopes can be nourished of improving the human species by virtue of the self-selective and self-improving tendencies proper to the reproduction of individuals, rather than through the eugenic suppression of defective lineages.
Morgan’s chromosomal theory attributes (v. GENETICA) the transmission and determination of hereditary characteristics to the “genids” or “genes.” These do not behave individually as unique factors of a given characteristic, 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 sometimes also requires the contribution of cytoplasmic genids—that is, ones located not in the chromosomes but in the cellular plasma. One may thus glimpse the enormous complexity of the mechanism regulating the reappearance of a hereditary trait. On the other hand, alongside the fact that such a large number of factors must concur, there is the extensive diversion and inutilization of large masses of genids in the phenomenon of “meiosis,” or maturation mitosis, of the sexual elements; consequently, the ovum or spermatozoon, ready for fertilization, is found to have lost half of its chromosomes and therefore half of its hereditary endowment. It is believed that in the human species, when the two gametes fuse, there is only one chance in 1996 that the fertilized egg cell, from which the new organism will develop, will contain reunited within it the entire hereditary endowment of one of the parents! It should also be remembered that the chain of genids in the chromosomes is double, so that a defective genid can be compensated for by a healthy one placed alongside II. One must also recall the very small number of offspring characteristic of human families, as compared with the enormous number of spermatozoa—several hundred million in each emission—and the multitude of ova (approximately 450 from puberty to menopause) that do not participate in reproduction. These phenomena, of a vastness and significance not easily conceived, provide the basis for the so-called “self-improvement of heredity” (Kleist), whereby pathological defects transmitted with recessive characteristics may disappear within a few generations if the affected subject unites with a healthy one.
Attention must also be paid to the decreasing geometric progression (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc.) by which the ancestors’ hereditary endowment diminishes in the children in relation to maturation mitosis, compensated for at fertilization by the reacquisition of chromosomes of a different nature carried by the other parent. This is Galton’s “law of ancestral hierarchy,” according to which each parent gives the child half of his or her hereditary characteristics, equal to one quarter of those received from the parents, one eighth of those of the grandparents, and so forth. Although in practice such a law does not correspond with the mathematical rigor with which it is formulated, in broad outline it proves true; in reality, the more remote a morbid characteristic is in the line of ancestors, the smaller are the chances that it will reappear in a descendant.
In this regard, one should reflect on the great number of ancestors each of us has (55,324 already in the 16th generation alone). This demonstrates, on the one hand, how many salutary crossings and renewals contribute to the formation of our hereditary endowment; on the other, it reveals the practical uselessness of the programme of purifying the species to the utmost from hereditary diseases, if one considers the hundreds and thousands of times that individuals must necessarily have intermarried consanguineously. Anyone wishing to follow the inflexible rules of negative eugenics would have to ban every marriage or impose mass sterilization upon humanity! This is especially so because many diseases transmissible to offspring, e.g. mental diseases, behave as recessive traits, so that defective genids are carried by apparently healthy individuals, and coercive measures can strike only those who are manifestly ill, not the hidden carriers of the trait. It has been calculated that, in the case of the mentally deficient, reducing their proportion in relation to normal persons from 1:1,000 to 1:100,000 by sterilizing those who are manifestly afflicted would require 68 generations, that is, approximately 2,000–3,000 years!
Another element that strongly qualifies the absoluteness of the so-called laws of heredity is the phenomenon of «mutation» (v.), the sudden variation of the germ plasm through which a new trait appears in the individual or an existing one is substantially modified. The phenomenon of mutation undermines the alleged immutability of the laws of heredity and shows how the environment may affect the final constitution of the «gene» and modify a hereditary trait.
But, alongside concern about the hereditary recurrence of morbid defects, one must not forget the serious harm that may infiltrate the offspring through diseases which, having no connection at all (e.g. alcoholism and syphilis), or only a partial connection (tuberculosis, because of the element of organic predisposition), with heredity, are capable of inflicting the gravest damage on the germ («blastophthoria» of Forel), the embryo, or the foetus during intrauterine life, giving rise to defective offspring despite the best conditions for a eugenic marriage.
Catholic thought on eugenics is reaffirmed with clarity and precision in the encyclicals 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 24 February 1940 (ibid., 32 [1940], p. 73). See also Association mariage chrétien, L'Église et l'engénisme, Paris 1930.