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| New Scientist | 29 January 2022
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Culture
Book
Control: The dark
history and troubling
present of eugenics
Adam Rutherford
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
WHAT does the word “eugenics”
bring to mind? For many, it is Nazi
Germany and the atrocities that
were committed in its name, not
least the murder and involuntary
sterilisation of people that they
deemed unworthy of reproducing.
But eugenics didn’t begin or end
with the Nazis. In fact, writes
geneticist Adam Rutherford in
his new book
Control
, “the idea
persisted – and persists”.
Eugenics didn’t begin with
Francis Galton either, even though
he coined the term in the 1800s
and was responsible for spreading
the idea around the world. More
than 30 countries, including
Germany and the US, had formal
eugenics policies in the 20th
century, with awful consequences.
In fact, as Rutherford points
out, notions of eugenics and
population control date back
much further in human society
to the 4th century BC, when the
Ancient Greek philosopher Plato
outlined in books V and VI of
Republic
a detailed plan to control
the reproduction of the people in a
utopian city-state. “Children born
with defects would be hidden
away, which may well have been
a euphemism for killed,” writes
Rutherford. Plato’s plan was never
enacted, he adds, but infanticide
has been a constant feature in
human societies throughout
history and around the world.
Eugenics became a dirty
word after the horrors of the
20th century, yet some of its ideas
survived in science and medicine,
says Rutherford. Eugenics formed
the basis for the modern field
of human genetics, with many
eugenicists rebranding
themselves as geneticists after
the second world war, he argues.
Some of the language and
phrases of the 20th-century
eugenics movement remain in
general use today, although their
meanings have evolved. “Today’s
casual insults such as ‘imbecile’,
‘moron’ or ‘idiot’ carried specific
psychiatric significance a
century ago, and… could warrant
enforced institutionalisation and,
in hundreds of thousands of
cases, involuntary sterilisation,”
writes Rutherford.
Unfortunately, the drive to
restrict reproduction to those
practices are dangerous notions
of inferiority and superiority that
are unscientific and laced with
prejudice, says Rutherford. And,
as the world reckons with climate
change, discussions around the
idea of population control are
increasingly resurfacing.
Control
’s strength is that it
provides not only much-needed
guidance for these conversations
by reminding us of the horrors of
the past, but also uses scientific
evidence to dismantle the viability
of these ideas.
Rutherford makes it clear that
there is still a question mark over
whether eugenics would even
work, which neatly demonstrates
how limited our understanding
of human genetics actually is and
how ill-equipped we are to direct
our species’ evolution, even if it
weren’t morally offensive.
The 2018 births in China of Lulu
and Nana, the first gene-edited
humans, provide one example.
He Jiankui used CRISPR/Cas9
gene-editing technology on two
fertilised human embryos in an
attempt to introduce a naturally
occurring genetic mutation
associated with resistance to
HIV infection. But, as Rutherford
describes, the intended gene
editing failed. In the embryo that
became Lulu, 15 letters of DNA
were deleted, while in the one
that became Nana some DNA
was added and other parts deleted.
Control
ultimately exposes
eugenics as “a pseudoscience that
cannot deliver on its promise”
and encourages us to instead
focus on interventions that we
know can improve people’s lives
and the state of our planet, such as
improved education, healthcare,
equality of opportunities and
protection of the environment.
❚
Layal Liverpool is a writer based
in Berlin, Germany
deemed by some to be the most
“suitable” still exists. In 2020,
there were reports that up to
20 women were involuntarily
sterilised in Immigration and
Customs Enforcement detention
centres in the US. And in Canada,
a class action lawsuit in response
to the coerced sterilisation of
hundreds of Indigenous women
as recently as 2018 is ongoing.
Meanwhile, sex-selective abortion
practices continue to skew sex-
ratios in India and China, the most
populous countries in the world.
Embedded in all of these
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