Eugenics and Dysgenics

Man has a tremendous ability to influence the destiny of the universe because of his highly evolved brain. While man's scientific technology is developing by quantum leaps, we are destroying the very intellectual faculty that gave us this capacity just as surely as a pianist would destroy his capacity by cutting off his hand. Every day we are crippling and maiming the children of the future by injecting into them the genes that cause poverty, suffering, starvation, famine, disease, physical and mental retardation causing in effect the degeneration and anti-evolution of the human species. Paradoxically, we have been conditioned to believe that we are doing all this in the name of the highest morality. Indeed, we are told that it is the epitome of compassion, charity, social responsibility and even religious duty to spend time and money maintaining the unfortunate children who are retarded and incapable of taking care of themselves. What of our moral responsibility to protect the right of future generations to be born physically healthy and mentally capable? It is only because of our highly evolved intellectual capacity that we were able to develop the technology to keep these genetically poisoned individuals alive. Ironically, we are using the intellectual capacity that made us great in order to destroy that capacity itself.

should anyone have the temerity to suggest that these eugenic techniques be used to protect our children, he risks being labeled as a nazi or racist.

The purpose of human action is and should be to increase man's knowledge about and power over the environment. Each year, we spend billions on education and nutrition for our children in order to increase their power to control the environment and thus produce a higher standard of living: Yet, we ignore the most pertinent and significant factor in human power, which is intelligence. The Encyclopedia Britannica acknowledges that at least 75% of the variation in intelligence between individuals is determined genetically and only 25% environmentally. We are ready to blow the world up in a nuclear conflict between Lysenkoist environmental determinist fairy tales like capitalism and communism and 2,000 year old ghost stories that could have been written by Bram Stoker or Mary Shelly, but we are too meek to take any action on a public health issue like eugenics that could directly improve the human condition without war.

Eugenic techniques like gene splitting and selective breeding are considered good when applied to plants and animals to produce advances in medicine and food production, but should anyone have the temerity to suggest that these eugenic techniques be used to protect our children, he risks being labeled as a nazi or racist. One actually hears the argument: eugenics is evil because Hitler believed in eugenics. Is everything that Hitler believed in wrong ipso facto because he believed in it. If Galileo had been a mass murderer, would that prove the world vs flat? Eugenics is a moral commitment, not a racial affiliation.

This schizophrenic attitude toward eugenics is muddled and confused further by the pseudo-intelligentia of sectarian atheists, humanists and socialists who think of themselves as the most liberal and objective free thinkers? Instead of entering into an honest discussion of eugenics, they catechize us with slogans like "we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal." This fanciful slogan is interpreted by egalitarians as a pseudo religious mystical 'divine right of birth'; that is parallel to the medieval concept 'divine right of kings'. In medieval times, a child who happened to be born to a king was thought to endowed with a metaphysical divine right to control the resources of the earth and the destiny of man. In modern times, according to the 'divine right of birth', a person who happened to be conceived and born because of the chance combination of sperm and egg and a thousand other happenstances is thought to be magically endowed with a mystical supernatural right to command the resources of the earth and the destiny of man. Both the 'divine right of kings' and the 'divine right of birth' involve the medieval assumption that those who happen, by chance and coincidence to have been born, have somehow more right to control the resources of the earth than those who did not yet happen to have been born. The 'divine right of birth' has no more validity than the capitalist assumption that those who happen to have been born with wealth have somehow more divine right to use the resources of the earth than those who do no happen to have wealth. The procreation of children is a combination of caprice, opportunism, greed and chance in much the same way that the acquisition of money is. The socialists and sectarian humanists would claim, with some validity, that an economic system is valuable only in so far as it contributes to mankind as a whole. To a much greater extent, this premise should be applied to the birth of each individual human being.

An even more fantastic objection to eugenics comes from superstitious people who base their objection on what they call religious or moral grounds. They claim that if a child is born retarded, it could only be because it was the intention of some all knowing and all powerful entity who wanted the child to be born retarded. Do we really believe that a child is born because of immaculate conception: because some ghost comes down and picks one sperm out of millions and matches it alone with the egg and determines that the child will be born with downs syndrome, mental retardation, spina bifida, and club foot and that it would be a sin against the ghost for a human being to protect his own children from physical and mental defects? What is the difference between this attitude and that of the Jehovah's Witness or Christian Scientist who refuses medical treatment for his children?

The pattern of present births is the pattern of future populations.

Do we have a right to determine who will be born in the next generation and thus who will control and direct the destiny of man and the universe? We are already doing that through the tax and welfare structure. A person who accepts responsibility for restructuring society in one generation automatically becomes responsible for the effects of that restructuring on future generations. "The pattern of present births is the pattern of future population." Suppose we continue the present policy of encouraging the least capable members of the human race to reproduce by giving them encouragements, welfare grants and rewards for bearing more children? In the end, there would be more people consuming goods than there would be people who had the ability to produce these goods and the very people we were trying to help would starve.

The existence of man depends on the genetically capable individuals because they are the only ones who can maintain society. If the capable individuals are not born or educated, all the people will starve. In order to prevent human suffering, we must first take care of those who can maintain civilization rather than those who will never be able to contribute. It is irresponsible for any society to adopt a social welfare system as they have today, without adopting a eugenic welfare system in conjunction with it. We must consider the future good of mankind. The premise of working for the greatest good for the greatest number is correct, but we must include in that number all the children who will ever be born in all the days that will ever be not just those who happen to have been conceived and born and who happen to exist at this particular stage in evolution.

Redistribution of life support away from the productive and creative members of the more "favored" socio-biological class to the less "favored" socio-biological class through the tax and welfare structure causes genetic change in the next generation. We as a species will change as a result of this redistribution. Our present welfare system is redistributing life support systems away from the capable to the incapable and thus reducing the genetic quality of future generations. We are indulging in unnatural selection by giving welfare to non-producers. We are creating a whole generation of parasites and problem makers and preventing the birth of those very people who could solve those problems. It is not a question of beginning or initiating a eugenic program. It is a matter of recognizing that we have already begun an anti-eugenic program which is a suicidal and disastrous one because it selects the inferior for survival and eliminates the superior. We are practicing eugenics in reverse. We are causing the reversal of evolution. Since we are already manipulating genetics, we should be made conscious of our responsibility for the results of our actions on future generations. We are responsible for what our children will be. We can no longer plead ignorance. We have a voluntary choice to make between superior and inferior, between prosperity and starvation, between evolution and devolution. Doing nothing is a choice and a disastrous one. Shall future generations consist of people who are fertile or of people who can contribute to culture and civilization?

Opponents of eugenics claim that man is a tool making animal now and that genetic improvement is no longer necessary. The fact is that the level of civilization that a life form can maintain is a direct result of and is delimited by the intellectual capacity of that organism. Intellectual capacity is genetically determined. Environmentalists claim that man can fly now, but it has not been necessary for man to develop wings through genetic mutation. The sea otter also uses a rock as a tool to open oysters. The twentieth century sciences of earthmen are as paltry as the otter's rock compared to the infinite achievements open to us if we continue genetic as well as cultural evolution. Those who allow man only mechanical innovation while prohibiting eugenic improvement are dooming children of the future to live the life of a rat in a Skinner box. The constant degeneration of the human species caused by the present dysgenic welfare system will result in our children becoming crippled by genetic defects. Is the fate of mankind to become a quadriplegic vegetable hooked up to life support systems from which he can never be released? Because of our timid, careless, irresponsible, neurotic cowardice, we are jeopardizing the very survival of the human species.

If man is responsible for the rain forest, the spotted owl and the snail darter, does he not have at least an equal responsibility for his own children? Eugenics is not cruel. On the contrary, it is the highest expression of concern and love for the children of the future. The suffering in this world is not caused solely by environment but partly by genetics. Thus, the cure for poverty, ignorance, or famine must involve genetic improvement. Poverty, ignorance and starvation can only be eradicated by removing the genetic and environmental combinations responsible for this human suffering. The cause of our suffering is within us. The source of our salvation is also within us.

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