Screening for Defects

A hundred years ago, eugenics was obvious and unapolagetic. It was, in fact, the purview of the enlightened and progressive mind.

In hindsight, we might wonder how ideas like forced sterilization and racial "lightening" by "breeding" methods could have passed for "enlightened" and "progressive". Our jaws may drop at what fell under the category of "unfit to breed" in the minds of these well meaning folks who merely wanted to spare the world some suffering. And of course, we cringe and weep at the vile form eugenics took in Nazi Germany. We wrinkle our noses when we hear of societies that practiced infanticide when unfit or unwanted children were born. We detest those cultures that tormented the disabled or the different by labeling them as witches or Devil's spawn. We may even find "positive eugenics" difficult to embrace, even though that merely involved encouraging "fit" people to have lots of babies.

And yet, eugenics continues to this day. It's propaganda is not so blatant, and it is done in minute scale, in sterile, high-tech labratories. It becomes easier and easier. And we ignore it. Or maybe even praise it. Perhaps use it, thinking as our high-minded predecessors did, that we can be little Saviors of Humanity through our eugenic choices. It is Science, after all. Blessed Science! How could anything be wrong with that?

But in doing so, we commodify children. Commodify humanity itself, really. The quest for perfection never ends. Children must be molded to fit our lifestyle and our preferences. They must not be allowed to burden us--physically or emotionally--with illness or disability or early death. The cry rings out: "Never from our loins shall spring a Wretched Burden On Society!" and perhaps a whispered addendum "...And never and Ugly One, if we can help it!"

Those who do not live this motto gradually slip into the category of irresponsible, even unfit. What awful person would allow a mentally "deficient" child to live out it's miserable life, when a quick and easy death in the womb, or even in a petri dish, is possible? What kind of torturing soul willingly bears a child destined to die 2 hours later? If we can screen embryos and pick out the choicest ones--those most likely to develop in physical and mental superiority--what kind of parent would deliberately forgo such a boon to their child and to humanity?

Lest you think this is science fiction, let us recall that 90% of women who are given the Down's Syndrome diagnosis for their baby choose to abort.

What we forget is that no matter how closely we examine DNA, and no matter how many "defectives" we quietly rid ourselves of, we will never attain the perfection we are looking for. Even if we somehow managed to create the elusive Superhuman Race, that race, like the rest of us, would find itself smacked in the face by reality. SuperMan would still get his mechanically perfect body bludgeoned by Nature on a regular basis, because Nature doesn't live in a science lab. SuperChild would still find itself trying desperately to live up to the ever increasing expectations of SuperParents and SuperSociety, because there is more to the human existance than limbs and synapses and perfectly pumping heart.

Anyone who thinks we have progressed beyond the tendancy to value people for their looks, abilities, money, or brains is fooling themselves. We sneer at generations past, and their clumsy, ugly, gory, brutal habits, their intolerances, their biases and "isms". Yet we pursue high-tech eugenics and in so doing, we make ourselves into the ultimate hypocrites.