Racial Science & Eugenics
The term “eugenics” was coined by Francis Galton in 1883–the literal meaning of the word is “well-born”, derived from Greek. From the late 19th century on, the idea’s popularity spread like wildfire. Galton and other proponents of eugenics believed humanity could be improved through selective breeding programmes. These programmes were intended to encourage those they judged to have desirable traits to reproduce, and to discourage those whose traits they considered undesirable. It should come as no surprise that the “desirable” traits were found primarily in white people, and especially the middle- and upper-classes. The “undesirable” traits were largely to be found among poor people, people of colour, and disabled people.
As this science grew in popularity, governments in countries like Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, to name just a few, adopted forced sterilization programmes directed against those they judged to be inferior. Poor people, and especially Black and indigenous people, were the primary victims of these programmes. In the Canadian province of Alberta, the Alberta Eugenics Board was founded in 1928 to oversee the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act. The Board was not disbanded until 1972. In those 44 years, they rejected fewer than 100 proposals for sterilization and approved nearly 5000. Of those, almost 3000 were actually performed, most of them on women deemed “mentally defective”. Originally, these sterilizations required consent from either the patient themselves, or from a parent or guardian–however, in 1937, the Alberta Government amended the Sterilization Act, giving the Board the power to authorize sterilizations without consent.
The Board and the Act were both dissolved in 1972. In the half-century since, the term “eugenics” has fallen out of favour. However, the prejudices and practices underpinning it are alive and well. In particular, genetic testing has opened up the possibility of embryonic screening–noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) screens cell-free fetal DNA to determine whether a fetus is “at risk” for genetic conditions including Down, Turner, Edward, and Patau syndromes. A number of researchers and disability advocates are concerned that the broad application of this kind of non-diagnostic testing has the potential to create a kind of “contemporary eugenics”, devaluing certain ways of being in the world and fueling both anxiety and pressure on pregnant people to engage with this sort of testing earlier and earlier in the gestational process. Thomas and Rothman (2016) point out that “NIPT may be expanded to include next-generation sequencing or microarray testing that would make it feasible to screen for subchromosomal deletions and duplications in the fetal genome, including chromosomal imbalances too small to be detected via standard karyotyping.” Much of this information is essentially unparseable to most laypeople without extensive expert support. Moreover, a simple report of a certain chromosomal abnormality provides extremely limited information about a fetus’s prognosis. As Rothman and Thomas note, while some fetuses with Down syndrome may not even survive an entire pregnancy, others will not only survive until birth, but thrive, living long, fulfilling lives. It is essentially impossible for even an expert to determine the life prospects of a person with Down syndrome, just as we cannot predict with any certainty the path that a child without Down syndrome may take. Despite this, termination rates for fetuses prenatally predicted to have Down syndrome range from 74% at the low end, to as high as 95% in some areas. Still, some parents may rely on this sort of testing to help them prepare to care for a child who may face additional and unexpected challenges, or to detect abnormalities that are invariably catastrophic or even fatal. It may be difficult to separate this sort of screening from earlier eugenic practices, but it may be equally unhelpful to identify all such testing as eugenics in the classical sense. It seems reasonable to identify screening for conditions like Down syndrome as a form of contemporary eugenics, especially given the lack of meaningful support for people with disabilities, the cultural pressures they and their parents face around ideas of normality, and the lack of nuance with which such diagnoses may be presented. Together, these factors create a set of circumstances in which “choice” is largely an illusion.
The term “eugenics” has fallen out of favour, but the prejudices underpinning it are alive and well. A growing cultural focus on genetics and genetic determinism, combined with the increasing popularity of genetic testing, raises serious concerns about a modern eugenics movement.
Suggested Reading
Reardon, J., & TallBear, K. 2012. “Your DNA is our history” genomics, anthropology, and the construction of whiteness as property. Current anthropology, 53(S5), S233-S245.
TallBear, K. 2013. Genomic articulations of indigeneity. Social Studies of Science, 43(4), 509-533.
Nelson, A., 2016. The social life of DNA: Race, reparations, and reconciliation after the genome. Beacon Press.
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