What does ‘eugenics’ mean?
The accusation that ‘X is a eugenicist’ is thrown around a lot on Twitter these days, as a way to try and cancel someone. For example, here is AI activist Timnit Gebru trying to de-platform longtermist philosophers Nick Bostom and Will MacAskill:
This tweet produced an outraged reaction from Will’s ex wife, Amanda Askell, another AI researcher. How shocking, to suggest Will was a eugenicist!
But wait…what does ‘eugenicist’ actually mean? The word is used so often in online slanging matches, but so rarely defined. So let’s have a look.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘eugenics’ as:
The study of methods of improving the quality of human populations by the application of genetic principles.
That doesn’t sound so bad. By this definition, embryonic testing and the allowance of abortion for congenital ailments like Down syndrome is ‘eugenics’. Any form of medicine that counteracts a genetic illness could also, by this definition, classify as ‘eugenics’.
Wikipedia has pretty much the same definition:
Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population.
So does the Encyclopedia Britannica:
eugenics, the selection of desired heritable charateristics in order to improve future generations, typically in reference to humans.
So does Science Direct:
Eugenics is the application of knowledge about genetics to improve humans’ lives
None of these standard definitions sound like something that should get someone cancelled. ‘That scum bag, you know he believes in the application of knowledge about genetics to improve human lives?’ ‘He what??’
But the definitions do diverge.
The Collins dictionary defines ‘eugenics’ as
the study of methods of improving the quality of the human race, esp by selective breeding.
Collins somewhat confuses the matter by adding ‘especially by selective breeding’. What do we mean by ‘selective breeding’ — if I choose a mate because I think they’re smart, kind and beautiful and would make a good partner and a mother to smart, kind, beautiful children, is that ‘selective breeding’? Is that eugenics? If you select a particular embryo, or genetically edit a human genome in some way, is that ‘selective breeding’? It implies what I think most people think eugenics means — governments decreeing who can and can’t reproduce. But that is not what eugenics precisely means.
History.com doesn’t help clear things up much:
Eugenics is the practice or advocacy of improving the human species by selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits.
This is a definition of ‘positive eugenics’ (encouraging those with characteristics you deem ‘fit’ to breed more), but entirely ignores ‘negative eugenics’ (encouraging or forcing those with characteristics you deem ‘unfit’ to breed less or not at all).
Merriam-Webster goes more into the darker and more coercive historical aspects of eugenics:
the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the population’s genetic composition
Eugenicists did indeed often advocate the forced or voluntary sterilization of those deemed unfit. But not all of them did. Sterilization of those deemed ‘unfit’, forced or unforced, is not synonymous with ‘eugenics’, it’s a subset of it.
Cambridge dictionary meanwhile goes straight for the jugular. Eugenics is:
The idea that it is possible to improve humans by allowing only particular people to produce children, which most people now do not accept or support because of the idea’s connection with racist and Nazi theories and actions
Weird dictionary definition no? It’s like a red barrier around the word saying ‘do not enter here’. Compare this to the Oxford definition:
The study of methods of improving the quality of human populations by the application of genetic principles.
We can go back historically to Francis Galton’s definition, in his 1904 essay, ‘Eugenics, its definition, scope and aims’. He writes:
EUGENICS is the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage.
That doesn’t help much either, because of the word ‘race’ — which in 1900 can mean a group of people, or a species, or an ethnic community. Galton used the term to mean ‘national community’ but there was a long argument among eugenicists about to what extent eugenics meant ‘racial improvement’ or ‘species improvement’. There were extremely racist eugenicists, like Madison Grant, and anti-racist eugenicists, like Sir Julian Huxley.
To conclude, if someone calls X a eugenicist, the first response should be ‘what do you mean by eugenics’, because it can mean a range of things, from ‘the attempt to improve the genetic quality of the species’ to ‘Nazi-style state-run breeding, sterilization and euthanasia programmes to create a master race’.
Pretty much everyone is a eugenicist in the first sense of the word. If you asked anyone ‘do you think we should allow medicines that remove genetic illnesses so as to reduce suffering’ they would say ‘yes’. On the other hand, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who supports eugenics in the second sense of the word, beyond a few neo-Nazi nutters on Stormfront or 4chan.
But because all the loaded historical associations are with the second definition, you can accuse anyone who believes in the first definition of being a ‘eugenicist’ and some people will think ‘my God they’re a Nazi!’
The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy lays out the problem with the word clearly:
“Eugenics” is a term loaded with historical significance and a strong negative valence. Its literal meaning — good birth — suggests a suitable goal for all prospective parents, yet its historical connotations tie it to appalling policies, including forced sterilizations, selective breeding programs in North America and Asia, and horrifying concentration camps and mass exterminations in Nazi Germany. Undoubtedly, we have an obligation never to forget the Holocaust, or indeed, any of the horrible policies and actions that have been justified in the name of creating better people. Yet intuitively we have some moral obligation to promote good births — to have, in the most literal sense, eugenic aims…And if we have some moral obligation to secure the well-being of our future children …do these obligations entail the use of reprogenetic technologies and practices? This question is particularly important given that current genomic science and technology permit significant control over reproductive choices. Can these contemporary practices be distinguished, in their aims, forms, justifications, and likely consequences, from the clearly morally impermissible eugenic programs of the past?
Perhaps we should stop using the term ‘eugenics’, deciding that it’s just too imprecise, too ‘loaded with historical significance and strong negative valence’. We could use terms like ‘genetic medicine’, ‘genetic enhancement’, ‘genetic modification’ — although these are not uncontroversial either (what’s the line between medicine and enhancement?). But however we frame it, the ‘genetic project’ emerged from eugenics, so it will always be possible for critics of genetic medicine and genetic enhancement to say ‘this is eugenics’.
People will still throw the term around. I still use it myself. But whenever someone accuses someone else of being a eugenicist, the first response should be ‘what do you actually mean by that word?’
