Custom-Designed Kids: How Darwin's Legacy Is Being Abused

Charles Darwin -- born 200 years ago today -- remains one of the strongest influences on modern society. His theory of evolution, detailed in On the Origin of Species, sculpts our understanding of what it means to be human more than any other idea outside of religion. We live in Darwin’s shadow, and it casts lingering controversies.

The most obvious of these controversies is over challenges to the role of evolution in educational curricula. That debate flared again just last month in Texas, and has been the topic of high-profile trials from Scopes in 1923 to Dover just three years ago.

Two other contentious conversations about genes and society also continue to haunt America: our legacy of race and racism, and proposals to genetically design our future descendents.

Race and ethnicity have confounded American society from its inception. Before Darwin, racial oppression and inequality were typically justified by invoking a religious “natural order.” After Darwin, “competitive advantage” and “natural selection” provided secular alternatives: In short, whites ruled because they were biologically superior to others.

Around the start of the twentieth century, this abuse of Darwin’s legacy, coupled with the rise of genetic science and the Progressive era’s faith in engineering, led to an even darker path. Grassroots organizations and influential elites, including Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton and other leading scientists of the day, mobilized for programs to encourage genetically “better” people to have more children, and to ensure that the “inferior” -- typically defined through racial and class lenses -- would produce fewer. With the approval of the US Supreme Court, the eugenics movement led to the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of Americans. Across the Atlantic, Adolf Hitler was inspired by the American programs’ success.

The unprecedented horror of the Holocaust largely put to rest efforts to improve the human gene pool, and helped to discredit explanations of racial disparity that depended on genetic differences between groups. Furthermore, by the mid-1970’s, a consensus grew among scientists: There is more genetic variability within racial and ethnic groups than between them, and what differences exist are primarily superficial, such as skin, hair, and eye color. Meanwhile, social scientists reinforced this consensus by demonstrating that racial categorizations are shifting reflections of social and political currents.  

Yet debates about the relationship between genes and race -- and by extension, racial superiority -- continue. Here in the U.S., we have seen a revival in recent years. In 1994, a time of identity politics and affirmative action backlash, Daniel Bell and Charles Murray published The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, which gave beliefs in racial genetic superiority a new sheen of respectability. Just over a year ago, Nobel Laureate James Watson ignited a debate with a remark about Blacks’ inferior genes and intelligence. Watson’s comment was widely condemned, but some prominent pundits defended his statement.

The eugenics movement marked an intersection of disturbingly misguided efforts: Assertions of genetic, and often racial, differences crossed with programs to produce genetically superior children. However, while scientifically based racism -- and racism in general -- thankfully seems to be on the wane, proposals to use genetic and reproductive technology to “enhance” future generations are again being heard.

These proposals are different from eugenics past, and the coercion and violence associated with them. The new eugenics comes as a tempting mix of technology, medicine, marketing, and individual choice. And it presents itself as simple extensions of legitimate applications of assisted reproduction and genetic medicine.