In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity

ALSO BY DANIEL J. KEVLES

The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modem America (1978)

I N Tl1 E NAM E O F EUG E N ICS

,

IN THE NAME OF EUGENICS Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity

by Daniel }. Kevles

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND J_os ANGELES

U nivcrsity of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles Copyright@

1985 by Daniel J. Ke, les

First California Paperback

1986

Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. Portions of this work originally appear1uller, genetic load reduced evolutionary fitness. An individual's load would be eliminated from the gene pool by his or her death before reproduction. But while the genetic load might diminish with pre­ reproductive death, the loss was constantly offset by fresh mutations. In a stable species like man, the degree of load was assumed to be the amount that the species could tolerate at equilibrium-that is, the point where the rate at which disadvantageous mutations were created equaled the rate at which they were eliminated. Muller put the accumulated load at an average

I N

T H E

N A M E

OF

E U G E N I C S

of eight genes per person, out of the tens of thousands each individual was estimated to carry. He further speculated that in primitive man this genetic load was sufficient to bring about the death from genetic causes of twenty percent of the human race in each generation. 2 7 I n this regard, modern man was n o different from his prehistoric forebears. "Most of us have a nearly twenty-per-cent chance of death or of reproductive inefficacy from genetic causes," Muller declared, but he pointed out that mankind had recently ceased to Jive "under those compara­ tively primitive conditions . . . to which a rough genetic equilibrium must have become established. " 2 8 Modern man, of course, benefited from im­ proved sanitation, nutrition, housing, and medical care; and post-Hiro­ shima man might well find himself Jiving in a higher radiation environ­ ment. Thus, deleterious genes were no longer being eliminated at the prehistoric rate, and an increase in radiation would speed up the rate at which mutations were induced. The human genetic load was getting bigger and would continue to grow. The greater the effectiveness of medicine, the greater the load that might be tolerated. i\tuller estimated the degree of load that might be reached in eight generations (about two hundred and forty years), assuming a continued advance in medical technology: it would be the same as that expected from the absorption by all the parents in one generation of two hundred roent­ gens of gamma radiation-a dose comparable to the average at the surface within two kilometers of Ground Zero at Hiroshima. The greater the genetic load, Muller warned, the more pitiful and less recognizable as human would our descendants be. Instead of struggling with "external enemies of a primitive kind such as famine, climatic difficulties, and wild beasts, " the human beings of the future "would be devoted chiefly to the effort to live carefully, to spare and to prop up their own feeblenesses, to soothe their inner disharmonies, and, in general, to doctor themselves as effectively as possible." He concluded that "everyone would be an invalid, with his own special familial twists. "29 Muller's belief that the therapeutic powers of modern civilization were working dysgenic effects echoed early-twentieth-century eugenics. Time and the cold war had tempered his socialism. Still, his theory differed from the mainline creed in that it did not identify dysgenic trends with race or class-mutations occurred in all sectors of society-and was couched in socially antiseptic, genetic language. 30 Advanced with a Nobelist's author­ ity, the specter of genetic load pervaded the debates over the genetic effects of atomic radiation. It also formed a central tenet in the reform-eugenic response to the population explosion. Julian Huxley fretfully declared in the course of a 1963 London symposium on the future of the human species: "The population explosion is making us ask . . . What are people for?

A New Eugenics Whatever the answer . . . it is clear that the general quality of the world's population is not very high, is beginning to deteriorate, and should and could be improved. It is deteriorating, thanks to genetic defectives who would otherwise have died being kept alive, and thanks to the crop of new mutations due to fallout. In modern man, the direction of genetic evolution has started to change its sign from positive to negative, from advance to retreat: we must manage to put it back on its age-old course of positive improvement. " 1 1

To Muller, meeting the mutation problem required the exercise of eugenic reproductive control . He explained to a physician in 1954 that "the fact that the so-called eugenics of the past was so mistaken . . . is no more argument against eugenics as a general proposition than, say, the failure of democracy in ancient Greece is a valid argument against democracy in general." In the standard eugenic vein, Muller argued for both diminishing reproduction among high-load people-presumably identifiable by their genetic diseases or disorders-and increasing it among those blessed with especially valuable genes. He recognized that in the wake of the Nazis people would not tolerate compulsory interference with human reproduc­ tion. "I think much of 'negative eugenics,' such as compulsory sterilization of alcoholics or criminals, is definitely out,'' he wrote to a correspondent in California. Muller expected people with high genetic loads to refrain voluntarily from procreation out of a sense of social duty. Similarly, it would be considered "a social service for those more fortunately endowed to reproduce to more than the average extent." 1 2

At a 1959 conference a t the University o f Chicago celebrating the centenary of Darwin's

Origin of Species, Muller presented a paper reviving

the old idea of eutelegenesis as his positive-eugenic method for offsetting the effects of increased genetic load. ( He had no ally in Herbert Brewer this time. After the war, Brewer had abandoned eugenics i n revulsion at what the Nazis had made of it.) He soon came to call the latter-day version of the plan "germinal choice." In Muller's view, recent developments in the field of artificial insemination-particularly the demonstrated success of freezing and storing sperm, then thawing them for vaginal injection­ enhanced the plan's prospects for success. The preservation techniques­ dry ice had been used first, then the much colder liquid nitrogen-allowed for the accumulation of sperm from a given donor, and as the number of sperm increased so did the chance of producing a pregnancy. More impor­ tant to Muller's positive-eugenic purpose, the frozen sperm might well be stored until, say, twenty years after the death of the donor. By that time, it could be better judged whether the donor, outstanding in life, seemed truly outstanding in calm retrospection. Thus the effort to guide man's

evolution could be kept to the h ighest standard. 1 1

I N

T H E

N A M E

OF

E U GENICS

Muller recognized that germinal choice, neat as it seemed, raised a number of vexing difficulties. People might well confuse choice with coer­ cion. While the divorce of sex from procreation had taken strong social hold, the emancipation of procreation from sex was as yet hardly consonant with prevailing values. Artificial insemination was practiced mainly to overcome marital infertility. The donor's identity was normally kept secret from the prospective parents, and this worked squarely against the idea of knowingly choosing a superior father. Besides, exemplary donors might well carry their share of genetic load. And since the genetic basis for superior traits was hardly known there was no way to predict the outcome of any particular conception. Germinal choice would merely weight the results in favor of the preferred procreative consequence, not guarantee it. 3 4 Yet Muller felt that high-minded couples would b e willing to forgo the guarantee to themselves as parents for the sake of what the collective process would yield-an increase in mankind's genetic quality. Eventually, the wise use of selection could breed out the load of disadvantageous genes from the limited fund of advantageous ones. Muller recognized that fears of coercion might arise, but he insisted that germinal choice would be strictly voluntary. And surely in the beginning a few couples would be willing to break with social convention and pioneer the procreational revo­ lution.H I n the early sixties, with the aim of getting that revolution started at least on a modest scale, Muller looked into the establishment of a Founda­ tion for Germinal Choice. Some of his old allies responded with advice or encouragement, among them C. P. Blacker, Fred erick Osborn, and ]. B. S. Haldane. So did some new ones, including a claque of a different cut. One of these was Robert K. Graham, a millionaire who had pioneered the development of shatterproof plastic eye-glasses and was the president and chairman of the board of the Armorlite Lens Company, in Pasadena, Cali­ fornia. At a meeting with Muller in June r¢3, Graham agreed to provide a thousand dollars to establish and about three hundred dollars a year to maintain a liquid-nitrogen repository for the sperm of outstanding men. H igh intelligence and altruism were to be among the primary criteria for donors. Muller thought that Julian Huxley would be an ideal donor. Gra­ ham suggested !\1uller himself, who, however, stipulated that his sperm not

be used until twenty-five years after his death. 3 6

But Graham, a political conservative, put too much emphasis for Muller's old-socialist taste on the genetic increase of intelligence and too little on the genetic increase of altruism. Graham's views, Muller thought, smacked enough of the old eugenics to jeopardize the germinal-choice project. Muller dissociated himself from Graham and abandoned plans for the foundation. �evertheless, in •97'· four years after \1uller's death and

A New Eugenics despite objections from his widow, G raham created the Hermann J. Muller Repository for Germinal Choice. A few years later, he began to collect donations of sperm, exclusively from Nobel laureates-the physicist Wil­ liam Shockley was a donor (the only one to reveal his name)-and to look for healthy and intelligent female recipients. Now housed in an office building in Escondido, California, and formally titled the Repository for Germinal Choice-but with MuJler's name listed in its brochure as a co­ founder-the Sperm Bank, as it is commonly known, has relaxed the Nobel requirement for donors. Its frozen deposits include, however, only the gametes of scientists. The Repository claims that fifteen offspring now owe their paternity to it. 1 7 Germinal choice stimulated a good deal o f ridicule a t a n anticipatory distance. Members of the Anglo-American genetics community tended to judge it either socially impractical or scientifically unworkable, or both. (There was word of a telling endorsement for germinal choice from a special, non-scientific quarter. Aldous Huxley was all for the scheme, ac­ cording to the report of one of Muller's acolytes, who had chatted with the author of Brave New World. Huxley considered it far superior to the ap­ procch of the activists in the early eugenic societies who had wanted to sterilize their genetic inferiors.) Yet welJ into the sixties Muller and his ideas occupied center stage at scientific symposia, and he saw several versions of his 1959 paper into learned print. Julian Huxley invoked Darwin's success at forging a theory of evolution despite his ignorance of genetics to scoff

at the claim that one had to know more about human heredity before one could think of human biological improvement. 1 8 Support of the principle of germinal choice came, in varying degrees, from points across the spectrum of evolutionists-from the Harvard

U ni­

versity systematist Ernst Mayr to the University of \Visconsin population geneticist James F. Crow. Natural selection, Crow observed, was "cruel, blundering, inefficient," while deliberate human selection could be based on criteria of "health, intelligence, or happiness." Francis Crick pro­ nounced himself in agreement \Vith "practically everything" that Muller had to say, and went on to wonder "why people should have the right to have children." ( Perhaps, Crick mused, one might have a "licensing scheme," so that "if the parents were genetically unfavorable, they might be allowed to have only one child, or possibly two under certain special circumstances.") 1 9 In 196l. 46. U.S. \Var Department, Annual Re ports, 1919, I, 279I; Weinland, A History of the I.Q in America, pp. I7<J-l; Marks, Tt·sters, Trackers, and Trusters, pp. 3H 39; "Grouping Pupils by Intelligence,'' School Revieu:, 28 (April I92U), 249-52· 47· John C. Almack, James Almack, "Gifted Pupils in the High School," School and Society, I4 (Sept. 24, I9ZI ) , 227 28; \Vein­ land, A History of the I.Q in A merica, pp. I72-7J. 48. Leslie S. 1 learnshaw, (vril Burt, Psychologist (Cornell L'nivcrsity Press, I979). pp. 7 8, 23, 2I, 3u; Edgar Schuster, Eugt'11ics (Clear-Type Press, I<JI2), pp. ISJ ;6. 49· Cyril Burt tu Yerkes, Jan. 23, I9ZJ, Yerkcs Papers, box 3. folder B; Hcarnshaw, Burt, pp. 30 . 39, 77 7 8, I 22 . ;o. Henrv H. Goddard, /Iuman Effi ciency and l.e�•els of Intelligence (Princeton University Press, I92), p. 1 .

Chapter V I : MEASURES OF REGENERATION

I. \'ictoria C. Woodhull :\1artin, '{be Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit (pamphlet; London, IS<ji), p. 38. According to C. P.

Blacker, later head of the Eugenics Society in Britain, the terms "positive" and "negative" eugenics were coined by C. \V. Saleeby with the approval of Francis Galton. C. P. Blacker,

Eu[!,eniu in Prosp.-ct and Retrospect (Hamish Hamilton, I945). p. I7. 2. :\'ature, 84 (Oct. IQIO) , 4.l l: Donald K. Pickens, f.'ugenics and the l'rogressir·es (\'an­ derbilt University Press, IQ68), p. 121. Bell

thought, "In the case of men and women who are thoroughbred . . . it is obvious that

Notes for pages 86-88 their descendants, spreading out among the population and marrying into average or in­ ferior families, would prove prepotent over their partners in marriage in affecting the offspring, thus leading to an increase in the proportion of superior offspring produced from the average or inferior with whom they have mated." Like many eugenicists, Bell mistakenly assumed that "thoroughbred" qualities in human beings were hereditarily determined bv unit characters and that these characters w�re dominant, to use the Men­ delian equivalent of prepotent. Alexander Graham Bell, "A Few Thoughts Concerning Eugenics," National Geographic, 11 (Feb. 1rosopbila

Index galactosemia, !1 � 31! Galton, Francis, lli H,_ � .g, rr, � !!Q, � � � � and eugenics, ix, tl !!: !ft. 19, � B rr, 5! 52, QQ.

� !!§. � '8

<M, �

£I.! � 1E.;

social views of, tl !!: 11 ,u, :z±, psychological makeup of, s, ll=l and !h ll=l and !!,_;_ background and training of, t::§_ and 1!:. 7: in Africa and Middle East, � � 2, !Q, ll=!b � marriage of, z,_ 2. 1Q, 11=g and Darwin, !Q, g and religion, !!. @; attitudes towards E.! and Weldon, rr, 1Q,_ £_;_ women, and Pearson, B .£, � and University College London, � and Davenport,

±l_,_ � �

-publications of, s, 7_, H. !Q; Hereditary Grnius, 1 !.1 !!_. !2_; Natural Inheritance, � :!H. .!Q

scientific work of, :z: and !h !Q, !_Q,_ '] ili!; heredity, tl !!: and !h lB. and !!,_, B "]! '] � � statistics, :z: and !h il u. !J=.12, � .!2 Galton Eugenics Professorship, � � �

Galton Garrod Society, � Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics, 3! � !QS_,_ '!Q � women at, 12, llQ. m_; research in heredity at, 12: � and Pearson, � il and alcoholism, !Qi! and mental deficiency, !Qi! and American genetics, IO), � llb !.!Q, !1 and Penrose, 2)1 2 and !h � research and !!,_, funds of, � and Fisher, � and Haldane, l.ID=l Galton Society, U.S., 52, Zi Garrod, Archibald, oH,. � Gates, R. Ruggles, HZ Gauss, Carl Friedrich, � !5 Gauthier, Marthe, � gemmules, lB. gene pool, human, eugenic improvement of, � � and n., � � genes, � � use of term, 'Hi see also genetics, human; Mendel's laws genes, human: identification and mapping of, !21; and recombinant DNA, � !!, � � � see also behavior, human: and genetics genes, mutant, see mutations, human genes, recessive, and genetic disease, oH,. see also !2s, !9.1. !21., � � il counseling, genetic; genetic diseases and

disorders; Mendel's laws; screening, genetic gene therapy, � � � � future of, 2_ normal distribution, see error, law of Noyes, John Humphrey, 21 and !1. nutrition, and human development, !±b

� EZ., il

Ohio State University, � Oneida Community, 21 Osborn, Frederick, !!; and eugenic legislation, � 22, !QQ. � and !6 1.68. paternity, and blood groups, Paul, Julius, il Pauling, Linus, � pauperism, i!.t !!J., m.;. heritability of, m, � � Z!.i. and negative eugenics, :zb !!5., � 2.1; and mental deficiency, 7!b &. 22. !!.'b !.lit � as dysgenic , � � Pearl, Raymond, � � � � !N,_ % � lE

Pearson, Hesketh, u Pearson, Karl, £. .Ji, ±�. � � !!3, !J