LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias

 Research Posting 2009

Amy Sidle

Research Posting 2 

Eugenics: The Notion of Utopic Individuals

            What if we paired one of the most beautiful women on the planet with one of the most attractive men, i.e. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt? Besides their physical attractiveness, they are both talented and philanthropic, so is their mating modern-day eugenics?

            In the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century, eugenics was stigmatized as one of the most pernicious and repugnant aspects of scientific thought thanks to Hitler and the Nazi Holocaust (Parrinder). Though Hitler was the first to make a global impression with human selection, it was biologist Francis Galton who coined the term. Eugenics is defined as the improvement of the human race by selective breeding (Parrinder). By eliminating all the “undesirable” races, Hilter would have only been left with his “perfect” Aryans from which to breed his new race. Fortunately, Hilter didn’t succeed; however, eugenics isn’t limited to the holocaust or even the elimination of one kind of people, no, eugenics has influenced many communities over many time periods. Some say it has even evolved: could modern technology give every parent a little piece of Utopia with a perfect baby?

            Selective breeding is nothing new. The Oneida community started practicing Stirpiculture in the 1860s. By reading the studies of Darwin and Galton, John Humphrey Noyes, the leader of Oneida, became interested in scientific propagation, not for breeding superior physicality like others, but for “perfecting the soul by breeding for religious and virtuous qualities” (Wikipedia). With the aid of a committee, Noyes was the main judge of choosing the men and women who were allowed to breed. Older men were sought for their wisdom and spirituality, and women for their child-bearing age; nevertheless, both parties “were chosen based on spiritual and virtuous qualities, rather than physical ones” (Wikipedia). For the 10 years in which Oneida participated in the experiment, fifty-eight children were born, including twelve to Noyes and his son Theodore, and though these children lived long and well-educated lives, it is suggested that the environment in which they were raised lent them these abilities (Wikipedia).

            The horror of eugenics experiments seems the stuff of ancient or communist fashion, but few know that in the early 1900s, and lasting as late as 1974, the United States of America gathered the adverse children of the country and began institutionalizing them, for they were unfit for society, unfit for reproduction:

            The Fernald School (in Boston, Massachusetts) and more than one hundred other state-run institutions that confined hundreds of thousands of American children – many of whom were utterly normal – were at the center of a long-running but largely forgotten national effort to engineer a better human race. For more than fifty years, physicians and bureaucrats applied the principles of animal husbandry – attempting to weed out bad stock – to troublesome boys and girls. All were branded feeble-minded, or mentally defective, but a great many…would, by modern standards, be considered quite normal (D’Antonio 5).

The children were sterilized, beaten, abused, uneducated and illiterate. And for what reason? All because some big-shots decided to misuse IQ tests and to build a bigger and brighter America? And even if these children, who were rounded-up like cattle, were separated from the public, would America be able to achieve a utopic state? Were mere children holding America back? Truly an absurd notion that only cost the childhood and innocence of thousands of America’s youth.

            Eugenics goes from fact to fiction in Ayn Rand’s Anthem. In Equality 7-2521’s dystopia, “men may not think of women, save at the Time of Mating.” His government has eliminated all human contact except for procreation, which he says “is an ugly and shameful matter,” so they may pair partners appropriately:

[The Time of Mating] is the time each spring when all the men older than twenty and all the women older than eighteen are sent for one night to the City Palace of Mating. And each of the men have one of the women assigned to them by the Council of Eugenics. Children are born each winter, but women never see their children and children never know their parents (41).

As Equality continues to think of the Golden One, “without reason” he connects her to the Palace of Mating, not knowing that mating typically involves feelings of want. However, he does want to prevent her from being sent to the Palace, but again, not knowing why, he states: “Only we do not know why such thought came to us, for these ugly matters bear no relation to us and the Golden One.” His government and eugenics eliminated his feelings, and thanks to technology couples no longer need sexual intercourse to create a designer baby.

            Genetically engineered, or “designer,” babies are defined as a baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilization to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics (Agar). Though there are a handful of procedures relating to genetically engineered babies (such as cloning), I would like to focus on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Most couples that use PGD are at “risk of passing on serious genetic disorders on to their children” (Agar). Three days after embryos are created, the embryos contain eight cells. One cell is extracted and tested for disorders such as down syndrome or sickle cell anemia. Though this procedure is saving a lot of heartache for the parents-to-be, the technology can go one step further to soon select the baby’s eye or hair color or ensure the baby is athletic or highly intelligent. For instance, “Dean Hamer presents evidence that the gene for a vesicular monoamine transporter, VMAT2, influences a trait labeled self-transcendence,” meaning the child’s ability to go beyond himself and “to see everything as part of one great totality” (Agar). He claims “that different versions of VMAT2 lead to different degrees of self-transcendence and, therefore, to different propensities for religious or spiritual belief” (Agar).

            Do we want to genetically create our children like baking a cake? A dash of personality here, and a smidge of self-respect there all wrapped up in a blue-eyed, blonde little girl? Yes, it is wonderful that this girl would be free of heart disease or breast cancer, but at what cost? To guarantee her life as a pre-disposed Stepford Wife for life?

            Eugenics is still a scary possibility; whether from selective breeding to designer babies, it is hard for this reader to swallow, but what about the world? Honestly it’s not a matter of could, but should we create a superior and utopic human race?

Works Cited

Agar, Nicholas. “Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations.” American Institute of Biological Sciences. 2006. 1 July 2009. http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html

D’Antonio, Michael. The State Boys Rebellion: The Inspiring True Story of American Eugenics and the Men that Overcame It. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. 2005.

Rand, Ayn. Anthem. Penguin Group. 1996.

Wikipedia. Oneida Stirpiculture. 1 July 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_stirpiculture