The ‘new eugenics’ lose sight of human dignity

		THE INTERVIEW a regular feature of The Catholic New World, is an in-depth conversation with a person whose words, actions or ideas affect today’s Catholic. It may be affirming of faith or confrontational. But it will always be stimulating.

Catholic New World staff writer Michelle Martin talks with Jean Bethke Elshtain.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, an ethics professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, will give a presentation on “The Dignity of the Human Person and the New Eugenics” as part of a symposium on “Human Dignity & Reproductive Technology” March 4 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Elshtain, a political philosopher who explores the connection between political and ethical convictions, is the author of many books, including “Who Am I? Critical Reflections; Hopeful Possibilities.”



The Catholic New World: What do you mean when you say “the new eugenics?”

Jean Bethke Elshtain: I’m talking about the way in which much of the new genetic technology that’s emerged out of the genome project seems geared towards what’s called positive genetic enhancement, which is a fancy euphemistic way of talking about eugenics, or the notion that you can control for desirable traits. This is not about trying to play around with the structure of DNA and so on in order to prevent some hideous illness or harm. It’s really about do you want your child to be taller, do you want blue eyes, even things as trivial as that, which are rated as desirable by the culture.

Is that the business we’re going to be into, breeding these perfect people by these pretty trivial cultural standards? Of course, part of the deal is that what starts to count as a defect or what starts to count as an undesirable trait gets more and more particular and trivial, but becomes sufficiently problematic in the eyes of many folks that it becomes the grounds for abortion, for example. We know that babies get aborted now because it’s the wrong sex—they want a girl or they want a boy—or because of little minor things like [a] cleft palate.

They do all this panoply of prenatal tests, and they say, “We think the kid’s going to be this,” or “The kid’s going to have that,” and the parents panic and they say, “Oh, no.” The list of things that make you imperfect is getting longer and longer and longer. So this is the new eugenics. No one likes to use the word eugenics because of its association with Nazism, so they find other words to talk about it, like positive genetic enhancement—that’s a euphemistic phrase.



TCNW: Is it really different than the old eugenics?

JBE: Well, it’s different than the old eugenics in that the techniques are so much more sophisticated, and also because the way of talking about it has become much more scientifically acceptable. That is to say, the dominant voice in the scientific community, even among those who say we really should go slower on some of this—there are very few who are going to say this is bad science. The claim now is that we really can do the kinds of things that people in the old order claimed they could do but really couldn’t do because they didn’t know enough and they didn’t have the techniques. You read some of this stuff, and they’re talking about designer genes, g-e-n-e-s. What is that going to do over the long run to people who don’t look the way you’re supposed to look? Or what happens to parents who choose to go ahead and have an imperfect child when they could have got rid of it?

I had a letter from a woman who had a Down’s syndrome baby, and she and her husband had gone through the most unbelievable stuff before the baby was born, because of course the tests showed that this would be a Down’s syndrome child. The assumption was that, well of course, you’re going to abort. When they didn’t, they were accused of being irresponsible for bringing such a child into the world. It was amazing, because a woman when she’s pregnant is rather more vulnerable than at any other time, and here you’re getting all this stuff from your own physician about “What’s the matter with you?”

It’s difficult to have this discussion in public, because when you start to talk the way I’m talking, people immediately accuse you of being reactionary and backward and somehow you want people to be unhappy because you’re not letting them have the kind of kids they want.



TCNW: What effect does this have on the dignity of the human person?

JBE: That is the central issue. I think what it does is undermine our commitment to that dignity which is simply there by virtue of the fact that we are human and created in the image of God. That gives us a dignity that is irrespective of what we look like, of whether we’re a certain height, a certain weight, have a certain IQ, can run swiftly or have to be in a wheelchair. That dignity is ours. Often the human person appears before us in a form that seems to us broken and troubled, but Christians are certainly enjoined to see in the face of the other a fellow child of God. I think that if you accept that view of the source of human dignity, then anything that starts to differentiate the value of human beings according to the genetic makeup and develops these categories, where some people by definition have more worth than others, then you’re undermining the basis for human dignity and for the decent treatment of all persons.

One of the arguments I’ve made in some of my writing is that the way we’re pushing the business of, if you know the child’s imperfect, you have something like a responsibility not to give birth to that child, it doesn’t take much of an imagination to see down the road how that would undermine any notion of a social support for families or for children in that situation, because it would be, “They didn’t have to have this kid. Why should my tax dollars go for education or even health? Why should I even care? It’s their lookout.”

I think the claim that others have on us because of the brokenness of their situation (that) is not their fault—that’s a very fragile thing, and it’s easy for that to be weakened or even undermined, certainly in the political community. Hopefully within the community of the church, people will embody a different ethic.



TCNW: How can you tell people that they shouldn’t try to have a healthier baby, or baby without some genetic problem?

JBE: There are some inherited conditions that are quite devastating that they—those people within this world of genetic science and genetic medicine—are starting to claim, that based on the research they’ve done, they think there are some ways they can fix this, so the child doesn’t suffer from this condition. I don’t see where the objection to that would come from. That doesn’t involve claims that the child’s going to be imperfect so we eliminate it, and it doesn’t involve this positive genetic enhancement where the aim is not to avoid some terrible harm but to create these desirable characteristics. One can make a distinction between those measures that can be taken with a very specific limited aim and this positive genetic enhancement business and also against those who say if the child is imperfect and we can’t fix it, eliminate it.



TCNW: If these things can be done, is it possible to stop them, or is it a case of, what we can do, we will do?

JBE: The general American ethos tends to be what we can do, we will do, and the general scientific and technological one too. You have to have your head in the sand to think anything else, it seems to me. There are fellows who talk about “technological drift,” about how things keep moving and moving and moving.

It seems to me that there are ways that cultures either give approval to these things to move full steam ahead, or they don’t. I believe the law plays a powerful normative role here, in either legitimating an activity or making it illegitimate. Either making it really easy to do something, or making it really hard to do something. There are deterrent things that can be done There’s more control and oversight that can be exercised. These labs have almost no regulation as you probably know. That’s one of the problems with the stem cell stuff. “We’re just going to create these embryos and harvest the stem cells, but of course no responsible scientist would ever implant one for cloning purposes.” Give me a break, I wasn’t born yesterday. Of course someone’s going to try that. There’s fame, there’s television, there’s huge sums of money, and there’s always narcissistic kinds of people running around saying “I’d like a little copy of me.”



TCNW: How can it be stopped?

JBE: A couple of ways. People who have doubts and have reservations and have criticisms have to at every available opportunity keep raising those doubts and criticisms no matter what the reaction of others. If it’s at a dinner party where this comes up in casual talk and you don’t want to upset people, well, maybe they should be upset. Whatever vocation is yours, whatever environment you find yourself in, speak on behalf of an alternative way of looking at things, so people at least know there is an alternative. I think that the obligation of the church is really to embody this alternative way of being in the world. My hunch is that kind of witness is far more powerful than someone issuing statements about this shouldn’t be done, that shouldn’t be done. The statements have to be issued. But the major way that people see there are alternatives is to look at the way people care for one another and love one another and help one another. And that that’s possible, that human beings can do that, and recognize our intrinsic value.

Another way, quite bluntly, through the law is to begin to get quite serious about certain penalties that get attached to certain possible practices. I would criminalize certainly cloning with pretty severe penalties. You put on a $10,000 fine, and that’s a hiccup for these genetic industry people. There have to be some serious, serious penalties attached. We live in a world where, thank God, deterrence still counts for something. People say these people will just go offshore and do this. Well, we can’t control everything, but we can be a society that s saying we’re drawing this line. I would create more oversight even though people are going to scream about scientific freedom, more oversight over what goes on in some of these laboratories. I think there are ways to do that and not immediately have a completely chilling effect on research. Most of the undeniable medical advances that have been made through the last half century have been made through a combination of government partnerships with scientists. It’s like saying people should freelance with the atom bomb.

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