A Kinder, Gentler Eugenics

Eugenics have a bad rap. A lot of it has to do with the Nazis’ use of eugenics during the Second World War. Nazis also pioneered the use of computers for record keeping, but nobody complains about that. Just because Nazis applied science and technology for evil doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them for good.
The problem with the eugenics of the past, whether they were used by the Nazis or the Alberta government (whose eugenics board sterilized thousands of “feeble-minded” people between 1929 and 1972), is that they focused on the negative, like sterilizing and breeding humans beings as if they were animals.
But we are now sitting on the cusp of a new kind of eugenic science that won’t only let us prevent the bad, but also allow us to create the good.
Liberal eugenics, those based on parental choice as opposed to state coercion, are the future. Modern technology enables us to detect inherited diseases and genetic defects. Several countries, including Israel, have genetic testing programs that dissuade inherited diseases from being passed to offspring. But these programs are like those of the past. The only difference is that, rather than using murder and forced sterilization, they depend on voluntary non-mating.
But we can do better. With scientists continuing to make breakthroughs in genetic engineering, it is only a matter of time before these techniques are applied to humans. At the moment this work is still experimental and highly controversial, but progress is inevitable.
Whatever country takes the lead and creates a legislative framework that supports genetic engineering will have an incredible opportunity to become a destination for this work. It is time for Canada to step up. With much of the work on the genetic engineering of plants having been conducted here, we have the scientific and technological resources for this research.
There is the fear that applying this work to humans will be done by private, for-profit companies, raising the spectre of the rich turning themselves into super-beings, while the poor become a genetically-distinct sub-class.
Again, Canada can take the lead, by funding medically-beneficial genetic engineering. Through the Medicare system, Canada can create a country where genetically inherited disease is a thing of the past – where genetic disabilities no longer exist. This could be accomplished by fixing defective genes. The long-run cost savings, as well as the prospect of diminishing the suffering of those afflicted with genetic abnormalities (and their families), should be enough to counter the fears of those opposed to this brave new world. Eugenics is preventative war on human misery.
The majority of objections to this course of action come from the religious minority, those who believe that when Jesus said, “You will always have the poor with you” is a command to inaction.
Using genetic engineering to cure disease is no more playing God than is the dispensing of life saving medicine. Remember, this is the same religious minority that believes humans should never be taken off life-support systems, even when they are clearly dead or well on their way to dying.
If anything, genetic engineering is doing God’s work. By fixing the mutations in the human genome that cause weaknesses and disease, we are only returning these genes to their original state; whether we consider that divine perfection or natural selection. It is time we take control of our own evolution and make a better future, where inherited disease is relegated to the history books.