The Lives to Come (1997) 3/4/04. Reviewed by Jon Turney Philosopher Philip Kitcher explains how to think about eugenics.

The latest science gives us new ways to influence the genes of future humans. Past attempts to do this have invariably ended badly. Collectively, they are dubbed eugenics, and the term is often invoked by critics of new genetic technologies.

But how anxious should we be about this? Philip Kitcher, best known as a philosopher of science, offers one of the most thoughtful looks at the relations between old and new eugenics. He steers a middle path. On one side are those, like many geneticists, who argue that the new science has nothing whatever to do with eugenics, in the sense of trying to improve the race. On the other are opponents of applying genetics who hold that it will inevitably lead to eugenics, and this will have effects as dreadful as those seen in, say, Nazi Germany. Kitcher does not buy either position.

Philip Kitcher offers one of the most thoughtful looks at the relations between old and new eugenics.

His fundamental point is that at some level eugenics is now inescapable. Once people know enough to exert control over some aspects of their successors' genes, then even deciding not to apply this knowledge is taking a view about what the future gene pool should be like. From there he goes on to examine the aspects of past eugenic programmes that we now find most repulsive. Although earlier eugenic campaigns and policies were varied, the worst of them had not just one, but a whole collection of bad features. They were targeted at particular disadvantaged groups. They were coercive – in the Nazi case taking coercion beyond even sterilisation to the death camps – they were based on supposed traits whose definition was based largely on prejudice, and where they used actual genetic information it was of laughably poor quality.

Kitcher reckons that it is possible now to imagine eugenic policies that score better on each of these counts. But he is also clear that achieving this is not straightforward. Prejudice is still in play in many discussions of what genetic screening, for example, might achieve, and there are more subtle ways of coercing people than writing a court order for sterilisation. Even if we believe that knowing the mistakes of the past will help avoid repeating them, we can still find new ones. Always distinguish, he says, between utopian and real world eugenics.

So he makes no claim to resolve all the problems of a new eugenics. But he can take credit for taking the argument further than many other writers who simply want to avoid using the e-word, or to use it as a reason for blanket rejection of any policy that leads to unnatural selection. Life, says Kitcher, is more complicated than that, not least because any serious discussion of neo-eugenics leads to broader questions of social justice. These do not rule out applying the new genetic technologies, which would mean foregoing real benefits and ignoring genuine suffering. But he leaves the reader with the feeling that moving real world eugenics closer to the utopian version will still require long and careful thought.

Book details

Publisher: Penguin (1997)
Out of print