War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, Expanded Edition (80 page)

That same year, after numerous genetic counseling and human heredity programs had been established, Osborn was able to confidently write to Paul Popenoe, “The term medical genetics has taken the place of the term negative eugenics.” Keeping a low profile had paid off. On April 12, 1965, Osborn wrote a colleague at Duke University somewhat triumphantly, “We have struggled for years to rid the word eugenics of all racial and social connotations and have finally been successful with most scientists, if not with the public.”
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Indeed, by 1967, Osborn’s society had become a behind-the-scenes advisor for other major foundations seeking to grant monies to genetic research. Even the National Institutes of Health sought their advice in parceling out major multiyear grants for what was called “demographic-genetics.” By 1968, a pathologist at Dartmouth Medical School was asking the Carnegie Institution ifhe could access the ERO’s trait records on New Englanders for his “medical genetics project.”
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During the sixties, seventies and eighties, the racist old guard of eugenics and human genetics died out, bequeathing its science to a new and enlightened generation of men and women. Many entities changed their names. For example, the Human Betterment League of North Carolina changed its name to the Human Genetics League of North Carolina in 1984. In Britain there were name changes as well. The
Annals of Eugenics
became the
Annals of Human Genetics
and is now a distinguished and purely scientific publication. The University College of London’s Galton Chair of Eugenics became the Chair of Genetics. The university’s Galton Eugenics Laboratory became the Galton Laboratory of the Department of Genetics. The Eugenics Society changed its name to the Galton Institute.
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In 1954,
Eugenical News
changed its name to
Eugenics Quarterly
and was renamed again in 1969 to
Social Biology.
Later the AES renamed itself the Society for the Study of Social Biology. As of March 2003, both the organization and its publication are operating out of university professors’ offices.
Social Biology
editors and the leaders of the society are aware of their society’s history, but are as far from eugenic thought as anyone could be. The group is now researching genuine demographic and biological trends. Professor S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago and
Social Biology’s
associate editor as of March 2003, denounced eugenics and his journal’s legacy during an interview with this reporter. “You couldn’t find anyone better to run this society,” he insisted. “I carry a potentially lethal genetic disorder. Plus, I’m a Jew. I would be the exact target of any eugenics campaign. I hate what eugenics and the Nazis stood for.”
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The American Genetic Association, formerly the American Breeders Association, also continues today. As of March 2003, it was headquartered out of a scientist’s home office in Buckeystown, Maryland. In the 1950s, the American Genetic Association still listed its three main endeavors at the top of its letterhead: “Eugenics-Heredity-Breeding.” As of 2003, most of the organization’s early twentieth-century papers were in storage. As of early 2003, AGA leaders knew little of the association’s past. But the group still publishes
Journal of Heredity.
Once a font of eugenic diatribe, it is now a completely different journal with a different and enlightened mission. Its editor as of March 2003, Stephen O’Brien, is a distinguished government geneticist who has been featured in documentaries for his efforts to help develop countermeasures to fight plague-like diseases.
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Planned Parenthood went on to promote intelligent birth control and family planning for people everywhere, regardless of race or ethnic background. It condemns its eugenic legacy and copes with the dark side of its founder, Margaret Sanger. Planned Parenthood exists in a community of other population-control groups, such as the Population Council and the Population Reference Bureau, many of which sprang from eugenics.
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Cold Spring Harbor stands today as the spiritual epicenter of human genetic progress. Following the war, it devoted itself to enlightened human genetics and became a destination for the best genetic scientists in the world. In the summer of 1948, a visionary young geneticist named James Watson studied there. He returned in 1953 to give the first public presentation on the DNA double helix, which he had codiscovered with Francis Crick. Watson became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1968, and president in 1994. In February of 2003, the lab hosted an international celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the double helix.
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The world is now filled with dedicated genetic scientists devoted to helping improve all mankind. They fight against genetic diseases, help couples bear better children, investigate desperately-needed drugs, and work to unlock the secrets of heredity for the benefit of all people without regard to race or ethnicity. Every day, more eager scientists join their ranks, determined to make a contribution to mankind. Genetics has become a glitter word in the daily media. Most of the twenty-first century’s genetic warriors are unschooled in the history of eugenics. Most are completely divorced from any wisp of eugenic thought.

Few if any are aware that in their noble battle against the mysteries and challenges of human heredity, they have inherited the spoils of the war against the weak.

W
hat now? The short answer is nobody knows. The world will not discover the latest human genetic trends in books like this one, but rather in the morning paper and on the evening news. Almost as soon as any author’s page is typed, genetic advances redefine the realities, the language and the timelines. By creep and by leap, the world will be alternately shocked and lulled-and then shocked again-to learn how rapidly humanity and nature are changing.

Today’s headline is tomorrow’s footnote. In 1978, Louise Brown became the world’s first test-tube baby and a braver new world shuddered. Since then,
in vitro
fertilization has become common reproductive therapy. In 1997, Dolly the cloned Scottish sheep captured cover stories and stirred acrimonious debate across the world. Shortly after that, several cows were cloned in Japan, but the news merely flashed across CNN as a fleeting text report behind the comical headline “Udderly Amazing.” In 1998, the Chinese government launched a program to clone its pandas. Shortly thereafter, Spanish authorities approved cloning of a bucardo, a recently extinct mountain goat. In 2000, Virginia scientists cloned five pigs. Entire menageries are in various stages of being cloned, from monkeys to mastodons to family pets.
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Human clones are next. In late 2001, when editors were discussing this book, the experts insisted we were decades away from the first human clone. As chapters were being submitted, the prediction of “decades” shortened to “years.” By the end of 2002, those same experts were debating whether any of several competing scientists had already successfully created the first cloned babies. There is no shortage of willing donors or parents, nor rumors to supply the field. Legislation enacted in several countries cannot address the international dimensions of the where, who and how of impregnation, gestation and conception itself
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Predictions and timelines are little more than well-intentioned self-delusion. However, this much is certain: a precocious new genetic age has arrived. This genetic age, morphing at high velocity, can barely be comprehended by a world that doesn’t even speak the language of genetic engineering. Certainly, the latest developments continuously flood a spectrum of scientific journals and symposia, prominent and obscure. Yet few can keep up with the moral, legal and technological implications, especially since much of the information is so technical.

At the same time, the consequences of genetic advance are obscured by hype and conspiratorial clamors. Adding more fog, human genetics is now in many ways dominated by capital investment, and many revelations are subject to the eighteen-month initial secrecy of patent applications, the protracted strictures of Wall Street financing and the permanence of corporate nondisclosure agreements. Many areas of human science are now trade secrets. Twentieth-century corporate philanthropy has given way to twenty-first-century corporate profits. Information is often controlled by public relations officers and patent attorneys. It takes a profoundly trained professional eye and a clear mind to separate fact from fantasy and blessings from menaces.

No one should fear the benefits of human reengineering that can obliterate terrible diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs. The list is long and genetic researchers are constantly laboring toward the next breakthrough. Every such medical advance is a long overdue miracle. Society should welcome corrective genetic therapies and improvements that will enhance life and better mankind.

Yet humanity should also be wary of a world where people are once again defined and divided by their genetic identities. If that happens, science-based discrimination and the desire for a master race may resurrect. This time it would be different. In the twenty-first century it will not be race, religion or nationality, but economics that determines which among us will dominate and thrive. Globalization and market forces will replace racist ideology and group prejudice to fashion mankind’s coming genetic class destiny. If there is a new war against the weak it will not be about color, but about money. National emblems would bow to corporate logos.

Newgenics may rise like a phoenix from the ashes of eugenics and continue along the same route blazed in the last century. If it does, few will be able to clearly track the implications because the social and scientific revolutions will develop globally and corporately at the speed of a digital signal. The process will manifest as gradual genetics-based economic disenfranchisement. First, newgenics will create an uninsurable, unemployable and unfinanceable genetic underclass.

The process has already started.

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Like eugenics, newgenics would begin by establishing genetic identity, which is already becoming a factor in society, much like ethnic identity and credit identity. DNA identity databanks are rapidly proliferating. The largest group of databanks warehouse the genetic identities of criminals, suspects, arrestees and unidentified individuals whose DNA is found at crime scenes. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Combined National DNA Index System (CODIS) was inaugurated in 1990 and has been steadily databasing DNA from criminal encounters. All fifty states have now passed laws creating state databanks that feed CODIS using the FBI’s software. By March of 2003, these state databanks were just becoming operational, but legal reviewers have already pointed out the state-to-state inconsistencies in collection and dissemination standards, as well as storage protocols. The FBI’s databank, which in March of 2003 maintained more than 1.5 million profiles, is growing by some 100,000 profiles a month, and the Department ofJustice has asked the FBI to prepare for up to fifty million.
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England’s rapidly expanding National DNA Database is expected to hold DNA “prints” on three million individuals by 2004. Canada’s newly-created databank stored some 23,000 samples as of March 2003, and adds more than a thousand profiles a month. Canada is also pioneering total robotic management and retrieval. China is building extensive databanks, employing more than a hundred DNA laboratories to process the samples. By March of 2003, national DNA databases had become active in Austria, Holland, Germany, Australia and many other countries. Local DNA dragnets in Germany, England, Australia and the United States have been launched by police to snare offenders who would otherwise never be identified. Such dragnets, which typically ask every citizen of a certain profile or geographical area to provide a DNA sample, are becoming more common.
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Police DNA databanks are a powerful and needed tool to help thwart crime and terrorism. They have not only trapped many criminals, they have also prompted the release of many wrongfully arrested or convicted. A number of death row inmates and long-term convicts have been freed only because of DNA analysis of previously untested evidence. Moreover, helpful medical information on individuals is already being discerned from police DNA “fingerprints.” For example, British police DNA specialists have concluded that one of the ten DNA markers they analyze for criminal identification also carries information about diabetes. Information about various types of cancer has been derived from DNA fingerprints as well.
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The network of DNA databases will soon be global. Interpol conducts a regular International DNA Users Conference to proliferate and link police DNA databank systems worldwide. Soon every nation from Argentina to Zambia, and every local jurisdiction in between, will be able to tap into the international genetic network.
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While police DNA databanks are a necessity, they carry twenty-first-century problems. Each country will develop its own rules and regulations about storage, handling and access. There is as yet no body with the authority to set global standards for collection, maintenance or dissemination of DNA data. Quickly, society has learned that crime fighting is no longer the only reason to collect and organize DNA fingerprints. Identification itself is a compelling issue. Military organizations now record DNA fingerprints of their soldiers. America’s Armed Forces Repository of Specimen Samples, located in a facility outside Washington, maintains hundreds of thousands of profiles. The tomb of the unknown soldier will soon be a thing of the past.
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States are discussing local genetic identification banks for ordinary citizens as well. Connecticut’s Department of Social Services already operates a special Biometric ID Project that stores digital fingerprints of its welfare recipients to combat widespread interstate welfare fraud. The Connecticut program currently only records digital scans of traditional fingerprints, but the agency has publicly indicated that stored biometric data could also include retinal scans and facial imaging.
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Eventually, each state will probably develop its own biometric methodology, which would almost certainly include genetic identification. Such systems would ultimately proliferate down to the county and municipal levels, creating a diverse interoperable national network.