Pandora Revisited

National Review, Sept 29, 2003 by Wesley J. Smith

For obvious reasons, eugenics faded from view after World War II. But it was only hibernating. It has reawakened, Black warns, in the guise of a utopian "newgenics," advocated by "self-ordained experts" in bioethics and bioscience who urge that we harness the nature-changing power of genetics and the energy of entrepreneurial enterprise to once again chase in vain after the mirage of human perfection.

Black's warning is well worth heeding. Over the last 30 years, academics and bioethicists have espoused beliefs and attitudes that are eerily reminiscent of those of Charles Davenport and his ilk, ideas that now, like then, threaten the most weak and vulnerable among us. As with the old eugenics, the new eugenics is led by the intelligentsia and academic elite. Once again, the most respected foundations are funding it. Today, the belief in the inherent moral equality of all human life has been badly undermined by advocates who would judge human moral worth upon subjective "quality of life" criteria. There is even a nascent social movement called transhumanism, which advocates seizing control of human evolution and creating a utopian "post-human" future through genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and cyber-modification of the human genome.

Many advocates of the new eugenics hubristically believe they can avoid the horrors of the old eugenics. But the acorn does not fall far from the tree. As Black's powerful history demonstrates, once the odious notion that some of us are better than others of us achieves a critical mass of legitimacy, inexorable forces are set in motion that drive society with the implacable force of gravity toward the abyss.

Mr. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. His current book is the revised and updated Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder .