Posted on 01/04/2003 7:03:39 PM PST by victim soul
It all started around the turn of the last century in England and the United States. Under the leadership of social engineers such as Francis Galton and Charles Davenport, the eugenics movement became a powerful social force that had a stranglehold on the American psyche by the 1930s.
What were called "Fitter Families" contests were held in many places across the nation. Fitter families were families with little or no incidences of physical or mental disability. Their ethnic heritage also had to be intact. Racial intermarriages resulted in disqualification. Thus, fitter families were strictly Caucasian. At the Kansas Free Fair in 1920, Mary T. Watts, co-founder of the first contest, said: "While the stock judges are testing the Holsteins, Jerseys, and white faces in the stock pavilion, we are judging the Joneses, Smiths, and Johns." Winners were awarded a medallion that said, "Yea, I Have a Goodly Heritage."
The objective of the eugenics movement was to "create better human beings through breeding." Yet, it resulted in whole clans of people being labeled as genetically inferior. Most states enacted mandatory sterilization laws requiring thousands of people considered "feebleminded," "indolent," or "licentious" to be sterilized against their wills. It created an entire subculture of people who were deemed "undesirables" and unworthy of existence.
What began in the United States and England a generation earlier was pursued in earnest by Nazi Germany during World War II. The eugenics movement of Nazi Germany was the application of a philosophy behind the holocaust of the Jews.
Virginia was the first state in the nation to apologize for its sterilization program. Oregon was next. And recently, Governor Mike Easley apologized for North Carolina's role in sterilizing more than 7,600 people through a eugenics program that lasted from 1929 to 1974.
Easley said, "On behalf of the state, I deeply apologize to the victims and their families for this past injustice, and for the pain and suffering they had to endure over the years ... this is a sad and regrettable chapter in the state's history, and it must be one that is never repeated again."
Indeed, Easley is right. It should never be repeated again! Unfortunately, however, it's already happening.
Dr. John F. Kilner, executive director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, Illinois, says, "The new eugenics is simply the latest version of the age-old quest to make human beings -- in fact, humanity as a whole -- the way we want them to be. It includes our efforts to be rid of unwanted human beings through abortion and euthanasia. It more recently is focusing on our growing ability to understand and manipulate our genetic code, which directs the formation of many aspects of who we are, for better and for worse."
Dr. C. Ben Mitchell, editor of the journal Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics says, "‘Designer babies' are one example of the new eugenics. Pre-implantation genetic selection is another. Selection of our offspring has never been easier," he says. "Embryonic death has never been more acceptable in our culture. This is eugenics with a vengeance."
A 1993 March of Dimes poll found that 11% of parents said they would abort a fetus whose genome was predisposed to obesity. Four out of five would abort a fetus if it would grow up with a disability. Forty-three percent said they would use genetic engineering if available simply to enhance their child's appearance.
Today, many college-aged women are being solicited for their donor eggs on the basis of their desirable genetic traits. In the summer of 2000, the Minnesota Daily, a student newspaper of the University of Minnesota, ran an ad for egg donors. The ad requested women donors who were 5 feet 6 inches tall or taller, Caucasian, with high ACT or SAT scores, with no genetic illnesses, and extra compensation was offered to those with mathematical, musical, or athletic abilities.
Where does this all end? Who will make the critical decisions about who will live and who will die? Who will decide what is a disease and makes a baby "undesirable" versus a merely undesirable genetic trait? Will genetically engineered superiors ultimately rule and reign over naturals? Without question, we are rapidly moving toward another eugenics nightmare worse than the first.
If we would see a truly human future for ourselves, we must recognize that all human life is priceless. All are created in the image and likeness of God. Each person is of infinite worth and each life is sacred. Individuals must be valued because they are human beings, not for what they can produce. The noble goal of treating human diseases must never be allowed to become a justification for eliminating other people. Children must never be designed or destroyed for what we deem appropriate. Unless our brave new world of incredible knowledge and powerful technologies echoes the Word of old, we will witness a face of evil too frightening to even imagine.
Rev. Mark H. Creech (calact@aol.com) is the executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc.
Never forget their motto, "Proud of our Past, confident of our future"...
the infowarrior
The idea that we can breed a good stock of persons is absurd. Their will always be a nastiness about humans. If one tried selective breeding for a dozen generations, the 13th individual could just as well be a serial killer as could the first. It is the nature of humans to kill, lie, steal, cheat and murder.
So you are raised right and you act right. Your children are raised right and act right. Yet in every generation there is the predisposition to act wrong. Your great-grandchildren could be another Al Capone just as well as your great-grandparents could have been.
It is the Biblical phrase, "we are born in sin" that translates in contemporary language as "nobody is perfect". And nobody will every be perfect. Eugenics is born out of humanism. This point is the underlying falsehood of the humanistic approach to social science.
BTW, the founders of our nation understood this concept through and through.
Survival of the fattest...so to speak... :-)
barf.
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