To the Editor:

With his usual brilliance and lucidity, Charles Frankel voices in “The Specter of Eugenics” [March] the misgivings felt by many about the uses to which discoveries in the field of biology, particularly genetics, can be put in our imperfect world. Biology and genetics have achieved spectacular successes during the last half-century, especially in the last decade or two. Unprecedented powers to influence individual humans, and mankind as a whole, are placed, or are soon to be placed, in human hands. Does man have enough wisdom to use these powers wisely? Will the possession of these powers be a blessing or a curse? It seems that a polarization of opinion concerning these questions is taking place among scientists and intellectuals generally. What may be called a “no-holds-barred” and a “hands-off” school of thought are crystallizing. To the former, the genetic endowment of mankind is in jeopardy. Genetic corruption leads to mental and physical degeneration, and may lead to the extinction of the human species. The clear and present danger warrants application of heroic remedies: if these remedies are accepted freely, so much to the good; if not, compulsion may be necessary. By contrast, the “hands-off” school believes that the dangers are exaggerated or even imaginary. Tinkering with human “nature” is not only foolhardy but sacrilegious. Human reproduction and family building are private affairs, and the right to privacy is in this matter too basic to be abrogated or infringed upon.

To reconcile the above antithetical schools of thought is beyond my abilities. It is, however, worthwhile to point out that the problems at issue have several aspects that should be distinguished. Before all else, euphenics and eugenics must not be confused. The former proposes to control the manifestation of the genes carried by individual persons; the latter aims to alter the genetic endowments of populations and eventually of mankind as a whole. In the broadest sense, euphenics includes everything from swallowing aspirin tablets to heart transplants. An increasing number of hereditary diseases can be “cured,” e.g., phenylketonuria by special diets. Of course, what is “cured” are the manifestations and not the genetic causes of the diseases. Some euphenic measures, such as organ transplants and abortion, raise issues of ethics that are yet to be resolved. I place abortion under the rubric of euphenics, because it is something that is done to the body of a prospective mother who wishes to be freed from that prospect. A fetus is potentially a person, but the potentiality is realized only very gradually. To say that the destruction of a fetus in early pregnancy stages is murder is about as unreasonable as calling any birth-control measures murders. After all, the Pill and IUD also destroy sex cells that potentially could give rise to persons. Be that as it may, euphenics is concerned with individuals; it is a branch of medicine that can be guided by medical ethics.

Eugenics does not aim to “cure” individuals with genetic defects, but rather to minimize the chances of their being born. Negative eugenics would reduce the frequencies in populations of genes responsible for genetic defects, and thus reduce the incidence of persons with these defects. Positive eugenics would attempt to enhance the incidence in populations of healthy, desirable, or elite genetic endowments. Negative and positive eugenics are in a sense the two sides of the same coin, because lowering the frequencies of undesirable genes enhances the frequencies of desirable ones, and vice versa. Actually negative and positive eugenics are very different in scope. A near-unanimity may possibly be reached on what genetically conditioned traits mankind would be better off without. It is hard to conceive of such unanimity on what an ideal man should be like. Some genetic defects bring utter misery to afflicted individuals as well as to their families. A method whereby some of the aims of negative eugenics may be achieved is genetic counseling. Basically, it consists in providing information to the individuals concerned about the risks involved. The actions that follow from the counsels may be recommended but not compelled. Ethical problems arise in connection even with this “mildest” form of negative eugenics. Moreover, some would argue that counseling alone is not enough to counter the disgenic trends of human evolution. Others, on the contrary, find fault in counseling because it is often connected with such procedures as amniocentesis and abortion, which are alleged to be a “slippery slope” at the bottom of which they imagine horrors like infanticide, euthanasia, etc. Perhaps one should remember that venturing on some slippery slopes is inevitable in human life, but one can take precautions not to slide to the bottom.

Positive eugenics is by far more ambitious an undertaking. Some zealots wish to “redesign man” or make a “new man.” Others would be content making the best of the existing genetic endowments common or universal. The late H. J. Muller exclaimed, “The biological distance from apes to man is a relatively slight one, yet how potent!” We could arrange things so that mankind of the future will be as much above the present one as the latter is above the apes. Does not so grand a perspective justify heroic measures, even if they go against the present-day mores? Mores will change as the appreciation of eugenics becomes widespread. “Prenatal adoption” is the first chapter of Muller’s program: women will bear children conceived by artificial insemination with the sperm of eminent and/or eugenically approved men; there will be “sperm banks” for storage of the semen in deep-frozen condition; later, “ova banks” and in vitro insemination by the sperm withdrawn from the sperm banks may be developed. Somewhat more remote are cloning and genetic engineering, manufacturing synthetic genes superior to those existing now. Problems of ethics and values that arise in connection with “Brave New World” projects of the above sort are more troublesome than those connected with euphenics or negative eugenics. Who is to decide what sort of men and women positive eugenics should aim to produce? Will the decisions be reached by committees of eminent scientists, of politicians, or perhaps by popular vote? Will the ideal man envisaged by our contemporaries remain the ideal in the 25th and 125th centuries? Cultural changes are, at least in principle, relatively inducible and as rapidly reversible. Genetic changes demand much longer time, and they may prove to be irreversible, unless the science of the future will be more nearly omnipotent than most of us dare to imagine.

Euphenics in the widest sense is practiced now, and will be increasingly ubiquitous in the future. Negative eugenics is making its first hesitant steps, chiefly byway of genetic counseling; it will probably develop superior new techniques and gain the confidence of the general public. Whether one likes it or not, some negative eugenic measures may become necessary to counter genetic deterioration. Positive eugenics of “Brave New World” varieties may or may not emerge from the realm of science quasi-fiction. What is important at present is that research on basic genetics and on biomedical technologies be enabled to proceed and develop. Of course, some of this research, especially that on human subjects, must be made with due precautions and consideration of its social repercussions and of the rights of the persons involved. Some voices have been heard insisting that this research is intruding on matters so sacrosanct or so dangerous that it should be interdicted. It is hard to imaging a more short-sighted and obscurantist attitude.

Theodosius Dobzhansky
University of California
Davis, California

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To the Editor:

At first, I admit, I was somewhat miffed to see Charles Frankel limit his treatment of my recent book, Genetic Fix, to a quibble with a blurb by Betty Friedan, on the book’s jacket. I was even more concerned when Mr. Frankel associated the activist ideas of radical feminists (Betty—radical?), and those of Marcuse, with those of social scientists who wanted to push, pull, or pulverize Vietnam into the modern world. Mr. Frankel should know from his years of service in the State Department that these social scientists are a quite different breed.

But then I relaxed because it soon became apparent that Mr. Frankel’s whole article is by and large a fair, albeit somewhat pedestrian, summary of my book. Like him, I opened with a review of the major new developments in biomedicine; like him, I stressed that not “all the miracles that have been announced at hand are really about to materialize”; in a similar vein, Genetic Fix did find it useful to explore the moral issues raised by those developments which are upon us—and to distinguish between negative eugenics (the use of these tools to combat genetically caused diseases) and positive eugenics (their use to promote “desirable” traits, Nazi-style or otherwise). Finally, like Mr. Frankel, I argued against hyperactivism, trigger-happy interventionism, but also against a holistic anti-scientism which rejects all these developments. Parents and all citizens, it seems to me, ought to inform themselves in greater detail about these matters so that they will be better able to reap the benefits (e.g., in 1974 about 14,000 Mongoloid children will be born in the U.S.; about half need not) and avoid the dangers (e.g., abortion turns out to be riskier than heretofore reported).

There is no doubt in my mind that my Columbia colleague reached his conclusions all on his own; I am equally sure that if he had gotten beyond the jacket of Genetic Fix, he would have acknowledged the similarity in approach.

Amitai Etzioni
Columbia University
New York City

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To the Editor:

. . . Charles Frankel seems moved by that archetypal nostalgia for simpler, ergo better, times, when certain events—notably, the events of human procreative life—were apparently left to chance. Mr. Frankel also shows us convincingly how humans have transgressed whenever they have tried to implement dreams of a “new man,” and how the best of our modern scientists often produce rhetoric that smacks of brave new worlds. . . . Against the menacing specter of “eugenics” (Hitler has rendered the term forever disreputable and pejorative, we need another), Mr. Frankel holds up an image of fallible, fallen man. And with modern history as his chief witness, he opts for innocence and randomness, infinitely preferable to any human scheme.

It is a tempting thesis. Procreative and genetic choices, unlike more detached social and political choices, are incredibly difficult to make. For one thing, we live with and through our genetic choices, and are literally the products of the choices of our ancestors—whether deliberate or chancy. Objectivity is impossible in this realm: we move into the “amoral” demilitarized zone of science and find it booby-trapped by subjective concerns. Can we make decisions about abortion without consciously or subconsciously identifying the unborn with our children, or ourselves? Can we coolly label the tragedy of a profoundly afflicted child an “inborn error of metabolism” and be comforted when every impulse makes us wish to invest such an event with significance larger than scientific categories? Is it not in the very recognition of our limits that we are most human? How then can we presume to intervene in other lives?

Yes, it is tempting to avoid certain arguments that demand that we try to articulate the inchoate, examine our most intimate acts and responses, perhaps pass judgment on our secret selves. “Is nothing sacred?” we ask in outrage as the machine once again invades the garden; like Mr. Frankel, we resist under the banner of spontaneity and individuality. But perhaps we ought to hesitate before we accept this welcome reprieve from choice and responsibility, present and future. . . .

Man is, as Mr. Frankel notes, prone to speculate on distant possibilities; but his “new man” theory may be a straw man in this argument. Man is a creature uniquely capable of imaginative leaps through time, both past and future: this attribute has produced poets and prophets as well as tyrants and fanatics. Man is also uniquely capable of imaginative prediction, dramatization, confrontation with, and even subtle alteration of his probable future. In this sense, our best possibilities are undermined by Mr. Frankel’s ultimate reprieve. Those who speculate today in the area of biomedicine seek, not a new man, but new alternatives in response to new knowledge.

Rather than decry or debunk such efforts, it would seem that more non-scientists and non-physicians should turn their creative energies—and I happen to think they they are considerable, if not omnipotent—to the ongoing debate in bioethics. While “genetic engineering” is yet in a primitive state where man is concerned, our ethical and moral positions are also fragmentary, spectral, and ill-defined. Paradoxically, we are faced with that rare situation, a congruence between our technological capability and our values. The result, in this case, is an uneasy paralysis, eliciting Mr. Frankel’s rightful complaint. We have not reached the haziest agreement about what it means to be “human,” and about which of our “rights” are inalienable, valuable, vital to the human condition. The fact that we have no logic for solving the problems which are raised by human genetics suggests the need to explore them further, rather than to retreat from them. When we confront our hidden agendas, we can more confidently speak of a fine freedom.

What gives some cause for optimism is that today there are compassionate adults of high intelligence and considerable education who are willing to wrestle with these terribly difficult problems. If some of the participants in the debate, such as Daniel Callahan and Amitai Etzioni, sound “familiar,” they remind us more of Aldous Huxley and J. B. S. Haldane than of Frankenstein and Faust. They challenge our apathy and our resistance to new and disturbing knowledge; they seek to create a climate in which freedom and choice are possible rather than illusory.

Thus, the contemporary dialogue of biomedical ethics does not seem to be a lurid publicity stunt, as Mr. Frankel suggests. Because of the “stream of reflection” many laymen are becoming more aware of the issues already at hand, some of which Mr. Frankel mentions in his article, as well as the more outré genetic prophecies. Some may choose to remain on the periphery of the discussion, wringing their hands, calling down old gods to exorcise futurist nightmares, or evoking the days before the snake appeared. If they choose the latter pose, they may respond positively to Mr. Frankel’s statement that “the deliberate broad-scale regulation of man’s procreative life requires powers of intelligence, imagination, and emotional perspective not within the human range.” Is this humility in the face of facts? Is it a curious form of optimism? Or is it evidence of a profound unwillingness to deal with problems which are already demanding response, and receiving partial answers? One does not have to march in the ranks of historical revolutionaries, carry the torch of moral absolutism, or crave Faustian powers to believe that the human cause in this case will not be served by easy protestations of impotence, or appeals to our insatiable appetite for yesterday’s innocence

Eileen T. Bender
New Haven, Connecticut

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To the Editor:

I cannot agree with Charles Frankel when he identifies abortion as a biomedical technique. I doubt that most mothers who have abortions are doing so with the idea of improving the race or of reducing the incidence of defective genes in the genetic pool. I also doubt that that is what Father Drinan or Rabbi Jakobovits had in mind when they made the statements quoted by Mr. Frankel. Perhaps, however, Father Drinan and Rabbi Jakobovits would agree that abortion perfectly expresses the most abhorrent facet of genetic planning as it is presented to the public: the denial or destruction of human life as a basis for improving the race.

It is paradoxical that so many of the proponents of abortion, euthanasia, and compulsory sterilization consider themselves liberals. Yet the true liberal idea has always been a belief in the possibility of human progress based on the freedom of all human beings to make choices. Permissive abortion is based on the freedom of the mother to choose, not whether she will be a mother (since she already is if the question of abortion arises), but whether she will allow her child to live. But what of the child? If Mr. Frankel’s mother had chosen to destroy him he would not be free to choose any method of eugenic planning—or none. . . .

Mr. Frankel’s statement that “the partisans of large-scale eugenics planning, the Nazis aside, have usually been people of notable humanitarian sentiments” is charitable but I have difficulty feeling that those who base humanitarian schemes on the willful and deliberate destruction of groups of people other than themselves are interested in anything other than their own self-actualization, which can hardly be called humanitarian in relation to those killed. . . .

To say that it is necessary to destroy some human life in order to improve some human life is to say that all progress stops here. Such an attitude is just as reactionary as to say that the study of biomedicine or space technology should be banned. The quest for knowledge is inherent in man. But only if we keep faith with the tenets by which we live will this quest for knowledge lead to progress rather than to the destruction of mankind.

Sarah M. Dietz
Taftsville, Vermont

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Charles Frankel writes:

Sarah M. Dietz chides me for departing from ancient verities, and Eileen T. Bender takes me to task for yearning for simpler days. Once again I learn the perils of taking a moderate position. I think I understand some of Miss Dietz’s concerns. It is better to consider abortion, I think, in the homely terms of family, children, wife, personal resources, rather than in the grandiose terms of genetic engineering. But I could share Miss Dietz’s entire point of view only if I could shut my mind to the monstrous suffering which prohibitions of abortion have caused.

I am less than sure that I fully follow Miss Bender, but I think I sense where her central discontent lies. It is with my emphasis on contingency, individuality, and unpredictability, which she thinks I am using as a license to evade choice and responsibility. Now it is true that I believe that unpredictability is uneliminable from human life, and it is also true that I value this aspect of the human scene and enjoy waking up in a world in which, up to a point, I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen during the day. I think it desirable, indeed, to make special moral and legal room for individuality and diversity, and regard such provision as indispensable to any society that is free and equitable. But Miss Bender misunderstands the implications of this position if she supposes that it means opposition to intelligence, foresight, choice, or planning. As with death, whose time and character are unpredictable, one can still make prudent provision and take out an insurance policy.

Behind Miss Bender’s misunderstanding there is perhaps another assumption which, because it is generic and widely shared, deserves some explicit attention. It is the assumption that the more knowledge we have in a given area the more we are justified in undertaking broad-scale collective planning with regard to that area. But this assumption is sometimes valid, sometimes not. Everything depends on the problem faced, on what the knowledge gained actually reveals about its character, and, not least, on the procedures for collective decision-making that are available or realistically imaginable. With regard to the genetic constitution of humanity, I find myself distrustful of collective planning.

Does this show a loss of faith in intelligence, an opting-out, a wringing of hands in the face of complexity? It is difficult to see how. It is an attempt to use intelligence to appraise the character of present knowledge and the soundness of prevailing moral tendencies, and to reach some notion about social policy on this basis. Rightly or wrongly, my own conclusions are that the proper social policy where procreation is concerned is, within fairly broad limits, to leave the matter to free individual choice. The leap from “faith in intelligence” to faith in the collective masterplanning of God-knows-what is characteristic of the contemporary mind dite “progressive.” It has had calamitous consequences, from which, in my opinion, it would be intelligent to learn.

Amitai Etzioni’s letter begins by disagreeing with the central point in my essay, then says that I really only have written a summary of his book, and then says that I probably haven’t read his book. His letter is its own commentary on itself. The one point worthy of discussion is what I think is a profound intellectual disagreement between us. It is whether radical feminists and Herbert Marcuse belong to “a quite different breed” from the social scientists who rationalized the Vietnam war with talk about modernization, etc. Mr. Etzioni, leaning hard on my previous condition of servitude, thinks that I “should know” that the two groups are quite different. He thinks it so obvious that he doesn’t bother to explain why. But I can only confess that I don’t know what I “should know.”

From where I sit it seems to me that there are in the world—and particularly in what is known as the world of letters and learning—a rather large number of people who think that by a proper application of “knowledge,” or by an act of righteous will, the attitudes, tropisms, fears, and desires formed by biology, culture, and human experience can be changed—and changed into what we want, and without an unreasonable cost. The “knowledge” in question is often simply the fashionable opinion of a half-decade, and sometimes not even opinion but a farrago of pretentious metaphysics, history-by-pronunciamento, and moral ponderosities. As for the righteous will, it usually consists in little more than the incapacity to imagine the reality of those who are different. No matter. Some of these people, armed in their knowledge and sense of right, have been prepared to celebrate Stalin, or announce Mao, or expose constitutional government as a hypocrisy, or call for dismantling “the system”; others have talked about sexual differentiation as though it were the result of a conspiracy; others have called for grand genetic designs; and others have proclaimed the American misadventure in Vietnam as noble. To be sure, the last group sprinkled its sacramental abstractions over an obviously bloody affair. But have not other intellectuals, similarly illuminated to suppose that neither nature nor human nature has its limits, also endorsed bloody affairs? And have they not smiled fondly on movements and events which have done great harm, and which have been saved from bloody consequences only by their essential frivolity?

When, on the cover of a book I read a blurb announcing it as an act of existential courage, a beacon pointing the way to a new political path, and a call to take personal responsibility for the human future, and when the book is about genetics and eugenics, I fear I have a natural tendency to think the words rather grandiose and to identify them as part of the stream of thought which says that the human race can accomplish anything it wants if it only has the knowledge and will. I think, for my part, that the human creature is, to a very considerable extent, the product of forces external to him, most of which he does not understand. Through intelligence he can master some of these, but he remains an animal barely five feet high in a universe that outruns his imagination. His achievements, given his provenance and stature, are extraordinary, but he becomes comic or a monster when he forgets that it is nature, not he, that usually calls the tune.

Mr. Etzioni calls this disagreement—merely a disagreement about the place of man in nature—a “quibble.” Well, everyone to his own sense of what is a big issue. In my essay I distinguished between Mrs. Friedan’s approach and his, but I now see that I may have overstated the difference.

Theodosius Dobzhansky’s letter, it seems to me, expresses an attitude toward nature and man generally similar to my own, which I find fortifying. More important, it carries the discussion forward beyond anything I said. In stimulating his letter, my article has already justified its existence.