Report on History, Eugenics and Human Enhancement
History, Eugenics and Human Enhancement, a 1-day conference convened by Andrew Moeller (Faculty of History, Oxford), Jose Maria Andres Porras (UNC), and Alberto Giubilini (Uehiro Oxford Institute), took place on 24th March, at the Tsuzuki Lecture Theatre in St Anne’s College. Co-organised by the Boundaries of Humanity Project (Stanford), TORCH Medical Humanities (Oxford), and the Uehiro Oxford Institute (Oxford), it was a thematically vast and ambitious event, with four panels and a debate. It brought together specialists and scholars from several disparate and allied fields, including history, medicine, medical ethics, law, philosophy and science and technology studies (STS). Organised around the question of how the past can “help us inform ethical debates in the present”, the conference explored both the possibilities and the difficulties embedded in such an endeavour.
The first panel, focussing on human enhancement and the European Middle Ages, included presentations by Jose Maria Andres Porras and Meagan S. Allen (Johns Hopkins). Porras’ presentation focussed on a 14th-century medical treatise which discussed how politicians could ensure that parents could procreate “good and perfect children”, while Allen’s presentation discussed the idea of prolongatio vitae or prolongation of life, an idea popular in the Middle Ages and central to the thought of the Franciscan Roger Bacon.
Focussing on the ways in which the 14th-century text differentiated between “positive eugenics” and “negative eugenics”, Porras’ presentation highlighted how, historically, the text itself had been written in the context of scarce resources. This context of production influenced its larger concerns with questions of overpopulation—of more “useless mouths”—and the need for sustainability. To this effect, the text also explored themes such as the social “value” of a life, differentiating between the kind of lives that needed to be created, sustained and nurtured, while others which had no place/utility and thus needed to be eliminated. This latter category included groups such as the disabled, the old and the infirm, or the morally derelict, who, on the basis of their physiological constitution, could not, as the text argued, be bettered. Significantly, it was argued that the measure of “necessity” could thus be physical and/or moral, and the line between the two was not fixed. In discussing this text, the presentation therefore raised important questions about the abiding and enduring tension between nature and nurture, and highlighted certain ethical questions societies, economies and political systems still grapple with today—what is the measure of a good life? At what point does a life become a “burden”? Who is the arbiter of such categories?
Allen’s presentation, on the other hand, problematised the often-assumed notion that there is an historically continuous human desire for immortality. Her presentation showed, instead, that in the Middle Ages, although there was a notion that human life used to be longer in the past, but had, due to Original Sin, been shortened, immortality itself was not essentially desired. This was not because such a desire was essentially impossible to bring into physical fruition. Rather, it was because of a theological stance which connected the soul to the body, and argued that the modification of one could not take place independently of the other. In other words, even if the limits of the body could be modified, the body was connected to the soul, which had also been compromised by sin. Her presentation also discussed alchemical medicines which were meant to deal with the body “holistically”, improving mental as well as physical health. In discussing the ways in which the limits of life were thus negotiated, the presentation historicised larger questions around the human desire for and the possibilities of extending life and explored the relationship between the physical and spiritual boundaries of humanity.
The second panel included presentations by Andrew Moeller and Marius Turda (Oxford Brookes). While Moeller’s presentation provided a framework for conceptualising the utility of history and the historian in contemporary debates over human enhancement, Turda’s talk made a case for looking at how history is a useful tool to help understand the practice and perseverance of eugenic practices in the present. Both these presentations were more prescriptive than thematic, offering roadmaps on how to negotiate the limitations and possibilities of certain disciplines and concepts.
Moeller’s presentation focussed on the idea of history as the “wisdom of lived experience”. The utility of history was explored through the metaphor of a grandparent to whom one goes to for advice; their advice may not exactly correspond to the exigencies of the now, but it would not be alien either, and might bring forth similarities, overlaps and even perspectives hitherto unconsidered by the person asking from the vantage point of the present. Highlighting the consequent play of difference and continuities evidenced through cross-generational advice, a case was made for the potential use of history in addressing concerns of the present. While acknowledging the complexities of negotiating such an act of comparison and transposition, the presentation also acknowledged the “tension at the heart of historical analysis”, the tension between “continuity and change”. However, this, it was argued, was a generative tension which allowed more than it constrained.
Turda’s presentation, on the other hand, focussed on the need for historicizing eugenic practices by looking at the cultural and political conditions which allowed for these ideas to emerge, develop and be deployed. Doing so, it was argued, was necessary, which would help one notice “lingering fragments” of such practices and thoughts today, and thereby expose them. Focussing on the protean nature of eugenics, it highlighted the ways in which ideas, concepts and practices of difference and discrimination travelled in the past, and continue to travel in the present. Viewing the legacies of eugenic thought in the modern world, the presentation argued for a more palimpsestic reading of the past and the present, one in which the past and the present were not only co-dependant, but also co-constituted, enmeshed and entangled with one another.
This discussion of lingering fragments of eugenic thought led to the third panel, which included presentations by Alex Aylward (Oxford) and Heloise Robinson (Oxford). This panel focussed on whether eugenics was still with us in the present, and if so, in what form and capacity. While Aylward’s presentation problematised the question of whether eugenics, as a “science”, had ended, Robinson’s presentation questioned the neutrality of the state and looked at how eugenic practices of coercion and selection were actuated by certain laws, provisions, and government action in the context of prenatal testing.
Aylward’s presentation showed how a certain combination of institutional apparatuses and political choices and conditions had made possible the categorisation of eugenics as a “science” Shifting the focus away from whether eugenics was a “correct” science from a theoretical perspective, it highlighted the way in which eugenics became a science in the first place, and how, if at all, it came to an “end”. Aylward argued for two models of “ending”: a science ended either by disproval or by disapproval. It was argued that in the case of eugenics, its “end” had been largely influenced by the latter. Rather than the “end” of eugenics being seen as a victory of “correct science”, the waning influence of eugenic thought in the latter half of the 20th century was seen by many of its proponents as the result of a kind of “disapproval”—and not a “disproval”— prompted by certain social and political changes and eventual institutional dismantling. This meant that eugenics “ended” when certain political changes led to such ideas becoming a “disapproved” science. Given these circumstances of its “ending”, the presentation thus also highlighted new ways in which certain eugenic sciences were returning due to political change and institutional repackaging. This return was termed “eugenics reconfigured”. This new, reconfigured form was made possible through newer institutional assemblages and political changes, albeit through new, emergent disciplines such as population science, demography, genetic counselling and mobility studies.
Robinson’s presentation, on the other hand, analysed the ways in which practices such as Preimplantation Genetic Testing (PGT) and abortion laws place themselves within larger debates of reproductive autonomy and coercion. She argued that although it is generally assumed that the state is neutral when it comes to such laws and practices, analysing the ways in which funding choices and decisions took place or the ways in information regarding disability was shared by the state, or the cost-benefit analyses advocated for these decisions, for instance, made it clear that the state was not a neutral figure, but one that could potentially push for the preference of certain kinds of choice, and of certain kinds of life over others. In this way, the presentation argued that eugenic practices of selection and difference continue today, rewriting narratives of inclusion and exclusion. Yet the crucial difference lies in the fact that the modern state (or some action found in the modern state) worked not through coercion but rather through information manipulation, with women on the receiving end.
The fourth panel included presentations by Keith Lemna (Saint Meinrad Seminary) and Carlos Lopez-Beltran (National Autonomous University of Mexico). While Dr. Lopez-Beltran’s presentation focused on the long histories of racial purity, mixing, and inheritance in South America and its continuation in the present, Dr. Lemna focused and contrasted the views of Dietrich von Hildebrand with those of Martin Heidegger in the context of phenomenology and human perfection.
Lopez-Beltran’s presentation discussed how the idea of “inherited stock” mediated race relations as well as the physical, cultural and moral interactions between the European colonisers and the native South American populations during the period of colonial invasion which was followed by the period of slave trade. This interaction gave fillip to notions of blood purity in the Iberian Peninsula, devaluing local bodies and perpetuating the idea of “casta”. Successive waves of invasion and settlement led to the “Hippocratic bodies” of natives being constantly evaluated in terms of perfectionism and degeneration, leading to different categories of mixed-race individuals, each with their own physical, cultural and moral associations. Within this matrix, the mixing of Spanish and Indian blood created the Mestizo, the Spanish and the Mestizo created the Castizo, the Spanish and the Castizo, in turn, led to a “return” to the original, white, Spanish racial self. The presence of African blood, on the other hand, in one’s ancestry, was associated with atavistic notions of animality. Returning to the present, it was argued that these notions morphed into forms of scientific racism and perfected national citizenship perpetuated by the modern neoliberal state, where more “indigenous” traits were pathologized, subject to disappearance and demographic substitution by the preference of whiteness. This preference of the Mestizo over other forms –called “Mestizophilia”—also led to state-backed methods of racial exclusion based on skin-colour. While methods such as ancestry markers and bioinformatic markers were used at a state level, this “pigmentocratic racism”—eugenic in nature— percolated at a more popular and imaginative level in the ways in which certain racial traits –such as particular colours of hair, whiter skin—became more “desired” characteristics preferred during marriage.
Lemna’s presentation, on the other hand, studied the way in which Martin Heidegger’s neglect of the biological dimension of the body, his ignoring of the dignity of the beings in favor of the contentless concept of Being, and his failure to develop a plausible ethical framework for philosophy contributed to his drift towards Nazism and its obsessions with human perfectionism, which were built upon racial and eugenic notions.
These notions were contrasted with the ideas of Jonas and Hildebrand who advocated, instead, for affective intentionality, a need to remember the body even in its biology, and a ethics attentive to the givenness and goodness of particular human beings, where power is understood to be perfected in the realistic embrace of human weakness and vulnerability.
The main ideas of both the presentations and their relationship to one another was succinctly summarised by Michael Wee (Oxford), who noted that while Lemna’s presentation seemed to argue to “forget not the body”, Lopez-Beltran’s presentation argued against the dangers of “wrong ways of remembering the body”.
Finally, the event ended with a debate between Julian Savulescu (National University Singapore /Oxford) and Benjamin Hurlbut (Arizona State University) on the “moral stakes of Germline Genome Editing”, moderated by Alberto Giubilin and Heloise Robinson. In many ways, the debate was also between philosophy and social science, and between ideas and context.
The debate began with each of the participants defining what they understood by “enhancement”. While Savulescu explained it as the process of “making better”, Hurlbut responded by suggesting that “enhancement” was something imbricated in the social. Thus, to Hurlbut, “enhancement” had to be seen as a contextual category.
There were also disagreements over the question of prohibitory frameworks and safety thresholds. In the part of the debate, Savulescu likened the decision to undertake/ refusal to undertake certain (complex biotechnical) as one of “crossing a river”. On this side of the river, he argued, was an arid desert, and on the other side, one could see paradise. To cross, one had to jump in the river; yet, some people would jump and others wouldn’t. The choice of entering the waters depended on factors such as the risk of the current, or even what lurked under the waters themselves. To this, Hurlbut suggested that even the act of “seeing” was contextually, socially and culturally mediated and situated. How were we to know that what one person or a group sees as paradise is not, in fact, a mirage? The troubled history of eugenics was given as an example in this context, since it, too, was fuelled by a vision of betterment but had dangerous and disastrous consequences. Savulescu also framed the quest for betterment as an upshot of the human capacity of curiosity, and argued for a kind of inevitability; in other words, it was argued that if certain frameworks prohibited certain interventions from being undertaken in one scientific context, the multipolarity of the modern world would allow it elsewhere, and it could not, thus, be stopped from taking place someplace else, a somewhere else which perhaps had a different definitions and prohibitory frameworks. Hurlbut pushed against this suggestion by noting that the argument of inevitability should not devalue the value of prohibitory networks themselves, since these frameworks often protect certain inalienable rights and freedoms. He asked, if prohibition against an intervention in one place does not stop it from occurring elsewhere, does that mean we abandon the prohibition itself?
This question of a “good life”, and what constitutes “good science” were major issues in the debate. While Savulescu noted the difficulties of determining a general definition of a “good life” --in the face of moral relativism—he nonetheless suggested the need for “reasonable definitions”, “good science, ethical discourses and risk assessments”. Yet, “goodness” also had its complexities, and Hurlbut suggested that what is considered “good” at a certain point in time must also be exposed to critical reflection, and must be understood as historically and culturally situated.
In many ways, while capturing the difference in approaches between social science and philosophy, the debate also highlighted the tension between questions of scientific possibility and moral/ethical permissibility..
Each panel discussion was followed by short Q & A sessions with the audience. It was heartening to see questions from both experienced scholars in the many allied fields, as well as, more importantly, from students and early career researchers (ECRs) from different disciplines, including history, philosophy, and the natural sciences. These latter set of exchanges, to me, were one of the main successes of the event. By virtue of its generous range, the conference brought to the fore perspectives which allowed early career scholars and students to consider the possibility of exploring newer interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary perspectives. To this effect, the conference, in bringing historical perspectives in conversation with contemporary ethical debates, also cultivated an atmosphere of collaboration between scholars of different disciplines. As a historian of science, medicine and technology, such an endeavour which allowed for the pushing of and against certain disciplinary boundaries was personally quite significant, since our subject is, in many ways, located at the intersection of apparently disconnected fields.
In concluding, William Hurlbut (Stanford) reflected on the range of discussions that took place during the conference, reflecting, also, on the place of religion, philosophy and spirituality in discussions of biotechnology today. He argued that while biotechnical mechanisms of human enhancement aim at prolonging life from a physical and medical perspective, there was also a dire and pressing need to rethink the philosophical imperatives which drive these innovations—the dream of human perfection, the desire for potential immortality, or even the dream of human life without limits. He also urged the audience to consider the place of human vulnerability in the face of these dreams of perfection, a limitation on the physical boundary of life which makes us consider the measure of a life not only by its physical dimensions, but also by the affective. In doing so, the Hurlbut’s reflection—and indeed the proceedings of the event in general— also reminded us of these enduring human boundaries. Boundaries which are all at once old as well as immediate, historical as well as contemporary, ancient as well as abiding—the inevitability of death, the omnipresence of suffering and disease, but also the persistence of hope and love— these boundaries which makes all the lives we live, subjects of such tender dignity.
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