Is genetic counseling a form of eugenics? To some extent, the answer depends upon how the terms “eugenics” and “genetic counseling” are defined. This paper reviews the eugenic implications of four models of genetic counseling. The complexities of slapping the eugenic label on genetic counseling are illustrated with three cases drawn from clinical practice. However, even though genetic counseling is not always a eugenic activity, genetic counselors work in a medical/ financial setting that has the net eugenic effect of, and profits from, reducing the number of people with genetic disorders.

L. E. J. Brouwer and David Hubert, two titans of twentieth-century mathematics, clashed dramatically in the 1920s. Though they were both Kantian constructivists, their notorious Grundlagenstreit centered on sharp differences about the foundations of mathematics: Brouwer was prepared to revise the content and methods of mathematics (his “Intuitionism” did just that radically), while Hilbert's Program was designed to preserve and constructively secure all of classical mathematics.

Hilbert's interests and polemics at the time led to at least three misconstruals of intuitionism, misconstruals which last to our own time: Current literature often portrays popular views of intuitionism as the product of Brouwer's idiosyncratic subjectivism; modern logicians view intuitionism as simply applying a non-standard formal logic to mathematics; and contemporary philosophers see that logic as based upon a pure assertabilist theory of meaning. These pictures stem from the way Hilbert structured the controversy.

Even though Brouwer's own work and behavior occasionally reinforce these pictures, they are nevertheless inaccurate accounts of his approach to mathematics. However, the framework provided by the Brouwer-Hilbert debate itself does not supply an adequate correction of these inaccuracies. For, even if we eliminate these mistakes within that framework, Brouwer's position would still appear fragmented and internally inconsistent. I propose a Kantian framework — not from Kant's philosophy of mathematics but from his general metaphysics — which does show the coherence and consistency of Brouwer's views. I also suggest that expanding the context of the controversy in this way will illuminate Hilbert's views as well and will even shed light upon Kant's philosophy.

Some have claimed that negative genetic interventions are morally permissible while positive ones are not, but the distinction cannot be used to draw this moral boundary. Underlying the negative/positive distinction is a distinction between treatment and enhancement. The treatment/enhancement distinction at best provides an imperfect guide to which health care services we are obliged to provide and which we are not. It offers only some “warning flags” to help us think about what is permissible or not.

Eugenics is generally regarded as evil; but what was its sin? Racism, class bias, and violation of reproductive freedom, which tainted objectionable eugenic interventions, are not part of the core notion of eugenics. A number of candidates have been suggested as the wrong inherent in eugenics, ranging from statism to the impossibility of consensus on the ideal human being. It is most plausible to view eugenics as sharing moral dilemmas with much of public health, and the critical issues as those of distributive justice.

The claim that x is a form of eugenics is frequently used as if it were a knockdown argument against x. Genetic counseling has tried to distance itself from eugenics by presenting itself as facilitating choice. Its success in this attempt has been challenged. The argument however is not a knockdown one and there is scope for some mediation between autonomy and public health goals in genetics.

What are the aims of genetic services? Do any of these aims deserve to be labeled “eugenics”? Answers to these strenuously debated questions depend not just on the facts about genetic testing and screening but also on what is understood by “eugenics,” a term with multiple and contested meanings. This paper explores the impact of efforts to label genetic services “eugenics” and argues that attempts to protect against the charge have seriously distorted discussion about their purpose(s). Following Ruth Chadwick, I argue that the existence of genetic services presupposes that genetic disease is undesirable and that means should be offered to reduce it. I further argue that the economic cost of such disease is one reason why governments and health care providers deem such services worthwhile. The important question is not whether such cost considerations constitute “eugenics,” but whether they foster practices that are undesirable and, if so, what to do about them. The wielding of the term “eugenics” as a weapon in a war over the expansion of genetic services, conjoined with efforts to dissociate such services from the abortion controversy, has produced a rhetoric about the aims of these services that is increasingly divorced from reality. Candor about these aims is a sine qua non of any useful debate over the legitimacy of the methods used to advance them.

A survey of 2901 genetics professionals in 36 nations suggests that eugenic thought underlies their perceptions of the goals of genetics and that directiveness in counseling after prenatal diagnosis leads to individual decisions based on pessimistically biaed information, especially in developing nations of Asia and Eastern Europe. The “non-directive counseling” found in English-speaking nations is an aberration from the rest of the world. Most geneticists, except in China, rejected government involvement in premarital testing or sterilization, but most also held a pessimistic view of persons with genetic disabilities. Individual, but not state-coerced, eugenics survives in much modern genetic practice.

In most historical accounts, eugenic doctrines and Christian beliefs are assumed to be adversaries. Such a perspective is too narrow, however, for while many prominent eugenicists were indeed religious skeptics, others sought to reconcile eugenics with Christianity. Various American Protestant social reformers tried to synthesize new biological theories with older biblical ideas about the meaning of a good inheritance. Such syntheses played an important role in disseminating eugenic doctrines into America's deeply Protestant heartland.

Little has been written about religion vis à vis eugenics and, even less on Roman Catholicism and eugenics. A 1930 papal encyclical, Casti connubii, is usually held by historians to have been the official condemnatory view of the Catholic Church on eugenics, and the document is further supposed to have induced the only organized opposition to eugenic legislative efforts in several countries (especially France). In fact, the encyclical was not directly about eugenics but a general statement of the Catholic doctrine on marriage.

This article attempts to clarify the issue of a Catholic position on eugenics by re-examining the encyclical itself as well as its contemporaneous reception in Germany and France, where there was a strong Catholic presence. Casti connubii introduced a change in the prescribed hierarchy of the aims of marriage when, for the first time, relations between spouses took precedence over procreation. While condemning the means (abortion, sterilization, etc.), the encyclical did not condemn positive eugenics. In the broader context of the history of eugenics, the reception of the encyclical emphasizes the family as the third entity between the individual and society. Eugenics, as a “religious Utopia” of modernity, developed a hegemonic discourse over the family realm. As such it entered into competition with more traditional religious institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church.

Japanese eugenic discourse and institution building contrast sharply with comparable movements elsewhere. As a social-intellectual phenomenon, Anglo- American eugenics considered the Japanese racially inferior to Western peoples; yet eugenic ideals and policies achieved a remarkable popularity in Japan. Most of mainstream Japanese genetics was derived from orthodox Mendelian roots in Germany and (to a lesser degree) the United States. But French-style Lamarckian notions of the inheritability of acquired characters held surprising popularity among enthusiasts of eugenics. Japanese eugenicists could condemn the actions of foreign eugenicists like Charles Davenport in the United States for their efforts to forbid Japanese immigration in the 1920s, yet appeal to these same eugenicists as a source of legitimacy in Japan.

These paradoxes can partly be explained against a background of relative isolation in a period of profound social change. Few Japanese eugenicists had close personal contact with foreign eugenicists, and most of their knowledge was acquired through reading rather than direct exposure. The eugenic ideal of ethnic purity was attractive to a society long accustomed to monoracial self-imagery. The need to defend national independence in an era of high imperialism seemed to require the most up-to-date policies and ideas. And Japan's own acquisition of an overseas empire seemed to demand a population management philosophy ostensibly based on scientific principles. These and other forces supported the implementation of eugenic policies and prescriptions among the Japanese people in the first half of the twentieth century.

Muslims share with others both the interest in and the concern about genetic engineering. Naturally their reactions and views stem from general Islamic dogma and from Islamic medical ethics, but they are not unaware of Western scientific data. Particularly relevant is the Islamic religious prohibition against “changing what Allah has created.” Muslim muftis try to offer practical solutions for individuals. Islamic law is concerned about maintaining pure lineage. Consanguineous matings are very common, but induced abortions are usually ruled out. Cloning has reawakened among Muslims an old debate over the positive as well as hazardous aspects of genetic engineering.

To describe the attitude of the Jewish tradition toward eugenic ideology and policies, it is necessary to examine classical sources from a contemporary perspective. In the heyday of eugenics, Rabbi Max Reichler (1916) enthusiastically endorsed its ideology, supporting his position with numerous traditional texts. Similar views of traditional teachings on “chosen people” and on the importance of lineage have a certain contemporary following as well. The paper argues, however, that these views involve a one-sided reading of the Jewish tradition and, particularly, the suppression of traditional critiques of lineage and of the notion of a “Jewish race.”

Whereas eugenics aspired to redeem the human species by forcing it to face the realities of its biological nature, Zionism aspired to redeem the Jewish people by forcing it to face the realities of its biological existence. The Zionists claimed that Jews maintained their ancient distinct “racial” identity, and that their regrouping as a nation in their homeland would have profound eugenic consequences, primarily halting the degeneration they fell prey to because of the conditions imposed on them in the past. Some Zionists believed in a Lamarckian driven eugenics that expected the “normalization” of Jewish life styles to change their constitution. Others believed that transforming conditions would shift selective pressures exerted on the Jewish gene pool.

In contrast to “socialist eugenics” as a set of ideas on how to deal with the biological problems of mankind, “proletarian race hygiene” placed its emphasis on the environmental components of human life. This mode of eugenics always assumed a change in living conditions, or social milieu, to be the key to human betterment. Its objective was a gradualist, thoroughgoing improvement of human working and living conditions in order to bring about a life of harmony, solidarity and equality. These ideas can be traced back to phrenomesmerism at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and developed through a stage closely entwined with the Marxist thought of Daniels, Engels, Bebel, etc. (which has scarcely been acknowledged by more modern Marxist literature). This tradition was picked up in the early twentieth century by the Austrian sociologist Goldscheid as well as by the developmental biologist Kammerer. These men extended these ideas and incorporated them into the framework of “proletarian race hygiene,” involving as key concepts what they called “human economy” and “organic technology.”

Recognizing that social Darwinism is an intrinsically varied and composite concept, this essay advocates an approach delineating the various intellectual constituents and sociopolitical contexts. It is argued that German social Darwinism has often had a sophisticated biological content, and that the prevalent notion of the state as a biological organism has drawn on non-Darwinian biological theories. Different social interests and programs, institutional structures, and professional interests have also to be taken into account. Alternative interpretations stressing Nazi vulgarizations of biology have serious historical flaws. The paper considers the position of the historian Richard J. Evans, who has rejected interpretations of social Darwinism as scientific and medical discourse. While Evans stresses social Darwinism as public rhetoric, I suggest that social-Darwinist ideas have provided rationales for welfare policies and have had institutional, professional, and ideological implications. What occurred in crucial sectors of the emergent German “welfare state” was a shift from the legally trained administrators to specialists in such areas as public health and social work, who frequently looked to biology to legitimate policy.