Eugenics: A very dark history

This was the first book I read, very early in 2023, as part of my self-imposed, year-long challenge that I explained in an earlier blog. The page numbers I give below relate to the hardback version.

As a psychologist who spent a lot of his career studying individual differences, I naturally have taken an interest in most offshoots of this broad field; including how, in some hands, interest in individual differences segued, via studying the inheritance of those differences, into a set of socio-political ideas which Francis Galton called "eugenics" (see Rutherford's footnote, p.40, which quotes the passage where Galton's first used the term, in 1883). 

Even if I hadn't had a special interest in this topic, then Rutherford's book would have been an enjoyable, informative and thought-provoking read. He writes with a fluid style that many scientists struggle to attain. He also tries to emulate J.B.S Haldane's use of the witty (and cutting) footnote, and he sometimes pulls it off (see p. 244). It is a serious book about a very serious topic, but one still gets hints of the personality and style that permeate Rutherford's science podcasts.

Part 1 is about the history of eugenics. Rutherford seems to have read widely about the history of ideas and uses his considerable knowledge and skill to draw together historical materials from a variety of domains to cover the long arc of eugenic thinking, dating back long before the term "eugenics" had ever been coined. (In an ironic twist that didn't pass him by -- see the footnote on p. 114 -- Rutherford notes the risks which may arise when scientists play at beng historians.)

Over nearly a century and a half since the field of eugenics was named, Rutherford notes (p. 9) that advocating eugenics to improve society was generally considered "desirable" for the first half of that period and "poisonous" thereafter. The turning point in public opinion followed eugenics' ultimate expression in Nazi Germany: first in a broad programme which sought to achieve Rassenhygiene ("racial hygiene"), thereafter leading incrementally and inexorably to the deathcamps of the Final Solution. The section of Rutherford's book called The Road to the Holocaust and a short section on The Aftermath (collectively pp. 114-135) carefully detail this dark period of 20th century politics and its dependency on the strength of the German eugenics movement.

Despite the widespread early acceptability of eugenics, I have always found it fascinating that some of the brightest minds of their day, such as Galton, appear not to have questioned the possible extreme downsides and dangers of their proposals, let alone debated the broader morality of the ideas in the first place. I sense Rutherford feels the same way. He illustrates the "cultural ubiquity" of eugenics by listing (pp. 11-13) a diverse array of the major figures of the 20th century who embraced its toxic ideas. 

Some of the greatest figures in statistics following Galton (such as Pearson and Fisher) were also enthusiastic eugenicists. Pearson was the first director of the Galton Eugenics lab at UCL and he was succeeded by Fisher. Fisher had formed the Eugenics Society when a student at Cambridge and later served on the board of the Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilisation. While Rutherford rightly summarises the importance of their statistical legacies he lays bare how racist their thinking was. He quotes (p. 99) the openly anti-semitic statements which Pearson wrote in 1925, decrying Jewish immigrants as "parasitic". Rutherford illustrates a dualism between the underlying science and its political application via a discussion  (p. 101-103) of Fisher's 1930 book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Rutherford argues strongly that it is a book of two halves. He notes that the first half is a scientific tour de force before describing the final 5 chapters -- the ones in which Fisher outlines eugenic ideas -- as "jarringly polemical", "frankly bizarre" and "slightly rambling". Rutherford also comments later that Fisher continued to espouse eugenics after the second world war (p. 141). After reading Rutherford's analysis I had two over-riding thoughts. First, that Fisher's book would probably have inevitably been written this way: Rutherford stresses (p. 104) that Galton, Pearson and Fisher all viewed eugenics as an applied science, thereby emphasizing that (some forms of) science and politics are not, and cannot be, independent. Second, Fisher's book will be another one of those I'll read this year as part of my challenge.

Rutherford shows that, although eugenics was so deeply embedded in US, British and European societies, there were several thinkers who went againt the zeitgeist and strongly opposed its ideology. He discusses G.K.Chesterton, Josiah Wedgwood, and J.B.S.Haldane as prominent examples. The defence of historical eugenicists, which some might offer, is that you should evaluate their thinking through the lens of the cultural milieu at that time, and not by using contemporary values. However, this defence is greatly weakened by the fact that some figures in the past were able to stand outside their cultural milieu and see the serious problems and risks posed by eugenics, even when its ideas were widely accepted. Rutherford is blunt: "it is not enough to simply exonerate people's acts because times were different [p. 142]".

Clearly, Rutherford is an admirer of Haldane but notes (p. 105) that his communist politics led him to be "arguably no less problematic politically" than Fisher, Pearson or Galton. He quotes him liberally and clearly enjoys Haldane's writing. However, my favourite comment about a quote actually concerns something Pearson wrote when he argued that American eugenics research was dangerous because it was so sloppy. Rutherford says (p. 112): "I can't work out if this is an admirable stance or not - to criticise something grotesque because it is not rigorous enough in its grotesqueness." 

Part 2 of the book concerns where we are today: "the troubling present of eugenics" noted in the subtitle of the book. The title for Part 2 also gives a hint as to what Rutherford will conclude: "Same as it ever was". I also like to think this shows, for once in my lifetime, that one of Britian's currently prominent scientific talking heads is a fan of David Byrne et al. Am I right, am I wrong?

There are several interlocking strands to Part 2. First, Rutherford demonstrates that eugenics is alive and kicking today (or until very recently) in the guise of selective population control policies, in countries as different as China, the US, and Canada. Rutherford contrasts these policies with the variety of methods now routinely deployed to test for a range of conditions during pregnancy or even before embryos are implanted as part of assisted reproduction techniques. He states his belief, more than once, that these methods do not equate to eugenics but acknowledges that they share a scientific history. 

In the second strand, Rutherford discusses whether the explosion of knowledge about genetics in recent decades has encouraged a re-emergence of eugenic thinking and relatedly whether this recent knowledge could add powerful tools to a neo-eugenicist's armoury. This part of the book is right in Rutherford's wheelhouse as he is a geneticist by training. To flesh out his arguments he starts with a helpful primer on the modern history of genetics (pp. 161-179). 

One of the main outcomes of genetics research is that that we are now able to identify the parts of our DNA that play a significant role in traits and diseases; however, complex traits such as intelligence, personality and mental illness almost always involve a large number of genetic loci, with each individual locus contributing very small effects to the trait concerned. Moreover, the mechanisms by which these genes work is extraordinarily complex and, as yet, poorly understood. 

The second outcome is that we have invented a variety of methods for changing DNA. Rutherford's book starts with a description of the 2018 work by Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, in which he had illegally (and unsuccessfully) experimented on baby twin girls' DNA using the CRISPR gene editing system, in order to try to inoculate them against HIV infection. Rutherford fleshes out the details on pages 190-197. Cases like this one, Rutherford believes, are contributing to a re-emergence of pro-eugenic thinking. Rutherford calls out the recent explosion of such writing by provocateurs, pseudo-scientists, and political bloggers, giving examples (pp. 198-211) of how this has propagated misunderstandings of the underpinning science. This is all reminiscent, for Rutherford, of the Galton era when eugenics previously exploded into the mainsteam.

Theoretically, eugenics could now be pursued in a more powerful and informed way. The ethical aspects of doing so are currently being discussed. In the third strand of Part 2 of his book Rutherford sets aside these moral questions temporarily to ask whether what is being discussed is actually possible. There is an assumption that "of course" eugenics would work. By way of illustration, Rutherford (p. 239) cites the now infamous tweet by Richard Dawkins which stated, while explicitly not endorsing the pursuit of eugenics, that if it works for farm animals, pets and flowers, then eugenics will surely work for humans. 

By contrast, Rutherford questions the idea that eugenics would work, even (or especially) when informed by a knowledge of modern genetics. In my view he does so robustly and expertly in the remainder of part 2. Importantly, his counter-argument begins with a quite technical section of the book (pp. 211-225) which he likens to a summary of a basic graduate school course on genetics. Rutherford argues that one needs to understand the "nuts and bolts" of modern genetics to realise how simplistic it is to claim that eugenics will "work", and  returns to his earlier theme of the dangers posed when complex ideas are grasped poorly by ideologues.

The book concludes by arguing that eugenics didn't work in the past and wouldn't work now in most cases. The Holocaust tried to purfiy the Nordic race: this was "folly squared" for Rutherford. His view, which is currently widely held, is that there is no such thing as the Nordic race or racial purity. In addition, the Nazis tried to eliminate many diseases by sterilisation and murder: for example, they sterilised or killed at least 3/4 of all diagnosed German schizophrenics. However, this did not decrease the number of new cases of schizophrenia when this was assessed 3 decades after the war (if anything the incidence was higher than in comparable European countries).

Rutherford ends (p. 250) by stating "I cannot see a way in which genetic modification to improve the stock of people could be achieved without costs that dwarf arguably marginal benefits." On using embryo selection he adds: "I'd be sceptical about its utility for simple traits such as eye colour and cynical about it  for much more complex traits, such as for behaviours, intelligence or to curtail the risk of mental health problems." You'll have to read the book for the detailed arguments supporting these conclusions.

As might be obvious, I am generally in close agreement with Rutherford's analysis and arguments throughout the book. However, he did write: "Galton's legacy is great, but he will and should be remembered primarily for his role in ushering eugenics into the twentieth century [p. 41, emphasis added]". Here I found myself in potential disagreement. Galton made important contributions to the development of very many fields (exploration, metereology, forensics, composite photography to name a few) but, for me, his most important work was in the fields of statistics and psychometrics. Hundreds of thousands of researchers, across almost every domain of science, have used the statistical techniques, such as correlation and regression, which he pioneered. In psychology specifically, he was one of the principal forefathers of psychological measurement, being the first to apply general techniques (such as the questionnaire) that are now deployed on a daily basis by psychologists around the world. Should we remember Galton primarily for his enthusiastic advocacy for the morally abhorrent applications of his statistical contributions? I think the reason why we remember Einstein for his theoretical physics rather than, say, the atom bomb that derived from his equations, is because Einstein warned about the dangers that lay ahead with the potential applications of his ideas. Galton, by contrast, embraced eugenics, and his statistical work was aimed directly at achieving an understanding of the mechanisms that might be brought into the service of the social application of eugenics. 

As Rutherford relates (pp. 136-138), University College London has removed the names of Galton and other eugenicists, such as Pearson, from their University buildings, professorships and departments. This seems completely appropriate to Rutherford (p.139), and to me: we should not commemorate these thinkers, precisely because they enthusiastically advocated applying their research in ways which most people now deplore. But can it be right to simultaneously say that these ideas for applying their science should be the primary ways in which we remember them? I prefer to be 100% clear about why their reputations are so tarnished, and I offer neither exoneration nor try to make revisions to the history. However, I am willing to stress their positive contributions to the foundations of science. I am unsure if Rutherford feels the same way. Maybe mine is a naive approach.

In consequence, after reading this book, it made me want to go back and read more details about Galton's statistical contributions. Statistics Professor Steven Stigler always writes with great authority on the history of statistics, so it wasn't long before I alighted on one of his seminal papers about Galton's contribution to statistical thinking. Stigler (2010) argues that Galton's papers in 1877, and even more so his work in 1885/6, ushered in the era of "statistical enlightenment". That is high praise, and the paper is well worth reading. For those who can't access Stigler's paper, I will attempt a brief description of the insights Galton had in the 1870s and 1880s, but it will have to wait for a later blog.

Reading Rutherford's book was a pleasure in itself but it also enabled me (under the rules of the challenge described here) to embark of the first step of the fishing arm of my 2023 challenge. I'll describe that in a later blog entry, too.

References

Fisher, R.A. (1999). The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Edited with a foreword and notes by J. H. Bennett (A complete variorum ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. [This is a significant update on the original 1930 text including additional previously unpublished material.]

Rutherford, A. (2023). Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics. Orion Publishing Group, Limited. 

Stigler, S. M. (2010). Darwin, Galton and the statistical enlightenment. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, 173(3), 469–482.