Eugenics, Euphenics and Euthenics

The chapter closes with three related but distinct ways genetics has been proposed to improve the human condition. Eugenics — a term coined by Francis Galton in 1885, meaning 'well born' — is the application of the laws of genetics to the improvement of the human race, on the reasoning that increasing the proportion of individuals with outstanding heritable traits (and decreasing the proportion with defective or abnormal ones) would improve future generations. The chapter splits eugenics into two methods. Positive (constructive) eugenics tries to increase the representation of desirable germplasm in the population, through measures such as encouraging early marriage among individuals with desirable traits, establishing sperm and egg banks to preserve valuable germplasm, public education in genetics and eugenics, improving environmental conditions, and promoting genetic research. Negative (restrictive) eugenics instead tries to eliminate defective germplasm from the population, through measures such as sexual separation of individuals with serious defects, their sterilization, control of immigration, and regulation of who may marry — measures that, it is worth noting, raise serious ethical and human-rights concerns and have a documented history of misuse, which is why eugenics as a policy programme is now widely regarded as discredited even though the underlying genetic science it drew on remains valid.

Euphenics, a term coined by Joshua Lederberg in 1960 (literally 'normal appearing'), is a narrower and less controversial idea: the symptomatic or medical treatment of an individual's existing genetic disease, sometimes called medical engineering. It focuses specifically on managing inherited human diseases, especially inborn errors of metabolism — phenylketonuria (PKU), treated by dietary restriction of phenylalanine, is the chapter's example. …