Eugenics Revival Watch: What’s Richard Dawkins’s Position on Eugenics?

He wants an open discussion concerning the subject. Below is the full text of what he wrote as a contribution to the book, What is Your Dangerous Idea? (Simon & Schuster 2006). Richard Dawkins’s statement also appeared in the The Herald of Scotland in November of 2006: 

In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous – though of course they would not have used that phrase. Today, I suspect that the idea is too dangerous for comfortable discussion, and my conjecture is that Adolf Hitler is responsible for the change.

Nobody wants to be caught agreeing with that monster, even in a single particular. The spectre of Hitler has led some scientists to stray from “ought” to “is” and deny that breeding for human qualities is even possible. But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as “these are not one-dimensional abilities” apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice.

I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler’s death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn’t the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?

Rhetorically, this is a carefully—and even beautifully—crafted example of someone attempting to get an uncomfortable subject onto the conversational table. Like a good chess player, Dawkins anticipates his opponents’ moves, and quickly dispatches two of them:

1. the Hitler objection; and
2. the pragmatic objection.

He then makes a strong argument for eugenics by way of analogy:

[W]e might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them.

Notice how Dawkins makes use of the words “force” and “train” in the above sentences. They function as morally equivalent to breeding.

But, after the initial dazzle of Dawkins’s argument wears off, isn’t it quite obvious that neither force nor training—at least as these words are used in these contexts—are really comparable to the kind of breeding that Dawkins contemplates? A child who puts up sufficient resistance to her music lessons will not likely be tied by her parents to the piano stool. The mother and father will relent. Likewise, absent an existential choice, the athlete is not compelled by her coach to train for the Olympics.

That is, of course, if she lives in a free country.

And that’s the problem. Neither the word force (as applied to a child) nor training (as applied to an athlete) really represent the complete absence of choice and influence over one’s identity and life that institutional and systematic breeding entails. No one chooses their parents—it is a logical impossibility—but we are reaching a point in history where parents (or the State) may choose, and very specifically, the traits possessed by children.

In other words, a steering wheel left to God—the genetic wheel of fortune—will be taken over by humans.

And notice what this implies. It means that the traits chosen will be instilled toward a predetermined goal—a track upon which a person’s life will be designed to run. One will not find oneself, and one’s direction, in the way that humans do now. Instead, one will be told what strengths one has received from breeding, and where one ought to proceed. A person, for example, bred to elite athletic abilities will, presumably, not be advised to take a desk job, and might well be compelled by the State not to waste one’s talents in that way.

The future, in other words, may be less free for individuals and hold that at least some of us will be bred as horses on which others will ride. And the horse analogy (which you’ll notice that Dawkins also alludes to above) is exactly the one offered in a 1909 editorial comment by the editors of Scientific American (and recently reprinted at the Scientific American website):

Mendelian principles have no doubt long been followed by professional animal breeders in an empirical way, but only within recent years have enough data been accumulated to show that they apply with equal force to human beings. . . . Prizes have been offered to crack trotters for beating their own record, $10,000 for a fifth of a second, all for the purpose of evolving a precious two-minute horse. Yet we hear of no prizes which are offered for that much worthier object, the physically and intellectually perfect man.

This is Dawkins’s pragmatic argument turned into a positive program: if we can breed horses—and there’s evidently no reason why we can’t breed humans in the same manner—then let’s put capitalism to work on the problem, sweetening the pot toward “the physically and intellectually perfect man.”

In short, let’s make human eugenic breeding a Darwinian competition.

Why, ask the early 20th century editors of Scientific American, shouldn’t we?

Dawkins, a biologist living post-Hitler, avoids the Scientific American editors’ enthusiasm (even as he makes some of their arguments with his characteristic skill). He is careful to assert that, when push comes to shove, he hasn’t even really made up his mind about eugenics. I’m guessing that he’s being disingenuous, but his last paragraph on the subject is non-committal. Here it is again:

I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler’s death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn’t the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?

Notice that Dawkins makes no attempt at proffering some of those “good answers” against proceeding with eugenics. He can think of them, but he chooses not to argue for them. He just says that he probably could end up being persuaded by them (though, tellingly, they have not, as yet, persuaded him).

In other words, Dawkins wants the delicate subject broached. Hitler has been dead a long time now. Maybe, just maybe, if we start the conversation again, the 21st century needn’t play out as the 20th century did. Perhaps we can get eugenic policies right on a second go.

That’s Richard Dawkins’s position.

I wonder what he might say about the following recent video: