Columns:: Worth Repeating

since 12/15/98

Columns::February 25, 2002

Worth repeating

David Magnus, professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered UGA’s inaugural Lecture in Bioethics on Jan. 31. He discussed the moral and social consequences of the revolution in genetic and reproductive technology. An excerpt:
“We seem to be heading down a path that we’ve gone down before . . . to a new era of eugenics. . . . Over 60,000 individuals in this country were forcibly sterilized in the name of better breeding. . . . Now all this concern about eugenics is somewhat problematic in today’s context, because it may blind us to the real dangers. We’re so focused on the worries about state-directed eugenics policies--the kind of problem that took place in the past--that we may miss . . . eugenics coming in the back door. Backdoor eugenics: that’s . . . what happens when you allow things to be left open to the marketplace. . . .
“We may be heading toward a future in which the only people who are bald or fat are people who are too poor to take advantage of genetic technology. These differences may exacerbate already-existing social inequalities. And lest you think that this is something that’s far in the future, something that you don’t have to worry about--in a very real sense it’s already here. . . . In India and China, amniocentesis combined with the aborting of unwanted female fetuses have already produced altered sex ratios--55 percent of the children born are male. That means in 20 years 20 percent of the males will not be able to have mates of the opposite sex. . . . Individual decisions--not state-directed--individual decisions have collective consequences that can be very grave for society as a whole.”

--Beth Roberts

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