Eugenics is unethically abused

The argument

The introduction of human eugenics in the United States led to negative consequences. Involuntary sterilization, discrimination, and widespread support of euthanizing children became commonplace during the eugenics movement in the United States. The point being made is not that the movement had unfortunate excesses but that these were what it amounted to in practice: once a programme is organised around improving a population's hereditary stock, the people judged to be lowering it become the objects of policy, and the measures taken against them follow from the premise rather than departing from it. Even after sterilization support died down in the 1970s, women were still involuntarily sterilized because it was never outlawed. This is the part of the history that bears on the present. The movement lost its respectability without losing its legal footing, so the practices continued after the ideas that justified them had been abandoned. The lack of regulations following the eugenics movement raises the ever-present fear of eugenic practices being abused again, since nothing was put in place to prevent a recurrence beyond a change in fashion. Additionally, the way that eugenics was abused in Nazi Germany raises concerns. After World War II, the Nuremberg court revealed men that were involved in killing disabled people. One argument made in the court was that they were only supporting the eugenic ideals that stemmed from America. Although this probably was not the intention of America, it became an unintentional influence that was abused — which is precisely the danger. A eugenic programme adopted for reasons its supporters consider humane supplies a rationale that others can take up for purposes its originators never sanctioned, and the originators have no way to withhold it. Therefore, on this argument, eugenic practices are unethical and will only ever be abused.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Since the eugenics movement, more guidelines have been instituted to ensure that the procedures involved in eugenics are ethical. Despite the dark past of the Holocaust, eugenics has broken away from those practices. Modern eugenics is focused on changing the genes of a person, not eliminating others that do not have a specific trait as Nazi Germany did during the Holocaust.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The historical record is accurate and damning, but the argument moves from what a movement did to what a practice must do. "Only ever" is a claim about every future case, and a list of past abuses cannot establish it. [Rejecting P2] That involuntary sterilisation was never outlawed supports a case for regulation — which is what the counter-argument proposes — rather than showing the practice to be wrong in itself as opposed to dangerously ungoverned. [Rejecting P3] The Nuremberg point is the weakest link. That defendants invoked American eugenics was a plea offered in mitigation by men on trial, and citing an influence is not the same as demonstrating one; the argument half concedes this in allowing that it "probably was not the intention of America". The counter-argument also raises a distinction never addressed: whether contemporary genetic medicine is the same practice under a new name or a different one sharing a label.