Bioethics and New Health

Author: Cao Wenmei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: The selection of life's seeds There is an advertising slogan that says "Nature is beauty." If this is applied to human reproductive behavior, no one would believe that people born naturally without any eugenic intervention are more beautiful than those who are physically and mentally sound. Although it is said that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," beauty and unattractiveness may be very subjective, but humans ultimately have a more generalized standard of judgment for beauty and life health. To have healthy offspring, medicine has been tirelessly exploring, and society has never taken it lightly.
(1) Eugenics: It Should Not Be Feared
In 1883, British biologist Francis Galton published the book Hereditary Talent and Development, founding eugenics. Subsequently, the eugenics movement emerged. Eugenics saw significant development in the early 20th century, with many countries establishing eugenics organizations and formulating relevant laws and regulations. In 1905, scholars from Germany, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, and other countries formed an international eugenics organization, the "International Society for Racial Hygiene." In 1907, Indiana, USA, enacted the world's first eugenics law, the "Eugenics Law," prohibiting people with physical defects or genetic diseases from marrying or having children. In 1912, an international eugenics conference attended by representatives from over ten countries was held in London, UK, and the International Eugenics Committee was established. By the 1930s, more than 20 states in the U.S. had successively enacted laws and regulations related to eugenics, forcibly sterilizing what were deemed the "unfit social classes." This included not only people with physical defects such as the blind, deaf, and mute but also syphilis patients, tuberculosis patients, and other chronic infectious disease carriers, as well as criminals, drug addicts, beggars, orphans, and the poor. During this period, the main means of achieving eugenic goals were social measures to prevent people with severe genetic diseases from marrying, forced sterilization, and induced abortions.
During World War II, Hitler promoted fascism, exploiting the immature aspects of eugenics, which overemphasized the heredity of human intelligence, to carry out so-called "racial optimization" and implement policies of ethnic extermination. To prevent what were deemed "inferior races" like the Jewish people from polluting the "noble bloodline" of the "Aryan race," the Nazi regime in Germany killed millions of Jews. The term "eugenics" became associated with such brutal realities, inevitably leading people to doubt and fear eugenics, eugenic movements, and eugenic policies. It was only natural for the eugenics movement in the West to decline, and for eugenics to be relegated to the "dustbin of history."
It was not until the 1950s, with the development of human genetics and molecular biology, that people gained a deeper understanding of genetic diseases and recognized that these diseases arise from changes in genetic information (genes) or are caused by certain viruses and carcinogens. Only then did the eugenics movement experience a resurgence. Modern scientific research shows that factors affecting the quality of newborns mainly come from five aspects:
1. Whether parents are healthy, i.e., whether both partners are physically and mentally developed, free from diseases, and without smoking, alcohol, or other harmful habits;
2. Whether sperm and eggs carry adverse genetic factors, and whether there is consanguineous marriage;
3. Whether the embryo and fetus remain in a good environment during development, with adequate nutrition, oxygen, and normal placental blood flow;
4. Whether there is water and air pollution in the mother's larger environment, and whether toxic or harmful substances are encountered in living or working environments;
5. Whether the fetus is full-term, whether the delivery process is smooth, and whether there is any injury, asphyxiation, or infection.
Therefore, in the modern sense, "eugenics" refers to the deliberate adoption of various health protection measures using modern scientific and technological methods to prevent and reduce the birth of children with congenital and genetic disabilities, ensuring the birth of healthy offspring. P7-9