Liberal Eugenics

Johann Hari takes some particularly nasty swipes of Christians in his defense of eugenics policies that many people find morally troubling.

The criticisms that I have even less time for come, predictably, from the Vatican and other centres of organised superstition. Interestingly, Jews, Muslims and followers of Eastern religions are much less hostile to human biotechnology - the problem here is primarily with the Christians. They argue that at the moment of conception, an invisible supernatural agent ('God') implants an invisible substance ('a soul') into a cluster of cells smaller than a speck of dust, and from that moment on the cells are a person with inalienable rights. To perform tests on them is morally equivalent to performing tests on an adult human. Stem-cell research is Mengelian. Discarded embryos have been murdered.

To a materialist who rejects supernatural explanations for the world, this of course seems absurd. We believe humans develop slowly and in stages, and that they have far greater rights once they become self-aware and capable of feeling pain - at around twelve weeks after conception - than when they are insentient blobs. The brilliant science writer Ronald Bailey has picked numerous holes in the Vatican position. Using their logic, if there was a fire in an embryo lab and you had a choice between saving a petri dish of ten near-invisible embryos or Steven Hawking, you would snatch the petri dish and run. And there's a bigger hole. Eight in every ten embryos are flushed out in women's menstrual flows, so why aren't the Catholics trying to prevent this global holocaust of human beings? Why aren't they trying to collect and implant them? The answer is obvious - even they cannot take the Pope's position seriously. If we followed his dictates and refused to develop cures that can treat millions because of these supernatural beliefs, we would actually create the "culture of death" that the Pope crows about.

Ramesh Ponnuru takes him to task in National Review.

Hari does not waste a lot of time insisting that good eugenics isn't really eugenics at all. But I don't think he makes a very good case.

Some of these criticisms are simply based on misconceptions. Some people believe human clones will be carbon-copies of their originals, or " robots" and "automatons". Scaremongers like Francis Fukuyama have even conjured hilarious visions of "armies of cloned Hitlers".

It would be nice to see a citation here. I haven't seen anything by Fukuyama that matches that description.

The criticisms that I have even less time for come, predictably, from the Vatican and other centres of organised superstition. Interestingly, Jews, Muslims and followers of Eastern religions are much less hostile to human biotechnology - the problem here is primarily with the Christians. They argue that at the moment of conception, an invisible supernatural agent ('God') implants an invisible substance ('a soul') into a cluster of cells smaller than a speck of dust, and from that moment on the cells are a person with inalienable rights.

I can't say that I particularly care what Hari does or does not "have time for," being wholly uninterested in his psychology. But for a guy who throws around the word "superstition" Hari, as we will see, does not have a firm grasp on logic or facts. For one: The Vatican does not argue against the intentional destruction of embryos on the basis of any teaching about ensoulment.

To a materialist who rejects supernatural explanations for the world, this of course seems absurd. We believe humans develop slowly and in stages, and that they have far greater rights once they become self-aware and capable of feeling pain - at around twelve weeks after conception - than when they are insentient blobs.

Really? All materialists believe these things? Has Hari founded a church?

The brilliant science writer Ronald Bailey has picked numerous holes in the Vatican position. Using their logic, if there was a fire in an embryo lab and you had a choice between saving a petri dish of ten near-invisible embryos or Steven Hawking, you would snatch the petri dish and run. And there's a bigger hole. Eight in every ten embryos are flushed out in women's menstrual flows, so why aren't the Catholics trying to prevent this global holocaust of human beings? Why aren't they trying to collect and implant them? The answer is obvious - even they cannot take the Pope's position seriously.

These aren't serious arguments. The "Vatican's position" implies neither of Hari's supposed conclusions. First, let's match his hypothetical fire with another one. You can save either a cancer scientist or a pedophile in a burning building—which do you choose? The answer isn't important to the embryo controversy, because it does not establish a right to kill either one of them. Second, the bit about natural embryonic death treats the intentional causing of death with the failure to take some (probably impossible) steps to prevent death. It's like saying that ninety-year-olds can be intentionally killed since they die all the time.

[Liberal eugenics] has nothing to do with the evil of Nazi eugenics, which was imposed by the state and concerned not with producing healthier babies but with deranged race-theories. No, this new brand is voluntarily entered into by parents, and it is motivated by love, not hate.

Hari is wrong again here. Nazi infanticide was not always imposed by the state on parents, especially in the beginning, and compassionate and humanitarian motives were cited in its support.

Those who want to stop these natural, beautiful acts of love should be shunned and shamed.

I think I can handle being shunned by Johann Hari; how about you?

And later finds that Hari makes up some of his own "facts" (he lies).

Johann Hari wrote (see below), "Scaremongers like Francis Fukuyama have even conjured hilarious visions of 'armies of cloned Hitlers'."

Being skeptical, I emailed Fukuyama, who writes back: "No, I never said anything remotely like this. Have no idea where people get this stuff from."