'Think Nice Thoughts About Eugenics,' and Good News

I tend to take the principles of eugenics personally, since I'm 'unfit' from some points of view. (February 3, 2009) An Italian book about eugenics could be an effort to restore public acceptance of the term, the result of shoddy scholarship, or 'none of the above.'

On happier notes: an American judge has dismissed an attempt to sue the Vatican; and an Olympic medalist showed 'world class' off the field.

1. Eugenics: 'It Can't Happen Here?'
   • Dealing with Unpleasant Realities - or Not
   • Rehabilitating Eugenics?
   • Don't Worry, But Don't Look at Sweden
   • "Lacunae?!"
2. Suing the Holy See: Dismissed
   • America's Hate Affair With the Catholic Church
3. Good News From Spain

Some folks seem to think that science is evil. Others seem equally convinced that religion requires believers to be willfully ignorant.

I don't agree with either view. On the other hand, I can see how the notions might seem plausible.

Some Victorian-era intellectual fashions with "scientific" trappings could be related to a later effort to remove 'unfit' folks from Europe's gene pool. Some painfully religious folks don't seem to like much of anything that's happened since around 1850.

But I don't think a systematic study of God's creation leads inevitably to Dachau and the Tuskegee experiments. And I certainly don't think faith requires ignorance.

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1. Eugenics: 'It Can't Happen Here?'

What Allied troops found when they reached places like Dachau and Auschwitz was unpleasant, to put it mildly.

Photographs, accounts by survivors, and documentation of what 'improving the race' actually involved were a serious public relations problem for supporters of eugenics.

Dealing with Unpleasant Realities - or Not

One approach is to claim that the systematic extermination of Jews, Poles, and other 'inferior' people, never happened. There's simply too much evidence for more than the most dedicated believers to take the claim seriously. It's a perennial favorite, though: and that's almost another topic.

Another, more successful, approach has been to drop the word "eugenics," and present abortion as a matter of 'compassion.' When I was a youth, "quality of life" was supposed to be a good reason for killing the unfit.

I didn't buy it: partly because I wasn't leading a 'quality lifestyle.' I preferred being alive, anyway: and still do.

Rehabilitating Eugenics?

"Eugenics," that good old-fashioned word for ridding the world of 'unfit' people, may become fashionable again. I hope not: but it's possible.

A bioethics expert, Carlo Alberto Defanti, has a good idea. He thinks it's a good idea to learn from history. How he applied that idea, that's another matter. His new book, "Eugenetica: un tabù contemporaneo. Storia di un'idea controversa" ("Eugenics: a contemporary taboo. History of a controversial idea"), doesn't quite tell the whole story about applied eugenics.

Some linguistic oddities in this article indicate that it's a translation into English, and that is another topic.

"Through the darkness"
Lucetta Scaraffia, L'Osservatore Romano, via News.va (August 22, 2012)

"Carlo Alberto Defanti, a neurologist and expert in bioethics, has written a book called Eugenetica: un tabù contemporaneo. Storia di un'idea controversa (Turin, Codice edizioni, 2012, 309 pages, € 23) [Eugenics, a contemporary taboo. History of a controversial idea], with the courageous intention of clarifying a doubt that is spreading in our society and that we often seek unsuccessfully to eliminate: 'whether or not the horrors of the so-called Nazi euthanasia', then those of the Shoah, were a possible off-shoot of eugenics.

"Defanti rightly thinks that to answer this question it is necessary to go back to the 19th century, to the birth of eugenics in Darwin's England and to the rapid dissemination of this new science in the Western countries, even including Nazi Germany. It is not the first time that Defanti tackles an important aspect of bioethical reflection: the need for historical reflection for a better understanding of certain issues, such as euthanasia.

"Reconstructing the history of eugenics is no easy undertaking, despite the many studies on the topic that have been published in recent decades, because it involved a sort of scientific trend which then often became political policy. In turn this spread successfully in the Western countries...."

Defanti's book may or may not be translated into English and sold here in America. I think we can count on his ideas making the rounds on this side of the Atlantic, though. I put a longer excerpt from the article at the end of this post¹ - and recommend reading it on News.va's website.

Don't Worry, But Don't Look at Sweden

Basically, Defanti says that eugenics and what happened in in Germany during during the national socialist administration aren't connected. He also says that nice democracies don't have to worry, because eugenics is okay and what happened in Germany didn't have anything to do with genetic issues.

I'm over-simplifying, of course.

Apparently Defanti has taken a sophisticated approach to the 'Dachau didn't happen' argument. Instead of denying that lots of folks were killed because they weren't sufficiently pure, Defanti simply ignores inconvenient facts:

"...Defanti's bibliography, moreover, has vast lacunae, especially regarding the application of eugenic ideas in the United States and in the Scandinavian democracies. If he had read Colla and Dotti's on eugenic practices in Sweden, for example, he would have seen that social democracy can also exercise an oppressive bio-power over the weak, and especially over lonely and poor women, which is damaging to personal freedom. It is they, in fact, and not the sick, who accounted for more than 80 per cent of the victims of sterilization and eugenic abortion policies...."
(Lucetta Scaraffia, L'Osservatore Romano, via News.va)

"Lacunae?!"

I know what "lacunae" are: thanks to knowing a little Latin; a year studying for a Library Science degree; being Catholic; and loving language. "Lacunae" are more than one lacuna, and "lacuna" means "a blank gap or missing part." (Princeton's WordNet) In other words, there are big holes in Defanti's bibliography.

Too bad: because his basic idea, that it's a good idea to look at the history of an idea, is sensible.

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2. Suing the Holy See: Dismissed

Yes, I know about the 'pedophile priests' What some priests did over the last half-century was a bad thing. Moving on.

America's cultural assumptions about the vast riches of the Vatican may or may not have been part of the motive for this effort to extract money from Rome.

I know that victims of abuse are hurting. I also know that dioceses in America are paying for what a few individuals did - in this case, about five decades back.

It's very regrettable that some folks got hurt. Justice needs to be served. On the other hand, I don't think justice means shaking down whoever is thought to have the most money.

"Federal judge dismisses abuse lawsuit against Vatican"
Kevin J. Jones, CNA/EWTN News (August 21, 2012)

"A federal judge dismissed a sex abuse lawsuit against the Holy See on grounds that the Vatican was not an employer of the accused ex-priest and cannot be held financially liable for the abuse.

"Jeffrey Lena, counsel for the Holy See, told CNA on Aug. 21 that the ruling is 'particularly important.'

"It follows a years-long legal examination of whether the Vatican has sovereign immunity protecting it from such lawsuits.

"On Monday U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman in Portland, Ore. ruled that the laicized Servite priest Andrew Ronan, who allegedly molested the plaintiff as a teenager in 1965 and 1966, did not have an employee-employer relationship with the Vatican...."

Some bishops did shield some abusive priests. That was wrong. The notion that the Catholic Church is dedicated to protecting icky people? It's popular in some circles, but not true. "Laicization" is a technical term for kicking someone out of the priesthood:

"...He [Jeffrey Lena] said that only the Servite order knew of the abuse until it petitioned for the laicization of Fr. Ronan in 1966.

"When the Holy See learned of the abuse, Lena said, 'it dismissed Ronan from the clerical state very quickly, in just five weeks.'..."
(Kevin J. Jones, CNA/EWTN News)

America's Hate Affair With the Catholic Church

I'm an American citizen, and think this country is a good place to live. Our national and regional cultures have room for improvement, though. I think, and hope, that my native country's attitude toward the Catholic Church will continue to mellow.

Practicing Catholicism has never been officially criminalized, but some 'real Americans' probably would have supported a Constitutional amendment prohibiting papists from becoming citizens.

Traditional antipathy toward Catholicism will almost certainly change. Meanwhile, I think it's prudent for Catholics living in America to avoid living down to expectations: which doesn't mean accepting the status quo, and that's yet another topic.


(From Thomas Nast Portfolio, Ohio State University, used w/o permission.)
"The American River Ganges, a cartoon by Thomas Nast showing bishops attacking public schools, with connivance of Boss Tweed. Harper's Weekly, September 30, 1871." (Wikipedia)


(from H.E. Fowler, via Wikipedia, used w/o permission)
"Crowley, Jeremiah J. (1913) 'The Pope: Chief of White Slavers High Priest of Intrigue,' p. 430"


(Pillar of Fire Church, via Wikipedia, used w/o permission)
"From ''Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty'', 1926. Published by the Pillar of Fire Church in Zarephath, NJ...."


(Chick Publications, via FoxNews.com, used w/o permission)

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3. Good News From Spain

"Spanish swimmer dedicates Olympic medals to Virgin Mary"
CNA/EWTN News (August 17, 2012)

"Spanish swimmer Mireia Belmonte offered her two silver medals from the London 2012 Olympic Games to Our Lady of Monserrat in Barcelona.

"The 21-year-old - who won silver in the 800 meter free-style and the 200 meter butterfly - posed for a picture before the image of Our Lady of Monserrat and posted the photo on her Twitter account, which has grown from 7,000 followers to 56,000.

"In an Aug. 4 press conference, Belmonte, the only Spanish swimmer to win two medals in London, said both were of 'equal value' to her.

" 'One cost a little bit more effort than the other because it was a longer race,' she recalled. 'But all of my rivals were very tough and before it starts you don't know what is going to happen because everyone is very strong.'..."

It's good to see an athlete with this attitude. Very good.

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¹ Excerpt from the news:

"Through the darkness"
Lucetta Scaraffia, L'Osservatore Romano, via News.va (August 22, 2012)

"Carlo Alberto Defanti, a neurologist and expert in bioethics, has written a book called Eugenetica: un tabù contemporaneo. Storia di un'idea controversa (Turin, Codice edizioni, 2012, 309 pages, € 23) [Eugenics, a contemporary taboo. History of a controversial idea], with the courageous intention of clarifying a doubt that is spreading in our society and that we often seek unsuccessfully to eliminate: 'whether or not the horrors of the so-called Nazi euthanasia', then those of the Shoah, were a possible off-shoot of eugenics.

"Defanti rightly thinks that to answer this question it is necessary to go back to the 19th century, to the birth of eugenics in Darwin's England and to the rapid dissemination of this new science in the Western countries, even including Nazi Germany. It is not the first time that Defanti tackles an important aspect of bioethical reflection: the need for historical reflection for a better understanding of certain issues, such as euthanasia.

"Reconstructing the history of eugenics is no easy undertaking, despite the many studies on the topic that have been published in recent decades, because it involved a sort of scientific trend which then often became political policy. In turn this spread successfully in the Western countries....

"...Defanti's bibliography, moreover, has vast lacunae, especially regarding the application of eugenic ideas in the United States and in the Scandinavian democracies. If he had read Colla and Dotti's on eugenic practices in Sweden, for example, he would have seen that social democracy can also exercise an oppressive bio-power over the weak, and especially over lonely and poor women, which is damaging to personal freedom. It is they, in fact, and not the sick, who accounted for more than 80 per cent of the victims of sterilization and eugenic abortion policies. And he would have realized that financial reasons (that is, complaints about the cost of care for the sick) constitute the first and most widespread reason for the eugenic practices implemented by democratic governments.

"The author's certainty that we in democratic regimes are not in danger from Nazi-type eugenics is therefore belied by history. Yet, while the conclusion of the book – which would like to dispel the fears that hover around a eugenic use of science today – is far from convincing, Defanti's idea that to judge the present we must review the past and, in particular, come to grips with the ghost of Nazi eugenics, is interesting."