Christianity and the New Eugenics is a deep philosophical probe, not least about how we value the life of our neighbour and that of (future) children. Its author ably pinpoints the horns of the dilemma upon which society finds itself: all people are equal, but some people are more equal than others.

Evangelical Christian Dr Calum MacKellar is Director of Research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics and the author of Christianity and the New Eugenics.¹ Among other things, he is a Fellow with The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity, and a Visiting Professor in bioethics at St Mary’s University in London.

The book’s references at the bottom of each page are helpful, and a glossary is included in-between the further reading section and the indices. Its subtitle, “Should we choose to have only healthy or enhanced children?”, implies there is an evaluation, a moral choice, a preference at stake (p. 88). This seemingly simple question is answered throughout the book, coming from many different angles. The book consists of five chapters. The following review uses the same structure.

Introduction

‘Eugenics’ is a combination of two Greek words: eu (good) and genos (birth). It raises the question, ‘good birth according to whom?’ A historic slogan for eugenics was elimination of ‘life unworthy of life’, excluding people judged to be inferior from contributing to the human gene pool (‘negative eugenics’). As currently understood, new (‘positive’) eugenics is “the selection of desired heritable characteristics in order to improve future generations, typically in reference to humans”.² The resulting ‘designer babies’ idea is a topic explored in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian book Brave New World, which is set in the 26^th century. We have presently already entered the era of tinkering with our progeny.³ MacKellar quotes the American scientist Lee Silver regarding the risk of the new eugenics:

“It is individuals and couples who want to reproduce themselves in their own images” (p. 10).⁴

Is humanity poised to fall into error by not learning from the past?

History

Discussing past eugenics, unsurprisingly the author mentions the Nazi regime.⁵ However, the Germans were not the frontrunners. “Eugenic ideology seems to have flourished in the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century”, according to MacKellar (p. 20). Earlier, it can be traced to Britain, and particularly the late nineteenth-century writings of biologist Francis Galton (figure 1)—a cousin of Charles Darwin—who coined the term ‘eugenics’. Its proponents included prominent scientists, some of whom supported it with religious fervour.

Francis Crick (1916–2004), co-discoverer of the helical structure of DNA, was in favour of bribing people who were “poorly endowed genetically” to be sterilized.⁶ Sir Julian Huxley, president of the British Eugenics Society from 1959 to 1962, wrote:

“Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the future [emphasis added]” (pp. 18–19).⁷

Robert Edwards, 2010 Nobel Prize winner, said:

“Soon it will be a sin for parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children” (p. 19).⁸

Edwards developed in vitro fertilization (IVF) and linked his work with eugenics. He stated:

“I wanted to find out exactly who was in charge, whether it was God himself or whether it was scientists in the laboratory.” He concluded, “It was us” (pp. 19–20).⁹

MacKellar makes no bones about the fact that there is a worldview connection between abortion and eugenics:

“…decriminalization of abortion with the UK Abortion Act 1967 may have been motivated by a willingness to eradicate the disabled and unwanted based on eugenic ideology” (p. 20).

Another Nobel Prize winner, James Watson, recognized this too, but did not have any qualms about ‘playing God’ through abortion:

“…we will increasingly have the power, through prenatal diagnosis to spot the good throws and to consider discarding through abortion the bad ones” (p. 4).¹⁰

Therapy is used to treat a person with some disorder; eugenic selection is to either prevent (genetically) or destroy (by means of abortion) a person with a disorder.

Abortion is sometimes ‘justified’ by people who supposedly should know better. Ordained as an Episcopal Christian priest, Joseph Fletcher, founder of ‘situational ethics’, who later in life identified as atheist, was an American bioethicist. He argued, in 1968:

“People…have no reason to feel guilty about putting a Down’s syndrome baby away, whether it’s ‘put away’ in the sense of hidden in a sanitarium or in a more responsible lethal sense. It is sad; yes. Dreadful. But it carries no guilt. True guilt arises only from an offense against a person, and a Down’s is not a person” (p. 196).¹¹

MacKellar warns his readers not to be misled now that eugenics is resurfacing under the euphemism ‘therapeutic genetic selection’ (p. 185). Therapy is used to treat a person with some disorder; eugenic selection is to either prevent (genetically) or destroy (by means of abortion) a person with a disorder.

The Christian Perspective

Calum MacKellar devotes half of the book to a “Christian enquiry into the new eugenics”. He takes a positive approach by discussing the image of God, love and unconditional acceptance of children, and equality of all.

Little is said about the materialism so entrenched in the evolutionary worldview. He hints at it when he says that “all human life (including all adult life) can just be reduced to biochemical molecules” and equates this with “a purely scientific perspective” (p. 102). With that, MacKellar probably means naturalistic science, as later he says that “by suggesting a purely naturalistic explanation of humanity there is a danger that it may be reduced to biological science” (p. 193).

… no matter how (un) healthy, suffering or flourishing, short- or long-lived, a child is always loved unconditionally by God, so parents should do likewise.

The author clearly delineates that the image of God is not related to “functional aspects, … [as] it would mean that every human being would reflect the image of God to a different degree” (p. 43). Only Jesus “perfectly reflects the love coming from the Father” (p. 39) and this reflection has nothing to do with ‘ableism’, but the fact that Jesus is without sin. Ableism “includes a number of beliefs, processes, presumptions, and practices that project the normal human standard while devaluing those who do not fulfil these [physical, mental, etc.] characteristics” (p. 94). The key point that MacKellar gets across throughout the book is that all “humans do not simply bear the image of God: they are the image of God [emphases in original]” (p. 44). He explains that no matter how (un) healthy, suffering or flourishing, short- or long-lived, a child is always loved unconditionally by God, so parents should do likewise. Most parents do so once their child is born, but MacKellar focuses on the decisions made prior to birth, and even before conception. He powerfully states:

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