Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Biological Utopians: Second Generation
All these schemes—artificial selection, sexual selection, Lamarckian
adaptation—required time. By the 1920s, some scientists were becom-
ing impatient. Spurred by both scientific developments and the
Bolshevik revolution, they began to speculate about the possibility of
speeding up the process of improving the human race. The first off the
mark was Haldane, whose
Daedalus, or Science and the Future
and its
1927 sequel, “The Last Judgment,” inspired many others to imagine
how science might transform nature, including human nature, both for
better, as in J. D. Bernal's
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
, and worse,
as in Bertrand Russell's
Icarus, or the Future of Science
, and Aldous
Huxley's
Brave New World
.
20
Haldane's slim topic ostensibly incorporates excerpts from an
undergraduate student essay on the influence of biology on history
written 150 years hence. Through this device, Haldane disparages the
eugenics movement as crude in its methods, and frustratingly slow, but
predicts that its aims will be achieved in a different way.
21
Mass pro-
duction of individuals with exceptional qualities will occur through
directed mutation and especially ectogenesis (in vitro fertilization), which
will largely replace motherhood as a source of babies. The separation of
sexual love from reproduction will allow for a vastly more thoroughgo-
ing selection. That is fortunate since civilization would otherwise have
gone to the dogs. “The small proportion of men and women who are
selected as ancestors for the next generation are so undoubtedly supe-
rior to the average that the advance in each generation in any single
respect, from the increased output of first-class music to the decreased
conviction for theft, is very startling,” the student writes, and goes on to
add: “Had it not been for ectogenesis there is little doubt that civiliza-
tion would have collapsed within a measurable time owing to the greater
fertility of the less desirable members of the population in almost all
countries.”
22
Many, of course, will find this vision offensive. Thus, the student notes
that in some countries there was strong opposition, “intensified by the
Papal Bull 'Nunquam prius audito,' and the similar fatwa of the Khalif,
both of which appeared in 1960.” But ultimately, our values adapted to
the science (as they always do), and ectogenesis became universal.
23
In
