A breaking news story by the London Student in early January exposed a “secret” eugenics conference held annually at University College London (UCL) since 2014.¹ The article clearly expressed indignation over the idea that some people still advocate for state-manipulated human reproductive practices. But similar outrage over the same disregard for human life sanctioned by the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision 45 years earlier on January 22 was strikingly absent from the report.
 
Eugenics is the quest to improve humanity’s genetic composition. Eugenicists have advocated for various practices, such as selectively breeding “superior” people and eliminating “genetic defectives” by sterilizing, aborting, or euthanizing “inferiors.” These medical applications were meant to somehow mimic nature’s “selective” death and loss of reproduction—as if to ensure only the strongest survived among humans today in the absence of nature’s struggle for survival.²
 
As a way to hide the group’s agenda, the annual eugenics conference at UCL was again shrewdly billed as the “London Conference on Intelligence.” The report identified that a past central figure at the conference in 2015 and 2016 was the President of the Ulster Institute for Social Research, Richard Lynn. Consistent with the spirit of past eugenicists efforts, the report claimed that Lynn is a “white nationalist…who has called for the ‘phasing out’ of the ‘populations of incompetent cultures.’”
 
The London Student finds it fashionable to condemn the racist tenets of eugenics. But it fails to report the documented history³ that eugenics philosophy is the extension of Darwinian evolutionary thinking into societal practices. They neglect reporting that it continues today as an effort to promote coerced abortions in the climate of legalized abortion.

Darwinism is predicated on death eliminating “unfit” members from populations of creatures struggling to survive.

Darwinism is predicated on death eliminating “unfit” members from populations of creatures struggling to survive. A leading proponent of eugenics, during its heyday in 1927, affirmed that Darwinian selection is the root of all eugenics practices. He said,

In my own mind and in a growing number of other minds…unless civilisation can find a method of doing for itself what Natural Selection did for man during his ascent—insuring that he shall breed only from his best. The study of how it is possible forms the subject matter of what we now term the Science of Eugenics. We have to replace the ruthless action of Natural Selection by reasoned conduct in civilised man.”¹

In the United States, that selection-based “reasoned conduct” resulted in 31 states passing barbaric eugenics laws where over 70,000 citizens were forcibly sterilized.⁵
 
State-sponsored sterilization in the U. S. ended with the Supreme Court decision Relf v. Weinberger (1977).⁶ This case followed the actions in 1973 of officials from the Federal Community Action Program (an anti-poverty program for minorities) in Alabama which took the Relf girls, Katie (16), Mary Alice (14), and Minnie (12), to a doctor who inserted an IUD in Katie and sterilized Minnie and Mary Alice.⁷

ICR has previously identified the historical link between eugenics and abortion where eugenics organizations transitioned into abortion-rights groups following the public outcry over forced sterilizations.⁸ In addition, state coercion still continues through some state-funded genetic screening programs for pregnant citizens of lower incomes. Research revealed that “directiveness” in counseling, based on pessimistically biased information about persons with genetic disabilities, influences parental decisions after prenatal diagnosis. Medically speaking, consent of patients is only valid when based on accurate, objective information from impartial medical professionals and not misinformation that stigmatizes certain disabilities.
 
UCL suspended its eugenics conference, but the destructive ideas live on. Richard Dawkins and others still visualize humans somehow augmenting evolution’s supposed powers to craft humanity.⁹ Evolutionary thinking pervades science, medicine, education, politics, and entertainment. A subtle eugenic-based mentality can creep in anywhere people think that natural selection, though fueled by death, preserves the viability of the whole population. They think it eliminates genetic defects by removing those members with harmful or lethal characteristics.

Creationist thinking encourages a celebration of life, beginning with the unborn.

But creationist thinking encourages a celebration of life, beginning with the unborn, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works” (Psalm 139:13-14).

References

1. Van Der Merwe, B. Exposed: London’s eugenics conference and its neo-Nazi links. London Student. Posted on londonstudent.coop January 10, 2018, accessed January 18, 2018.
2. Weikart, R. 2004. From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
3. See: Guliuzza, R. 2015. Major Evolutionary Blunders: The Eugenics Disaster. Acts & Facts. 44 (11): 10-12.
4. Pearson, K. 1927. The Right of the Unborn Child, Eugenics Laboratory lecture Series. No, XIV. London: Cambridge University press, 12.
5. Wieland, C. 1997. The Lies of Lynchburg. Creation. 19 (4): 22-23.
6. See: Relf v. Weinberger, 565 F.2d 722 (1977).
7. Singleton, M. M. 2014. The ‘Science’ of Eugenics: America’s Moral Detour. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. 19 (4): 122-125.
8. Guliuzza, R. 2016. Major Evolutionary Blunders: Survival of the Fittest, Eugenics, and Abortion. Acts & Facts. 45 (1): 12-14.
9. Comfort, N. The Eugenics Impulse. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Posted on chronicle.com November 12, 2012, accessed January 18, 2018.

Stage image: University College London. Used in accordance with federal copyright (fair use doctrine) law. Usage by ICR does not imply endorsement of copyright holder.

*Randy Guliuzza is ICR’s National Representative. He earned his M.D. from the University of Minnesota, his Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and served in the U.S. Air Force as 28th Bomb Wing Flight Surgeon and Chief of Aerospace Medicine. Dr. Guliuzza is also a registered Professional Engineer.