Introduction

Can genetics be confused with eugenics? This is one of the questions raised by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in their report on the ethical issues of genetic screening, which suggests that the ‘potential for eugenic misuse of genetic testing will clearly increase’ (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 1993). In the report, eugenics is defined as the selective breeding of some members of the population and the elimination of undesirable individuals, which found its worst expression in the racial hygiene policies of Nazi Germany. Britain, however, has a long history of a eugenic movement involving many leading members of society, including members of the medical establishment, a movement that continued through the 1950s and 1960s. This chapter investigates the British eugenic movement as one way to help address the difficult questions emerging today from the ‘new genetics’.

We examine the origins of eugenics in the early twentieth century in the work of Francis Galton, who was a cousin of Charles Darwin. The middle-class concern with social problems of the 1920s and 1930s, unemployment, pauperism, alcoholism and the decline of the nation, found expression in eugenic policies on population control. Scientists, too, participated actively in debates on the hereditary aspects of social problems.