From eugenics to genetic screening

Abstract

When trying to deal with precursors of problems which modern human genetics or medical genetics confront us with, particularly in regard of genetical screening, some preliminary reservations must necessarily be made. Genetic screening as a relatively inexpensive method of testing larger populations quickly and technically simple for certain genetical traits, has just been thirty years old. Attempts at phenotypically registering carriers of definite physiological or pathological traits considered to be hereditary could be mentioned among the precursors of screening. But these methods were complicated and had been carried out with a different intention. It was only in the fifties, that the terms ‘human genetics’ and ‘medical genetics’ and their application in medicine were beginning to be accepted world-wide. The systematical scientific examination of human heredity, however, had started already in the second half of the 19th century. It was combined with reflections on the practical relevance of the new genetical knowledge. The application of genetics on human populations with the aim of preventing a degeneration or even improving the genotype was called eugenics by Galton. Still, the term ‘eugenics’ does not coincide with the modern notion of an applied science. Eugenics, as ‘Eugenics Movement’ in particular, has always been a technocratical movement intent upon solving social problems with scientific, biological means. Its followers saw themselves as prophets of a new, imminent positivistic religion of human betterment. But then again eugenics is part of the history of human genetics and medical genetics. Its scientific exponents were as a rule geneticists or doctors who often made important contributions to the science of human heredity.