Through the darkness

2012-08-22 L'Osservatore Romano

Carlo Alberto Defanti, a neurologist and expert in bioethics, has written a book called Eugenetica: un tabù contemporaneo. Storia di un'idea controversa (Turin, Codice edizioni, 2012, 309 pages, € 23) [Eugenics, a contemporary taboo. History of a controversial idea], with the courageous intention of clarifying a doubt that is spreading in our society and that we often seek unsuccessfully to eliminate: "whether or not the horrors of the so-called Nazi euthanasia", then those of the Shoah, were a possible off-shoot of eugenics".

Defanti rightly thinks that to answer this question it is necessary to go back to the 19th century, to the birth of eugenics in Darwin's England and to the rapid dissemination of this new science in the Western countries, even including Nazi Germany. It is not the first time that Defanti tackles an important aspect of bioethical reflection: the need for historical reflection for a better understanding of certain issues, such as euthanasia.

Reconstructing the history of eugenics is no easy undertaking, despite the many studies on the topic that have been published in recent decades, because it involved a sort of scientific trend which then often became political policy. In turn this spread successfully in the Western countries, creating a class of experts, usually also skilled popularizers, who for the first time involved public opinion in their proposals to improve the human race. They were acclaimed but later, in the aftermath of the Second World War, that is, when eugenics had become a synonym for Nazism, were hastily concealed; hence too many protagonists, some of whom have been forgotten. Instead, this is not how it was and Defanti is right about this. However, in reconstructing the eugenicists' reflections from abundant sources, he wishes to separate eugenics from the use the Nazis made of it and thereby rescue it, not considering eugenicists themselves so negatively, at least in relation to the scientific research of the time.

Defanti's bibliography, moreover, has vast lacunae, especially regarding the application of eugenic ideas in the United States and in the Scandinavian democracies. If he had read Colla and Dotti's on eugenic practices in Sweden, for example, he would have seen that social democracy can also exercise an oppressive bio-power over the weak, and especially over lonely and poor women, which is damaging to personal freedom. It is they, in fact, and not the sick, who accounted for more than 80 per cent of the victims of sterilization and eugenic abortion policies. And he would have realized that financial reasons (that is, complaints about the cost of care for the sick) constitute the first and most widespread reason for the eugenic practices implemented by democratic governments.

The author's certainty that we in democratic regimes are not in danger from Nazi-type eugenics is therefore belied by history. Yet, while the conclusion of the book - which would like to dispel the fears that hover around a eugenic use of science today - is far from convincing, Defanti's idea that to judge the present we must review the past and, in particular, come to grips with the ghost of Nazi eugenics, is interesting

Lucetta Scaraffia

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