Genetic testing, eugenics and risk

Abstract

Many critics regard contemporary human genetic practices as a continuation or resurrection of eugenic programmes of the past. By contrast, others hold that there is a fundamental rupture between old eugenics and modern human genetics. In this paper I argue that neither the continuation hypothesis nor the assumption of a discontinuity are ultimately tenable. While the notion of risk and the focus on individual decisions mark key criteria for distinguishing genetic tests today from the deterministic and collectivistic conceptions of the past, this difference may at the same time be the condition for a universalization of eugenic goals. As, in principle, everyone is affected by genetic risk and potentially 'ill', current eugenic practices no longer focus on 'purification of a collective genetic pool, but on 'government' of individual genetic risks. Instead of eugenic programmes enforced by state institutions, relying primarily on repressive means, we find apparatuses of risk, aiming at the productive enhancement of individual human capital in the name of self-determination and choice.