This is a guest post by Aris Tay, PhD Candidate, Bruce Wang and Diana Laird Labs, Developmental and Stem Cell Biology (DSCB), UCSF

Watching “Belly of the Beast: survivors of forced sterilizations in California’s prisons fight for justice” from an intersectional lens reminded me of social Darwinism. The theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest permeates biology and ecology. Faster lions are better at catching prey and thus are more likely to survive, so of course lions as a whole would prefer to select for speed and athletic prowess. However, does this apply to human society? It is theorized that humans implicitly select for attractiveness when choosing a partner and as a result the human race has supposedly gotten more attractive over the centuries. But with the industrial revolution, betterment of healthcare, and resultant increase in lifespan and quality of life, several “less fit” traits have been allowed to remain in the gene pool. There are several diseases, with genetic causes or predispositions, that are typically fatal without treatments. If these people died of such a disease, then the genetic mutation would not be passed on and eventually dwindle out from the gene pool. However, we are now able to treat such a disease and thus the mutation stays. 

From a purely logical, theoretical, and utilitarian standpoint, human society would probably be more “fit” if the people carrying these mutations were not treated and died. And because Darwinism and social Darwinism is such an accepted and prevalent theory in the medical community, parents undergoing in vitro fertilization are recommended to choose the embryo without any genetic mutation or harmful predispositions. Many disabilities, such as blindness, deafness, autism, and achondroplasia, are symptoms of or outright caused by genetics and are theoretically preventable during in vitro fertilization. However, many people in the disabled community take pride in their disability and the culture that has been created around it, not entirely unlike black American culture. If a medical professional did not discuss with the patients and chose to implant the undiseased embryo as opposed to one with a genetic mutation that could result in deafness, would this be equivalently morally reprehensible as the forced sterilization of incarcerated black women? Would this take society a step closer to eugenics?