II. Quantity, Quality, Morality
In the Brave New World of my fantasy eugenics and dysgenics were practiced
systematically. In one set of bottles biologically superior ova, fertilized by biologically
superior sperm, were given the best possible prenatal treatment and were finally decanted
as Betas, Alphas and even Alpha Pluses. In another, much more numerous set of bottles,
biologically inferior ova, fertilized by biologically inferior sperm, were subjected to the
Bokanovsky Process (ninety-six identical twins out of a single egg) and treated prenatally
with alcohol and other protein poisons. The creatures finally decanted were almost
subhuman; but they were capable of performing unskilled work and, when properly
conditioned, detensioned by free and frequent access to the opposite sex, constantly
distracted by gratuitous entertainment and reinforced in their good behavior patterns by
daily doses of soma, could be counted on to give no trouble to their superiors.
In this second half of the twentieth century we do nothing systematic about our
breeding; but in our random and unregulated way we are not only over-populating our
planet, we are also, it would seem, making sure that these greater numbers shall be of
biologically poorer quality. In the bad old days children with considerable, or even with
slight, hereditary defects rarely survived. Today, thanks to sanitation, modern
pharmacology and the social conscience, most of the children born with hereditary
defects reach maturity and multiply their kind. Under the conditions now prevailing,
every advance in medicine will tend to be offset by a corresponding advance in the
survival rate of individuals cursed by some genetic insufficiency. In spite of new wonder
drugs and better treatment (indeed, in a certain sense, precisely because of these things),
the physical health of the general population will show no improvement, and may even
deteriorate. And along with a decline of average healthiness there may well go a decline
in average intelligence. Indeed, some competent authorities are convinced that such a
decline has already taken place and is continuing. "Under conditions that are both soft
and unregulated," writes Dr. W. H. Sheldon, "our best stock tends to be outbred by stock
that is inferior to it in every respect. . . . It is the fashion in some academic circles to
assure students that the alarm over differential birthrates is unfounded; that these
problems are merely economic, or merely educational, or merely religious, or merely
cultural or something of the sort. This is Pollyanna optimism. Reproductive delinquency
is biological and basic." And he adds that "nobody knows just how far the average IQ in
this country [the U.S.A.] has declined since 1916, when Terman attempted to standardize
the meaning of IQ 100."
In an underdeveloped and over-populated country, where four-fifths of the people
get less than two thousand calories a day and one-fifth enjoys an adequate diet, can
democratic institutions arise spontaneously? Or if they should be imposed from outside or
from above, can they possibly survive?
And now let us consider the case of the rich, industrialized and democratic
society, in which, owing to the random but effective practice of dysgenics, IQ's and
physical vigor are on the decline. For how long can such a society maintain its traditions
of individual liberty and democratic government? Fifty or a hundred years from now our
children will learn the answer to this question.
Meanwhile we find ourselves confronted by a most disturbing moral problem. We
know that the pursuit of good ends does not justify the employment of bad means. But
what about those situations, now of such frequent occurrence, in which good means have
end results which turn out to be bad?
For example, we go to a tropical island and with the aid of DDT we stamp out
malaria and, in two or three years, save hundreds of thousands of lives. This is obviously
good. But the hundreds of thousands of human beings thus saved, and the millions whom
they beget and bring to birth, cannot be adequately clothed, housed, educated or even fed
out of the island's available resources. Quick death by malaria has been abolished; but life
made miserable by undernourishment and over-crowding is now the rule, and slow death
by outright starvation threatens ever greater numbers.
And what about the congenitally insufficient organisms, whom our medicine and
our social services now preserve so that they may propagate their kind? To help the
unfortunate is obviously good. But the wholesale transmission to our descendants of the
results of unfavorable mutations, and the progressive contamination of the genetic pool
from which the members of our species will have to draw, are no less obviously bad. We
are on the horns of an ethical dilemma, and to find the middle way will require all our
intelligence and all our good will.