Health – Genetic Engineering Pt.2

In the 1930’s in Brush Mountain, Virginia, the county sheriff would raid the hill of families who had been separated from society and deemed “unfit.” The purpose for the raid was to sterilize these “unfit” individuals as was permitted under “The Racial Integrity Act of Virginia.” The law was repealed in 1963, but how did the United States government become involved in such atrocities in the first place?

In 1923, the American Eugenics Society was founded with support from many scientists and the social elite. One of their purposes was to influence legislation in favor of mandatory sterilizations, as they were fearful for the future of the human race. The paramount question is, of course, who gets to play god and decide who is required to undergo such an operation?

Physicians, lawyers, judges, the police, legislators, scientists, and the upper class were all involved. Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld the constitutionality of the Virginia law on mandatory sterilization saying, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Ironically, the weight of evidence is that none of the three generations of women in question were mentally retarded as the Supreme Court Justice thought. (See Oliver Wendell Holmes and Buck vs. Bell, 1927.)

Since mental deficiency was considered to be partially hereditary, it was decided that inmates at state institutions who were pronounced as hopeless cases by at least two physicians, were to be involuntarily sterilized. Of course, sterilizing the insane was simply a way by which to accustom society to the atrocious practice. Once the operations were seen as socially acceptable, what other individuals might be slated for involuntary sterilizations?

The theories of evolution and “survival of the fittest” were tools that influenced those involved in what became known as the U.S. Eugenics Movement. By their standards, the most superior of the human race were the Nordic, or Northern Europeans. Aside from the mentally defective, the physically deformed, the blacks, Jews, Indians, Hispanics, Eastern European Jews, and the poor were also subjected to involuntary sterilizations. In addition to sterilization, regulations were placed on marriages. Through these means, many believed the less desirable of the human race would disappear in one generation.

California became the epicenter of the United States Eugenics Movement. Nearly half of the more than 60,000 persons who were forcibly sterilized were in California. In Cold Springs, Long Island, millions of index cards on ordinary Americans were stockpiled for future use in removing whole bloodlines, or families.

Adolf Hitler made a careful study of the American Eugenics laws and their rationales, finding them to give him the scientific support he needed to develop his idea of a super race. The idea of a superman was already present in the philosophy of Nietzche. This advantage coupled with the theory of Eugenics supported Hitler in his design to improve the genetic stock of Germany. By establishing human breeding centers and eliminating those they deemed inferior, the Nazis sought to build this advanced race. Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest was to be carried out to a greater degree by Hitler’s social program. This was the scientific rationale which led to the murder of six million Jews during World War 11. The experiment to improve the health and well-being of the human race resulted in breaking the sixth and seventh commandments millions of times over.

Hitler followed the same initial steps as the Eugenics movement in the United States. In fact, his sterilization laws in 1933 were patterned after the proposed law by an American eugenicist. This was followed by a series of laws passed to ensure the preservation of the perfect race. In 1935, Nuremburg’s racial laws restricted marriages between Germans and non Aryans. In 1936 all medical students were required to take racial hygiene courses and to study euthanasia laws, and finally in 1942 an attempt was made to exterminate the Jews. Many Jewish scientists had originally supported the Eugenic movement’s ideas never dreaming, one day, that they themselves would be considered amongst the “unfit.” All these facts are documented in the book, The War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, by Edwin Black.

In the same way many people are supporting movements that will subject them either to abject servitude or destruction.

After World War 11 eugenics became unpopular with the whole of the world having witnessed the results of such thinking in Germany. However, the philosophy of Eugenics did not die. It was simply disguised in other names such as “genetic research,” and later “genetic engineering.” In Hitler’s time all that the eugenics movement could do was to breed selectively. The increase of breeding among the desired genetic lines also increased fornication and adultery, and the decrease of breeding by the undesirable lines resulted in forced sterilization and genocide.

But in the post World War 11 world, research proceeded in earnest to find out how man could actually manipulate and control the heredity of plants and animals, thereby, to some degree, controlling the future and destiny of the human race. Such manipulation is expressly addressed in Leviticus 19:19. It has been proclaimed by some Christians that are involved in this work that sin has caused defective genes. They state that if the defective genes were replaced with genes that were not defective, a myriad of ailments might be cured. It is true that sin has created havoc on the human gene pool. Perhaps if all that was being done was to replace a defective gene with a non-defective gene, the world could rest in peace. But, as we will see, this is not all that is being developed. Genetic engineering is conducted according to worldview and philosophy, a view which finds its base in humanism and evolution; a philosophical backdrop which influences what types of genetic experiments are attempted.

In the year 1990, America became the first country to allow new genes to be introduced to human beings. As these techniques are refined, what can we expect to happen? It is believed that we will eventually have “designer babies.” The fact is we have already started. You may have read advertising in the New York Times asking if you want to choose the gender of your next baby. This is presently being done in clinical trials. If the procedure is scientific, many people do not consider the fact that scientific fornication is still fornication, using what is called scientifically based sperm-sorting procedures. Can we then consider ourselves to be self-made men and women? One question is: if this process persists, and such experiments become perfected and extensively practiced, what will these new beings be like? We already have some evidence that these experiments can produce not just “supermen,” but monsters as well and nobody can predict or imagine what the final outcome of such experiments could be.

Why is God going to destroy the earth when Jesus returns? Because it will have become the same as it was in the days of Noah: “If there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God, and caused confusion everywhere. God purposed to destroy by a flood that powerful, long-lived race that had corrupted their ways before him. He would not suffer them to live out the days of their natural life, which would be hundreds of years.” The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 1, 69.

Pastor John Grosboll is Director of Steps to Life and pastors the Prairie Meadows Church in Wichita, Kansas. He may be contacted by e-mail at: historic@stepstolife.org, or by telephone at: 316-788-5559.