QUEST FOR PERFECTION: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings [Hardcover]

Gina Maranto (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2, 1996

Examines historical attempts to control the outcomes of pregnancy, from infanticide to eugenics, and then chronicles and raises questions about the latest scientific advances in manipulating DNA. 15,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a provocative, richly informative report, freelance science writer Maranto combines a tough-minded, unsentimental look at the infertility industry with a historical survey of attempts to influence childbearing through forced sterilization, selective infanticide and control of mating. Eighty percent of attempts at in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer and other forms of assisted reproduction fail, she warns, and marriages are often destroyed by the rage, recriminations, stress and anxiety resulting from infertility treatment. Maranto skeptically views the modern science of manipulating sperm, eggs and embryos as a distant stepchild of the eugenics movement launched by English anthropologist Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin, who put forth a scheme of selective breeding for human betterment. She exposes the racist and anti-immigrant overtones of eugenics in the U.S., where dozens of states by the 1920s passed laws requiring compulsory sterilization of individuals deemed "unfit," meaning diseased, dependent, delinquent, epileptic, blind, deaf or deformed. Maranto thoughtfully examines the ethical and legal issues surrounding surrogate mothers, egg donation and cloning of human embryos, an experimental technique that is expected to yield the world's first delivery of artificial twins within the next few years, unless it is banned by international law. She urges tighter regulatory controls to ensure that new reproductive technologies are not abused by those with misguided eugenic notions. Readers Subscription main selection; Library of Science alternate.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Many recent publications have examined the ethics and issues surrounding assisted reproduction. This book also provides a lengthy account of the history of humankind's attitudes toward reproduction. Science journalist Maranto begins her analysis in prehistoric times and continues to the present, discussing infanticide, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, cloning, and germ-line gene therapy. While the author is critical of the eugenics movement, she discusses its evolution in great detail and in a relatively straightforward manner. The long bibliography is useful for additional research on this topic. Readers are warned that the writing is fairly technical and some basic knowledge of genetics and scientific terminology is assumed. Recommended for health science collections in medical or large academic libraries.?Tina Neville, Univ. of South Florida at St. Petersburg Lib.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (August 2, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684800292
• ISBN-13: 978-0684800295
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,486,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good book to get an overview of genetics, January 18, 1999

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[e-mail] (Pleasant Hill, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: QUEST FOR PERFECTION: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings (Hardcover)

The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings, Gina Maranto gives an excellent accounting of eugenics and infanticide over the past 7,000 years. That is, humans have always tried to influence birth outcomes. She shows that eugenics is a natural desire among both individuals and groups that it seems to be an inborn trait. And up until the Holocaust it had never really been questioned. Humans want to better their own kind, and it can be easily seen as part of an evolutionary process, along with infanticide, to play the odds on destroying one child while giving a better life to a second, rather than chancing losing both. This competition between siblings, members of a tribe, and attempts to kill off other competing groups is seen in canines, chimpanzees and humans groups alike throughout history. Genocide is one way to better the chances of your own group over competing groups, and is no stranger to human evolution that is steeped in blood. The first two nations of people that competed with each other in a purely eugenic way rather than simply through human slaughter were the ancient Greeks and Jews. As MacDonald points out, the Jews began to practice eugenics initially to compete with the highly literate Greeks. While the Greek civilizations died out, the Jews alone have been able to sustain their eugenic programs to this day primarily through a fixation on purity of blood and a means of intellectual testing that elevated the best while discarding the failures (to become gentiles). And the Jewish secular religion today is singularly obsessed with blood purity over any other concerns, it could easily be called a eugenics secular religion. Maranto claims, like all good liberals, that the National Socialists were the first to adopt this blood purity obsession, showing again how the most learned intellectuals can practice extreme self delusion in pursuit of a political agenda. She also claims that medical geneticists tinkering may be botched just like other attempts at altering nature like artificial wetlands or self-regulating biospheres. But again, one can only be skeptical about the viability of eugenics by choosing to ignore the success of Jewish eugenics. She does admit that almost half of all Americans in surveys would favor genetic manipulations to improve the health, intelligence and attractiveness of their children. And where there is a desire and the technology, eugenics is here to stay, even though she would like to see it go away. Overall, the book is a very good history of infanticide and humanity's utter disregard for children through most of its history. One interesting story of many she conveys is how the Catholic church routinely accepted abandoned children, and forthwith allowed most of them to die for lack of interest or concern. So much for Christian compassion. Finally, the obligatory renunciation of the possibility of modern eugenics is hypothesized by an argument that unlike breeders who practice inbreeding to fix a few specific traits, humans mix up their genes and do not practice inbreeding so fixation would be impossible. Of course this is an absurdity. With regards to eugenic practices for the selection of intelligence, no one is stating that any one gene needs to go to fixation, intelligence is a combination of many genes and these genes can be increased without any form of inbreeding. But even with inbreeding, as practiced by Judaism where it has been historically practiced by uncles marrying nieces, there is little evidence that exogamy or endogamy are requirements for improving intelligence. (I am personally agnostic on the subject of hybrid vigor--waiting for additional evidence.) And of course no book of this kind is complete without denouncing both The Bell Curve and the now undisputed work of numerous adoption and twin studies in showing that intelligence is highly heritable by quoting the thoroughly anti-empirical pseudoscientist Stephen Jay Gould et al. (See citations and quotes by other scientists, including Dawkins' latest book Unweaving the Rainbow showing that Gould has been thoroughly discredited in the field of evolution because of his unyielding commitment to Marxist propaganda over scientific honesty.)