The specter of eugenics is commonly raised in concerns about the ethical and legal implications of the Human Genome Project. The present project explores the relevance of eugenics to genomics, using historical methods. In the first part of the project, the history of eugenics will be examined to see how genetic information was used in the 1920s-1940s to stigmatize or discriminate against specific individuals or members of groups. Attention will be given especially to Germany and the United States, where eugenics movements received strong scientific support and resulted in specific social policies. Comparisons will be made between the science and the policies of these two nations, in order to see how larger social forces shaped the evolution of eugenics and its application in these two contexts. A second part examines the history of recent cancer theory to determine the extent to which evidence has been found that cancer is genetic, in the various senses of that term (somatic, germ-line, etc.). The discovery of oncogenes and genes predisposing certain individuals or groups to specific types of cancer will be traced, along with policy implications conceived to flow from these discoveries. Analysis will be made of the extent to which both scientists and science popularizers may have exaggerated the genetic nature of Cancer; the larger debate over the contribution of environmental mutagens, lifestyle, and viral infection in carcinogenesis will also be chronicled, placing recent cancer debates in a larger context. Efforts will be made to distinguish evidence from exaggeration in claims for the genetic origins of cancer; also to elucidate possible unanticipated social consequences of cancer genetic research. A third and final part compares and contrasts the potential dangers implicit in the biological determinism of eugenics and genomics. Efforts will be made to assess the extent to which the biological determinism often associated with genomics will have different social consequences from the determinism of earlier eugenics, given the changed political climate within which the new genetics is developing. The implications of genomics for cancer research will be again be examined in detail as a case study of how genomics may have social and ethical consequences different from those of the earlier eugenics movement.
