The Rebirth of Eugenics: Tech Bros and Pronatalism

Part 4: Snipping Away “The Unfit”

Read on for the final part of our series tracking the rise of the pronatalism movement in Silicon Valley, the threads of eugenics woven into the fabric of that movement, and the snags of humanity that may yet unravel a carefully stitched path toward a dystopian future. For early parts, see: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

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Once eugenicists start down the path of breeding out people with disabilities, the next step is usually eliminating living people with disabilities. This can be accomplished by quite literally killing people with disabilities, exemplified by programs like the Aktion T4 program, where people with disabilities—labeled as “Lebensunwertes Leben” (“life unworthy of life”)—were among the first to be executed in Nazi Germany between 1939-1941. According to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, nearly 250,000 disabled people were murdered by the Nazis. At first, children with Down syndrome and cerebral palsy under three were targeted in “mercy killings,” often without the knowledge of their parents. Then, the program expanded to extinguishing adults with disabilities and other chronic diseases in killing centers where they were starved, lethally injected, or poisoned with gas in the first experimental gassing of the Nazi regime. 

Photo: By Bundesarchiv, Bild 152-04-28 / Friedrich Franz Bauer / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5420181

Read more:

• Mass Murder of People with Disabilities and the Holocaust edited by Brigitte Bailer and Juliane Wetzel (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance)
• Useless Eaters: Disability as Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany by Mark P. Mostert (Catholic Culture)
• The First into the Dark: The Nazi Persecution of the Disabled by Michael Robertson, Astrid Ley, and Edwina Light

But the more common way to discreetly eliminate people with disabilities is by removing the public and social supports, services, and medical care that improve their quality of life, health outcomes, and ultimate life expectancy. Indeed, we know that the life expectancy of people with Down syndrome has increased dramatically over the past 50 years, from about 20 years old in 1970 to over 60 years old today. Moreover, the survival rate past the first year of life has increased from around 50% in 1970 to over 94% today (Saul & Meredith, 2016). This improved life expectancy and survival rate is the result of improved healthcare (such as surgical repair of heart and gastrointestinal defects), made possible by  expanded access to health insurance and investment in health research. The vast majority of adults with Down syndrome have health insurance through Medicaid (Runbenstein et al. 2023), and, according to KFF, the largest percentage of Medicaid dollars go toward providing both healthcare and support services for people with disabilities and seniors. Therefore, any cuts to Medicaid or disability services and supports could lead to devastating health and survivability outcomes for people with significant disabilities.

Indeed, Medicaid provides the majority of healthcare funding for people with conditions like Down syndrome, and also funds home and community-based Medicaid waivers that pay for necessary services like direct support staff, day programs, medical equipment, job training, etc. Other federally-funded critical supports that help people with significant disabilities thrive in the US today include:

• Early intervention services that help children age 0-3 with disabilities meet their developmental milestones
• Special education services paid through state and federal funds 
• NIH and CDC research funding to improve health and life outcomes for people with disabilities
• The Administration on Community Living, which oversees critical programs like University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities and Protection and Advocacy programs
• And many more essential supports and services.

How do prominent leaders of the pronatalism movement perceive healthcare, supports, and services for people with disabilities?

Even though Elon Musk self-identifies as a person with “Asperger’s syndrome”, Malcolm and Simone Collins both identify as autistic, and Peter Thiel extols the value of workers “suffering from a mild form of Asperger’s”, the way these prominent figures  talk about disabilities is out of touch with the broader disability advocacy movement. This is evidenced by their references to “Asperger’s” and “high and low-functioning autistics”—which are not common terms/positions supported by autistic disability advocates. In fact, Musk frequently uses the term “retarded” to disparage people, and the use of the r-word has nearly tripled on X after Musk started using it in his posts. Whether directed at them or someone else, this word is extremely hurtful for people with intellectual disabilities. Plainly, public figures with such a wide disconnect between them and the disability advocacy community likely do not understand (or, perhaps, do not care about) the critical importance of public programs for people with disabilities to survive and thrive. 

Indeed, many of these leaders in the pronatalism movement are sharply critical of programs like Social Security and Medicaid that provide these vital services. Musk was criticized in his tenure with the Department of Government Efficiency—by both Democrat and Republican lawmakers—when he portrayed people who use federal programs as part of the “parasite class.” Additionally, Malcolm and Simone Collins strongly convey that Medicaid and Social Security must be ultimately cut in order to avoid raising taxes, and that their ideology will win because they will have more children who are “genetically superior” and control American culture.

And do any of the currently proposed federal budget cuts, which have been heavily influenced by pronatalists in the billionaire class, suggest that people with disabilities are being targeted?

Services for people with disabilities are already chronically underfunded in the US, and the recent budget proposals from Congress and the President represent the largest and most expansive recommendations to cut currently-funded services. The vast majority of disability advocacy organizations–from The Arc, to the National Down Syndrome Congress, to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network–have been shouting from the rooftops their concerns about the currently proposed federal budget cuts, which would be devastating to people with disabilities who rely on federal and state services. These organizations have issued policy alerts about cuts to a range of programs serving people with disabilities, including Medicaid, the Department of Education, NIH and CDC research initiatives, and the Administration on Community Living. They have also sharply criticized claims from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that the goal of future research will be to detect the cause of autism and eradicate it. While autistic people and their families certainly want to address various issues that they have indentified to improve quality of life, many also take great pride in their autistic identity, gifts, and talents, and do not see autism as a problem that needs to be eradicated.

Quite frankly, I don’t believe that the rank and file Democrat or Republican wants to eliminate their friends and neighbors with disabilities. I have seen too many acts of friendship, love, and inclusion in my community to accept that. But I do think that members of both parties need to question the motives of anyone who proposes cutting disability services—particularly when those people also publicly praise the virtues of pronatalism and selective breeding. Let me also be abundantly clear that I support people having children (if they want a family), the use of IVF for those who are struggling to conceive, and the ethical use of preimplantation genetic testing for families impacted by truly lethal genetic conditions. What I am patently opposed to is the eugenic movement of systematically selectively breeding for certain kinds of children while also cutting services for people with disabilities. 

As discussed by Malcolm and Simone Collins in their Based Camp podcast, the Tech Right can be distinctly different from both the traditional right AND traditional liberalism, as it envisions a utilitarian future where children are bred for genetic superiority and their potential financial contributions rather than valuing children based on their humanity and compassion. We need to be cognizant of the underlying agendas of the influential leaders shaping public discourse to ensure that our federal and state policies align with the values of the majority of American parents–not the priorities of the tech elite pronatalist minority with greater influence than the rest of us. And I, personally, still have faith that the majority of Americans, including my generous and kind friends and neighbors, still value people like my son with Down syndrome and don’t want to either screen him out through systematic embryo selection or cut him out by eliminating necessary services.

Written by Stephanie Meredith, MA, DrPH