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Eugenics

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It's all grand and idealistic until you ask the people who are deemed unfit to have a family or even exist.

The practice of removing "undesirable" people from the gene pool while encouraging "desirable" people to breed. "Undesirable" people may include disabled, dark-skinned, impoverished, mentally ill, LGBT+, and other people, depending on the desires of those in control.

"Eugenics is the attempt at having a good influence on genes."

Supporters[]

As if the entire history of the human species hasn't been an exercise in eugenics. To our credit, the ethical framework for such artificial selection has much improved and we no longer tend to the barbarism of Social Darwinists. The next big challenge will be one of PR, how do we sell the genetic engineering of progeny to the current and future generations? Newgenics, perhaps.

The lesser challenge is simply to ensure free access to all, as surely the cost-conscious capitalists will account for the savings in future welfare/healthcare costs.

-- Anon, 17. Feb, 2020

Eugenics was rather based on that social malcontents had lifestyles where-in they suffered. And they had children into situations that were suffering for the children. So better for them not to have children, was the idea. I.e. to reduce people who live in squalor. At that time, healthcare wasn't as scientifically advanced, nor was dental care, e.g., so there were clearer reason for thinking like this. -- G. Eiríksson, Dec, 2019

Altho often confused with political pseudoscience, ’eugenics is a term used to refer to ideas and practices within the realm of human improvement and health, concerned with created more genetically capable creatures. Like with many terms, the definition of eugenics has been a matter of debate since the term was coined (by Francis Galton in 1883). The concept predates the term; Plato suggested applying the principles of selective breeding to humans around 400 BCE. The term came to have increasingly negative connotations with increasing moral disapproval of certain practices deemed by some to be eugenic, such as forced sterilization under the authority of the State. By 2014, gene selection (rather than "people selection") was made possible through advances in genome editing,[7] leading to what is sometimes called new eugenics, also known as "neo-eugenics", "consumer eugenics", or "liberal eugenics".

the 20th century eugenics movement, which attempted to “breed better people” and “improve the human gene pool” through socially biased reproductive controls and inducements (Wikler 1999). 

It is by irrationally thinking that eugenics must in every vision be linked to nazism, that the many people misunderstand the concept. Eugenics are only a subdivision of eubionics, the latter which are widely practiced in e.g. western society, such as when a Down's syndrome fetus is aborted.

Etymonline: "doctrine of progress in evolution of the human race, race-culture," 1883, coined (along with adjective eugenic) by English scientist Francis Galton (1822-1911) on analogy of ethics, physics, etc. from Greek eugenes "well-born, of good stock, of noble race," from eu- "good" (see eu-) + genos "birth" (from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget").

Frederick Osborn's 1937 journal article "Development of a Eugenic Philosophy" framed it as a social philosophy—a philosophy with implications for social order.[6] Osborn advocated for higher rates of sexual reproduction among people with desired traits ("positive eugenics") or reduced rates of sexual reproduction or sterilization of people with less-desired or undesired traits ("negative eugenics").

While eugenic principles have been practiced as early as ancient Greece, the contemporary history of eugenicsbegan in the early 20th century, when a popular eugenics movement emerged in the United Kingdom,[8] and then spread to many countries, including the United States, Canada,[9] and most European countries. In this period, eugenic ideas were espoused across the political spectrum.

To-day and in the future, man's chief concern must be increasingly with himself. With his very success in the conquest of the environment has come a new danger. Unless the civilized societies of to-day improve their organization, unless they invent and enforce adequate measured for regulating human reproduction, for controlling the quantity of population, and at least preventing the deterioration of quality racial stock, they are doomed to decay and be submerged in some new barbarian flood. --- Julian Huxley, 1926

Criticism.[]

There is a hangover from the 20th century that persists to the present, a hangover that grants genetics a privileged position as supreme fortune-teller – the translator of biology into destiny; not so much prism as crystal ball.
It is this privileging of genetics that gives rise to ‘the prism of hereditability’ – a viewpoint from which human behaviours, traits, illnesses and susceptibilities are regarded as being largely due to inheritance rather than to the environment, culture, life events, experience or training.


— McNally

No entity can exert broad influence over the human genome without eroding human rights and self-determination.

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