Custom-Designed Kids: How Darwin's Legacy Is Being Abused
By Jesse Reynolds,
AlterNet
| 02. 12. 2009
Charles Darwin -- born 200 years ago today -- remains one of the strongest influences on modern society. His theory of evolution, detailed in On the Origin of Species, sculpts our understanding of what it means to be human more than any other idea outside of religion. We live in Darwin’s shadow, and it casts lingering controversies.
The most obvious of these controversies is over challenges to the role of evolution in educational curricula. That debate flared again just last month in Texas, and has been the topic of high-profile trials from Scopes in 1923 to Dover just three years ago.
Two other contentious conversations about genes and society also continue to haunt America: our legacy of race and racism, and proposals to genetically design our future descendents.
Race and ethnicity have confounded American society from its inception. Before Darwin, racial oppression and inequality were typically justified by invoking a religious “natural order.” After Darwin, “competitive advantage” and “natural selection” provided secular alternatives: In short, whites ruled because they were biologically superior to others.
Around the start of the twentieth...
Related Articles
By Laura Hughes, Financial Times | 05.20.2026
Sophie and her husband are set to spend more than £100,000 in travel and medical bills as they fly between England and the US in their bid to have another child.
The couple are undergoing IVF treatment in New York...
By Gina Kolata, The New York Times | 05.25.2026
In a small, preliminary study, an experimental gene-editing treatment dramatically lowered cholesterol levels, perhaps permanently, after just one infusion, scientists reported on Monday.
If confirmed in larger studies, researchers hope the findings may lead to a one-and-done way to prevent...
By Nanette Elster, Kayhan Parsi, and Art Caplan, The American Journal of Bioethics | 05.06.2026
“Better babies.” “Fitter families.” “Survival of the fittest.” “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” These phrases are not merely historical reminders of the United States’ regrettable eugenic past but are appearing in an increasingly eugenic present. Eugenics may have seemed...
By Rob Stein, NPR [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 05.06.2026
Justin Schleede reaches onto a black lab bench to pick up a tray of small plastic tubes.
"These are saliva samples as well as blood," says Schleede, a geneticist who runs Herasight Inc.'s lab in Morrisville, N.C. "We also...
