How To Understand The Resurgence of Eugenics
By Sydney Perkowitz,
JStor Daily [cites CGS]
| 04. 05. 2017
In 1883, the English statistician and social scientist Francis Galton coined the word “eugenics” (“well-born,” from Greek). The term referred to his idea of selectively breeding people to enhance “desirable” and eliminate “undesirable” properties. Seen as following Darwin’s theory of evolution, in the 1920s and ’30s eugenics gained important backing in England and the United States. Scientists and physicians spoke and wrote in its support. It influenced U.S. immigration policy, and states like Virginia used it to justify the forcible sterilization of the intellectually disabled.
Today’s growing anti-immigrant and white nationalist movements are raising concerns about a return of this long discredited dogma. For instance, U.S. Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) recently tweeted about a far-right movement in Europe, calling Western culture “superior” and saying, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” King hoped for “an America that’s just so homogenous that we look a lot the same.”
At the same time, we are seeing an advance in methods of manipulating human DNA that, though they present many benefits, could also be used to advance eugenic goals. This...
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| 07.11.2024
Louise Perry’s recent article in The Spectator cautions against “The quiet return of eugenics,” a threat she locates in preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders. The technology is billed as a way for parents undergoing IVF to select which embryo to implant based on information about each embryo’s genetic risk factors and traits. These reports, she says, give parents “a very full picture of the adult that embryo could become”––from their child’s risk of developing different diseases to their “likely...
Photo by TeggorMindFish via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
Prophets of techno-paradise tend to bloom and then fade but not necessarily disappear. Malcolm and Simone Collins, a husband and wife team, have been on quite a roll for a couple of years. However, their time in the spotlight may at last be coming to a close, after a report revealed their parenting style.
The Collins family have already featured on this...
GATTACA was released in 1997, but — remarkably — is even more relevant now than it was then, as the technologies whose social implications it explores have developed considerably.
On Thursday, June 13, the California Film Institute presented GATTACA to a sold-out house at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center as part of their Science on Screen series. CGS Associate Director Katie Hasson offered framing for the film and participated in a Q+A discussion.
The film’s plot explicitly involves...