The New Eugenics
By Michael Dorsey,
World Watch
| 06. 30. 2002
On a not too distant horizon, advances in human biotechnology
may enable us to engineer the specific genetic makeup of our
children. Only a few months ago, the headlinemaking Italian
doctor Severino Antinori claimed to have implanted cloned embryos
in several women. We are already at the stage where we can selectively
terminate our offspring if certain genetic criteria are not
met. Soon it may be possible to discern, and ultimately select
for or against, individual traits in our children.
It is at this juncture that the promise of biotechnology runs
head-on into the history and the horrors of eugenics— the
quest for biological “improvement” through reproductive
control.
At the start of the 20th century, British scientist Francis
Galton coined the term eugenics, from the Greek eugenes, for
“well-born.” He later distinguished two major kinds
of eugenics, positive and negative. “Positive eugenics”
was preferential breeding of socalled “superior individuals”
in order to improve the genetic stock of the human race. “Negative
eugenics” meant discouraging or legally prohibiting reproduction
by individuals thought to have “inferior” genes and
was to be “achieved...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 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...