When most people hear the word “eugenics,” they immediately think of the Nazis. And for good reason: the Nazis force-sterilized over 400,000 people and brutally murdered another 300,000, all in the name of a particular approach to eugenics called “racial hygiene.” Yet the truth is that eugenics captured the imagination of people on both sides of the political spectrum. This included progressives across Europe and North America, many of whom saw it as playing an integral role in progressive social reform.
Eugenics isn’t a new idea. Though the term itself was coined in 1883, proposals for improving the “human stock” through methods like selective breeding dates back at least to the ancient Greeks. Eugenics practices — often based on what we now describe as “ableist” beliefs — have been common throughout history. It is a monster that just won’t die, no matter how many times people have tried to bury it.
One of the earliest discussions of eugenics comes from Plato’s “Republic.” In outlining what a just city-state would look like, Plato’s fourth-century B.C.E. treatise proposed a rigged lottery to...
Chinese scientist He Jiankui set off global outrage and landed in prison after he skirted ethical guidelines and claimed he had produced genetically modified babies designed to resist HIV infection.
By Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi, MIT Technology Review | 03.25.2025
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Why do we hear about medical breakthroughs in mice, but rarely see them translate into cures for human disease? Why do so few drugs that enter clinical trials receive regulatory approval? And why is the waiting list for organ transplantation...
By Anna Louie Sussman, The New York Times | 03.25.2025
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On June 24, 2022, the same day the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I received a call from the fertility clinic where I’d been undergoing in vitro fertilization, informing me that seven of...
The death this week of a teenager receiving Sarepta Therapeutics’ gene therapy Elevidys for Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a tragic reminder of the stakes involved in cutting-edge biotech innovation.
While gene therapies like Sarepta’s offer an opportunity to treat and...
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