Viewpoint: ‘Unnatural selection’? The troubling past — and present — of eugenics

Ideas of selective breeding are almost as old as philosophy. Plato proposed a utopian city-state in which elite men and women would be matched for their qualities, and “inferior” citizens would be discouraged or prevented from breeding. In modern biology, such ideas were first explored and popularised by Darwin’s half-cousin Francis Galton and his follower Karl Pearson at University College London.

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[In his new book Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics, Adam] Rutherford traces a clear line from these racist theories – widely acted upon in US prewar sterilisation programmes – to the genocidal atrocities of nazism. He also shows that though the “doctors’ trial” at Nuremberg effectively banished the word “eugenics” from any curriculum, the science – and in some cases the politics that exploited it – persisted.

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