Here are some points made by [geneticist] Adam Rutherford while in conversation with IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed.
1. Eugenic thinking happened throughout human history
“It starts really with Plato talking about how high-quality men should be matched with high-quality women at marriage festivals. And with that, you would maintain high-quality children and different stratification within society. We think this type of idea has existed in pretty much every culture for the whole of human history.”
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3. Eugenics ideas were popular across the political spectrum, before the Second World War
“It’s often discussed as being a very right-wing philosophy…but it was also incredibly well supported on the Socialist Left as well. The normalization of these types of ideas, that we find so toxic today is always astonishing to me. [Winston] Churchill, as a young MP, was the most politically active supporter of eugenics in the U.K.”
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8. Researcher He Jiankui’s 2018 attempt to create gene-edited babies shows that the world needs to stay vigilant
“If there’s one positive thing that comes out of that story is that the international community was alerted to this and was after a few hours universal in condemning it.”
“[Ethical debates need] to involve expertise from scientists, from doctors, from geneticists, from reproductive health experts, and patient advocacy groups. But it has to be happening in society. Scientists are members of society and they don’t get to make (all the) decisions. That’s how democracies work.”
