1) Would you prefer to marry a good-looking man or woman?
2) Would you abort if you knew your child would have Down's syndrome?
If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, you already support eugenics.
No one doubts that it is immoral to involuntarily sterilize individuals let alone entire races. But all parents want healthy children and in 15 years, we will even have genetic tests for mental illnesses. It would be immoral not to abort if you knew your fetus had all the genes for schizophrenia.
We ought to free the word eugenics from the stigma it has been received thanks to the Nazis and others. I'd wager that most of the research in genetics today is going to be used in eugenics in the future, regardless of whether we refer to it that way.
2) Would you abort if you knew your child would have Down's syndrome?
If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, you already support eugenics.
No one doubts that it is immoral to involuntarily sterilize individuals let alone entire races. But all parents want healthy children and in 15 years, we will even have genetic tests for mental illnesses. It would be immoral not to abort if you knew your fetus had all the genes for schizophrenia.
We ought to free the word eugenics from the stigma it has been received thanks to the Nazis and others. I'd wager that most of the research in genetics today is going to be used in eugenics in the future, regardless of whether we refer to it that way.
