Same with a lot of really cool progressive folk in the 1900s. Suffragettes, feminists, etc. It was really in vogue until the Nazis.
It was popular during a period when folks used science to make policy. It was also popular as a thought experiment on how to improve humanity and society as a whole but when faced with the reality that eugenics required the survivors to ignore the screams of the oppressed, ethics won out.
Eugenics is still wildly popular, they just don’t call it that. A short list of modern things founded in Eugenics.
- Stanford University
- IQ testing
- Idiocracy (2006)
Don’t forget psychology. Turns out a lot of its like 90% of it is founded on a mix of religious dogma and eugenics. Remember that infamous Canadia Nazi Jordan Peterson who nearly killed himself with a paleo diet and then went on a ketamine bender in Russia? Psychologist.
That’s like saying medical research is a scam and citing Andrew Wakefield as a prominent exemple
Nobody… not a single soul…
Some biologists: We take this man from a Nigerian family, breed him with a girl from this Greek family, then as the child grows to maturity, they again breed with someone from this Philipino tribe, and we have the vaccine for cancer.
Everyone: …KILL THEM!!! KILL THEM ALL AND DESTROY THEIR FINDINGS!!!
We already breed animals and plants, why not breed other humans? It’d be cool to live in a world where everyone is a healthy super soldier
As for just trying to create healthy humans, we can see that idea failing with crops. We selectively bred the healthiest crops, then everyone wanted that best crop, and now the pests for that crop flourished, meaning they’re usually even more sickly than other crops and we have to constantly keep them alive with pesticides.
Eugenics in general has many problems, though. The most fundamental problem is that, whatever one might view as an ideal human, is completely arbitrary.
Even if we ignore obviously existing personal biases, there is no fundamental reason why a muscular man is good, for example. In the next few decades, we might see full automation of manual labor. Then those muscles are irrelevant. And we might see ever hotter temperatures. Then having a bulky body might actively be bad for cooling off.
Or maybe tomorrow, there’s a massive volcano eruption, which causes oxygen levels to fall and food scarcity. Then a slender man might be best adapted to that situation.There’s just a million ways in which our situation can change all the time. And the best strategy for dealing with that is diversity.
Which is the second fundamental problem with eugenics, it necessarily reduces diversity.
Diversity is also what prevents singular pests/illnesses from being able to wipe us all.
But ultimately, diversity is also great, because we live in a society. People with different strengths and weaknesses can work together, usually indirectly by just taking up different jobs and paying each other to perform our respective jobs.
In particular, a weakness in one field can also push us to develop greater skills in other areas. Had I been able to become a super model, I wouldn’t have pursued an education as fiercely, for example.
Ok hot take, just my thoughts and if you disagree please share, nothing is written in stone. Eugenics I feel had a dream of achieving the ultimate human, this dream would of course be abused by anyone who could touch this idea on how to achieve it, doesn’t matter how good your intentions are, someone will get the short end of the stick either through being excluded or included against their will or with their blessings.
But here is my controversial take, the human gnome has been polluted by viruses, other hominids, unfavorable gene mutations… etc. There are also gene mutations that are unfavourable, such as cystic fibrosis, some that can be beneficial in certain situations but down sides in other, like sickle cell with better immunity to malaria, or characteristics that are not that important like blood type maybe and lastly characteristics that are incredibly desirable such as being less disease prone like cancers, dementia…
My idea is that we do a huge DNA collection around the world from consenting persons. Then we sequence it and try to make the most standard average human gnome, trying to clean up a lot of useless genes or junk left by viruses or radiation for example, that serve no function, and remove any identified genetic disorders maybe identify beneficial genes and add them. This gnome must be open source and accessible and continually improved. The goal is not to make a person, just like how we have sequenced the gnome of homo neanderthal that helped us study and learn, not to bring them back from extinction.
I would like this to be done for a purely scientific curiosity and furthering of medical science. Also we should ensure any use or modification cannot be patented or trademarked whatsoever by any entity and editing of the existing genome of people should be totally banned.
I do not want to see a person coming out of existence from this artificial gnome but rather it be a tool to assist, study, improve and further mankind’s understanding and interaction based on the building blocks of humankind
We’ve already collected DNA samples from people around the world to map the genome, it’s how we even know what genes may cause disorders in the first place. This did not require us to create some genetically ‘pure’ hypothetical gene sequence for the ideal human. What you’re suggesting is still eugenics and still bad for all the same reasons.
There may be such a thing as an “average” human genome though I doubt such an amalgamation would be able to produce a viable or even desirable organism. There is absolutely no such thing as a “clean” human genome, and attempting to create one would be a damning demonstration of a deep misunderstanding of both evolution and biology in general.
