control the dark history and troubling present of eugenics

The result is a stimulating critique of one of science’s most disgraceful chapters. Rutherford writes in a pugnacious, sometimes polemical style-“It persists like a turd that won’t flush,” he remarks of Madison Grant’s perennially influential white-supremacist tome The Passing of the Great Race-while conveying the science in a lucid, down-to-earth way.

Rutherford then investigates the neo-eugenics enthusiasm surrounding present-day advances in genetic screening and gene editing, and convincingly debunks the notion of superhuman “designer babies,” arguing that it’s “barely viable” to enhance complex traits such as intelligence with genetic-engineering technologies. The doctrine led to thousands of Americans being sterilized under state eugenics laws in the 1930s and, in Nazi Germany, to the mass murder of those deemed genetically “undesirable.” These policies, Rutherford shows, grew from a pro-eugenics consensus among leading scientists and other mainstream figures of the time, from Winston Churchill to W.E.B. Geneticist Rutherford ( How to Argue with a Racist) begins by surveying the 20th-century impact of eugenics, the attempt to improve the genetic profile of a population by discouraging certain people-historically the poor, the disabled, and racial minorities-from having children. He has written and presented many award-winning series and programmes for the BBC, including the flagship weekly Radio 4 programme Inside Science and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry with Dr Hannah Fry.A century of efforts to breed, sterilize, or slaughter the way to grasp control over “who lives” is lambasted in this stinging study of the eugenics movement. He studied genetics at University College London, and during his PhD on the developing eye, he was part of a team that identified the first genetic cause of a form of childhood blindness.

Deeply steeped in contemporary genetics, Control offers a vital account of one of the defining – and most destructive – ideas of the twentieth century.ĭr Adam Rutherford is a science writer and broadcaster. But these ideas are not merely historical: today, with new gene editing techniques, conversations are happening about tinkering with the DNA of our unborn children to make them smarter, fitter, stronger. In the Victorian era eugenics, a full-blooded attempt to impose control over unruly biology, began to grow among the powerful and quickly spread to dozens of countries around the world. Throughout history, people have sought to reduce suffering, eliminate disease and enhance desirable qualities in their children. The first half of Control is the history of an idea, from its roots in key philosophical texts of the classical world all the way into their genocidal enactment.

Control the dark history and troubling present of eugenics