Eugenics

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through social intervention. The goals have variously been to create more intelligent people, save society resources, lessen human suffering and reduce health problems. Proposed means of achieving these goals most commonly include birth control, selective breeding, and genetic engineering. Critics argue eugenics has been applied as a pseudoscience, that it has a potential for objectifiying human characteristics and note that historically it has been a means whereby social thinking culminated in coercive state-sponsored discrimination and human rights violations, even genocide.

Further reading

• Mark B. Adams, ed., The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). ISBN 0195053613
• Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003). http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/ ISBN 1568582587
• Edwin Black, "Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection", San Francisco Chronicle (9 Nov 2003).
• Elof Axel Carlson, The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Cold Spring Harbor, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Press, 2001). ISBN 0879695870
• Michael Crichton, State of Fear, (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). ISBN 0066214130 (contains an appendix on eugenics, politics, and science in the US.)
• Richard Lynn, Eugenics: A reassessment (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001). ISBN 0275958221 (controversial book which argues for eugenics)
• Nancy Ordover, American Eugencis: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003). ISBN 0816635595
• Tom Shakespeare, "Back to the Future? New Genetics and Disabled People", Critical Social Policy 46:22-35 (1995)