JoeB131
Diamond Member
Daniel Kevles, a professor of the history of science and medicine at Yale, wrote an essay titled “In the Name of Darwin.” In it, he observes: “The word ‘eugenics’ was coined in 1883 by the English scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its ‘undesirables’ while multiplying its ‘desirables.’” Essentially, humanity could give natural selection a hand by getting rid of those who (in the eyes of “desirables”) should just fade away eventually anyway.
But don't we already do that today through genetic screening for diseases such as Tay-Sachs, Down Syndrome, Cystic Fibrosis, etc. So Galton wasn't that far off, the technology just wasn't there yet.