Future Human Evolution: Eugenics in the Twenty-first Century

by John Glad

eugenics and humans

Genres: Science, Genetics, Nonfiction, Eugenics, Evolution

136 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Emil O. W. Kirkegaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found here: http://whatwemaybe.org/

http://whatwemaybe.org/txt/txt0000/gl...

The homepage is really weird, but the book turned out to be... pretty good. At first I was not impressed, especially because he went into insufficient details with the g factor and stuff related to that. But really g factor or not, is somewhat unrelated to eugenics. It contains some interesting quotes too. Here's two of them:

We do our utmost to check the process of elimination;
we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert
their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last
moment…. Thus the weak members of civilized socie-
ties propagate their kind. No one who has attended to
the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this
must be highly injurious to the race of man. (Darwin)

Democracy demands that all of its citizens begin the race even.
Egalitarianism insists that they all finish even.
Roger Price, “The Great Roob Revolution”

I recommend reading this book for its focus on eugenics history, and why it is not quite how we were told in Nazi Germany. There was a lot I didn't know there. Richard Lynn's 2001 book on the same topic is also worth reading. It is more dry, but goes more into detail about the methods.

Me? I still think we should employ population wide, state funded (to make sure the poor can do it too), non-coercive (because I don't trust states to do this properly) methods using not sterilization, but embryo selection, selective abortion (more than we do now), germ-line genetic engineering.

[Mannie Liscum · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a mixed bag of valuable insights and true-believer proselytization. Glad’s treatise is a prime example of creeping bias (and I’ll presume blind spots). His political stance/beliefs/loyalties are shinning bright in his framing of the defense of eugenics. He argues vociferously that the ‘right’ is not the only political side that embraced eugenics. Duh, 1920’s eugenics in the US and UK was most often associated with the progressive movements on the left. So no eugenics is not the love child of the right. But this defensive position Glad takes really just lays the ground for his ‘myth of Nazi eugenics’ argument: in brief, that the Holocaust and Nazi genocide wasn’t eugenic, based calmly because the Nazi program didn’t fit Glad’s definition of eugenics and Mein Kampf didn’t use the word ‘eugenics’ (this is Glad’s argument!). Silly really. Whether the Nazi’s argued in clear word that the Final Solution was eugenic ins’t relevant. Nazi policies were eugenic and racist. That doesn’t mean eugenics is be default racist, but if we’re honest, classic eugenics is racist, classist, and exclusionist. So Glad makes arguments that are full of holes. Some of Glad’s text, arguments and descriptions of eugenics, past, present and future are however relevant and important for the reader. We don’t have to agree with his assessment and views, but we need to come to terms with them.

[Haider Ziyadi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is the first time for me to read this kind of books. It works as a beginner’s guide to “eugenics: the betterment of human species” and similar topics. The book contains many ideas that might be very controversial to some people such as legalizing abortion. Will we be able to enhance future human populations? It’s very idealistic to think that we can implement every aspect of eugenics that it seems very far-fetched considering everything going on in the world right now, not to mention the states of third world countries.

[Brian Fang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and intelligent little book packed with lots of information. The first part (75%) seems to explain how eugenics is a highly nuanced and progressive field smeared by the holocaust and multiple straw man attacks. The final chapter is the meat of the book, where the author lists his policy recommendations.

[sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible book that twist history and tries to justify eugenics.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This curious little book attempts to advocate the pursuit of eugenic solutions to many of the problems currently assailing our world, approaching the subject from scientific and ethical standpoints. I found a lot more to like -- or less to dislike -- in it than I'd expected, although I had a sense throughout that the author was ducking the most important perceived flaw in notions of eugenics ever since they were first floated by Francis Galton in the latter half of the 19th century: who gets to decide which are the favorable and which the unfavorable traits in their fellow human beings. It's a flaw that led, so most people would argue, to the horrors of the Holocaust; Glad acknowledges the existence of it to the extent that, even as he (very evidently genuinely) deplores the countless crimes against humanity the Nazis committed in their attempted exterminations, he claims eugenics was not among the Hitler regime's motivations -- it was merely invoked as a phony justification. I have to confess that there seems to me to be only the breadth of the thinnest possible hair between these two portrayals of the circumstance, and I was left unconvinced. I was also unconvinced by Glad's account of another problem faced by any ethical proponent of eugenics: his section on "Possible Abuse of Genetics" (pp91-2) runs to just a paltry three paragraphs -- a paucity of treatment that seems to smack of denial.

Yet there are good things to be found here too. For example, he makes this point: "The question is whether parents have a moral right to bring children into the world who will be disadvantaged by their heredity" (p34). It's a refreshingly thoughtful observation in a society that is all too keen to stress the rights of parents -- as for example in the option to home-school, or to indoctrinate with a particular ideology or religious faith -- while often oblivious to the rights of those parents' children. A child who's brought up brainwashed into Creationist views, say, or racist ones, is likely to be handicapped for life in the evolving society he or she is set to inhabit; yet this goes ignored as we defend the rights of parents to be science deniers or bigots and to pass those values on to their offspring. This is obviously not rational. One could say that Glad is merely taking the matter a step further by saying parents have the responsibility to their offspring to make sure those offspring are born as the best and brightest they can be; one could also say that this further step is an unacceptable one.

There's plenty that's wrong with this short book -- for example, its potted history of the eugenics movements, begun on p62, just sort of peters out a dozen pages later after a longish discussion of WWII -- but, as indicated above, there's also some interesting and useful material in among the rest. The print version, which is the one I read, is full of plugs for the free downloadable-PDF version, available from www.whatwemaybe.org; I've just checked that URL and it's still functioning.

[Heath · Rating 2 out of 5]

If this is the case for eugenics...

Proponents of scientific selection might want to give Brave New World a read. It really doesn't seem that far off when you read this sort of thing. Humanity's propensity to make itself into a colony of gods is astounding. We are the arbiters of life and nonexistence. We say we do it for the sake of our children. But who knows whom these folks will actually allow to have children.

[Guillermo]

you may down load your book here.

And it's free!!!!