Eugenics never went away

No mention of abortion in this article. Particularly relevant because Iceland has no kids with down syndrome because of it, and European countries are following their pattern.

> According to UN statistics from 2006, in India 37 per cent of women have undergone sexual sterilisation.

If India's population in 2006 were approximately 1100 mill, then India had 550 mill women of whom 200 mill were sterilised. Are there some important information missing here? Were it only lower caste women which if I remember correctly constitute around 10 percent of the total population? 37 percent sounds high.

While I don't have a problem with eugenics as a purely philosophical thought exercise, actually implementing it is another question. It's pure hubris to think we understand humans -- at the physical, psychological, or spiritual level -- enough to know what constitutes superiority. It's further hubris to think that removing "inferior" humans will improve the overall state of humanity. If you haven't already, read A Brave New World because it works as a thought experiment of intentionally constraining the number of elite humans and artificially breeding massive numbers of lessor/inferior humans for the tasks beneath the interest and dignity of the Alpha Class. One of the side stories in that book is that the Alpha Class rules tried an experiment where an island was populated with only Alphas and they very rapidly descended into civil war because, each recognizing their ability and superiority, nobody wanted to work for anyone else.

A moral problem that can flow from eugenics as a thought exercise is considering certain groups of humans as less-than, inferior, or not worth consuming our resources. Once you accept that possibility it's only a matter of time before someone promotes or enacts policy to rid the world of the lessors. See the lessons learned from Nazi Germany or the Armenian Purge at the hands of the Young Turks, the wholesale genocide of the Celts by the Romans, etc. We either value human beings and human life or we start defining who needs to die.

Eugenics has a bad name, but it is scientifically valid. We now know that genetics play a huge role in life outcomes (e.g. adult IQ appears to be 70-80% heritable) and, for better or for worse, the eugenicists were right, even if their methods were morally wrong.

We don't focus enough on positive eugenics: getting smart, non-violent and conscientious people to have large families. Right now we do the opposite: smart folks feel all sorts of pressures to have a small or no family due to careers, the expense of elite schooling, the environment, etc. The opening scene of Idiocracy nailed it.

It is reasonable to look at soft negative eugenics, such as offering free, voluntary sterilization for reduction of prison sentences for violent crimes, but getting smart folks to have more kids is far more important.