Adam Rutherford | Control
- The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics
Copyright: © Adam Rutherford, 2022
Throughout history, people have sought to improve themselves - and society - by reducing suffering, eliminating disease or enhancing desirable qualities in their children. But this wish goes hand-in-hand with the desire to impose control over who can marry, who can procreate and ultimately who is permitted to live. Population control has been attempted in every country for thousands of years. But in the Victorian era, in the shadow of Darwin's ideas about evolution, a new full-blooded attempt to impose control over unruly biology began to grow in the clubs, salons and offices of the powerful. It was enshrined in a political movement that bastardised science, and for sixty years enjoyed bipartisan and huge popular support: eugenics.
Control tells the story of attempts by the powerful throughout history to dictate and dominate reproduction and regulate the interface of breeding and society. It is an urgently needed examination, deeply steeped in contemporary genetics, that unpicks one of the defining - and most destructive - ideas of the twentieth century. To know this history is to inoculate ourselves against its being repeated.- Language: English
- Dimensions: 14 х 22 cm
- Pages: 278
- Cover: hardcover
- First published: 2022
- This edition published: 2022