‘Eugenics’ was, growing up, one of those words that always had a shadow about it, much like ‘murder’ or ‘incest’, marking it out as one of those things that humans frequently engage in across the world’s many cultures that they really shouldn’t.
I am aware of the nuanced debate around the term (i.e. that it’s eugenic to, say outlaw cousin marriage for the sake of the population’s health, which is by and large considered to be a good development), but for the most part, in the western context, it’s largely impossible to separate the word from the atrocities carried out by the Nazis, which saw, to name just a few things, widespread sterilisation programmes, racial education programmes, and the ‘T4 Programme’, which resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of people with both mental and physical disabilities.
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