Today I read an article in Bloomberg about designer children. In this case they were combining the DNA of one man and two women to make a “superior and healthier” child. Well, the reeks of eugenics and let me explain why.

Back in the 1920’s, a movement began called ‘eugenics’ and it had a simple belief: that a superior human being could be bred. This went hand-in-hand with scientific racism, where the scientists tried to say that based off the shape of a person’s head, their skin color, etc could determine their intelligence. It was this belief, and the eugenics idea of breeding the superior person that led to the rise of the Nazis.

Thousands of people were deemed to be unfit to reproduce under eugenics and were either forcibly sterilized or coerced into doing it voluntarily. In fact, Margaret Sanger (Creator of Planned Parenthood) was a major eugenics supporter. In their minds, Asians, Blacks, Native Americans were all inferior and everything was done to prevent them from having children-all in the name of science of course.

This is why I’m bothered by this article because it’s bringing this issue back to the front again. The last time it came to the front we had the holocaust. And why was that? Because Hitler and many of his followers in the high ranks of the Nazi Party were all eugenics supporters, which lead to them killing millions of Jews. Do we want to do this again?

In the novel “A Brave New World,” this is the basis of the dystopian future. In the novel, people were separated by class depending on their DNA/Intelligence and then assigned jobs. I can see that coming out of this too.

And people wonder why I and many writers too, write dystopian futures. It’s because we’re headed towards one at warp speed and have zero intention of slowing down any either.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-25/dad-may-join-two-moms-for-disease-free-designer-babies.html