Control

£9.99

Throughout history, people have sought to improve themselves – and society – by eliminating disease, or enhancing desirable qualities in their children. Others have imposed control over populations with rules about who can marry, who can procreate and who can live. For just over a century, we have referred to this age-old crafting by biological design with a word which became poisonous: eugenics. The ideas underlying eugenics are not merely historical. We live in a time where forced sterilisation of women is current – including in immigration detention centres in the USA – and where sex-selective abortion is endemic in the most populous countries on Earth. This book is an urgently needed discussion exploring the science, history and future of eugenics, and the practice of population control by selective procreation.

In stock

Description

How did an obscure academic idea pave the way to the Holocaust within just fifty years?
Why does eugenics still loom large in the 21st century, despite its genocidal past?
Did eugenics work? Could it work? Or was it always a pseudoscientific fantasy?

Throughout history, people have sought to reduce suffering, eliminate disease and enhance desirable qualities in their children. In the Victorian era eugenics, a full-blooded attempt to impose control over unruly biology, began to grow among the powerful and quickly spread to dozens of countries around the world. But these ideas are not merely historical: today, with new gene editing techniques, conversations are happening about tinkering with the DNA of our unborn children to make them smarter, fitter, stronger. Deeply steeped in contemporary genetics, CONTROL offers a vital account of one of the defining – and most destructive – ideas of the twentieth century.

Additional information

Weight 260 g
Dimensions 196 × 128 × 24 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

ix, 278

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

363.9209 (edition:23)

Readership

College – higher education / Code: F