eugenic
Improving hereditary traits
Eugenic means relating to or promoting the improvement of genetic qualities in a population, typically through selective breeding.
The term carries heavy historical baggage from early 20th-century programs that forcibly sterilized people deemed "unfit" and provided ideological cover for Nazi atrocities.
Modern usage appears in debates about genetic screening and reproductive technologies: Critics worry that prenatal testing for disabilities has eugenic implications.
Hitler's fascist dictatorship
- racial hygienePseudoscientific selective breeding ideology
- racial purityIdeology of ethnic exclusivity
- forced sterilizationInvoluntary surgical infertility
- social DarwinismMisapplied natural selection to society
degeneracy · feebleminded · unfit · institutionalization · master race · scientific racism · euthanasia
Moral philosophy for medicine
- designer babiesGenetically customized offspring
- human dignityIntrinsic worth of persons
- informed consentPermission given with understanding
- reproductive rightsBodily autonomy in family planning
disability rights · bodily autonomy · slippery slope · playing God · perfectionism · ableism · coercion · exploitation
Controlled reproduction for traits
- artificial selectionHuman-controlled trait propagation
- hereditaryPassed through generations
- inheritanceProperty received from ancestors
- fitnessGood physical shape
sterilization · breeding programs · prenatal screening · elimination · propagation · CRISPR · germline · heritability
Nazi Germany
Hitler's fascist dictatorship
- racial hygienePseudoscientific selective breeding ideology
- racial purityIdeology of ethnic exclusivity
- forced sterilizationInvoluntary surgical infertility
social Darwinism · degeneracy · feebleminded · unfit · institutionalization · master race · scientific racism · euthanasia
bioethics
Moral philosophy for medicine
- designer babiesGenetically customized offspring
- human dignityIntrinsic worth of persons
- informed consentPermission given with understanding
reproductive rights · disability rights · bodily autonomy · slippery slope · playing God · perfectionism · ableism · coercion · exploitation · stigmatization
selective breeding
Controlled reproduction for traits
- artificial selectionHuman-controlled trait propagation
- hereditaryPassed through generations
- inheritanceProperty received from ancestors
fitness · sterilization · breeding programs · prenatal screening · elimination · propagation · CRISPR · germline · heritability
eugenicdegenerative
Causing progressive decline
maladaptive · deleterious · harmful · deteriorating · debilitating
eugenicacquired
Came to possess
environmental · epigenetic · learned · developmental · conditioned
eugenicnatural selection
Differential reproductive success
random · spontaneous · unselected · Darwinian · unguided