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Designer Babies and Fitter Families...

Designer Babies and Fitter Families
So-called “designer babies” have generated fervent discussion in recent weeks, sparked by the latest online dating trend: a sperm and egg bank with the goal to make beautiful people. For some, genetic manipulation is a moral necessity, for others it is an ethical outrage. We are reminded of the eugenics movement. “Better Babies” contests, originally conceived to promote child...

One Hundred Years Later….Eye Color...

One Hundred Years Later….Eye Color Genes “Visualized”
Understanding the inheritance of eye color has been a challenge for decades. Most parents try to make their best guess about their unborn child’s eye color, hoping for that warm brown or the more rare bright blue outcome. "Eye Colors in Man," from The Trait Book, ERO Bulletin No. 6, by Charles B. Davenport, 1912 (Archive Image #1913) Davenport and other eugenicists oversimplified eye-color...

DNA DAY 2010: What, me worry about my DN...

by Dave Micklos Of course, everyone asks me what I think about National DNA Day, to which I usually reply, “Every day is DNA Day at the DNA Learning Center.” DNA is business as usual for me and legions of genetic researchers and counselors, but its also becoming business as usual for a lot of average people who are interested in their health or genealogy. People also often ask me how...

Involuntary Sterilization?...

A North Carolina-based charity’s initiative to pay drug and alcohol abusers to be sterilized or choose long-term birth control (IUD) has popped up recently in my Google “eugenics” news alert. Once an addict proves they have had a procedure to prevent pregnancy, they are given $300. Several thousand individuals have participated in the program in the US. The group argues that the policy...

Positive Eugenics?...

Positive Eugenics?
Recently a campaign by a Georgia anti-abortion group featured billboards that depicted a black baby and the text “Black children are an endangered species.” [See this Associated Press article.] As you may imagine, the billboards were instantly controversial and provoked heated discussion among abortion-rights and anti-abortion activists. Motivated by the desire to promote an agenda, the...