The new eugenics

Maybe the new eugenics in the 21st century is going to be quite benign after all. This documentary highlights the uses and abuses of Darwinian ideas in society, and there's a depiction of a sort of eugenics where children have DNA or blood samples taken which are then stored, and if two adults later want to have children they can then consult the database to decide whether they are "genetically compatible" and determine the probabilities of having offspring with certain genetic diseases. Assuming that the genetics information is reliable, that seems like a much more reasonable way of doing things, rather than forced sterilisations or genocide, and it's just a private decision where the state doesn't get involved.



There will no doubt be a lot of other dilemmas which arise from a better understanding of genetics. For example I can imagine a court case in which an employee sues their employer because a work situation in which they were placed caused a particular deleterious set of genes to be expressed, affecting their health. Situations like this might mean that certain types of jobs or insurance policies are only available to people with certain types of genetics or epigenetics, and this is all bound to be highly controversial.