Control
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- £9.99
Publisher 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.
Customer Reviews
Factual, Fascinating and sometimes frightening
Rutherford builds on How To Argue with a Racist by attempting to contextualise past and present social injustices but this time from a more historical perspective.
If you are at all interested in the dark history of eugenics as well as it’s implications in the present and the future, then this is the book for you.
I also found it to be more accessible than some of his other work as it requires no background knowledge of science (almost as if the original founders based these ideas off fundamentally flawed science).
I can tell I enjoyed the book as I keep thinking back in shock and almost shame at how deep eugenics infiltrated modern (in human terms) society and politics of the western world.