“While modern Darwinists may wince, eugenics clearly drew inspiration from Darwin’s theory. In fact, Galton was Darwin’s cousin. He took evolutionary theory seriously, arguing persuasively that hospitals, mental institutions and social welfare all violate the law of natural selection. These institutions preserve the weak at the expense of the gene pool. In the wild, such people would die off naturally, thus keeping the human race strong. As Darwin himself declared in ‘The Descent of Man,’ ‘No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this has been highly injurious to the race of man. … Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.'”
And so as we continue as a nation to debate the ethics and efficacy of embryonic stem cell research, it might pay to remember the history of the eugenics movement. Read here for a reminder of what can happen when we decide that some people are dispensable and not worth perpetuating or even living.