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#750 Adam Rutherford - Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics

The Dissenter

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Is It Really a Thing or Is It Ideological?

In natural selection terms, there are some characteristics which if they result in lack of fertility or death, then those are versions of genes. But the more we breed an organism to have one particular trait, that also comes hand in hand with negative traits as well. There's a genetic disorder which historically might have been targeted for each externalization because of the suffering it causes but today, less so. Those are real decisions that society is having to make at this point and technology has reached the point where we can effectively eradicate down syndrome from a population.

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