READER GREG DECKER WRITES:

How is genetically engineering humans to be smarter/stronger/prettier different from eugenics?

There’s the obvious difference, in that we’re fabricating humans instead of breeding them, but what’s the moral/socio-political difference? Is eugenics bad simply because fascists used it the last time?

And, if there is none, then please outline your argument defending eugenics, for if genetic engineering and eugenics are equivalent, and you approve of genetic engineering, then you must also approve of eugenics.

Uh, no. Eugenics wasn’t bad because it involved improving the species (though the genetic theories — and applications — of eugenicists were lame enough that it probably wouldn’t have done that anyway). Nor was eugenics bad “because fascists used it the last time.” (At any rate, the fascists got their own ideas from American eugenicists, vigorously supported by Oliver Wendell Holmes).

What was bad about eugenics was that it involved overriding people’s reproductive choices, typically by sterilizing them so that they wouldn’t pass on genes deemed defective. Conflating forced sterilization with voluntary use of reproductive technologies — a common move among opponents of genetic science — is either ignorant, or dishonest.