•Chromosome 21 is the smallest human chromosome, and as a result, it is often called chromosome 22.
• Children born with an extra copy of chromosome 21 are healthy, but they are not considered ‘normal’.
• The father of eugenics was Francis Galton, who believed that human beings could be bred to improve the race.
• Karl Pearson was a radical socialist Utopian and a brilliant statistician who followed in Galton’s footsteps.
• By 1900, eugenics had caught the popular imagination and many people were in favor of planned breeding.
• The focus soon shifted from encouraging the ‘eugenic’ breeding of the best to halting the ‘dysgenic’ breeding of the worst.
• In 1904 Charles Davenport persuaded Andrew Carnegie to found for himthe Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to study eugenics.
•In the early 1900s, many countries began to restrict immigration for racist reasons.
• The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 was a direct result of eugenic campaigning.
• Eugenics is the belief that some people are born with better genes than others and that society should take steps to ensure that these “superior” individuals reproduce more often than those with inferior genes.
• Six states already had laws on their books by 1911 to allow the forced sterilisation of the mentally unfit.
• The Supreme Court changed its line in 1927 and ruled that Virginia could sterilise Carrie Buck, a seventeen-year-old girl committed to a colony for epileptics and the feeble minded, along with her seven month old daughter Vivian.
•In 1910, Winston Churchill became an ardent champion for eugenics and advocated for legislation that would restrict procreation by those with mental disabilities.
• One man who opposed this bill was MP Josiah Wedgwood, who argued that it was fundamentally oppressive and cruel.
• The bill was eventually passed into law, but in a much watered-down form.
• In the early 1930s, as unemployment rose during the depression, eugenics experienced a marked revival.
• Most countries passed their eugenic laws around this time, including Sweden and Germany.
• A government report on mental deficiency led to pressure for a sterilisation law in Britain. However, the bill never saw the light of day due to changing public opinion.
•Eugenics is back in fashion, with better empirical evidence than before.
• Genetic screening allows parents to choose the genes of their children.
• Philip Kitcher calls genetic screening “laissez-faire eugenics.”
• In most cases, Down syndrome embryos would have led happy lives if they had been born.
• Genetic knowledge gives mothers more reasons for wanting an abortion.
• Parents may come under all sorts of pressures to adopt voluntary eugenics.
• Most scientists now recognise that the well-being of individuals should take priority over that of groups.