Rockefeller Foundation Quotes

UNFIT HUMAN TRAITS Such As Feeblemindedness, Epilepsy, Criminality, Insanity, Alcoholism and Many Others Run In Families And Are Inherited in Exactly The Same Was As Colour In Guinea Pigs. If ALL MARRIAGES WERE EUGENIC, We could BREED OUT Most Of This Unfitness In THREE GENERATIONS.

If we could honestly promise young couples that we knew how to give them offspring with superior character, why should we assume they would decline? Common sense tells us that if scientists find ways to greatly improve human capabilities, there will no stopping the public from happily seizing them.

The science of improvement of the human race germ plasm through better breeding

Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are--not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage. ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes.

Many families would like to avoid burdening future generations with inherited diseases such as haemophilia or severe developmental disorders. But most would think it wrong to edit the genes that influence the 'normal' range of human variation, from eye colour to intelligence or athletic ability.

There is a lot of hype and fear about this much-talked-about prospect of designer babies.

In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous - though, of course, they would not have used that phrase.

If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power.

Man has no right to claim the role of the creator of his likes or to choose their genetic prototypes, thus determining their personal characteristics .

Genetic engineering of are own species is not a question of if, but only a question of when….The human race may bifurcate into two subspecies of humans: Enhanced and Unenhanced.

If we did find that (most) mathematically gifted people possessed a special gene, would implanting such a gene in our children ever be justified? If certain traits are objectively superior to others, should we not promote active potentials to acquire such traits? The difficulty in answering this question lies in the fact that we live in a pluralist society. If people were to disagree about the ranking of certain characteristics, how would we decide which ranking is the correct one? It may be true that some characteristics are objectively superior to others (or better before God). And it may be true that many people would be capable of picking out a few such superior qualities. But who is to be appointed supreme judge?

The time to talk about it in schools and churches and magazines and debate societies is now. If you wait, five years from now the gene doctor will be hanging out the MAKE A SMARTER BABY sign down the street.

there is no doubt that anyone who had a fair knowledge of the principles of genetics, and who was given control over the matings of human beings, could in the course of a very few generations, produce a large number of very diverse types. He could breed a race of idiots, a race of dwarfs, a race of giants, an albino race, an insane race, a race of moral imbeciles, a race which would almost invariably get drunk in the presence of alcohol, a race of preeminent mental ability, or a race of unusual artistic talent. The task would be easy, as it would involve only the isolation of existing strains of the human species.

The Eugenist takes man purely as a plant or as an animal; he wants to breed him just as animals are bred.

The modern movement declares that it is quite worth while to produce a better man, and this is to be done by making him an animal of a finer breed…. What wonders have been accomplished with pigs and cattle; try the same methods, have patience, and you will produce a race of saints and heroes.

The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.

Personally, I don't think it is acceptable to manipulate the human germline for the purpose of changing some genetic traits that will be transmitted over generations.

Natural selection must be replaced by eugenical artificial selection. This idea constitutes the sound core of eugenics, the applied science of human betterment.

As we all saw in grade school, once you learn how to read a book, somebody is going to want to write one - that's how authors are made. Once we know how to read our own genetic code, someone is going to want to rewrite that 'text,' tinker with traits - play God, some would say.

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.

No one really has the guts to say it, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?

Individual wishes are driving the possible emergence of eugenics, not the state, because people want children for whom they can be ambitious.

Eugenics.

Degenerates, he warned, must not be permitted to reproduce their kind.