Eugenics and the outer limits of good breeding

It hasn’t gone away, you know: Victorian junk science has its race-baiting adherents

When I teach Irish university students about eugenics as part of the history of science and medicine, I observe gratifying looks of incredulity – often followed by outbursts of horror and disgust.

Eugenics, a science popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, aimed to encourage governments to favour the reproduction of the most “fit” members of society and to reduce or even prevent the reproduction of those considered less fit. My students immediately hone in on the injustice of self-selected individuals deciding what constitutes fitness to reproduce. I use the example of eugenics because it shocks them into understanding that science and medicine are not neutral and can be used to forward social agendas.

Eugenics was a specific extension of evolutionary ideas often termed social Darwinism. Eugenics societies flourished around Europe and the US in the early 1900s, but were particularly prominent in Britain, where its promoters included a number of leading evolutionary scientists.

Drawing on both evolutionary science and an understanding of livestock...