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What will it mean for society if science enables us to choose a future child whose health, athletic ability or intelligence is predetermined? This future is becoming ever more likely with the latest developments in human reproduction - but concerns are growing about the implications.
New procedures making possible heritable genetic modifications such as genome editing open the door to 'sanitized' selective eugenics; but these practices have some unnerving similarities to the discredited eugenic programmes of early twentieth-century regimes. A Christian perspective based on Scripture gives us the resources we urgently need to evaluate both current and future selection practices.
Calum MacKellar offers an accessible, inter-disciplinary analysis, blending science, history and Christian theology. This book will enable you to become fully informed about the new scientific developments in human reproduction - developments that will affect us all.
1. Introduction
Learning from the past
Looking to the present
2. Eugenics in its historical context
The history of eugenics in Germany
The history of eugenics in the UK
The history of eugenics in the USA
3. A Christian enquiry into the new eugenics
Creation and the image of God
Procreation, love and unconditional acceptance
The new eugenics and the equality of all
Other arguments relevant to the new eugenics
4. Presentation of different eugenic procedures
Reproductive eugenics by the selection of partners
Reproductive eugenics through selecting to have many, few or no children
Eugenics through selective adoption
Eugenics through sex selection
Eugenics through egg and sperm selection
Eugenics through prenatal genetic selection
Eugenics and embryonic selection
Eugenic selection through human cloning
Eugenic selection through infanticide
Eugenics through genome and germline modifications
5. Conclusion
God's creation of the child
Unconditional acceptance in procreation
The immeasurable worth and value of all individuals created in the same image of God
The ethics of the new eugenics
Risks of discrimination
The value and worth of life versus the quality of life
Glossary