Control

Throughout history, people have sought to improve themselves - and society - by eliminating disease, or enhancing desirable qualities in their children. Others have imposed control over populations with rules about who can marry, who can procreate and who can live. For just over a century, we have referred to this age-old crafting by biological design with a word which became poisonous: eugenics.

The ideas underlying eugenics are not merely historical. We live in a time where forced sterilisation of women is current - including in immigration detention centres in the USA - and where sex-selective abortion is endemic in the most populous countries on Earth. In 2020, new techniques in genetics and gene editing put discussions about improving the 'quality' of the population, by selecting embryos for intelligence, at the centre of the British government. CONTROL is an urgently needed discussion exploring the science, history and future of eugenics, and the practice of population control by selective procreation.