Extreme Measures

This book is about Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton.  He invented eugenics and statistics, amongst other things.  Martin Brookes wrote the book and it is well worth reading if only to see how much more dishonest we are now.  Galton was a racist and his idea of making the human race better- preventing criminals and idiots, amongst others from reproduciting- was horrifying.  H.G. Wells thought that criminals were some of the smartest people he knew.  He thought they were smarter than some judges.  Therefore, he disagreed with Galton.  Who knows who would make a good parent?  Galton didn't and he never became one himself.  Doesn't what you give your child after he is born mean as much as the genes you have given him?  Galton didn't think so.  It's one hundred and fifty years since Galton came up with eugenics.  As Brookes notes, a lot of people followed him, including thirty states in the U.S. in the 1920s and 30s.  He was a proto-Nazi.  But I've been reading letters to the editor from people with Down syndrome children who say they get asked all the time why they didn't get the amneo that would tell them whether their child was going to have birth defects.  They say this with the child standing right there!  How much have we really changed?