Cybernetics was also deemed a bourgeoisie science for a while. This changed later.

I wonder where we are now. Long shadows of Hitler and eugenics do certainly have a chilling effect on research of intelligence etc.

This article published last year in the New Yorker goes into details.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/can-progressiv...

I get the political unease that surrounds such topics, but with things like CRISPR making gene editing possible, we could improve inborn traits in living humans one day - provided that we actually know what we are doing.

Gene therapy and eugenics are different things. CRISPR falls under the former.

They overlap, though. Or, more precisely, gene therapy can be used as a means to achieve certain eugenic ends.

If, in 2030 or 2050, it will be possible to use CRISPR or another newer technology to edit out detrimental alleles out of someone's DNA safely, the end effect on the genetic pool of humanity is going to be very similar to the one that eugenicists tried to achieve via more primitive means.

If all that eugenics was or is concerned with was the removal of some harmful alleles by consensual methods, and it was not a pile of often racist bullshit falsely claiming to be based on what is actually solid science, it would not have a bad name.

There is a lot of stuff in between.

For example, Down syndrome can be practically eradicated by selectively aborting aneuploid embryos. Of course, the embryo cannot consent, and while the parents can, institutional pressures can be put on them to make them change their mind.

Countries like Iceland and Denmark abort almost all Down syndrome embryos. This article in The Atlantic does not seem to be completely OK with that, and The Atlantic is pretty representative for East Coast liberal viewpoints.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/the-las...

> institutional pressures can be put on them to make them change their mind.

Which is a weird and arbitrary location to draw the line considering how those institutions tend to lean on other issues, or even the same issue in a slightly different context.

I wasn't trying to draw any line anywhere. It is notoriously hard to draw any lines when it comes to disabilities.

I'm saying it's a weird spot for them to draw a line.

If CRISPR enabled a way to achieve the same outcome while avoiding these concerns (to be clear, I have no idea whether this is a possibility), that would seem to be a desirable outcome from all points of view.

> Of course, the embryo cannot consent,

I mean, technically the person born with Down Syndrome would be incapable of consenting on their own life decisions after they were born, right?

While a D.S. sufferer has intellectual disability, its severity may vary a lot, with some cases mild enough that the capability of giving consent might be there.

Then there are mosaic cases, which are in the middle between a full Down Syndrome and normalcy. In mosaic cases, only a certain percentage of cells is afflicted. People with mosaic aneuploidies can often lead fairly normal lives.

> Long shadows of Hitler and eugenics do certainly have a chilling effect on research of intelligence etc.

Speaking solely about eugenics: it wasn't Hitler, eugenics were largely considered progressive at the time and the Right Thing To Do. Most of the Nordic countries today that Western countries admire have eugenics programs to some degree or another, they just don't use the word eugenics.

You could argue that the US for example has one of the most "successful" eugenics programs in the world - just look up the demographics of the abortions funded by tax-payer money.

You could also argue that many of the global NGOs that are popular among Western leaders today have a strong eugenics focus, but again, nobody uses that word. It's much easier to suggest that a population shouldn't reproduce by calling it feminism, empowerment, or simply making child-raising a luxury good.

Here's a fun game: search "Margaret Sanger quotes" and then count how many blue-pills you need to dose yourself to remain ideologically comfortable.

He was vindicated by modern science.

His "delusions" were that epigenetics exist and are heritable. (His opponents took a polar, more hardline stance that only genetic information is relevant for phenotype expression.)

See more here: https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=heritable%20epigene...

>He was vindicated by modern science.

He denied that genetic heritability existed and that all characteristics were propagated epigenetically. That's hardly been vindicated. In practice his theories and practical policies were utterly disastrous.

It is true that since then we have found some mechanisms by which some traits can propagate epigenetically, but characterising that as vindicating Lysenkoism is absurd.

I believe he denied existence of genes, not heretability of traits.

His theories were mostly pseudoscientific nonsense - but that alone is not particularly harmful. What was evil about him is that he literally destroyed other people’s lives, his most prominent victim being Vavilov.

DNA wasn't yet discovered when he was alive, and "genes" were an abstract philosophical concept.

That’s why I said genetic heritability.

If only he did not resort to using political means instead of science to push his views, he could have been considered a visionary (like Vernadsky or Oparin).

Instead, he's just a criminal and a fraud.

Yes, it was a story of political conflict, not a story about science.

thats the difference between science and other realms of human knowledge: it doesn’t matter how you can spin his words, because his theory made inaccurate predictions.