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Eugenics, by the psychologist Richard Lynn, is a detailed history of the eugenics movement, a probing analysis of its major aims, and a plea for its reimplementation. As is well known, the eugenics movement began with Sir Francis Galton in the late nineteenth century. Its classical principles were that the qualities of health, intelligence, and moral character are socially valuable; that these qualities are to a substantial extent genetically determined; that they have been in a process of decline throughout the world since the mid-nineteenth century; and that it is both feasible to implement social policies designed to reverse this dysgenic trend and produce societies whose average members are healthy, highly intelligent, and of strong moral character. Lynn distinguishes between classical eugenics, which essentially involves applying the methods of plant and animal breeders to humans, and the new eugenics, which involves using modern human biotechnology to achieve the same results. Within classical eugenics, Lynn distinguishes between nationalist eugenics, which involves policies devoted solely to the genetic improvement of the members of one's own nationstate, and universalist eugenics, whose target is the entire human species. Lynn aligns himself with the latter.
After a brief historical introduction, Lynn devotes the first long section of his book to a review of the evidence for the genetic foundations of various diseases and disorders (both physical and mental), intelligence and mental retardation, and personality, especially what he calls "psychopathic personality," which for him is a rather broad personality type that predisposes its bearers toward such socially undesirable behavior as crime, unemployment, teenage childbearing, and poverty. There then follows another long section in which the author discusses the implementation of classical eugenics. Classical negative eugenics involves various measures intended to reduce the fertility levels of people with serious genetic disorders, low levels of intelligence, and so-called psychopathic personality. This can involve providing information and services with respect to contraception and abortion, giving people incentives (usually economic) to limit their childbearing, or the outright use of compulsion, such as forced sterilization. A very recent form of negative eugenics is the proposal that people wanting to have children must be licensed by the state, with the state licensing only those prospective parents who have good health, high intelligence, and sound moral character. Classical...