Michael Gerson in WaPo:

Nazism largely discredited the old eugenics. But a new eugenics -- the eugenics of genetic screening and abortion, the eugenics of genetic selection in the process of in vitro fertilization -- is alive and well. Its advocates contend that the new eugenics is superior because it is voluntary instead of compulsory, and unrelated to race. But Levin responds: "Surely the most essential problem with the eugenics movement was not coercion or collectivism. . . . The deepest and most significant contention of the progressive eugenicists -- the one that made all the others possible -- was that science had shown the principle of human equality to be unfounded, a view that then allowed them to use the authority of science to undermine our egalitarianism and our regard for the weakest members of our society."

The point here is not to catch liberalism in an inconsistency. At its best, the liberal tradition has combined its belief in science with a firm commitment to the equal value of all -- including the disabled and imperfect.

But science can easily become the power of some over the lives of others.

RTWT; it's short.

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