In Popular Media
Galton and many others claimed that the less intelligent were more fertile than the more intelligent of his time. This is the basis of the movie Idiocracy, in which five hundred years in the future (2505) the dysgenic pressure has resulted in a uniformly stupid human society.
In Star Trek, there are conflicts known as the Eugenics Wars (or the Great Wars) which were a series of conflicts fought on Earth between 1993 and 1996. The result of a scientific attempt to improve the Human race through selective breeding and genetic engineering, the wars devastated parts of Earth, by some estimates officially causing some 30 million deaths, and nearly plunging the planet into a new Dark Age. (TOS: "Space Seed"; ENT: "Borderland")
Also, in the movie Gattaca, a dystopian set of events is portrayed through the application of "artificial selection". This is then shown to be misused by employer and insurance companies and even schools, screening out the "in-valids". Through this, the protagonist, an "in-valid", is shown to go to great heights to reach his dreams of being an astronaut.
In the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, one of the many in-game advertisements is for "Eugenics Incorporated," a firm that purports to adjust the genetic makeup of a fetus to ensure that all characteristics are ideal.
"Eugenics" is the name of an album, released in 2012, by the technical death metal band Malignancy
In Frank Herbert's "Dune (novel)," the Bene Gesserit breeding program (Designed to produce the Kwisatz Haderach) is eugenics on a massive scale, calculating the exact genetic pairings needed to produce the Kwisatz Harerach over many generations. This was done without artificial insemination and, in some cases, without the knowledge of the participants. The result was Paul-Muad'dib, and later Leto.
Read more about this topic: Eugenics
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or media:
“Kings govern by popular assemblies only when they cannot do without them.”
—Charles James Fox (1749–1806)
“Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why—but the editorialists forget it—terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)