This sense of entitlement and elitism is so sad.
To withhold food from a person until they agree to never have a child?
Nice way to bleach the gene pool eh'
eugenics
(Concise Encyclopedia)
Study of human improvement by genetic means. The first thorough exposition of eugenics was made by Francis Galton, who in Hereditary Genius (1869) proposed that a system of arranged marriages between men of distinction and women of wealth would eventually produce a gifted race. The American Eugenics Society, founded in 1926, supported Galton's theories. U.S. eugenicists also supported restriction on immigration from nations with “inferior” stock, such as Italy, Greece, and countries of eastern Europe, and argued for the sterilization of insane, retarded, and epileptic citizens. Sterilization laws were passed in more than half the states, and isolated instances of involuntary sterilization continued into the 1970s. The assumptions of eugenicists came under sharp criticism beginning in the 1930s and were discredited after the German Nazis used eugenics to support the extermination of Jews, blacks, and homosexuals
http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/human-testing-the-eugenics-movement-and-irbs-724The Most Infamous Eugenics Movement
By the 1930s, eugenics had been scientifically discredited in the United States due to the aforementioned difficulties in defining inherited characteristics, as well as poor sampling and statistical methods. In Germany, however, the eugenics movement was just gaining momentum. For instance, in 1933, the Nazi-controlled government issued the so-called "Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases," under which at least 400,000 Germans were involuntarily sterilized for having hereditary conditions such as mental illness, epilepsy, "feeblemindedness," or physical deformities (Kennedy Institute of Ethics, 2002). The passage of such measures continued over the course of the decade, and by the late 1930s, Hitler's eugenic-based national program of "race hygiene" had escalated into a program of euthanasia targeting both children and adults with various mental and physical disorders. This policy eventually culminated in the ghastly deaths of millions of Jews during the Holocaust.
Learning from History
In the 1940s, the judges who presided over the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi doctors who performed experiments on concentration camp prisoners wisely recognized a need for oversight of medical experiments involving human subjects. As a result, the Nuremberg Code was formulated in 1947, and it provided guidelines for research that are still adhered to today. Other more recent protocols for research involving human subjects require such things as informed consent and adherence to strict policies aimed at protecting the welfare of subjects. Moreover, within the United States, any research program involving human trials must now be scrutinized by an impartial institutional review board (IRB) before the program can begin, and any adverse events that occur during experimentation must be reported and reviewed.
Eugenic Philosophies Remain
Despite the events of the past, there are still many individuals yet today who support eugenic arguments against the decision to knowingly give birth to a child with a genetic disorder, cognitive impairment, or physical disability. Society, however, must accept that one person's definition of "disabled" or "impaired" may be drastically different from another person's. Deafness, for example, is seen by some as a disability and by others as merely a different way of living. Consider the case of a deaf lesbian couple in the U.S. who, in 2002, revealed that they had specifically sought out a hearing-impaired sperm donor to conceive their two children, who were indeed born deaf (Spriggs, 2002). Now, consider those parents who are either affected by or carriers of a genetic disorder who turn to modern techniques such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select for embryos that will be born without the genetic condition in question. Stories such as these have refueled the ethical debate over "designer babies" and whether society has a right to choose what types of children are born.
Of course, there are numerous other conditions that can be viewed as either disabling or empowering, depending on one's point of view. For example, bipolar disorder is a condition in which an individual alternates between periods of euphoric creativity and activity and periods of debilitating depression. Because this disorder has a genetic component and tends to run in families, it would have been a likely target of the U.S. eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. Today, however, bipolar suffers have access to treatments that allow most of them to lead normal lives; furthermore, some people would argue that eliminating bipolar disorder as a disease would also mean eliminating a positive intellectual force in society. Indeed, the Internet is rife with lists of well-respected intellectuals and artists who are rumored to have suffered from bipolar disorder. The decision to treat, rather than eliminate, bipolar disorder seems obvious when considering the societal contributions made by some of these individuals.
Respecting Differences in Thought and Opinion
Western geneticists and genetic counselors now make great efforts to avoid projecting their opinions and philosophies onto their patients, and they instead strive to educate their patients so that these individuals can make their own decisions regarding their genetic health. Although this concept of nondirective counseling is widely accepted in the West, it may never become standard in other parts of the world. In China, for example, moral values are strongly influenced by the Buddhist and Taoist religions and by Marxism. There is a strong ideology that regards each person as a small component of society, as well as widespread sentiment that an individual's interests should be subordinate to the interests of the nation. Therefore, it is not surprising that many Chinese geneticists strive to improve population quality and further eugenic principles, a goal clearly at odds with Western ideology (Mao, 1997). Indeed, it is examples such as this that highlight the importance of remembering the eugenic mistakes of the past so that they do not occur again in the future.