부산대학교 도서관

This book by Rutherford (biology and society, Univ. College London, UK) is sure to appeal to a wide audience, except for geneticists already familiar with the history of their discipline. Following a brief section on terminology and an introduction, the book is divided into two roughly equal parts. The first section discusses the history of eugenics, focusing on its development as both an idea and a practice in Britain, the US, and Germany. The motives for the practical application of this pseudo-science varied, spanning the eradication of disease, population limitation, and the preservation of the power and dominance of a putatively threatened white (and under the Nazis, Aryan) race, as did the methods for achieving these ends—e.g., selective breeding, involuntary sterilization, and/or the elimination of “undesirables.” The second part explores developments in modern genetics, including techniques and research endeavors like the Human Genome Project, which clearly indicate both the complexity of the human genetic structure and the erroneousness of eugenicists’ dream of finding simple solutions to schizophrenia, bipolar disease, and alcoholism, inter alia. One caveat: academic readers will have preferred footnotes that are referential (not just explanatory) and a heftier bibliography. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.