Eugenics has always been a technological problem, not an ideological one.
If there was a cheap and cost effective way to edit your genes as an adult in a 100% safe way, then everyone would be doing it.
The reason why eugenics has a bad reputation is that there are incredibly low tech solutions that require an authoritarian surveillance state and such states have indeed existed and abused their powers in the past. I'm talking about forced sterilisation.
The first problem with these low tech approaches is that their models suck and aren't founded by actual genetics research. E.g. fascists defining their own ethnic group as superior over other ethnic groups.
The second problem is that they didn't just think that they were helping the people born through eugenics avoid diseases or become better people, they were thinking that people with the wrong genes shouldn't procreate or exist at all, because they are a waste of resources and therefore should be killed even if they somehow manage to deal with their complications.
But if we take a step back and start off with a higher level of technology and scientific progress, these concerns turn out to be meaningless.
If there is a gene that objectively causes a disease or harm and it can be identified reliably, then having children with that disease becomes morally questionable. This means some people are prevented from having children that they would otherwise want. However, if there is a technology that allows people to have children without the disease, then suddenly the opposite happens. It becomes a moral imperative to give them access to the treatment so that they can have children. In the extreme limit, no matter how bigoted an eugenicist is, he must always allow even the most "inferior" people (in his eyes) to have children and procreate. The discriminatory part of eugenics collapses into itself as if it never existed.
This then leaves the actual problems with eugenics: lack of genetic diversity and unforeseen consequences of unrestricted gene editing.
The solution to this problem would be to never implement precise genetic editing in the first place. Instead, whole chromosomes should be swapped out. This will increase genetic diversity by allowing a single child to have the combined genes of multiple fathers and mothers.
If there was a cheap and cost effective way to edit your genes as an adult in a 100% safe way, then everyone would be doing it.
The reason why eugenics has a bad reputation is that there are incredibly low tech solutions that require an authoritarian surveillance state and such states have indeed existed and abused their powers in the past. I'm talking about forced sterilisation.
The first problem with these low tech approaches is that their models suck and aren't founded by actual genetics research. E.g. fascists defining their own ethnic group as superior over other ethnic groups.
The second problem is that they didn't just think that they were helping the people born through eugenics avoid diseases or become better people, they were thinking that people with the wrong genes shouldn't procreate or exist at all, because they are a waste of resources and therefore should be killed even if they somehow manage to deal with their complications.
But if we take a step back and start off with a higher level of technology and scientific progress, these concerns turn out to be meaningless.
If there is a gene that objectively causes a disease or harm and it can be identified reliably, then having children with that disease becomes morally questionable. This means some people are prevented from having children that they would otherwise want. However, if there is a technology that allows people to have children without the disease, then suddenly the opposite happens. It becomes a moral imperative to give them access to the treatment so that they can have children. In the extreme limit, no matter how bigoted an eugenicist is, he must always allow even the most "inferior" people (in his eyes) to have children and procreate. The discriminatory part of eugenics collapses into itself as if it never existed.
This then leaves the actual problems with eugenics: lack of genetic diversity and unforeseen consequences of unrestricted gene editing.
The solution to this problem would be to never implement precise genetic editing in the first place. Instead, whole chromosomes should be swapped out. This will increase genetic diversity by allowing a single child to have the combined genes of multiple fathers and mothers.