Is it good for livestock? It is good for us, their breeders, but is it good for them? Most highly bred animals are now totally dependent upon human support and would die out quickly if humans stopped farming them. I would argue that, from the livestock's point of view, it is bad for them. And for similar points of view, I would think it bad for humans. It would be selecting all humans for the perceived values of a small set of selectors. It might suit the selectors, but it probably wouldn't suit the selectees. So - NO! The thought of serious eugenics gives me the shivers.

This question was asked a while ago, but I found it and thought I'd rehash. From Wikipedia: "Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. The goals of various groups advocating eugenics have been to create healthier, more intelligent people, to save society's resources, and lessen human suffering." Most advocates of eugenics have historically talked about sterilization or selective breeding, most often just sterilization. Would it be so bad to select for intelligence, long life, and health? I don't think anyone has a "right" to have children, certainly, and there are plenty of children out there to adopt for a couple that isn't allowed to reproduce if they don't make the cut. The only real reason I see against it is that it can be a slippery slope that can end up with people selecting for traits that are appearance or race oriented. We generally like "tall" in our society, for example, but "tall" doesn't benefit the health, lifespan, or mental well-being or clarity of the individual. Neither does race. Certainly some races have certain genetic predispositions to diseases, but not every member of those races have these dispositions, and an easy genetic test can often discover which ones do and which ones don't. Selecting for higher intelligence, although it does sound very good on paper, is also problematic - people are often arguing about the biases of IQ tests, and different "kinds" of intelligence, and indeed there are some very successful, very creative, or very amazing people that do miserably on IQ tests. So, maybe selecting for intelligence should be out too. But I really think selecting away diseases, genetic disorders, and selecting for longer, healthier lives doesn't have a downside. With genetic screening, and even with genetic engineering, we don't even need to sterilize people - they just need to produce, or one can be engineered, an embryo that is free from any negative dispositions we know about today, and has better resistance to many diseases, including the ravages of aging. I don't see a downside there. Eugenics carries with it the danger of sliding down the slippery slope of abuse and social values that have nothing to do with the value to the individual - namely, mental and physical health. For that reason, and I think that reason ALONE, eugenics should not be practiced. I don't think it's reasonable to reject eugenics as pure evil just because it happened to be adopted by racist fascists - no more so than the music of Wagner is evil because Hitler liked it (or that Wagner himself was a horrible anti-Semite). Eugenics is an idea like any idea, which should be discussed without bringing up the emotional baggage of some that adopt it.