WI: Eugenics Survives?

What would allow eugenics to stay mainstream until present day and maybe even further? I know a lot of that was discredited in most people's eyes after WW2, when people found out about the horrific projects the Nazis had undertaken to weed out the unfit. Not scientifically discredited, though it may very well be invalid, but what drove most people away was the excesses it was driven to during Nazi Germany. So given this detail, what could preserve the eugenics movement to nowadays?
 
In the US, if health insurance premiums for workers' children varied based on the genetic health of the parents (expanding pre-existing conditions to include family history) that might lead to defacto eugenics, as parents have their children tested to prove the lack of negative genes.

Besides, eugenics does still exist. I read recently in Newsweek that 90% of all fetuses discovered by amnio to have Down's Syndrome were aborted. I can only imagine this would be true for other diseases if fairly easy tests were available. Juvenile diabetes, autism, mental retardation and childhood cancers spring to mind as conditions likely to have high abortion rates after a positive test.
 
I was thinking of a POD in the first half of the 20th century, but that might work too. I guess I would either need Nazi Germany to never happen or for word of the Holocaust to be far less widespread after the War.
 

King Thomas

Banned
No Nazis. And tests that are accurate as 50/50 tests would be too unreliable for most people to want to risk aborting a perfectly healthy unborn baby.
 

ninebucks

Banned
This is pretty simple really. No Holocaust, eugenics survives.

Even the narrative that eugenics died out as soon as the holocaust was discovered is a tad simplistic, as eugenics projects continued for decades in the 'civilised' world.
 
You might need an earlier PoD. What if there was additional groundwork for the American version of eugenics in the period 1890 - 1920? perhaps an author with the status of Sinclair (probably not Sinclair himself) writing a classic not about meatpacking (The Jungle) but instead about the effects of "bad breeding" on the national genetic stock after the ACW? Perhaps a novel (with a smack of AH?) in which large numbers of soldiers come back sterile due to some camp sickness, leaving the genetically inferior shirkers in the deep end of the gene pool?
 
From Wikipedia:
Although it was clear by 1941 that the SS hierarchy led by Himmler and Heydrich was determined to embark on a policy of killing all the Jews under German control, there were important centers of opposition to this policy within the Nazi regime. The grounds for the opposition were mainly economic, not humanitarian. Hermann Goring, who had overall control of the German war industry, and the German army's Economics Department, representing the armaments industry, argued that the enormous Jewish labor force assembled in the General Government area (more than a million able-bodied workers) was an asset too valuable to waste while Germany was preparing to invade the Soviet Union.
During this period there were a few conflicts between the Army and the SS over policy in Poland. Ultimately, neither Göring nor the army leadership was willing or able to challenge Himmler's authority, particularly since Himmler made it clear he had Hitler's support.


Unless someone other than Hitler takes hold or we avoid Nazi Germany altogether, the Holocaust happens.
 
You could go the other way with the holocaust. Have the Nazis win. They don't declare war on the US, Stalin decides to sue for a peace, gets something like Brest-Litovsk, England just sits there for a while before agreeing to a white peace. The Germans can finish off the USSR later.

The Germans winning, and touting their Eugenics ideas could make people less likely to dismiss it, even if they did find it morally abhorrent. "We don't want to kill everybody like the Nazis did, but we can sterilize the insane/mentally retarded. THAT isn't so bad, and it's humane!"

In any case, if there were stronger eugenics policies in the US I might very well not be alive (Mental illness/deafness runs in the family).
 
The most crucial question this brings to mind is who would be president of the United States 2001-2009?

I'm terribly sorry. I know I'm a bad person. But it really really is irresistible, there's only four more days of Bush-bashing to go, and this really is a gimme.
 
The most crucial question this brings to mind is who would be president of the United States 2001-2009?

I'm terribly sorry. I know I'm a bad person. But it really really is irresistible, there's only four more days of Bush-bashing to go, and this really is a gimme.

Well, if eugenics did survive we certainly know who would NOT have been elected president in 2008.

Perhap eugenics could have saved us the likes of Bill Clinton too.
 
IMO, eugenics might well end up making a comeback at some point in the future as science advances its understanding of genetics, especially when/if genetic engineering becomes viable.
 
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How about a POD wherein the Soviet Union was seen as the main aggressor of WWII? If anything, this could lead to a Cold War wherein Eugenics and "racial hygiene" are considered paramount to national defense.

Another method is the assassination of FDR in 1933. With this scenario, America can easily be seduced to Eugenics by the likes of a Adolf Hitler analogue, whether it is William Dudley Pelley or H. P. Lovecraft.

One terrible aspect of the eugenics movement people forget is that it banned "miscegenation" or mixed-race couples. As such, this would also lead to the flourishment of lynchings, which were often justified as "defending the honor of a woman's maidenhood..."
 
IMO, eugenics might well ending up making a comeback at some point in the future as science advances its understanding of genetics, especially when/if genetic engineering becomes viable.

If this ever happen, I will go underground. Even though I have no genetic illness' in my family and with my looks I'd be accepted by eugenics, I would still dedicate my life to combat this new horrible world. Hellfire, I'm even against genetic manipulation of crops. I think that eugenics is one of the foulest things ever conjured by the human race. It killed millions, and only here in Sweden, massive amounts of "unsuitable" women were sterilised during the thirties, if I'm not mistaken... Gods, how I loathe my country sometimes!
 
Holy Necropost Batman!

As for the Soviets could be the aggressor in World War II, there are plenty of possible scenarios, though most involve no Nazis in Germany. A simple search ought to turn up the most recent threads on the issue.
 
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