Throughout history, people have sought to improve themselves, and society, by eliminating disease. They want to enhance desirable qualities in their children or control populations with rules about who can procreate and who can live.

Join Adam Rutherford as he discusses how new techniques in genetics and gene editing prompt the urgently needed discussions about improving the 'quality' of the population. And how the ideas underlying eugenics are not merely historical.

In this talk, Adam explores the science, history and future of eugenics, and the practice of population control by selective procreation.

This is a theatre event, where the speaker and audience in our theatre are joined by an online audience. For Theatre attendees, the address is 21 Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4BS.

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Event image by MIKI Yoshihito via Flickr