A "mad" Darwinian?

Ever hear of selective gene editing, forced sterilization, population birth control, embryo selection, gene splicing, eugenics, GenRich, CRISPR?

It is noted that Charles Darwin did describe the variations of physical characteristics and implied the working of natural selection of physical characteristics. But, the effects of the first sentence above is not from Charles Darwin. It stems from a cousin, Sir Francis Galton. His studies lead him to believe the apparent randomness of nature and its production of beings might be improved. That the direction of organisms' development would not need to rely on the 'blindness' of nature and some of the acquired, unwanted defects and diseases.

Galton did not focus so much like Darwin on physical characteristics. He focused on traits, like longevity, intelligence, leadership, symmetry to enhance or improve on them and reduced undesirable traits, possibly to give desirable traits an upper hand and so better the odds of a species as was understood in the late 19th century. He advocated for the use of fingerprints as a way to keep records.

He eventually came to call the desirable traits as 'positive' and undesirable traits that may hold mankind back as 'negative'.

Galton was born into a well to do English Quaker family. He was essentially pampered. Soon he would not need to work for a living. But he was curious. He walked among crowds of people wondering how they got the characteristics he encountered. He wrote down the characteristics and kept track of them. He compared some populations based on traits, e.g. he described Aberdeen as woeful and London people as upgrade, exhibiting good symmetry. He held the impression of that time that characteristics do pass from generation to generation. But he knew regression, "regression toward mediocrity", had little to do with heredity.

He took a long expedition deep into Africa in 1850 from southern Africa. He was a little insensitive to cultural norms among the societies. But he did communicate. He also wrote down every character trait he encountered among the peoples. Then he returned to England and contemplated his notes. Started keeping statistics tables of traits and how often they showed up on the table. He came across the text of Charles Darwin, a cousin. He was mentioned in Darwin's "The Descent of Man".

In 1883, he coined the word eugenics. 1889, he published, "Natural Inheritance". He is credited with some 340 publications.

It appears he did not intend his works to reflect on individuals. He was just tracing tendencies of traits among populations. It may likely not have been intended for use by authorities as is depicted on the first sentence. Just a study with applicable conclusions like hundreds of other papers of that time. His pursuit was to raise the mean of mankind, improve the status and character on this world.

In 1909 Galton received knighthood. He died in January, 1911 at the age of 88.

Afterwards, his works were referenced and used for programs like, "Rassenhygiene", and promoting the Scandinavian characteristics (even tho blue eyes is a recessive gene and has been with humans only some 60,000 years, and may increase insecurity feelings.). That and others listed in the first sentence, whether blatantly applied or integrated by subtleness. Some are still in use. Perhaps a recent outgrowth from all that is CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) for targeting gene editing. One who speaks on CRISPR is Jennifer Doudna.