Neuroeugenics

A speculative and highly controversial concept referring to the application of eugenic principles to neuroscience—the idea of selecting, engineering, or enhancing neural traits to produce "desirable" cognitive, emotional, or behavioral characteristics. Neuroeugenics encompasses hypothetical technologies ranging from genetic selection for intelligence to neural engineering for emotional regulation to cognitive enhancement for social conformity. The term carries the historical weight of eugenics movements that justified forced sterilization, racial hierarchy, and genocide under the banner of "improving the human stock." Critics argue that neuroeugenics repeats the same dangerous logic: identifying certain neural traits as "superior," treating human variation as pathology, and justifying intervention on populations deemed "deficient." The concept serves as a warning about where cognitive enhancement technologies might lead when combined with ableism, racism, and the drive for social control.

Example: "The proposal to screen embryos for 'cognitive potential' was called neuroeugenics by critics—not because it was literally eugenics, but because it repeated the logic: some brains are better, and we should eliminate the others."

by Abzugal March 22, 2026

Neoeugenics

A term referring to contemporary forms of eugenic thinking that have shed the explicit racism and coercion of historical eugenics but retain its core logic: the classification of human traits as superior or inferior, the framing of variation as defect, and the project of engineering "better" populations through selective reproduction, genetic screening, or enhancement technologies. Neoeugenics operates through consumer choice rather than state coercion, through "personalized medicine" rather than racial hygiene, through "enhancement" rather than elimination. Critics argue that neoeugenics is more dangerous for being invisible—it frames its project as liberation while reproducing the same hierarchies, treats elimination as choice, and assumes that some people shouldn't exist while calling it progress.

Example: "The prenatal testing that screens for 'undesirable' traits was called neoeugenics—not because parents were forced, but because it assumed some lives weren't worth living, and called that choice."

by Abzugal March 22, 2026