Eugenics is a technique that aims at the improvement of biological and mental standards of human species by the control of heredity, not unlike breeders trying to obtain desirable qualities in animals by artificial selection. The idea of human eugenics was suggested inter alia by Plato, by Campanella in the 17th cent., by Galton in the 19th. Eugenics was discredited as a result of its use by the Nazi regime: slaughtering supposed misfits and ‘inferior races’. Whether a voluntary but scientifically organized selection would give better results than the spontaneous one is debatable — Professor Leszek Kołakowski