ABSTRACT
Apart from linguistic and cultural differences, eugenics has a grave historical legacy of misuse and abuse. In the scientific press, the term is mentioned with caution, guilt and sometimes with awe and terror at the risk of its resurgence. The scientific community finds it difficult to isolate eugenics from crimes of the past. Discussions focus on eugenic racism, eugenic sterilization, eugenic discrimination, eugenic euthanasia, state eugenics, population control, the phantom of eugenics, negative eugenics, positive eugenics and the crime of eugenics. The fact that technology gives the possibility of choosing desirable characteristics by screening and abortion causes great concern. A decade later application of prenatal screening for haemoglobinopathies in Greece, Cyprus and Italy gave people the possibility of having healthy children. By practising eugenics in their families they were spared the emotional deprivation and the social stigma of being childless. The actual practice remains with a public image related mainly to the trauma its misuse produced to humanity.
