Film festival puts eugenics under microscope

Published on Wednesday 4 November 2009 08:55

A SHORT season of films looking at the subject of eugenics is to be shown in Edinburgh this month.

The Biomedical Ethics Film Festival, at the Edinburgh Filmhouse, will look at questions of whether society should create the perfect human race, whether in fact this is already happening and ask why should parents not seek to have the perfect child?

The three-day event will include screening of provocative films such as the 1998 Swedish documentary Homo Sapiens 1900, looking at the birth and rise of the eugenics movement, and the Horizon documentary, Who's Afraid of Designer Babies?.

At the end of each screening, a discussion will take place between the audience and a panel of invited experts in bioethics, science, law, medicine and politics.

The festival has been organised in partnership with the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, Filmhouse, the Edinburgh and South-East Scotland branch of the British Science Association, and the ESRC Genomics Forum at the University of Edinburgh.

It runs from 20 to 22 November.