Psychologist calls for Selective Breeding of Humans

A leading Danish psychologist has caused outrage by calling for the state to encourage the selective reproduction of children from intelligent parents and try to stop less gifted groups having children. "Intelligence is hereditary," said Professor Helmuth Nyborg, the dean of the psychology institute at Aarhus University.

"The 15 to 20 per cent of those at the lower levels of society - those who are not able to manage even the simplest tasks and often not their children - should be dissuaded from having children. "The fact is that they are having more children and the intelligent ones are having fewer."

He insisted his proposals could not be likened to policies under the Nazis. "Hitler didn't believe in eugenics. He just wanted to exterminate individual groups, and in fact exterminated the most intelligent among them," he said.