# H. Bentley Glass **Entity class:** Person / geneticist **Relevant role:** Retiring president, American Association for the Advancement of Science, December 1970 **Relevant publication:** “Science: Endless Horizons or Golden Age?,” *Science* 171(3966), 8 January 1971, pp. 23–29 ## Definition H. Bentley Glass was a geneticist whose 1970 AAAS retiring presidential address included a historically consequential proposal about the relationship of procreation, heredity, and a prospective child's rights. The address belongs in [[wiki/Eugenics|the history of eugenics]] and the debate over who may decide reproductive and genetic futures. ## Relationships - **Publication:** [NLM/PubMed journal record](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17737984/) identifies the article in *Science* 171, issue **3966**, pp. 23–29; the supplied Batch 5 transcription locates the passage at p. 28. - **Institutional role:** The address was delivered as Glass completed his presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; publication in its journal does not make his normative argument binding institutional policy. - **Historical comparison:** [[wiki/Robert L. Sinsheimer|Robert L. Sinsheimer]] published a different 1969 argument about individually implemented genetic intervention. Their proximity in time is a comparison, not evidence of a shared program. - **Corpus route:** [[wiki/Eugenics|Eugenics]] and [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] preserve the passage and its provenance. The Reminder remains unverified until the journal page settles its wording. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “In a world where each pair must be limited, on the average, to two offspring and no more, the right that must become paramount is not the right to procreate, but rather the right of every child to be born with a sound physical and mental constitution, based on a sound genotype. No parents will in that future time have the right to burden society with a malformed or a mentally incompetent child.” > **— H. Bentley Glass**, *1970 AAAS retiring presidential address; published 1971 in Science 171(3966), p. 28* *Verification Status: Unverified — supplied transcription; variant wording in scholarly reproductions. Check the Science p. 28 scan before promotion.* [[reminders/unverified/Glass Put Genotype Ahead of Reproductive Choice by H. Bentley Glass|Glass Put Genotype Ahead of Reproductive Choice by H. Bentley Glass]]