Odium Generis Humani

The War on Humans by Wesley J. Smith

Discovery Institute Press, 2014
(240 pages, $14.95, paperback)

reviewed by Richard Weikart

In August 2005 the London Zoo opened a special primate display—a four-day exhibit of Homo sapiens. A zoo spokesperson proclaimed that this display "teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate." Worse yet, the zoo issued a communiqué explaining that the intent of the exhibit was "to highlight the spread of man as a plague species." The notion that humans are a "plague species," a cancer on the earth, and a dangerous pathogen that needs to be eliminated, is increasing in forcefulness in our society. Where did this come from, and how influential is it?

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Richard Weikart is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany and Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (both from Palgrave Macmillan). Some of his writings can be found at www.csustan.edu/history/faculty/weikart.

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