I think they are saying that there is a difference between genetic manipulation and eugenics. While the latter is the former, the reverse is not necessarily also the case. Our concept of eugenics explicitly tries to perfect mankind, through genetic modification and selective breeding. This is the actually creepy part of doing it. People deciding for other people if their genome is worthy enough to be allowed to reproduce. Utterly incompatible with our understanding of individual rights.

It is also uncomfortably close to nazi ideology, with aryan / pureblood German genes being desirable, and other ethnic origins not so much, leading to sterilizations in the „best“ of cases, ethnic cleansing in the others.

That being said, there are those doomsday instructions in the American desert, for our successor civilizations on big slabs of rock, written in pictograms. And one of those rules explicitly tells them to perform eugenics, to ensure mankind never reaches our current population numbers again, so they may never have to fight over a shortage of resources. And to ensure those humans will live in harmony with our world.