Ethical Issues Of Eugenics

Part Two covers the years 1900-1950. It describes the rise in popularity of eugenics, and the resurgence of physical therapies and remedies for mental disorders. Whitaker stated that the rise of eugenics caused a degradation in moral treatment of mentally ill patients, and eventually gave way to forced sterilization of patients deemed to be mentally incapacitated to prevent the spreading of the genetic disorder of insanity. The American public as a whole seemed to embrace forced sterilization by the 1920’s.

During the twentieth century, the United States Supreme Court passed laws that sparked a time where grotesque discrimination and outright injustice towards all races and gender ran amuck. The United States Supreme court supported a claim that those who were deemed “feebleminded” were a hazard to society, and to protect the nation’s gene pool by keeping the “lesser classes” from reproducing, they needed to be sterilized. Carrie Buck, notoriously known for her Case against the supreme court shows an unquestionable detail just how deplorable such a government was. In this essay I will illustrate the different types of ethical principles and how they were violated in the 1927 case of Buck vs. Bell.

Written by Justice Holmes, the infamous Buck v Bell opinion, gives a summary and an analysis of how the court reached the decision to uphold Virginia’s sterilization statute. The case involved Carrie Buck, an 18 year old women in a Virginia institution for “feeble-minded” individuals, she was to be sterilized after being found to be feeble-minded. In addition to the summary of the case, Holmes raises his concerns with having more “feeble-minded” individuals and criminals parading the streets which justifies coerced sterilization.

In Pages 11 and 12 in Laura Hildebrand's book Unbroken she talks about eugenics in the way that America was infatuated with eugenics. Eugenics promised strengthening of the human race by taking out people that were unfit. One of the tools of eugenics was sterilization which were procedures that rendered people unable to reproduce . when Louie the main character of Laura's book, was around his teenage years the state in which he lived California, Was overwhelmed with eugenics and ended up sterilizing around 20,000 people. As you can see why Louie, a troubled teenager, who never really was the type to make the honor roll, had a minority background, and was a notorious troublemaker may have had a reason to fear his life. Once he realized what he was risking he

In contrast to the "negative" eugenics position of the state of Virginia, involuntary sterilization laws emphasizing breeding restrictions for society's "unfit" neither benefit the welfare of the individual nor that of society for several moral and legal reasons. The legal validity of these involuntary sterilization laws would be challenged within the Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell. In September of 1924, at the age of eighteen, Carrie Buck, an illegitimate daughter of an allegedly feebleminded woman, was admitted to the Virginia's State Colony for Epileptics and the Feebleminded. Six months earlier, the Virginia State Legislature decisively passed their involuntary sterilization bill authorizing the Superintendents of five state institutions to petition for the permission to sterilize inmates. Buck, who had a mental age of nine and an I.Q. of about fifty, had already given birth to an illegitimate child herself, who was allegedly feebleminded as well. At the time, the Superintendent of the State Colony, Dr. A. S. Priddy, petitioned for permission to sterilize this woman for fear that Buck would have more mentally defective children. The statute had provided that each Superintendent needed to receive permission from a special Board of Directors of that institution, who would hear the grounds for sterilization and determine whether or not to follow through on the operation. Priddy faced immense pressure from state officials to petition for sterilization, as

The idea of eugenics made it possible for involuntary sterilization. In order to improve the human race, it meant regulating reproduction. 1907 Indiana passed to sterilize the mentally insane and inmates. Their plan was to eliminate “defective” genes. By 1960 63,000 people were involuntary

Eugenics is the social construction of the human race by controlling reproduction. “Reducing the number of unfit people the term refers to the effort to improve a human population by either encouraging the reproduction of desired traits or preventing the reproduction of undesirable one” (Bethel University). The eugenics movement in America support laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage, family planning, sterilization of the poor, disabled and education about human reproduction. They are in favor of reproduction among those thought to be the most genetically fit with characteristics such as hardworking, intelligent and physically fit. On the other had the movement discourage reproduction of the unfit considered to have

There are many things that have happened behind closed doors in our great nation. In fact, even today with all the technology and possibilities to learn, the people of this nation still fall ignorant. We don’t know the evils that occur in our nation, not to mention the ideas and blueprints that caused them to come to action. There are many great sins that have been committed, and currently in the process of committing, of these I believe Eugenics to be one of the most abominable. How did eugenics start, where does it come from and who authored and supported it? I hope to delve into this during this essay.

The eugenics movement began in the 20th century by a man named Francis Galton. As the cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton believed that eugenics was a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children (Carlson). This Galtonian ideal of eugenics is often thought of as positive eugenics. Eugenics can be defined as the outgrowth of human heredity aimed at "improving" the quality of the human stock (Allen and Bird). At the other end of the spectrum is what can be classified as negative eugenics and is presently in disrepute. Negative eugenics entails selective breeding in which the least able from the population is taken out of the reproduction pool to preserve humanity's best traits.

Hell is a road that was paved with good intentions; this cliché quintessentially describes the eugenics movement. Eugenics is the controlled reproduction of individuals; the main focus of eugenics is to isolate “good” genes from “bad” genes (Dolan DNA Learning Center). The main goal of Eugenics is to create a higher quality human race (Dolan DNA Learning Center). This movement became the center of which the twentieth century orbited around. The movement swayed numerous significant policies, which were implemented within the United States, ranging from immigration to sterilization (Selden). What is truly unsettling is the radical nature of the eugenics movement, which was originally founded with good intentions by Francis Galton (Carlson). The Eugenics movement made headway owing to the fact that America was frantic for a solution to social problems and believed that this scientific approach was the solution it yearned for; this is evident from the origin, purpose, supporters and policies that resulted from eugenics.

The American eugenics movement is characterized by the implementation of sterilization laws in over 30 states that led to over 60,000 sterilizations of those deemed “disabled” by the regulating entities. This movement began in the early 1900’s and many argue that this movement was the base for eugenics programs all over the world, including the infamous eugenics movement in Germany. Proponents of this program believed that the

The idea of eugenics was first introduced by Sir Francis Galton, who believed that the breeding of two wealthy and successful members of society would produce a child superior to that of two members of the lower class. This assumption was based on the idea that genes for success or particular excellence were present in our DNA, which is passed from parent to child. Despite the blatant lack of research, two men, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Jon Alfred Mjoen, played to the white supremacists' desires and claimed that white genes were inherently superior to other races, and with this base formed the first eugenics society. The American Eugenics Movement attempted to unethically obliterate the rising tide of lower classes by immorally

Eugenics is very controversial. It is important to be informed on the subject to avoid making rash and hasty decisions on whether or not it is right or wrong. It is up to each individual to gain the knowledge necessary to determine the moral correctness or incorrectness of any topic. Often decisions are made without information to back them up. You must understand the term before understanding the action. In this way, we must understand eugenics in a general sense and in detail. We must start with defining the term eugenics.

The roots of eugenics can be traced back to Britain in the early 1880’s when Sir Francis Galton generated the term from the Greek word for “well-born”. He defined eugenics as the science of improving stock, whether human or animal. According to the American Eugenics Movement, today’s study of eugenics has many similarities to studies done in the early 20th century. Back then, “Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes.” (www.eugenicsarchive.org) According to Merriam-Webster, the modern day definition of eugenics is, a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of

Under this law, no recorded sterilizations occurred. In 1929, a modified eugenics law was adopted. Under this law, 49 people were sterilized under the authority of the administration of the institutions. The supreme court ruled this law unconstitutional in 1933 citing the absence of a public hearing notice or standards for appeal. The law was modified and also called for the creation of a North Carolina Eugenics Board. It consisted of three state officials, one representative of a mental health institution and one representative of the State Hospital in Raleigh. The board’s duties were to “review all cases involving the sterilization of mentally diseased, feeble-minded, or epileptic patients, inmates, or non-institutionalized individuals” (North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources). Over the next forty-one years, more than 7,500 sterilizations were carried out under this law. The state ceased this process in 1974 and the Eugenics Commission was subsequently abolished in 1977 ("Eugenics Board of North Carolina", 2017).