Eugenics: A Negative And Invalid Theory For The Improvement Of The Human Race

I support the guidelines outlined by Kitcher for the use of genetic information because of their responsible and ethical nature. I believe that future generations will benefit as a direct consequence of these guidelines. I shall begin by defining eugenics as the study of human genetics to improve inherited characteristics of the human race by the means of controlled selective breeding.

Eugenics is defined, in some way or the other, as the process of reshaping the human race by determining the kinds of people who will be born. As such, there is much debate in the field of eugenics, with authors, like Philip Kitcher, who support laissez-faire or a minimalist approach of eugenics in which eugenic decision-making should be limited only to avoid neurological illnesses and in which parental free choice is valued. Gregory Stock’s essay, The Enhanced and Un-Enhanced, presents otherwise by supporting the position of maximalist eugenics, allowing individuals the full extent in the selection of genes. On the other hand, the film, Gattaca, raises major ethical problems by illustrating a dystopian society resulted by extensive

Future eugenicists can extort their knowledge and use it to their advantage. Eugenics is an interesting subject that is co-dependent on society; the future holds great possibilities for acknowledgment in this field of science.

From the reading, the one thing that stood out the most is how eugenics came about and how poor white trash were seen as having an illness and disease to justify their social class status. The whole concept of eugenics just doesn’t quite sit well with me due to the fact that it believes there is a set of individuals who are superior to others, what justify that? Under what conditions does society have the right to make a reproductive choice for someone else? Chapter 3 talks about how three generations of imbeciles is enough, but in my opinion, it is not up to society to cut reproduction, especially when family and heirs have such an importance to people, regardless of social class because it has become a norm, to have a family. Although eugenics

One reason our government should not limit how many children one has is because it can lead to abuse to citizens.

Eugenics is a special effort targeted at cultivating the genetic composition of the human race. In history, eugenicists had promoted selective breeding to accomplish goals that were set. Nowadays, we have the proper technology that makes it possible to directly modify the genetic composition of an individual. Nevertheless, people have different views on how to best use this kind of technology. In 1883, a British scholar named Sir Francis Galton, who was also the cousin of Charles Darwin, used the term eugenics, to represent “well-born.” Galton believed that the human race could directly help its future by selectively breeding individuals who have certain “desired” qualities. This idea was constructed on Galton’s study of the upper class in Britain. After the completion of these studies, Galton established that an elite position in society was due to those persons having good genetic makeup. “Galton idea of Eugenics was developed due to Charles Darwin’s theory of Social Darwinism, which explains survival of the fittest, the capability to

Throughout history, people have consistently tried to prove that groups with inborn qualities can either vastly improve or degenerate different races over time. This rhetoric has been proven multiple times throughout the course of the last century in the United States and Nazi-reigned Germany. Supposedly, this rhetoric has been disproven throughout the United States; however, there are proven accounts that the United States government has recently supported this theory of sterilization of minorities by supporting the eugenics movement, which was not only in Nazi Germany, but also on United States soil. The topic of improving the genetic makeup of different races has not only just become a common theme for many modern day countries to use to make their societies more genetically fit. However, it has adopted the basis for current racism that is clearly apparent in today’s society. If improving genetic fitness was not a concern to past societies, then people in general would be a lot more open to interracial and cross-cultural relationships rather than completely disregarding the idea of dating someone that is visibly genetically different.

Who inhabits the world? Can we really create the best race and are it determined by our genes? The study of Eugenics raises a lot of unresolved question still in the year of 2015 as this topic expands. Eugenics, also known as selective breeding has been an exceptionally disputable science that has existed in this world for quite a long time. Eugenics (genetic counseling) is characterized as the study of or assurance in the probability of enhancing the characteristics of the human species or a human populace by such means as disheartening a person to procreate because he/she have hereditary defects or risked to have inheritable undesirable qualities or permitting reproduction by persons attempted to have inheritable desirable traits. These are qualities that individuals in the public eye at the time considered "unfit". They incorporate the “unfit” to be alcoholics, being a criminal or prostitutes, those with a mental impairment, feeble minded and those with physical impairments. To battle this, individuals accepted that the choice to procreate ought to be controlled by more "fit" human.

These fears spread to the general population due to the efforts of aristocrats and scientists who developed theories of eugenics and scientific racism (Brodkin, 1994). The key players in these efforts were Madison Grant and his book Passing of the Great Race. In his book, Grant discussed his discovery that were three or four European races ranging from the superior Nordics of northwestern Europe to the inferior southern and eastern races of Alpines, Mediterraneans, and Jews. In Grant’s eyes, the upper class was pure Nordic while the lowers classes came from the lower races (Brodkin,

But did the climax of the Holocaust cease the desire to create the “desirable” human? By 1939, in America, a movement called the “Negro Project” was started to control the ‘breeding’ of the Blacks in the South. In the 1960’s, the Eugenic movement was one of voluntary capitalistic culture. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was an explosion of popular and scientific literature based upon molecular genetics. By the 1980s, sperm banks that select donors according to intelligence, looks and success were high in popularity. Women with “desirable traits” were selling their eggs for high cash amounts (de Araujo-Sommer 2015). In 1997, a sheep named Dolly was the first mammal ever to be successfully cloned. The contemporary truth on Eugenics is that technology is at a stage where it is possible to clone humans and genetically engineer them. The modern day Eugenic push is based upon the ideological values of social formation where “quality of life = economic performance” (Raman, 2015).

The Holocaust, where over 6 million people mostly Jewish died in concentration camps. Inside the camps, people underwent inhumane experiments in the name of scientific research. However, the Nazis discovered ways to help society and the future.

First of all, the history of eugenics of is a huge bad quality within itself. Francis Dalton, the half cousin of Charles Darwin, invented eugenics. Eventually the idea

Many wonder if it is ethical to use genetic information to alter natural processes of procreation to give people the best genes they can get. There are already ways to predict the presence of a genetic disease in a child based on the parents and in vivo testing. Eugenics is “increasing the number of genes in the human population responsible for improving intelligence, beauty, musical ability and other traits we value” (Munson, 2012 272-273) Eugenics is often confused to just be for consideration of the parents and the child. However, the definition of eugenics is reliant on the outcome for the entire human population. The two types of eugenics include positive and negative; positive eugenics is “The aim of increasing the number of

Eugenics, a new science of heredity was first introduced in 1883, brought about to address the budding fears and threats to the purity and fitness of the British race. A fear brought upon by events such as the Boer War in 1899, forced Britain to question the spectrum of degeneracy within the population and resolve the issue of bringing the British and White race back to strength, unified and fit. Sir Francis Galton defined eugenics as “the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally”. It was believed that differences in mental, moral and physical traits between individuals, as well as races were hereditary, producing those who were deemed

Eugenics will become a universal practice in the future due to the fact that humanity never learned the lesson from the Holocaust and the Second World War. For instance, in the years immediately after the war, many American geneticists worked as evaluators for many newborns’ adoptive placements. They would “focus on the [child]’s ability to appear convincingly white, relying upon examination of the ‘sacral spot at the base of the spine,’ nose width, lip thickness, hair texture and shape, and even scrotum coloration” to determine the type of family most suitable for the child. Moreover, Peter Singer, who was a moral philosopher born at the end of the war, publically endorsed the termination of not only disabled infants, but children and adults as well. Shockingly, he was also a supporter of the Nazi Aktion T4 program, More recently, an American jail sterilized all of its female prisoners who both failed to graduate from high school and had five or more children. The jail administrators did this without the consent of these prisoners. These were examples of negative eugenics, the one practiced by the Nazi party and caused the deaths of millions of people. Clearly, the American geneticists, Singer and the jail administrators all wanted to improve the quality of the population by discouraging the reproductions of people with less desirable traits, such as African American features, disabilities and low intelligence. Both the continued practices of negative eugenics as well as