The Pros And Cons Of Eugenics

Eugenics is the pseudoscience of obtaining desired traits in a population through controlled repopulation, specifically by preventing those deemed “unfit” by “Nordic stereotypes” from breeding. Most modern day Americans do not realize the origins of eugenics, which was planted by Charles Darwin and Sir Francis Galton and bloomed in America, and what effect it had on the attempt to create a master race in Nazi Germany. America played a very influential role in German eugenics by collaboration between scientists and funding from American corporations. The negative connotation associated with this science is usually directed towards the scientists of the Holocaust under Adolf Hitler, and not towards American scientists who also partook in horrific experiments and performed inhumane acts as well. This is absurd when you consider that the United States was the backbone of the eugenics movement internationally and only developed a negative perspective of the research when it became affiliated with the holocaust and the troubling actions of Nazi Germany.

The Oxford University Press defines eugenics as “the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics” with a further—and rather illuminating—explanation which states, “Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis”.

Eugenics is a taboo science, but back in 1883 it was a modern advancement, discovered by Francis Galton (Carlson). Galton’s original mission was to improve humanity by encouraging the best and healthiest couples to simply have more children; Galton created positive eugenics (Carlson). However, with the positive comes the inevitable negative. Negative Eugenics was more set on preventing the least able from reproducing, in order to preserve the fitness of the

The Eugenics movement was an act of getting rid of traits that were considered unwanted. The word “eugenics” was first conceived by Francis Galton and it comes from Greek, meaning “good birth”. The purpose of Eugenics was to improve the human race by sterilizing people with “undesirable” traits such as mental disability, dwarfism, etc. In 1910, the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was founded by Charles Davenport to improve qualities within the human family. The ERO existed for three decades and this movement began to lose power in the 1940s.

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.

Eugenics is a complex term that has been studied and discussed internationally and throughout the eras. A basic definition of eugenics is the scientific study of race improvement. The definition is then broken up into two different aspects, positive eugenics and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics is defined as improving a race by focusing on ways to increasing the better population. Incentives are given to those superior races or populations to have children and get married. On the other hand negative eugenics is decreasing the chances of the inferior race or population from having children. This type of negatives eugenics is trying to stop those who are determined on having inferior genes from passing on their inferior traits that would corrupt the population as a whole. The whole study of eugenics is based on the theory that the gene a person is born with determines their outcome in life. Using this theory some scientists are given a way to justify categorizing groups of people into superior or inferior classes based on race. The study of eugenics was discussed around the world having the main powers being in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States.

Eugenics, derived from the Greek word eugenes meaning well born, is defined as the study or belief that by encouraging people with good genetic traits to reproduce and discourage those people with less desirable traits the human race can benefit. There were certain groups of people who were affected by these sterilization laws, including people that were mentally disabled or ill and those from socially unacceptable areas of life, that were adopted in 32 states starting in the 1930’s. These sterilizations were done on over 350,000 people in the span eleven years between 1934 and 1945 (Kaelber), leading the United States into one of the darkest parts of our history.

Eugenics has been an exceptionally questionable science that has existed on the planet for a considerable length of time. Eugenics, also knows as selective breeding is characterized as the investigation of or confidence in the likelihood of enhancing the characteristics of the human species or a human populace by such means as disheartening reproduction by people having hereditary deformities or attempted to have inheritable undesirable attributes or empowering proliferation by people dared to have inheritable attractive qualities

In the 19th century progressive era the idea of eugenics began to take form and became a widely-spread political, scientific, and social movement. Throughout history there have been numerous political leaders and scientist who have sought to alter the human race to design a purer society. The thoughts of purifying humans can be mostly commonly associated with the Holocaust which was one of the lowest points in the history of civilization. Similarly, in ideas The Eugenics Movement focused on mitigating undesirable traits from generation to generation. The idea that improvement of human kind like breeding can’t be left up to nature, but with the use of the eugenics program it would better society. By sterilizing the mentally ill and feeble minded, eugenicists goals were to better public health, restrict immigration, and regulate reproduction. In these efforts, the movement sought to isolate the pure American genes and save them from being tainted by bad genes.

The ability to promote or enhance certain capacities in the hope to develop a superior human race connotes science fiction as well as fantasy, however the study of eugenics proves that this act of fiction has the potential to be reality. Eugenics, or “good breeding” as Sir Francis Galton would say, is a controversial topic due to the deliberation of whether its benefits outweigh the toll that it takes on humankind. The process of eugenics can be viewed as humans’ ability to control the Natural Selection process, which is the survival and reproduction of organisms with the best adaptations, such as a tree frog’s adaptation of different colouring to better blend in with their surroundings to avoid predators. Scientific experimentation seeks to

Cousin of Charles Darwin and a respected British scholar, Sir Francis Galton, first used the term eugenics, meaning “well-born” or “good genes” around 1883 (Berson & Cruz, 1998). Building off of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, he believed that the human race could positively direct its future by either breeding or sterilizing select individuals who had specific traits. Galton was convinced that an upper class position in society was largely due to good genes. The actual practice of eugenics, the act of involuntary sterilization, began in the United States as a means of population control with the goal to reduce the transmission of undesirable traits. Initially, sterilizations were targeted towards the mentally ill or disabled, criminals,

Eugenics was the hugely popular political movement that began with the in depth study of human heredity. During the 1920s through the 1940s it was seen as a progressive and state-of-the-art- way of thinking, which fueled its popularity. The technical definition of eugenics is the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. The debate that surrounded eugenics and still does today is the morality of creating someone that only possesses “desirable” characteristics. Who gets to decide what is deemed desirable? The term “Eugenics” was termed by Francis Galton in 1883 and stems from the Greek language meaning “well bred”. Galton was inspired to research the breeding of humans mainly by his cousin Charles Darwin but also by the middle classes of England and the United States. Galton’s studied revolved around variations in the human population through classifications such as race. There has always been a struggle between right and wrong in the Christian religion with the topic of eugenics. The question of who has the power to decide what is the perfect human is a driving force behind the many curiosities and opinions in eugenics. Throughout the research paper I intend to analyze the historical and medical effects of eugenics and how they play a role in Christianity and the success or demise of human life.

According to the Merrier Webster Eugenics is a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed. In 1930 eugenics was causing much controversy in U.S.A and Germany. The dictator was trying to abolish the Jewish religion not only in Germany but in the U.S. Now in the U.S. genetic modification is still going on there are places women can go to pick out what they want there baby to look like. In the world we live in now the is multiple cases of careless reproduction, in which some take the child and responsibilities the come with it and other Abort their child. Abortion is when a female decides to abort her pregnancy and kills the fetus. Abortion ties in to eugenics because if a

Eugenics was originally created for segregation, racial cleansing, and to make a pure race untainted (kelly). In order to accomplish this, doctors used sterilization to stop the births of babies with disabilities or mixed races. The word Eugenics comes from greek root words meaning “Good at birth” (eugenics). And this

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