The Pros And Cons Of Nazi Eugenics

Many brutal atrocities were committed during the Holocaust by the Nazi party against anyone they viewed as “unpure”. This included the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Afro-Germans, Slavs, communists, the handicapped, and the mentally disabled. These groups were targeted, stripped away of their rights and citizenship, and then sent to concentration camps. Some of these camps were death camps; created for the sole purpose to annihilate these groups of people, mainly the Jews. At these camps, the prisoners were tortured, starved, brutally killed, and experimented on. In this research paper, I am going to discuss some of the medical experiments that were

The chapter on Nazi medical experiments in Chalmers’ book is one of the most fascinating chapters because it examines the different types of techniques that the Nazi’s used to sterilize men and women. Chalmers explains that women were particularly subject to medical experiments because the Nazis were obsessed with destroying inferior races and wanted to perfect the art of sterilization so no more undesirable elements would be born (Ibid 123). However, both men and women were subject to Nazi medical experiments like medical injections, X-Rays, and chemicals, which resulted in burnt skin, abnormalities, and death. Among these experimentations many chemical companies, doctors, and University professors supported the experiments being done on

When you see a Nazi flag, what do you feel? Many people usually start to feel a little anxiety because they associate very strong negative feelings with the flag. This is because Americans are widely familiar with the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. However, most Americans are quite less educated about similar atrocities committed in the United States. Case in point: did you know that the Native American population today is a mere 10 percent of what it was before the Age of Exploration (meaning that there population has been decreased 90 percent due to genocide, diseases, etc.) ? Did you know that there was a sterilization movement in the United States that found success in getting their laws passed in state legislation? These less well-known facts are quite similar to actions carried out by the Nazis, such as the holocaust and the sterilization movement that took place in Germany during the 1930’s. Nazi Eugenics and racism was not a unique instance but rather part of a larger global trend of justifying racism through Religion and Biology, as seen in the United States.

Many claim that doctors were only advancing science, and others claim the horrid acts that were committed were done because of the hatred towards the Jewish people. Regardless of which fact is inevitably true, both situations caused cruel and inhuman treatment to the Jews, and ultimately led to their deaths at the camps. A civilian doctor named Carl Clauberg was famous for his sterilization experiments. The procedure involved injections to the cervix to destroy the fallopian tubes, and then often the victims were gassed and left for dead (Winik 9). When the Jews arrived on transports, Nazi doctors immediately determined who would be gassed and who would go to a work camp (Winik 8). In Auschwitz, Nazi doctors presided over the murder of most of the one million victims of that camp. “Doctors consulted actively on how best to keep selections running smoothly, on how many people to permit to remain alive to fill the slave labor requirements” … “and on how to burn the enormous numbers of bodies that strained the facilities of the crematoria (Gutman 303). In the book, “Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp,” Yisrael Gutman offers a summary of the events that took place at Auschwitz:

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.

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.

Gottfried, Ted, and Stephen Alcorn. Deniers of the Holocaust: who they are, what they do, why

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

During the Holocaust, the Nazis carried out many unethical medical experiments on patients without regard for their survival. Prisoners were forced to be subjects in various studies against their will. The Nazis’ victims went through indescribable pain as they were forced through high-altitude, freezing, tuberculosis, sea water, sulfanilamide, poison, and transplant experiments. Through these tragic Holocaust experiments, scientists and doctors discovered treatments used today for high-altitude sickness, hypothermia, contagious diseases, dehydration, poisoning, and war wounds.

The Eugenics era was said to have ended in 1981 with the last case of forced sterilization. The ideology of eugenics is viewed as pseudoscience now and as a inhumane event in American history. However, there are many individuals who still hold the same sentiment. This is evident in laws and different organizations in America. African Americans make up 13% of the population, however they make up 40% of inmates. This is due to racial bias leading to mass incarceration of minorities, specifically Black men. America implements racial bias laws and acts, such as the War on Drugs and alters the message to show it in positive light. The Dream Act proposed in America was not passed, however there is DACA for illegal immigrants. In this year Trump

During World War II Nazi Doctors played a key role in the mass genocide of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and those who were mentally and physically handicapped. The primary motivations of the Nazi doctors were most likely provoked by fear and safety at the cost of the cleansing the Aryan race of those who were considered impure. Motivations including peer-pressure and self-preservation are very likely to have increased the ability for the Nazi doctors to ignore one of the most basic components of moral and ethical code (do not kill others), as well as being able to ignore the Hippocratic oath all doctors swear by, to experiment on the poor dying bodies of the victims of the Holocaust. In order to murder thousands of Jews, Gypsies, and those who

Beginning in the late 19th century, eugenics was a social and health reform movement aimed at refining the genetic quality of the human population. Although the apparent goal of the movement was improving the human race, a desire to preserve white middle and upper class power also existed. This is evident in the policies implemented, as the unfit were confined to institutions and stringent marriage laws were established. Even more aggressive measures were applied in the Progressive Era. As immigration increased and the birthrate of Anglo-Americans declined in the 20th century, compulsory sterilization of the unfit was constructed to combat the threatened merit of society.

During the Holocaust, many innocent people were killed at the hands of the Nazis. Although this was a horrific event, some people suffered a fate even worse than death, medical experimentation. Most of the time, these medical experiments resulted in the death of the subject, but some lived. Even though they survived, they were almost always left in excruciating agony and most of the time disabled. The doctors who performed these experiments showed absolutely no mercy and tortured, mutilated, and murdered men, women, and children.

The question of whether or not people with intellectual disabilities should bear children is nothing new. Court ordered sterilizations of the intellectually disabled were commonly practiced during the first half of the 20th century as eugenics movements swept the globe. It was assumed that people who had intellectual disabilities were not capable of being good parents and would conceive children who also had a disability. This population of people was not desirable and fell victim of eugenics, which also happened to be gaining popularity in Nazi Germany. As most know, Adolf Hitler was one of the most famous leaders who practiced eugenics, essentially killing all who were not white, blonde haired and blue eyed. Anyone who attended school

The theory of Eugenics can be dated back all the way to 400 B.C. but was not popularized until the mid-1800s by an English scientist, Francis Galton. He researched and published the theory that aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human population through selective breeding (NC Office of Archives and History). As the half-cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton applied the Darwinism science (survival of the fittest) to heredity characteristics. Two types of Eugenics stemmed from the theory, positive and negative. Positive eugenics is encouraging the “best” people in the society based on financial and personal features to have more children while negative eugenics is picking people with flaws and defects from the population