What is eugenics and its significance in the life of man

Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been implemented in the Nuremberg racial hygiene laws. Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up from the Rockefeller Institute. After , however, historians began to attempt to portray the US eugenics movement as distinct and distant from Nazi eugenics. Skip to main content.

Chapter 6: Deconstructing Race. Search for:. In , Indiana passed the first eugenics-based compulsory sterilization law in the world. Thirty U. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell , upheld the constitutionality of the Virginia Sterilization Act of , allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions in The most commonly suggested method was to set up local gas chambers. However, many in the eugenics movement did not believe that Americans were ready to implement a large-scale euthanasia program, so many doctors had to find clever ways of subtly implementing eugenic euthanasia in various medical institutions.

Other doctors practiced euthanasia through various forms of lethal neglect. United States portal. National Library of Medicine. The American Journal of Sociology X 1 : 82, 1st paragraph. Bibcode : Natur.. Archived from the original on Retrieved Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage. Popular eugenics: national efficiency and American mass culture in the s.

Ohio University Press. ISBN Retrieved July 18, Singleton Winter Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 19 4. Retrieved January 23, A Century of Eugenics in America. Bloomington, Ind.

The Unfit: A history of a bad idea. Retrieved July 14, Birth Control Politics in the United States, — Cornell University Press. The Pivot of Civilization. Nor do we believe that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding. Birth Control Review. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world.

We maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother.

Woman and the New Race. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. National Museum American History. February 11, June 6, Smith , NE 2 Ind.

New York Times. Retrieved 10 December Charlotte Observer. Alfred A. February 9, By setting up a eugenical standard for admission demanding a high natural excellence of all immigrants regardless of nationality and past opportunities, we can enhance and improve the national stamina and ability of future Americans. At present, not inferior nationalities but inferior individual family stocks are tending to deteriorate our national characteristics.

Our failure to sort immigrants on the basis of natural worth is a very serious national menace. Harry H.

Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. University of California Press. New York: Oxford University Press. Bell U. Retrieved May 3, Mitchell Miller Retrieved July 15, Thicker than blood: how racial statistics lie. University of Minnesota Press. In his book Hereditary Genius , Galton studied the families of the most eminent people in society and found that their closest relatives were more likely to be similarly talented than the general population.

He argued that this was evidence that abilities were inherited and that therefore humans were suitable for selective breeding. Many countries instituted eugenics policies. There were two approaches, dubbed positive eugenics and negative eugenics. The former entails encouraging people with desirable qualities to have children with similarly advantaged people in order to — in theory — increase the number of people with these qualities in the population. Negative eugenics, which flagrantly violates human rights, involves dubbing certain people or groups as inferior, whether because they are of below average intelligence or part of a persecuted minority.

They are either discouraged from having children or, in some cases, actively prevented from doing so, for example by forced sterilisation. Eliminating supposedly undesirable traits would, in practice, drastically reduce the genetic diversity of the population, potentially leading to new problems linked with inbreeding. Furthermore, traits that are undesirable in certain circumstances may be beneficial in others: a classic example is the sickle-cell trait, which can cause anaemia but is also protective against malaria.

Eugenics in America took a dark turn in the early 20th century, led by California. From to , around 20, sterilizations occurred in California state mental institutions under the guise of protecting society from the offspring of people with mental illness.

Many sterilizations were forced and performed on minorities. Thirty-three states would eventually allow involuntary sterilization in whomever lawmakers deemed unworthy to procreate.

In , the U. Supreme Court ruled that forced sterilization of the handicapped does not violate the U. In the s, the governor of Puerto Rico , Menendez Ramos, implemented sterilization programs for Puerto Rican women. Ramos claimed the action was needed to battle rampant poverty and economic strife; however, it may have also been a way to prevent the so-called superior Aryan gene pool from becoming tainted with Latino blood. According to a Government Accountability Office investigation, between 25 and 50 percent of Native Americans were sterilized between and In some cases, health care for living children was denied unless their mothers agreed to sterilization.

In fact, he referred to American eugenics in his book, Mein Kampf. He believed Germans should do everything possible, including genocide , to make sure their gene pool stayed pure. And in , the Nazis created the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring which resulted in thousands of forced sterilizations. During World War II, concentration camp prisoners endured horrific medical tests under the guise of helping Hitler create the perfect race.

Josef Mengele , an SS doctor at Auschwitz , oversaw many experiments on both adult and child twins. He used chemical eyedrops to try and create blue eyes, injected prisoners with devastating diseases and performed surgery without anesthesia. Thanks to the unspeakable atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis, eugenics lost momentum in after World War II, although forced sterilizations still happened.

But as medical technology advanced, a new form of eugenics came on the scene. Modern eugenics, better known as human genetic engineering, changes or removes genes to prevent disease, cure disease or improve your body in some significant way. The potential health benefits of human gene therapy are staggering since many devastating or life-threatening illnesses could be cured.

But modern genetic engineering also comes with a potential cost. As technology advances, people could routinely weed-out what they consider undesirable traits in their offspring. Genetic testing already allows parents to identify some diseases in their child in utero which may cause them to terminate the pregnancy. As scientists embark on a new eugenics frontier, past failings can serve as a warning to approach modern genetic research with care and compassion.

University of Missouri.