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Eugenics Pros And Cons

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Eugenics
It was maybe four or five years ago that my youngest sister convinced my mother to take a DNA test proving her ancestry. We learned so much about what we already thought we knew and it was welcoming to see that we had such a culturally diversified heritage. In fact, millions of Americans today are a good blend of several ethnicities, so much so that it is almost an insult to claim the heritage of one race. With that in mind I turn back to the 1840’s, when Anglo-Saxons were in a conquest to racially purify this nation by using science to backtrack through evolution to make a pure, white race. You could say this was the beginning of trying to save the last of a dying breed, the Nordics, the pure, the solid hierarchy of racial supremacy, in a nation that was becoming a churning pot of immigrants.
Eugenics, or the process of trying to create a master race, mixed science with secular religion in hopes of making a society that was full of a class of race that was superior, intellectual and of the best human qualities of mankind. By suggesting the idea of manipulating the …show more content…

William Ripley and Madison Grant, were both forthright in their opinions regarding the outcomes of eugenics. Ripley pointed out the fact that more than individual traits ere to be factors in perceiving an accurate manipulation. He argued that social conditions of immigrants could cause undenounced physiological and for that matter psychological traits, even when it was determined that the subject was intelligent, nondegenerate and lacking any mental illnesses. Ripley believed that Europeans were already a mixture of several races, thus by further mixing them, the race would not become stronger but weaker in the sense that too many traits have hibernated into a state of primitiveness, causing the offspring to obtain a stance reversion or a worse condition being mixed of all the lower race traits

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One of an impactful, historical tragedy in U.S history is the Boston Bombing. On April 15, 2013, at about 2:50 p.m., two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The bombs explode within 8-12 seconds of each other, and they were about 50-100 yards apart. 3 people got killed and more than 260 people got injured. The window of the store near the explosion were broken and a window on the third floor of the Boston Public Library was damaged.

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After the fall of the Nazis in the 1940s, eugenics continued to impact the lives of those in the United States negatively up until the 1970s. It was not due to the need to be “superior”, but to be able to control reproduction by increasing the top members and decreasing the lower members. The movement took place mainly in the East Coast during the Progressive Era, reaching its climax in the 1920s and 1930s with immigration control, marriage laws, and sterilization of those who were considered dangerous to the society. Due to the Nazis, their rise to power, and the horrifying Holocaust, it had formed the movements in the United States.

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Darwinists in turn, believed biology to be destiny and that if one's ancestors were unfit their children would be as well. Much like in evolution, Spencer assumed that the unfit populations would decline overtime due to their failure to compete, however paranoia led some Americans to speed up this process, introducing eugenics. Eugenics were supposed to improve men, ridding the undesirable traits of the unfit and changing genetic structure to create more fit individuals. The Eugenics movement in America took people of color, the mentally ill or disabled, LGBTQ individuals, and other members of society deemed unfit, and conducted experimentation ranging from forced breeding, involuntary sterilization, or institutionalization on them. Although the movement was eventually stomped out, it violated thousands of

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Eugenics was prominent during the twenties and aimed to improve the human population by reducing the likeliness of defective genetic traits. Eugenics was practiced mainly in institutions for patients who possessed traits that could be passed through reproduction. During the time of eugenics, a young woman named Carrie Buck was sterilized in order to prevent passing on the traits that she and her mother possessed. Carrie and her mother were both institutionalized and considered “feeble minded”, therefore they were seen as unable to contribute to the procreation of the human race. These ideas of perfecting the human race resembled that of Hitler’s, as described in the Mein Kampf.

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Eugenics will cause the clash of classes through dominant physical traits along with the increase of racism. The only eugenics that should be further studied into is the prevention of disease because it does not dehumanize the fetus, but rather helps the longevity of one’s life. It should not surpass the goodness of

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Research Paper Rough Draft- Eugenics The amazing thing about the world today is the rapidly changing society, and the contemporary technology. Something that scientist have been working to perfect for many years is the modernization of eugenics. It is changing the way people are born by selecting specific traits for an individual to be smarter, stronger, more attractive and many other traits. Many parents of the new generation are willing to try the science of eugenics for their child to be customized to them.

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Many people have heard of eugenics, but they might not know that it is the catalyst for racism as we know it today. Eugenics is “the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable,” according to a Google search of the word. The idea was to improve the human race through selective breeding and other methods. Many believed in these ideas as well as Social Darwinism, which took Darwin’s theory of evolution and related it to humans. The main idea was the phrase “survival of the fittest,” which essentially meant that the people who become powerful in society gain that power because they are innately “better.”

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According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, eugenics is: “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed”. ("Definition of Eugenics by Merriam-Webster") The most common example of this concept would be the Holocaust, which was the extermination of Jewish people and others deemed “unfit” for society in World War Ⅱ. But little do many know, the Nazi’s were not the only people practicing eugenics in the early 1900’s, eugenics was being practiced in the United States long before the Holocaust. The American Eugenics Society aimed to educate American people on the science of Eugenics.

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In 1887, Thomas Nelson Page published In Ole Virginia, a collection of short stories about the Old South, focusing on the time period immediately pre- and post-American Civil War. Throughout literature, the Antebellum South has been depicted as a place of sprawling plantations, Southern belles, chivalry, and glamorous balls. Following the Civil War, the South is often still depicted as quaint small towns characterized by Southern hospitality, but is far less romanticized. In his stories, Thomas Nelson Page supports these notions, and attempts to illustrate both the glory of the Old South as well as the view that the Civil War was ultimately an unnecessary bloodbath.

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The impact of the inauguration of scientific beliefs and studies on eugenics in the 1800’s is still evident in modern United States today. Eugenics is defined as eugenicists promoting the naturally fit people who carried desirable traits to increase a population with hopes of a community filled with intelligent citizens. Positive eugenics advocated the superior people to marry each other and reproduce to create as many offsprings in order to increase the number of the fit. Negative eugenics would discourage the disabled from reproducing at all, so that they would not compete with the superior. The endorsement from the government allowed scientists to implement their ideas on eugenics and some aspect of their policies is used today.

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The eugenics movement was an important and dark event in America’s history. The eugenics movement “...aimed to emphasize the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood” (MacLean et al.). Basically society wanted only the best to populate it. If someone was disabled, they were considered inferior. They weren’t welcome to society because they couldn’t meet the basic standards of civilization.

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The twentieth century American eugenics movement was a social and scientific movement that sought to enhance the genetic quality of the human population through sterilization and selective breeding. Eugenics, the scientific practice and theory of planned breeding and racial purity, was widely popularized by an English polymath, Sir Francis Galton. Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, supported the idea of selected marriages and breeding, which then spread to countries across the globe. The social Darwinist philosophy of the early twentieth century and the newly developing science of genetics both had an impact on the eugenics movement as it rose in popularity in the United States. The movement was backed by many well known scientists, politicians,

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Eugenics or “good breeding” is meant to improve the human race through the gene pool using various methods. Similar to designer babies, the process could be used for good, but like Colin Tudge points out, “…although guns and bombs can be used as agents of peace, [humans] should not be overly surprised when in practice they are used to make war” (Tudge 282). Eugenics can be performed simply by regulating who and who cannot mate. It can also be done by sterilization, a procedure that permanently blocks pregnancy in a woman, which was a reality for many. The most famous account was performed by Germany, specifically the Nazis, during WWII, when 400,000 women were sterilized (Tudge 284).

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Eugenics is the science of using artificial selection to improve genetic features of the population. It is thought that improvement of the human race can be seen through sterilization of people who exhibit undesirable traits and selective breeding. Often called Social Darwinism, the concept was widely accepted during the time of World War I. It quickly became a taboo after World War II when Nazi Germany used it as an excuse for genocide. The thought of improving the human race by manipulating who is allowed to breed can either be appalling or compelling.

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Eugenics The term eugenics was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton. He defined it as the study of “the conditions under which men of a high type are produced” and also as “the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race”. However, it is not just a field of study and, could be taken as a social movement or policy as well. “Eugenics” may refer to the theory that infers hereditable intelligence and fortune which are possessed by the wealthy, successful and intelligent were made as a result of their good selective breeding, and that the lower classes would remain so because they continued to breed with other poor people from lower social classes or casts. Eugenics could be popular amongst people with a vested

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