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Pros And Cons Of Eugenics

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While reading the article “Out of Eugenics”, I was surprised to learn how eugenics has both positive and negative aspects, still in use today. When I hear the term “eugenics”, I used to think about helping prevent diseases with medicine. After reading this article, my opinion on eugenics has changed, and now I think of it as an awful practice that is unethical and inhumane. While I agree that eugenics has the potential for good uses, such as eradicating diseases, there is a bad stigma attached to it that makes me support my new stance (Kevles 8). Kevles mentions that, “much more was done for negative eugenics, notably the passage of eugenic sterilization laws”, which blows my mind, that America, “a country of freedoms”, would allow for the …show more content…

The answer is there are none. For example, one person may believe that being tall is superior to being short because you have longer legs to run faster, however another person may believe the opposite, because being short means you are closer to the ground and can accelerate faster. This example shows that everyone has a different bias on traits. Eugenics may be used to eradicate diseases, as mentioned earlier, but then that takes away that human’s rights and prevents them from having children, as mentioned by the sterilization laws. This relates back to my Moral Ethics class I am currently taking, and eugenics fits in with the argument of “is one person more valuable than another?”, naturally the answer is no, and who makes those decisions. The biggest problem with eugenics is that to apply it, one must decide what are good versus bad traits, and what is our ideal image of the perfect human. Also, following that tangent, humans are different in different parts of the world, as mentioned by Kevles (Kevles 8-9). Therefore, they adapted to different environments so traits that are desirable in one environment are not desirable in

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Eugenics is not a thought of morale and is not designed to save the entire human race, just the upper socioeconomic class. In North Carolina, feeble minded individuals were used as subjects for all kinds of genocidal experiments. Feeble minded simply means someone who suffers from an illness or mental deficiency and are often easier persuaded because they think they are getting help when they were really being coerced into becoming a test

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564 Words | 3 Pages

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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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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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 entire movement was flawed from the beginning. Heredity was not properly understood when Galton suggested eugenics. Many of the traits they believed were preventable were, in fact, not. Eugenicists based their science on something called the Mendalin inheritance factor, or alleles (McKinnon, 2021). But the way in which traits were passed from parent to offspring according to this factor was proven to be false by the Hardy-Weinberg principle, which basically says that a trait that causes mental defects is hidden in perceptively “normal” carriers, thus making it impossible for eugenicists to effectively block the spread of that trait (Paul & Spencer, 1995).

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The history of Eugenics Sir Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton first used the term ‘eugenics’ in 1883. He defines eugenics as the “study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.” Galton was born in 1822. He was pressured to follow in the footsteps of Erasmus Darwin, his great-uncle. No one knows why Galton decided to study eugenics as had little experience in biology.

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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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What prompted the rise of Eugenics in the United States was their increasing belief that deficiencies in humans were hereditary. Also, there was growing worry that Americans were providing too much support for the degenerates, and needed to place more emphasis on positively fit individuals to ‘improve’ the race. They defined an aspect of fitness with beauty while ugly as a defect (Pernick 94). Lower class people were deemed to be ‘unfit’ while the middle and upper classes were classified as superior. When concerning higher status women, Eugenicists encouraged positive eugenics, or rather procreating as much as they can conceive.

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Past eugenics should not have occurred with the knowledge and history of this term. Eugenics was used as an experiment with the attempt to transform the world in a better way. However, the

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Even though artificial genetic selection is not available for humans yet; it is being done on plants and other living things. Which is the next step in order for it to be done on humans. There is controversy on the idea of genetic engineering on people even though it isn’t even a reality yet. Arguments made about the idea of eugenics are it should be allowed for people to do because people should be able to do what they want with their family, that is shouldn’t be allowed because it is a way of playing and going against what “god” wants, and that it would benefit society because it could help get rid of serve medical conditions that can cut people’s lifespan dramatically. But, neither of those are the stance that I take personally I believe

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501 Words | 3 Pages

Eugenic on a population level can have detrimental consequences. Nazi Germany was fixated on purifying the German blood. Their radical ideology lead them to commit crimes against humanity. People were forced into marriages to keep their blond hair blue eye lineage strong, and others had sterilization forced upon them, effectively eliminating their genetic diversity. Jewish people were sent to the gas chambers and the lucky ones were forced to work in concentration camps until they died.

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Being genetically modified will be another addition to those standards. The thought of having a child following those standards would be so popular. If everybody has a tall structure and was intelligent, diversity in society would decline. “The use (and abuse) of advanced fertility technology that evokes fears of Gattaca… [and] the Nazis' quest for a blonde, blue-eyed race of Aryans continues apace”("The Need to Regulate 'Designer Babies'").

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1062 Words | 5 Pages

In a like manner, another topic for discussion that pertains to ethical obligations and individuals rights, genetic discrimination. To begin, the Genetics Home Reference website provides a clear definition, “Genetic discrimination occurs when people are treated differently by their employer or insurance company because they have a gene mutation that causes or increases the risk of an inherited disorder.” (Ghr.nlm.nih.gov. 2017, para. 1). A huge advocate in this arena is Karen Rothenberg, in an address to the government Protecting Workers from Genetic Discrimination (2007), she placed a great deal of emphasis on the fact

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722 Words | 3 Pages

There are a few appealing aspects to the act of eugenics. If eugenics were applied, the world could potentially see a decrease in disease, a rise in intelligence, and heightened physical aesthetic in humans. But, ethically it crosses many boundaries that have prevented this idea from going into world-wide effect in the past. A benefit to eugenics is it could lead to the reduction of genetic diseases in the gene pool.

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1229 Words | 5 Pages

Eugenics could make the human race more tough in terms of surviving epidemics or apocalyptic conditions which could wipe us off the face of the Earth as it is an attempt to improve the human gene pool .It could get rid of genetic diseases(from common ones like type 1 diabetes to severe ones like cystic fibrosis) which cause grief to family members, reduce quality of life and costs a lot of maintain life or treat, furthermore it could greatly increase our lifespan which is all good individually but it may have consequences as a species since competition for already scarce resources may increase if the birth rate is not controlled (is that ethical as well?), overpopulation could cause a greater anthropogenic pollution of the Earth leading to our doom which started off as a way to improve our lifestyle could lead to more industry to support the higher population leading to larger ozone holes more melting of polar icecaps and higher rising of sea levels and more cases of skin cancer. We would be playing god, altering a sort of natural cycle which regulates the population or cause a frenzy where everyone wants perfection where there could be discrimination where people can’t afford or are in no situation to receive the advantages of eugenics. In this case we should make eugenics widely and cheaply available but a question arises whether that is practically possible. Therefore eugenics also touches on other controversial topics like IVF, PID an

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