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