Pros Of Eugenics

Throughout history, people have sought after a way to better and further the evolution of mankind. Most methods proved to be controversial and practiced poorly. Eugenics, a science based on improving the human population and condition through selective reproduction, is one of those methods. Many issues, such as the infamous concentration camps of Nazi Germany, surfaced across the early to mid-twentieth century. Cases such as this serve as a reminder of the dangers of putting the task of bettering the human race into the wrong or ill-informed hands by showing that the science behind genetic improvement has the potential to be abused. Though history shows eugenics in a positive light in a few instances, overwhelming amounts of evidence suggest

Though many countries practiced negative eugenics, the United States and Germany are the two most prominent examples of the dangers of genetic modification. Policy makers in the United States, much like in Germany, sought to eliminate undesirable people in the population through eugenics. Robert Allison, the chair of the history department at Suffolk University stated that laws created to eradicate the pestilence of poor genetics was a “sociopolitical effort to control minorities” (2000). The Modern American, a scholarly journal that dedicates itself to both diversity and the law, explains that the want to control the spread of undesirable traits became especially prevalent after the advent of prenatal testing that allowed genetic abnormalities to be spotted before they became a problem in society (McChesney, 2006). The practice of eugenics allowed abuse of various sterilization methods in both men and women that provided the United States a unique and legal opportunity to target those that did not fit the image of a typical

These victims were chosen based on subjective criteria that aligned with the negative eugenics principle of eliminating the weak-links of the gene pool.Germany serves as one of the most perverse examples of eugenics. The Nazi’s implementation of modifying Germany’s genetic makeup was warped in a way that is unrecognizable from the original intent of the practice. According to Michael Freeden, the founding editor of the Journal of Political Ideologies, the social responsibility, and the allegiance that eugenists felt to a “supreme human entity,” forever entangled itself in Nazism, and no new, lasting eugenics movement could resurface (1979). The Nazi view of eugenics, much like in the United States, shows intense pride and detrimental nationalism. Because of this, the Nazi Party could promote their own warped method to improve Germany, which reiterates the dangers of unchecked eugenics