Eugenics

Logo of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921.

Eugenics was a movement which tried to eliminate "dangerous human pests" and "the rising tide of imbeciles" through what has been euphemistically called "selective breeding". What this meant, in actual practice, was forced sterilization of American immigrants and minorities (particularly in California). [1]

The liberal Journal of the American Medical Society provided this summary: "The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 led to the rise of the eugenics movement in Europe. Eugenics supporters believed that races could be improved by selective breeding. The Nazi Party adopted this belief and began a campaign against the Jews. Many physicians joined the Nazi Party because they needed jobs." "Medicine against society: lessons from the Third Reich," The Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 27, 1996 (Vol. 276, No. 20), at p. 1657(5), by Jeremiah A. Barondess.

Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionist, was more succinct: "The Nazi racial hygiene program began with involuntary sterilizations and ended with genocide." http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/scopenotes/sn28.htm

External References

Stephen Jay Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man", W.W. Norton and Co., 1981, 1996.

See also

• Genetic engineering