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 idea of Eugenics was first developed by Sir Francis Galton in 1865 , he based his ideas on the work of his cousin Charles Darwin.

The liberal 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.

Genocide

Many genocides have been commited in the name of Eugenics, most notably the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler was a strong believer in Eugenics & Evolution and believed that Jewish people were closest to apes, followed by Africans, Asians, non-Aryan Europeans, and finally Aryans who he believed were most evolved.

Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionist, was more succinct: "The Nazi racial hygiene program began with involuntary sterilizations and ended with genocide." [2]

Liberal Eugenics

Some argue that parents who abort infants with genetic mutation or other disabilities is practicing a form of eugenics. Some doctors and scientists have defended this practice and named it "liberal eugenics" in order to differentiate it from traditional forms of eugenics such as Nazi eugentics.

External References

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

See also

• Genetic engineering