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May 26, 2017 · The film Where Are My Children? reflects the eugenic claims of the early 1900s. In the film, Weber argues for restricting impoverished families from producing more children and says that wealthy women who choose to not have children are selfish.
Apr 29, 2020 · The emergence of new genetic technologies often prompts renewed debate. Can eugenic ideas about improving the human race be divorced from the evils of the past and pursued through benign means? Or is there something inherently morally problematic about the idea of genetically improving humans?
- Francis Galton
- Eugenics in America
- Forced Sterilizations
- Adolf Hitler and Eugenics
- Josef Mengele
- Genetic Engineering
- Sources
Eugenics literally means “good creation.” The ancient Greek philosopher Plato may have been the first person to promote the idea, although the term “eugenics” didn’t come on the scene until British scholar Sir Francis Galton coined it in 1883 in his book, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. In one of Plato’s best-known literary works,...
In the late 19th century, Galton—whose cousin was Charles Darwin—hoped to better humankind through the propagation of the British elite. His plan never really took hold in his own country, but in America it was more widely embraced. Eugenics made its first official appearance in American history through marriage laws. In 1896, Connecticutmade it il...
Eugenics in America took a dark turn in the early 20th century, led by California. From 1909 to 1979, around 20,000 sterilizations occurred in California state mental institutions under the guise of protecting society from the offspring of people with mental illness. Many sterilizations were forced and performed on minorities. Thirty-three states w...
As horrific as forced sterilization in America was, nothing compared to Adolf Hitler’s eugenic experiments before and during World War II. And Hitler didn’t come up with the concept of a superior Aryan race all on his own. In fact, he referred to American eugenics in his 1934 book, Mein Kampf. In Mein Kampf, Hitler declared non-Aryan races such as ...
During World War II, concentration camp prisoners endured horrific medical tests under the guise of helping Hitler create the perfect race. Josef Mengele, an SS doctor at Auschwitz, oversaw many experiments on both adult and child twins. He used chemical eyedrops to try and create blue eyes, injected prisoners with devastating diseases and performe...
Thanks to the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis, eugenics lost momentum in after World War II, although forced sterilizations still happened. But as medical technology advanced, a new form of eugenics came on the scene. Modern eugenics, better known as human genetic engineering, changes or removes genes to prevent disease, cure disease or improve ...
Controlling Heredity: American Breeder’s Association. University of Missouri. Forced Sterilization of Native Americans: Late Twentieth Century Physician Cooperation with National Eugenic Policies. The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity. Greek Theories on Eugenics. Journal of Medical Ethics. Josef Mengele. Holocaust Encyclopedia. Latina Women: For...
Nikolas Rose sees four terms delineating eugenics: “population, quality, territory, and nation.” 3 Each of these has a specific modern history, shaped by long-nineteenth-century global changes that accelerated in the dramatic and turbulent history of the early to mid-twentieth century.
Jul 2, 2014 · Davis, too, acknowledges the claims of Deaf culture, and the reasons parents might prefer to have a child more like themselves, but argues that deliberately trying to conceive a child who will have relatively limited options – limited, in her view, not just due to enduring discrimination and social constraints, but also to bodily deficits ...
Jul 2, 2014 · Eugenicists had two-fold aims: to encourage people of good health to reproduce together to create good births (what is known as “positive” eugenics), and to end certain diseases and disabilities by discouraging or preventing others from reproducing (what is known as “negative” eugenics).
Mar 24, 2021 · A simple example of a structural inequity is access to nutritious foods while babies grow before birth and while children are growing up. Nutritious foods are expensive and difficult to keep. In areas with high average incomes, nutritious foods are easy to find; in low average income areas, they can be hard to find.
