Eugenics: Solving Social Problems?

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Recommended: Relevancy of eugenics in genetic modification

The melting pot was a movement to solve social problems of the population with the use of technology. Eugenics is the use of science to solve social problems. It is defined as the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits. Eugenics is from the Greek meaning “well-born”, eu (meaning well or good) and gene (meaning born). The idea of eugenics is, to make a society with every one having an over-abundance of highly desirable traits, making the society flawless.

Since the ancient time of the greeks there has been eugenics. Plato wrote in The Republic that the "best men" should reproduce with the "best women" as often as possible and that the "inferior" should reproduce as little as possible. The spartans discovered eugenics when they left newborn infants in different weather conditions to determine which physical state they would be strongest in.

The term Eugenics was first used in a book, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, in 1883 by Sir Francis Galton. Sir Francis Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin. He argued that personality was linked to our genes.

Two major eugenics leaders were two men named Davenport and Kallikak. These leaders showed how people develop their traits through their family. Another leader in American eugenics fought to have laws to control the spread of “inferior blood” to the general people. Eugenicist want to make a genetically enhanced race. Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher and political theor...

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Eugenics from BookRags Student Essays. ©2000-2006 by BookRags, Inc. All rights reserved.

"Eugenics". Anti Essays. 6 Apr. 2011

Soanes, C., and A. Stevenson (eds). 2005. Oxford Dictionary of English. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com (accessed Mar. 30, 2006)

Winston, M. 2002.Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press.

Begley, Sharon. "Designer Babies." Newsweek 9 Nov. 1998: 61.

Pernick, Martin S. 1996. The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kincheloe, Joe L., Aaron Gresson, and Shirley R. Steinberg, eds. 1997. Measured Lies: The Bell Curve Examined. New York: St. Martin's.

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