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Disadvantages of eugenics
Negative and positive practice of eugenics
FEATURE ARTICLE/ HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES Eugenics: Past, Present, and the Future main idea
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Recommended: Disadvantages of eugenics
For centuries, mankind has been fascinated by the idea of perfection. In recent decades, the issue has been raised regarding the perfect human and whether scientists are able to engineer and create this. Attempts have been made in the past to engineer this said “perfect” human, through eugenics and scientific racism, but until now, these attempts have been ineffective. Only now, with modern technology, are scientists able to make more significant progress in altering the human genome to the produce desired characteristics of perfection.
History has shown the attempts made to create a perfect, pure race of humans. Eugenics (the science of improving a human population by controlled or selective breeding to produce desirable heritable characteristics) has played a large role in this, with government campaigns launched in countries such as Germany, South Africa, the USA, Australia and Sweden, to segregate the population and breed a pure, unmixed race.
Adolf Hitler launched such a campaign in Germany in the early 1900s. His idea of the perfect human was the Aryan “Master Race” – a population of white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordic people. He wished to breed this race of physically perfect humans to be, in his own words.
With the idea that non-Aryans, especially Jews, were inferior to Aryans, he introduced the Nuremberg Laws, which classified the German population into Aryans and non-Aryans. This chart shows how the Nuremberg Laws used a rudimentary form of genetics to determine if a German was, in fact, German, Jewish or Mischling (“mixed-blood”) by looking at their ancestors and inheritance.
Once classified, the Aryan and non-Aryan races were kept strictly apart through laws like the “Law for the Protection of German Bl...
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...sed 6 July 2011. http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/pbgh.html
• Nazi eugenics. Author: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2011. Accessed: 6 July 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics
• “The Pioneering Operation.” From the Mail Online article by Sam Greenhill, Jenny Hope and Nick Mcdermott, 11 January 2009. Taken from the Daily Mail website 2011. Accessed 7 July 2011. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1110244/Britains-cancer-free-designer-baby-born-screened-deadly-gene.html
• Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) Author: Dr Andrew J. Levi, 2011. Park Avenue Fertility and Reproductive Medicine website. Accessed: 7 July 2011.
http://www.parkavefertility.com/pre-implantation_genetic_diagnosis.html
• What is a designer baby? Author: Bionet 2002. Accessed: 6 July 2011 http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/db_cont1.htm
The American Eugenics Movement was led by Charles Davenport and was a social agenda to breed out undesirable traits with an aim of racial purification. Eugenics was a used to breed out the worst and weakest to improve the genetic composition of the human race, and advocated for selective breeding to achieve this. The science of eugenics rested on simple mendelian genetics, which was a mistake because they were assuming complex behaviors could be reduced to simple mendelian genes. After Nazi Germany adopted the ideas behind the American eugenics movement to promote the Aryan race, the eugenics movement was completely discredited.
Hitler begins this chapter by citing various illustrations of the situation in North America, Central and South America to prove how historically when the "Aryan blood has become mixed with that of inferior peoples
The concept of eugenics was not initially intended to prevent overcrowding, however, it would later be used as a form of population control. Eugenics is the idea of improving society by breeding fitter people. Francis Galton was the first person to originate this term and was a major proponent of the concept during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The practice of eugenics was originally performed through the use of selective breeding. Eugenics was a progressive idea, driven by social perceptions. In fact, "many of its most strident advocates were socialist, who saw eugenics as enlightened state planning of reproduction."2 Fearing the degradation of society, the elite desired to prevent further social decay of the world by eliminating individuals who were considered unfit physically, mentally, or socially.
Not everyone in Germany looked like that, nor was “fit” to be into that “Perfect Race Look”. The “Perfect Race” idea, which Hitler got, was from an old group of people called the “Aryan Race.” This entire old race consisted of people with blue eyes, and blonde natural hair. The word “Aryan” even means superior, or the best. The Aryan race was a racial group that was commonly used in the period of the late 19th century to mid-20th century to describe people from European and Western Asian heritage.
They were forbidden from having any relationships or marriages with those of the Aryan race. The Nazis boycotted all Jewish owned stores, which forced many of them to close their stores and go out of business.
The Nazi State of the Third Reich is clearly defined by racial theory put into practice. One reading Burleigh and Wipperman's book; The Racial State, learns of these different racial theories and how they are implemented under Adolf Hitler in the Third Reich.
Eugenics was a proposed way to improve the human species by encouraging or permitting reproduction of people with desirable genetic characteristics. Higham says, "The dazzling development of modern genetics around 1900 revealed principles of heredity that seemed entirely independent of environmental influences." (Doc 4) In Grant's "Passing of the Great Race", he claims bad gene mixture based upon differences in skin, eye color, and lack of working abilities.
An exploration of Jewish mixed blood status in Nazi Germany renders a brief history of anticipatory racial conceptions leading up to the Third Reich. The use of Mischlinge as well as other labels intended to denote mixed blood naturally evolved out of well-established racial conceptions central to Germany and the Third Reich ideology. This ideology, which existed as “an uneasy fusion of different strands of racial elitism and popularism,” defined persons as according to not only their Rasse or racial identity, but also membership of the German people or Volk (Hutton 15, 18). The idea of the Volk denoted not only shared language and heritage as well as right of citizenship, but the ordained right to inhabit German lands. Above all, this idea concerned triumphant unification of a German people perceived to be under threat of dissolution by ethnic and religious groups such as the R...
Seven-foot, blonde haired, blue-eyed super-humans bearing the swastika and marching in perfect Aryan rhythm, bred to be smarter, stronger, superior. This is a typical image when people hear the word eugenics, but there are two distinct branches: negative eugenics, which looks at removing undesirables and degenerates from society, and positive eugenics, which looks to promote the positive hereditary traits within society. In this essay I will Look at both sides of the eugenics argument in order to find a conclusion.
One of the most destructive and arrogant persons in history was Adolf Hitler. The destruction that he and his regime brought on humanity has seldom seen its equal. In reality the Holocaust was a terrible horror, but in Hitler’s mind it was merely a brushstroke in the masterpiece that he believed he was creating. Hitler believed that the Aryan race was superior to all others and that it was only natural, and not cruel, that the higher would show no humanity toward the lower (296). This prejudiced belief predominated Hitler’s thinking. In his essay, On Nation and Race, his assumption that Aryans are superior to all others creates a type of logical fallacy called “Begging the Question” (Rottenberg 291).
The idea of eugenics was first introduced by Sir Francis Galton, who believed that the breeding of two wealthy and successful members of society would produce a child superior to that of two members of the lower class. This assumption was based on the idea that genes for success or particular excellence were present in our DNA, which is passed from parent to child. Despite the blatant lack of research, two men, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Jon Alfred Mjoen, played to the white supremacists’ desires and claimed that white genes were inherently superior to other races, and with this base formed the first eugenics society. The American Eugenics Movement attempted to unethically obliterate the rising tide of lower classes by immorally mandating organized sterilization and race based experimentation.
Wesley J. Smith goes on and on about how eugenicists would want to create homogeneity among Humans, valuing traits such as intelligence and looks instead of love, compassion, and empathy. He feels that this would create an unnatural society of human beings, creating chaos among the world. What he fails to recognize however is that it is not nearly as simple to do this as he thinks. Right now, cloning is in its very elementary stages, and most research being done is for medical purposes. Through advancing our knowledge in cloning and genetic engineering, we can eliminate unwanted traits and genetic diseases. Wesley may then try to argue that these unwanted traits and diseases make us unique, but I doubt he will get much support, especially from somebody who suffers from some horrible genetic disease or deformity.
He thought that those “inherited characteristics (did not only affect) outward appearance and physical structure”, but also determined a person’s physical, emotional/social, and mental state. Besides these ideas, the Nazi’s believed that certain ethnic races and certain people were inferior.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Sandel, M. J. The case against perfection, ethics in the age of genetic engineering. Belknap Press, 2007. Print.
The treatment of Jews and other minority groups by the Nazi’s can be described as actions that could only be done by a totalitarian state. Hitler believed in eugenics, the idea of improving a race by selective breeding. Nazi ideology of the Jewish race was severe anti-Semitism and pure hatred. The Nazi policy towards the Jews has been said to be the most brutal and horrific example of anti-Semitism in history.