Eugenics

1 Pages 310 Words

1) The Eugenics movement was pioneered by a British scientist named Sir Francis Galton and referred to a group of scientific theories concerned with biological and social improvements of he human race through controlling hereditary factors. Galton believed that in order to promote a progressive evolution of mankind through the control of human reproduction could cause an increase in the proportion of the population that is intelligent, healthy, and emotionally stable. There were two approaches which were negative eugenics which would attempt to reduce the incidence of hereditary mental and physical defects, and positive eugenics which involve the effort to increase the incidence of desirable hereditary mental and physical attributes. Different types of people were affected by both types of measures. The positive form affected people who were supposedly of a superior gene pool and were given tax reductions for large families and social services for expectant mothers and children. Negative measures affected people with hereditary defects and people in mental hospitals and prisons by sterilization, birth control, segregation, and restrictive marriage laws. The method of sterilization was favored because it would prevent the spread of defective stock. But there were some who frowned upon it because few defective traits have been proven to be hereditary. Through the discovery of DNA the movement moved to a consideration of how genetic material can be altered so that superior and not defective individuals will be born. Theoretically, through genetic engineering it would be possible at some point to produce innumerable geniuses developed from a physically and mentally superior human being. In the U.S. physicians have suggested that the reduction of hereditary defects in the population is a public health problem. The positive measures of the eugenics movement was endorsed by Pope Pius XII in 1953 and in 1954 there was a formation of a eugenics...