The dark history of Eugenics
Part 1) Introduction
Eugenics is the study of the means of arranging reproduction within a human society to increase the
occurrence of characteristics deemed as desirable. Now, this doesn’t seem ethical doesn't it? Controlling
who lives and who dies, who is allowed to have children, and who isn't. This couldn’t have been put into
practice, could it? Well, unfortunately, it was in practice, and was deemed ethical, and it is still going on
today.
The term, eugenics, meaning “good creation” was coined by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of the famous
scientist Charles Darwin. The idea was, to create a society of "perfect" humans. People with "undesirable"
characteristics, such as being poor, unintelligent, or disabled, must prevented from having children.
One famous publication, which considered to show the consequences of “bad breeding” originated from a
prominent American psychologist and US Eugenics supporter, Henry Goddard. Goddard had been studying
a girl called Deborah Kallikak since she was eight. He described her as “Feeble minded”, “The moron”, “The
delinquent”. Her great-grandfather was allegedly a noble soldier by the name of Martin Kallikak, who, with
his good puritan wife, produced a lineage of doctors, lawyers, and upstanding citizens. However, Martin
Kallikak also had an illegitimate child with Deborah’s great-grandmother, described as a “feeble-minded”
barmaid. Henry Goddard described this side of the family in less favourable terms, as generations of
criminals, idiots and morons: a drain on society. This story was told to show how bad traits, from “bad”
people could be inherited, supporting Goddard's theories of eugenics. This story influenced many eugenics
policies, and regimes, including in Nazi Germany. However, her family tree was completely fabricated.
Part 2) Impact and global prevalence
From 1907 - 1979 in the US alone, over 60,000 people were sterilised under the law that men and women
deemed “mentally defective” should not be allowed to have children. But do you think that these men and women
were tested fairly? It is a sad truth that the method of determining whether or not these people were mentally fit
biased against immigrants and minority groups.
The worst part of all of this is that despite Eugenics being thought of as evil due to its ideologies being put to
practice by the Nazies during the holocaust, many of its practices such as sterilisation of those deemed mentally
unfit still continued well into the 1970s. Showing how easy it was for the influence of eugenics to grasp hold of
society even when it had been shunned.
Unfortunately, some elements of eugenics are still practiced today in the sterilization of some minority groups. For
example, in Australia in 2012 sterilisation of mentally disabled women took place, and as well as this, in California
2013 African American and Latino women were sterilised in california state prison.
I believe that it is important that we as a civil society should be on guard against the vileness of eugenics and
other ideas that share is likeness. This is due to the fact that eugenics was biased to those who didn’t grow up
privileged, those who instead turned to a life of crime, purely circumstantially, and if we are to allow this to
continue anywhere across the globe, then we are part of the problem.