- Galton believed that the natural selection mechanism
was broken due to philanthropy of the rich [1]
- Galton defined eugenics as “artificial selection”
- At this early stage, another definition by Galton was
“the science of improvement of the human race germ
plasm through better breeding”
Sir Francis Galton, father of eugenics 
- Many
people are not familiar with the term “eugenics”
- Eugenics
is a term that has been defined by many
different people in many different ways
- There
are actually two different types of eugenics,
positive eugenics and negative eugenics
- Generally,
eugenics is the belief that people with
favourable genes are more beneficial to a society
- The
concepts of eugenics have actually existed long
before the Common Era of Man
- Ancient Greek
principles stated that if a man was a
peasant, his children would also be peasants [4]
- 1798
essay by Thomas Malthus laid the
groundwork for modern eugenics
- Cousin
of Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Galton, first
coined the term “eugenics” in 1883
-Charles B. Davenport was one of the most influential
geneticists in the beginning of the 20th century [3]
- His initial definition of the aim of eugenics was to
make young people fall in love intelligently
- He later went on to claim that people had genes in
them for “feeblemindedness”
- He suggested that people with these genes should be
sterilized in order to prevent their reproduction
-Davenport had begun to influence many people by
the 1910’s that his ideas on eugenics were correct
- The Binet immigration test was adopted in America
in 1912: 80% failure rate
- A book in 1916 by avid eugenicist Madison Grant
called “The Passing of the Great Race”, just one of
many eugenics books being written at the time,
brilliantly summarized the general idea of eugenics
“A rigid system of selection through
the elimination of those who are weak or unfit -in other words social failures -- would allow solve
the whole question in one hundred years, as well
as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who
crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums.
The individual himself can be nourished,
educated and protected by the community
during his lifetime, but the state through
sterilization must see to it that his line stops
with him, or else future generations will be
cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided
sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and
inevitable solution of the whole problem, and
can be applied to an ever widening circle of social
discards, beginning always with the criminal, the
diseased, and the insane, and extending
gradually to types which may be called weaklings
rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately
to worthless race types."
- Madison Grant
-Concepts of eugenics became increasingly popular
as time went on in the United States
- Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood in
1921, and abortion became legal
Margaret Sanger, coined the term “birth control” and founded Planned Parenthood
-The American Eugenics Foundation was created in
1922 by Henry Laughlin, Madison Grant, and Irving
Fisher
- They were funded by the some of the wealthiest
companies in the world at the time, such as the
Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institution
- They worked to get sterilization laws passed: some
60,000 Americans were sterilized and the marriages
of thousands were banned
- Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” expressed deeply
eugenic ideas: the idea of a master race
- Adolf Hitler was inspired by the American
eugenicists, especially Madison Grant
- “There is today one state, in which at least weak
beginnings toward a better conception are noticeable.
Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but
the United States.” [2]
- Hitler was initially praised by many eugenicists in
America for his actions of sterilizing people he
deemed “unfit”
- Hitler went on to exterminate 1/3 of the world’s
Jewish population, along with millions of others that
he deemed unfit to live and reproduce
- The idea of gas chambers to exterminate was
actually present in a 1918 American eugenics book
- Eugenics became vilified after the war was over
-Scientists after the war, including Archibald Garrod
and George Beadle, changed the meaning of eugenics
from negative to positive
- Negative eugenics implied sterilizing the unfit,
positive eugenics implied encouraging people with
good genes to reproduce together
Negative eugenics favoured those with
blond hair and blue eyes, and this idea
was not just Hitler’s: many people
worldwide agreed.
-The American Eugenics Society still exists to this day, along with The
Population Council – mostly genetic work is done with the ultimate goal of
improving the human gene pool through less aggressive methods
- Planned Parenthood still exists to this day
- Members of the American Eugenics Society funded and participated in the
Human Genome Project
- Negative eugenics are still prevalent in some parts of the world: i.e. the one baby
only law in China
If a Chinese woman becomes
pregnant again after having a
child, the baby is aborted, and
the woman is possibly arrested.
- One needs to consider the direction that humans are evolving in
- Human intelligence is largely hereditary, and innate intelligence of humans
decides the quality of the civilization that we live in
- Since 1875, the average human IQ has dropped by 4.4 IQ points, doubling the
number of people with an IQ below 70 (legally retarded) [5]
- Egalitarianism is an illusion: poverty does not create crime, people commit crimes
because of their genes
- If every retarded person were sterilized, the next generation would decrease the
number of mentally retarded people by 37% until eventually retardation would be
gone completely
- Rather than wasting money catering to the unfit, money could be put to good uses
while the gene pool improves itself due to less unfit people reproducing
-It seriously violates human rights to sterilize people
- Some believe that eugenics is actually a pseudoscience with no true
evidence to back it up
- It is immoral to abort babies, some consider it to be murder
- Everyone deserves to be treated equally
- Eugenics is incredibly racist and bigoted: there are often biases such
as the “master race” being pure white
- Some believe egalitarianism to be true: people with so called “bad
genes” can be reformed by the institutes of society and overcome
them
-I support the concepts of positive and negative
eugenics: people with low intelligence should be
sterilized in order to build a better future
- I do not however support Nazi Eugenics or any
form of exterminating races of people
[1] American Bioethics Advisory Commission (1999). Eugenics. Retrieved from http://www.all.org/abac/eugen02.htm
[2] Black, Edwin (2003). The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics. Retrieved from http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html
[3] Marks, Jonathan (2009). The Eugenics Page. Retrieved from: http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/eugenics/eugenics.html
[4] Turano, Jordan (2000). Eugenics, Links to Planned Parenthood Ethical or Not? Retrieved from:
http://www.cfpeople.org/SeminarianWritings/Sem036.html
[5] Van Court, Marian (2004).The Case for Eugenics in a Nutshell. Retrieved from:
http://www.eugenics.net/papers/caseforeugenics.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Francis_Galton_1850s.jpg (Slide 4)
http://commentariesonthetimes.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/madison-grant.gif?w=397&h=307 (Slide 7)
http://www.nndb.com/people/896/000031803/margaret-sanger-1-sized.jpg (Slide 8)
http://scm-l3.technorati.com/11/09/28/51963/plannedparenthood[1].jpg?t=20110928091602 (Slide 8)
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http://bigpeace.com/files/2011/09/2010-04-05-ChineseChildren-773778.jpg (Slide 14)
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