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An essay on American eugenics
An essay on American eugenics
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My research revolves around the ethics and morality of eugenics (Science of heredity and good breeding), and whether society should be in favor of influencing genetics in order to create a more favorable genetic pool. This topic interests me because I find great interest in political and cultural issues, and I have always been fascinated by whether eugenics would actually work and if governments should be in support of it. The sources I found were all scientific journals from credible books. I did this to because I needed to gain information on studies that have taken place in the name of eugenics as well as establish that eugenics is high priority within the scientific community.Taking this into consideration, my research question is: Is eugenics capable of being established and thriving in the contemporary society?
Source 1- Eugenics and Disability Discrimination, written by David Pfeiffer. This source will be helpful because it establishes how eugenics can affect those who are physically or mentally disabled which helps answer if eugenics would be a good thing for society. This source is credible because it is written in a journal titled “Disability and Society” which analyzes the issues that the disabled deal with every day in their normal lives and it is written by a professor for the Suffolk University School of Management. The source makes three main claims: 1 - There is continued discrimination against the disabled within the United States. 2 - Many in academia do not believe that discrimination exists or that there are laws that exist that heavily discriminate against the disabled. 3 - That Darwin’s evolutionary theory is wrongly used in being the driving force behind such wrongful attempts, and until such people use it ...
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...3.9422 (2004): 1742. Print.
Caplan, A. L., G. Mcgee, and D. Magnus. "What Is Immoral about Eugenics?" Bmj 319.7220 (1999): 1284. Print.
Fulda, K. G. "Ethical Issues in Predictive Genetic Testing: A Public Health Perspective." Journal of Medical Ethics 32.3 (2006): 143-47. Print.
Leonard, Thomas C. "Retrospectives: Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era." Journal of Economic Perspectives 19.4 (2005): 207-24. Print.
Pfeiffer, David. "Eugenics and Disability Discrimination." Disability & Society 9.4 (1994): 481-99. Print.
Sparrow, Robert. "In Vitro Eugenics." Journal of Medical Ethics (2013): n. pag. National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 4 Apr. 2013. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
Wertz, Dorothy C. "Eugenics Is Alive and Well: A Survey of Genetic Professionals around the World." Science in Context 11.3-4 (1998): n. pag. Pr
The eugenics movement started in the early 1900s and was adopted by doctors and the general public during the 1920s. The movement aimed to create a better society through the monitoring of genetic traits through selective heredity. Over time, eugenics took on two different views. Supporters of positive eugenics believed in promoting childbearing by a class who was “genetically superior.” On the contrary, proponents of negative eugenics tried to monitor society’s flaws through the sterilization of the “inferior.”
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.
Neoeugenics is the idea of new, “neo”, eugenics or a new way of creating a healthier race. Eugenics was first defined in the late 1800s by a man named Sir Francis Galton who said that it was basically the study of traits that will cause an advantage or disadvantage in the traits of future generations. Eugenics soon turned from being about the use of artificial selection of breeding to create a stronger species, to being about the advancement of certain races over others. When talking about neo eugenics, it is believed that it may turn into something similar to that of eugenics in that the use of artificial selection would now be used to bring the upper class higher in standards of health and wellbeing as well as beauty. Others believe that the use of neo eugenics will help create a healthier, more stable species. Whether bad or good, the way that eugenics will advance will be in designer babies.
Galton, David J., and Clare J. Galton. "Francis Galton: And Eugenics Today." Journal of Medical Ethics, 24.2 (1998): 99-101. JSTOR. Web. 8 Mar. 2010.
Rifkin, Jeremy. "The Ultimate Therapy: Commercial Eugenics on the Eve of the Biotech Century." Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 7th ed. Ed.
Perkins, H.F.. A Decade of Progress in Eugenics: Scientific Papers of the Third International Congress of Eugenics. 1993 Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Company.
The Web. 27 May 2014. The "Eugenics" - "The. Dictionary.com. The World of the. Dictionary.com, n.d. -. Web.
Ricci, Mariella Lombardi. "Assisted Procreation And Its Relationship To Genetics And Eugenics." Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics 15.1 (2009): 9-29. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
The Human Genome Project is the largest scientific endeavor undertaken since the Manhattan Project, and, as with the Manhattan Project, the completion of the Human Genome Project has brought to surface many moral and ethical issues concerning the use of the knowledge gained from the project. Although genetic tests for certain diseases have been available for 15 years (Ridley, 1999), the completion of the Human Genome Project will certainly lead to an exponential increase in the number of genetic tests available. Therefore, before genetic testing becomes a routine part of a visit to a doctor's office, the two main questions at the heart of the controversy surrounding genetic testing must be addressed: When should genetic testing be used? And who should have access to the results of genetic tests? As I intend to show, genetic tests should only be used for treatable diseases, and individuals should have the freedom to decide who has access to their test results.
"Eugenics, Genetic Engineering Lite." The Future of Human Evolution. Humans Future, 2010. Web. 14 Feb 2012.
In today’s world, people are learning a great deal in the rapidly growing and developing fields of science and technology. Almost each day, an individual can see or hear about new discoveries and advances in these fields of study. One science that is rapidly progressing is genetic testing; a valuable science that promotes prevention efforts for genetically susceptible people and provides new strategies for disease management. Unnaturally, and morally wrong, genetic testing is a controversial science that manipulates human ethics. Although genetic testing has enormous advantages, the uncertainties of genetic testing will depreciate our quality of life, and thereby result in psychological burden, discrimination, and abortion.
Savulescu, Julian. “Genetic Interventions and the Ethics of Human Beings.” Readings in the Philosophy of Technology. Ed. David Kaplan. 2nd ed. Lanham: Roman & Littlefield, 2009. 417-430.
When created in 1923, the American Eugenics Society exemplified an air of reform with a seemingly positive purpose, however this cannot be further from the truth. In reality, the society polluted the air with myths of weeding out imperfections with the Galtonian ideal, the breeding of the fittest (Carison). The founder of the society, Charles Davensport , preached that those who are imperfect should be eliminated(Marks). From the school desk to the pulpit, the fallacies of the eugenics movement were forced into society. Preachers often encouraged the best to marry the best while biology professors would encourage DNA testing to find out ones fate (Selden). A...
Pray, Leslie A., Ph.D. “Embryo Screening and the Ethics of Human Genetic Engineering.” Nature.com. Nature Publishing Group, 2008. Web. The Web.
The belief of eugenics was well-known in the 20th century and the set of its ideals were adopted by many societies across the nation. Eugenics is a study of improving human species by keeping all of the desirable races or breeds. It developed a controversial science regarding to human heredity and personal traits such as positive and negative eugenics. For example, it stated that in order to improve the genetic quality of human race, the society should encourage individuals with superior genes to produce more offspring and discourage reproduction who are considered as socially unfit. These biased eugenics ideas were inspired by Darwin’s theory of natural selection and as well as Galton’s theory of hard heredity. Even in today’s society, people