Eugenics

Paper Summary:

A presentation of a case against eugenics. The writer tries to prove that most of the arguments put forward by the supporters of eugenics were racially motivated and based on false or doubtful premises. The possibility of the pseudo-science making a comeback is also discussed.

From the Paper:

"The "father" of modern eugenics is believed to be Sir Francis Galton, an English scientist and a cousin of Charles Darwin, who first coined the term eugenics in 1883. ("Eugenics," Britannica, 2002). Galton believed that arranged marriages between men of distinction and women of wealth would produce a gifted race. Galton propounded his theory of eugenics until his death in 1910. Even before eugenics was so infamously used as an excuse by the Nazis to carry out a systematic extermination of the Jews, the Gypsies, the handicapped, and the "feeble-minded," it had found a ready audience, most notably in the USA. The influential American Eugenic Society (AES) was founded in the US in 1926. It campaigned for sterilization laws that were passed by more than half the states for compulsory sterilization of the insane, retarded, and the epileptic citizens of the country in the 1930s. Restrictions were also placed on the immigration into the country by people of "inferior" stock such as Greeks, Italians and Eastern Europeans through the efforts of eugenecists. ("Eugenics," Britannica, 2002)."

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