Eugenics

Eugenics

Introduction

Eugenics is the study of bringing in improvements in the human species. It is an applied science aimed at improving the characteristics of a particular human population by limiting reproduction by people who have genetic defects. It also encourages reproduction by people who have positive traits. This concept was very popular in the 20th century but its popularity fell in the later years of the century. Some people claimed that the study of eugenics was flawed since even perfect pairs may reproduce siblings with genetic mutations. The first person to claim this was Thomas Hunt Morgan who observed this phenomenon in 1915 when he witnessed the hatching of a white eyed fruit eye from a pair of red-eyed fruit flies. Eugenics was promoted by governments all over the world and it became very popular. It was considered a social philosophy which aimed at improving the human hereditary traits. This was achievable through selective reproduction. People with good traits were better placed to reproduce siblings with positive traits, while those with any heredity problem were asked to avoid reproduction.

Today, this concept is rejected by most people especially human rights activists who claim that every human being should be allowed to enjoy freedom to reproduce regardless of their personal traits. The major reason human rights groups is against this concept is that it does not allow reproduction by disabled, homosexuals, racial groups, and people who are not intelligent. In fact even the families of such people were asked not to reproduce. After the Second World War, people associated this concept with Nazi Germany since they wanted to eliminate certain races especially the Jews. Research after the war has raised various questions regarding the relevance of Eugenics and its moral and ethical status.

Discussion

Eugenics is a term which specifically means to improve the genetic quality of human race. It stated that there is no place for degenerate people and eugenics was all about eliminating poverty social dilemma out of the society. There are two types of genetics which is known as positive genetics and negative genetics. The concept of eugenics was to develop a human race of higher socio-economic levels by encouraging genetically healthy people with positive social traits to have more children. At that time this cause was supported by incentives being given to people who had more children. On the contrary negative eugenics was about stopping people to reproduce who had genetic, mental and physical defects. Negative eugenics got its spread in the U.S., Germany and the Scandinavian countries in the early centuries. This enjoyed wide popularity in the United States (Cullen, 2007).

Negative eugenics requires that "useless human material" is no longer reproduced. Genetics of data, it was concluded that people as well as plants and animals should be separated from their less productive members through forced sterilization, whereas the breed can only the healthiest individuals. In this unhealthy recognized socially accomplished people. They seem to have some kind of permanently tainted heredity (Cullen, 2007). Thus, eugenics was trying to explain the cause ...