What is eugenics? The definition of eugenics is the theory of human can influence our own evolution, through selective breeding, or genetic enhancement. What do I find wrong about this? EVERYTHING! While I was reading about eugenics I thought it was very disturbing. I know they were trying to be scientific and find out new things about DNA and reproduction but it was not right for them to go around judging people.
What they used to do was take people that they thought were perfect to make a perfect baby. They made laws and rules that if there was someone imperfect that they were not allowed to breed with somebody else. Some of the laws they made were no blacks and whites were allowed to reproduce. Actually there could be no mixing races at all. They made everybody think that the only ones that were perfect to reproduce were the whites. The scientists also made everyone believe that anybody that had a problem was unfit to have kids. What they did with the people who “they” thought were unfit was sterilize them which is to make sure they could not reproduce. Everyone started judging the mentally challenged, the alcoholics, the depressed, and many others because they believed that everything was genetic.
Although the scientists thought they were doing this correctly their research did have some flaws. One of their flaws was that they were not very good at defining the traits. The only traits they really recognized correctly were the obvious such as eye color, stature, and blood group. The second flaw they had was that they thought their was only one kind of intelligence and it came from the brain which there are many different ways to be intelligent. The third flaw was that they had very poor information; they only got information from the last two generations so they did not know everything that could be passed on. The fourth flaw was that they thought that if somebody scored high on an intelligence test that their gene of intelligence would be passed on. Also very poorly educated people created the tests. The fifth flaw was that they believed that the life styles were also genetic because they found in some families the life styles were often similar.
The social origins of eugenics hurt a lot of people throughout the country. This influenced a lot of cultures such as Nazis. It ruined a lot of businesses and sent a lot of people into the depression. The birthrate went down hill and a lot of people who were wealthy could not pass anything on. Although it was their fault they turned their problems to the mentally ill and said that if they were sterilized then everything would start to look up for them. They also believed that immigrants were another problem socially so they decided to make immigrant restrictions.
The scientific origins were very strange. They believed that bad environmental influences damaged hereditary. This theory over the years turned into onanism, which they believed was bad environmental influences. They thought this would affect their health. They also believed that over 3 years of genetics people would become worthy citizens. The scientists became scared that people that had a problem were having way more kids then the wealthy intelligent people so that when they would sterilize them.
They had many other laws such as marriage laws. Nobody “perfect” was allowed to marry someone “unfit” because that would mean they would have children and that would not be acceptable for the scientists. Of course they always thought that other races other then white were unfit to have children so whites were not allowed to marry another race. They believed that if too many whites had kids with other races that soon the white race will eventually disappear. They thought this would happen because a white person with a black person would end up having a white kid, the same for white and Mexican, white and Indian, and so on. When all of this happened all the other races had to go through so many steps to become fit to be a white person and if not you were separated from them.
All in all this mess was inspired a lot of bad things and surprisingly good things. Eugenics has helped us be more advanced in research today. On the other hand it ruined a lot of peoples lives and inspired a lot of bad events in history. In my opinion I did not like what happened with Eugenics.
