Eugenics is a social
philosophy which advocates the improvement of
human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.
[2] Throughout history, eugenics has been regarded by its various advocates as a
social responsibility, an
enlightened stance of a society, meant to create healthier, stronger and/or more
intelligent people, to save
resources, and lessen human
suffering. Earlier proposed means of achieving these goals focused on
selective breeding, while modern ones focus on
prenatal testing,
genetic counseling,
birth control,
in vitro fertilization, and
genetic engineering. Opponents argue that eugenics is a temptation to the power hungry and is thus notably subject to corruption. Historically, some eugenics advocates have used it as a justification for state-sponsored
discrimination,
forced sterilization of persons deemed genetically defective, the killing of institutionalized populations, and genocide, such as during
the Holocaust.
The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir
Francis Galton in 1883,
[3] drawing on the recent work of his cousin
Charles Darwin. From its inception eugenics was supported by prominent people, including
H. G. Wells,
Woodrow Wilson,
Theodore Roosevelt,
Emile Zola,
George Bernard Shaw,
John Maynard Keynes,
William Keith Kellogg,
Margaret Sanger,
Winston Churchill, and
Sidney Webb.
[4][5][6] G. K. Chesterton was an early critic of the philosophy of eugenics, expressing this opinion in his book,
Eugenics and Other Evils. Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities, and received funding from many sources.
[7] Three
International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York. Eugenic policies were first implemented in the early 1900s in the
United States.
[8] Later, in the 1920s and 30s, the eugenic policy of
sterilizing certain mental patients was implemented in a variety of other countries, including
Belgium,
[9] Brazil,
[10] Canada,
[11] and
Sweden,
[12] among others. The scientific reputation of eugenics started to decline in the 1930s, a time when
Ernst Rüdin used eugenics as a justification for the
racial policies of
Nazi Germany, and when proponents of eugenics among scientists and thinkers prompted a backlash in the public. Nevertheless, the second largest known eugenics program, created by
social democrats in
Sweden, continued until 1975.
[12]
Since the
postwar period, both the public and the scientific communities have associated eugenics with
Nazi abuses, such as enforced
racial hygiene,
human experimentation, and the
extermination of undesired population groups. However, developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century have raised many new questions and concerns about what exactly constitutes the meaning of
eugenics and what its ethical and moral status is in the modern era.
