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Eugenics

Eugenics is the science – or pseudoscience, as some might say in the case of human beings – of using the principles of genetics for the purpose of creating more superior organisms, whether they be human, animals or plants. Its historical focus was primarily on the improvement of human hereditary attributes through the development and implementation of methods of social intervention. Eugenics gained much popularity in the early 20th century, when it was a trendy notion about an idealized population that would realize the goals of the enlightenment and be more intelligent, more resistant to illness, and less likely to cause or endure the suffering brought about by physical, mental or emotional inadequacies.

It does not take much imagination to recognize the darker, more dangerous side of such a concept. Eugenics is considered by many to be a more neutral packaging of the same ideologies promoted by the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan, that of a supreme and dominant race. In the past, eugenics functioned on the basis of birth control, both in the form of sterilizing the “undesirables” (such as the blind, the deaf, the deformed, the insane, even the ethnic races) and by encouraging the “desirables” to increase their numbers, for example by making abortion illegal only for them. Currently, eugenics is still practiced though in another form, as seen through pre-natal screening, “designer” babies and other such procedures that seek to pre-determine outcomes before birth.

Web Resources On Eugenics

Eugenics -- Breeding a Better Citizenry Through Science
Wikipedia: Eugenics

Book Resources On Eugenics

Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State by G. K. Chesterton, Michael W. Perry
In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity by Daniel Kevles

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