Transhumanism In Eugenics

Eugenics is the pseudoscience of obtaining desired traits in a population through controlled repopulation, specifically by preventing those deemed “unfit” by “Nordic stereotypes” from breeding. Most modern day Americans do not realize the origins of eugenics, which was planted by Charles Darwin and Sir Francis Galton and bloomed in America, and what effect it had on the attempt to create a master race in Nazi Germany. America played a very influential role in German eugenics by collaboration between scientists and funding from American corporations. The negative connotation associated with this science is usually directed towards the scientists of the Holocaust under Adolf Hitler, and not towards American scientists who also partook in horrific experiments and performed inhumane acts as well. This is absurd when you consider that the United States was the backbone of the eugenics movement internationally and only developed a negative perspective of the research when it became affiliated with the holocaust and the troubling actions of Nazi Germany.

Eugenics is defined, in some way or the other, as the process of reshaping the human race by determining the kinds of people who will be born. As such, there is much debate in the field of eugenics, with authors, like Philip Kitcher, who support laissez-faire or a minimalist approach of eugenics in which eugenic decision-making should be limited only to avoid neurological illnesses and in which parental free choice is valued. Gregory Stock’s essay, The Enhanced and Un-Enhanced, presents otherwise by supporting the position of maximalist eugenics, allowing individuals the full extent in the selection of genes. On the other hand, the film, Gattaca, raises major ethical problems by illustrating a dystopian society resulted by extensive

Eugenics is the scientific belief that through “selective breeding… and [the] restriction of reproduction by birth control or surgical procedures” (Thomson), a ‘better’ and more productive society could develop. Similar to the ideas of Social Darwinists, Eugenicists used medical intervention to weed out the unfit members of society(anyone who was not white), and continued to grow the population of the ‘fit members. People believed that ‘unfit’ members of society had genes that would bring society down as a whole, and “race mixing, or crossbreeding, would deplete the national fitness of Anglo-Saxon Americans” (Thomson). Eugenics during the progressive Era: Although most progressive thinkers were against the Social Darwinist theory, there

The Oxford University Press defines eugenics as “the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics” with a further—and rather illuminating—explanation which states, “Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis”.

Eugenics is a taboo science, but back in 1883 it was a modern advancement, discovered by Francis Galton (Carlson). Galton’s original mission was to improve humanity by encouraging the best and healthiest couples to simply have more children; Galton created positive eugenics (Carlson). However, with the positive comes the inevitable negative. Negative Eugenics was more set on preventing the least able from reproducing, in order to preserve the fitness of the

Other than our desire for perfection, we as humans also have another desire: to learn about ourselves. We have the desire to explore our humanity. We often like to look within ourselves and question things about ourselves. In this way, eugenics should be explored in order to answer questions we have about ourselves. " Humanly speaking, the new genetics seems to have five dimensions or meanings: (1) genetics as a route to self-understanding, a way of knowing ourselves; (2) genetics as a route to new medical therapies, a way of curing ourselves; (3) genetics as a potential tool for human re-engineering, a prospect I find far-fetched; (4) genetics as a means of knowing something about our biological destiny, about our health and sickness in the future; and (5) genetics as a tool for screening the traits of the next generation, for choosing some lives and rejecting others."

History throughout the United States has multiple positive and negative attributions that reflect onto today’s society. One circumstance that has been partially neglected was the eugenics movement in America; the notion of eugenics occurring in the United States is infrequently brought up today. According to Dr. Laura Rivard, the average person most likely does not even know what eugenics is. An English intellectual named of Francis Galton is responsible for starting this movement. Eugenics can briefly be defined as exploiting the fundamentals of genetics and heredity for the benefit of superiorizing the human race.

The eugenics movement began in the 20th century by a man named Francis Galton. As the cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton believed that eugenics was a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children (Carlson). This Galtonian ideal of eugenics is often thought of as positive eugenics. Eugenics can be defined as the outgrowth of human heredity aimed at "improving" the quality of the human stock (Allen and Bird). At the other end of the spectrum is what can be classified as negative eugenics and is presently in disrepute. Negative eugenics entails selective breeding in which the least able from the population is taken out of the reproduction pool to preserve humanity's best traits.

There are many things that have happened behind closed doors in our great nation. In fact, even today with all the technology and possibilities to learn, the people of this nation still fall ignorant. We don’t know the evils that occur in our nation, not to mention the ideas and blueprints that caused them to come to action. There are many great sins that have been committed, and currently in the process of committing, of these I believe Eugenics to be one of the most abominable. How did eugenics start, where does it come from and who authored and supported it? I hope to delve into this during this essay.

Just think about a human race free of genetic disease where everyone is intelligent and where society and technology advance at staggering rates. This is the future that is envisioned by those who advocate eugenics. Eugenics is the study of methods to improve the human race by selection of parents based on their inherited characteristics (Hartl). The idea was first discussed by Sir Francis Galton in the 1880’s, but was widely unaccepted by people at first due to fear that it would take away their basic human rights and be misused (Hartl). In the early 20th century, eugenics was a very popular and widespread idea in the United States and there were laws created to encourage certain people to have children, while discouraging others from procreating (Morris 66). The main reason eugenics has fell into such disfavor is because the Nazis cited it as the reason for the Holocaust (Morris 66). The use of eugenics by the Nazis can be compared to the use Islam by ISIS, or the use of Christianity by the Westboro Baptist Church. It is a concept that can be misused based on interpretation and extremism. Eugenics itself is just an idea to improve the human race by selective breeding, not by killing millions. Forms of eugenics should be implemented in society because they eliminate genetic diseases and problems, spread favorable traits and attributes, create a more intelligent and less flawed society, and help advance the human race as a whole.

The idea of eugenics was first introduced by Sir Francis Galton, who believed that the breeding of two wealthy and successful members of society would produce a child superior to that of two members of the lower class. This assumption was based on the idea that genes for success or particular excellence were present in our DNA, which is passed from parent to child. Despite the blatant lack of research, two men, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Jon Alfred Mjoen, played to the white supremacists' desires and claimed that white genes were inherently superior to other races, and with this base formed the first eugenics society. The American Eugenics Movement attempted to unethically obliterate the rising tide of lower classes by immorally

There is much bias and confusion surrounding the topic of eugenics. Many times the reason for this is the lack of understanding of what the term means, where it states “In 1883, Sir Francis Galton, a respected British scholar, and cousin of Charles Darwin, first used the term eugenics, meaning ‘well-born.’ (Genetics Generation, 2015).” This term has evolved to encompass more than just “well-born” as can be seen in the encyclopedia. “The eleventh edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica defines eugenics as ‘the organic betterment of the race through wise application of the laws of heredity.’ (Court, 2004).” The meaning of the word eugenics, due to the way it has been used, confuses many people.

The theory of Eugenics can be dated back all the way to 400 B.C. but was not popularized until the mid-1800s by an English scientist, Francis Galton. He researched and published the theory that aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human population through selective breeding (NC Office of Archives and History). As the half-cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton applied the Darwinism science (survival of the fittest) to heredity characteristics. Two types of Eugenics stemmed from the theory, positive and negative. Positive eugenics is encouraging the “best” people in the society based on financial and personal features to have more children while negative eugenics is picking people with flaws and defects from the population

The definition of eugenics is to breed out undesirable traits. Based off of Austrian scientist Gregor Mendel’s studies, eugenics is accomplished through selective breeding. Dominant traits would replace recessive traits and the law of dominance would be ineffective. Originally, the idea behind eugenics was not completely bad. Over time though, problems surrounding it have been found. Dealing with positive and negative traits, questions have been asked about what constitutes as a negative trait and who decides which traits are

The roots of eugenics can be traced back to Britain in the early 1880’s when Sir Francis Galton generated the term from the Greek word for “well-born”. He defined eugenics as the science of improving stock, whether human or animal. According to the American Eugenics Movement, today’s study of eugenics has many similarities to studies done in the early 20th century. Back then, “Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes.” (www.eugenicsarchive.org) According to Merriam-Webster, the modern day definition of eugenics is, a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of