August 26, 2008
Biology 340
Eugenics: The Artificial Selection In the 1800’s, well-known biologist, Charles Darwin enlightened us with his theory of evolution and natural selection. In short, natural selection states that random genetic changes transpire within an organism 's genetic code, such changes are preserved because they are valuable for survival. Darwin’s ideas came from economics applied to biology. By the late 1800’s Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, had thoroughly studied his cousins findings and disclosed his beliefs in biology, which he related to human beings. His philosophy was known as Eugenics. Eugenics was an idea was based on ways to control reproduction so that human race can better succeed, in other words, a revised sequel of Darwin’s natural selection, artificial selection. Galton understood that good advancement of mankind was let down by generous outreach to the underprivileged when such hard work motivated people to have more children. Galton sought after expanding his eugenics idealism from science to a policy and religion. This science was a form of perfecting the human race through improved reproduction. That alone should have scared people, however, it began to evolve, as Galton desired. Eugenicist aspired the development of advantageous characteristics and abolition of the adverse ones. Eugenics was seen as a means to resolve the combined problems because it located the cause in the flawed germ cells within the embryo of individuals of certain ethnic groups instead of focusing on the structure of society. Eugenicist alleged that inherited disorders with basic modes of inheritance could be construed from derivations of inheritance contained by families, such as polydactyl. Psychiatric disorders, such as manic depression, were also considered when researching inherited disorders. Geneticist understood that behavioral personality had the utmost impact on society. They assumed that people inherited a trait that
Cited: EugenicsArchive.org Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/list3.pl Adams, Mark, ed. The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil and Russia (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 Neo Eugenics: http://neoeugenics.home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/ Future Generations: http://www.eugenics.net/links/othrlink.html