Euginics Essay Example

Euginics Essay Eugenics Research The word eugenics was coined in 1883 by British mathematician Francis Gallon, who defined it as the science of improving the stock. The eugenics movement, he said, would be dedicated to allowing the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable. The movement had its heyday from the asses to the asses, when eugenicists argued that southern Europeans, Jews, people of color, homosexuals, and people with disabilities were inferior to white, heterosexual, able-bodied Protestants of northern European scent. Eugenics made somewhat of a comeback in the asses with the advent of genetic in-outer testing, which some see as a new phase in the effort to purify society. Great Britains Francis Gallon was a 19th-century scientist and anthropologist whose achievements spanned an incredible variety of fields and disciplines. He is best known as the inventor of the science of eugenics, an endeavor to use the insight gained through Charles Darnings theory of evolution to improve the human species through the control of hereditary factors in mating. We will write a custom essay sample on Euginics specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Euginics specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Euginics specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Gallon was born in Birmingham, England on February 16, 1822 into a family with Quaker roots. His father, Samuel Terries Gallon, was a wealthy man, and his mother, Violet Darwin Gallon, was the daughter of Erasmus Darwin, the famous 18th-century English naturalist and grandfather of Charles Darwin (hence, Francis Gallon and Charles Darwin were cousins). Gallon was a quick student, and he could read English, Latin, and Greek even before he reached school age. At the age of 14, Gallon entered King Edwards School in Birmingham. He soon chafed under the regime of classical studies, craving instruction in math and science. His arent intended him for a career in medicine, so in his teens, he embarked on a tour of medical institutions in Europe. After his return, he worked in the Birmingham General Hospital, entering Kings College in London to study medicine in 1839. However, his commitment to formal medical training did not run as deep as his interest in travel. While he was in Geneses, Germany to attend chemistry lectures, he was seized by a passion to see faraway places. Leaving the lectures, he traveled through Vienna, Constantinople, and Greece. Gallon returned in 1840 and left his medical studies at Kings College in favor of thematic, the study of which he pursued at Trinity College, Cambridge University. Overwork soon wore him down, and he suffered a collapse in his third year, causing him to miss an opportunity to take honors in his new field. Gallon left Cambridge without receiving a degree and returned to medical school in London. However, shortly after he had resigned himself to making his living in medicine, his father died. Thus, in 1844, at age 21, Gallon inherited a fortune that freed him of the need to continue his studies, and he abandoned all thought of becoming a physician. He could now indulge in his abiding passions: travel and unrestricted scientific inquiry. 1850, he began a two-year exploration of remote areas in southwest Africa. His successes here caused the Royal Geographical Society to award him its Gold Medal and elect him a fellow in 1853. Three years later, he was made a fellow in the prestigious Royal Society. He published two volumes of travel writing, Tropical South Africa (1853) and The Art of Travel (1855), which further increased his fame. The asses were very busy and eventful for Gallon, as he also married Louisa Butler in 1853. The marriage remained childless. Over the next several decades, Gallon continued to display his diverse interests and talents, continuing his work for the Royal Geographical Society while publishing papers on a wide variety of scientific subjects. He performed pioneering research in the field of meteorology (on anticyclones) and laid the foundation of modern fingerprint classification. He also worked on several inventions and continued his studies in mathematics, introducing innovations in the study of statistics. The publication of Darnings monumental Origin of Species in 1859 stimulated his greatest interest, however. In 1869, Gallon published Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences, and his overriding interest for the rest of his life would be in heredity, genetics, and eugenics. Hereditary Genius introduced Gallons contention that extraordinary ability was passed down from one generation to the next within certain families. He had noticed, he said, that the great and talented individuals in society tended to come from families that had produced other outstanding individuals. This trend had led him to believe that children inherited not only their physical characteristics from their arent, but also their mental abilities. From these ideas and his reading of Darwin, Gallon theorized that humans could control heredity for their own purposes and promote the creation of a society peopled by superior genetic stock. He termed his new science, devoted to promoting ways to achieve this goal of genetic engineering, eugenics?a word deriving from the Greek work Eugene, meaning well-born. From the beginning, other scientists disputed Gallons claims, arguing that culture, environment, and education were more decisive in shaping human character than genetics. This debate is often preferred to as nature (genetics) versus nurture (environment) and is still hotly disputed today. To prove his theories and promote eugenics, Gallon devoted much of his time to scientific data-gathering, employing primarily anthropometry (the measurement of various parts of peoples anatomy, especially the face and skull) and statistics. He published the results in The English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture (1874), Inquiries into the Human Faculty and its Development (1883), Record of Family Faculties (1884), and Natural Inheritance (1889). He also launched a scientific Journal voted to eugenics and the quantification of human qualities, Biometrics, in 1891 , and in 1893, he set up the Eugenics Laboratory at the University of London. In both of become the main advocate of eugenics in Britain after Gallons death. What Pearson and Gallon desired was a more scientific approach to reproduction in human society, with an eye to producing the fittest offspring, thereby improving the level of intelligence, morality, and health in society at large. This improvement could be accomplished, they argued, either through positive eugenics?encouraging the Redding of superior individuals?or through negative eugenics?discouraging or preventing the reproduction of such undesirable members of society as the sick, criminals, the insane, and even the poor. Such negative meaner did not preclude the use of force, in the form of compulsory sterilization. Gallons ideas on heredity spread all over the world and were influential in eugenics movements and programs in Europe as well as such places as Japan, Brazil, and the United States. Though his ideas were controversial during his lifetime and have remained so after his death, it is clear that he never envisioned the kind of arduous racial selection practiced in Nazi Germany before and during World War II, even though Nazi scientists relied on many of his theories. During the last years of his life, Gallon continued to research, write, and lecture at an astounding rate, and he received many honors from scientific societies and universities all over the world. In 1909, he was knighted by the British Crown. Despite his prolific output, Gallon suffered ill-health over the last years of his life, no doubt caused and exacerbated by his unrelenting work schedule. On January 17, 1911, he died at Hastener, in the county of Surrey, in England. In his will, he endowed a chair in eugenics at the University of London, of which Pearson was the first occupant. Genetic engineering is the artificial manipulation, modification, and recombination of DNA or other nucleic acid molecules in order to modify an organism or population of organisms. A great deal of controversy surrounds both the concept and practice of genetic engineering: the idea that humans should try to shape and control the world and their own bodies is a concern to many and runs counter to the worlds major religions. Critics also point out that genetic control would necessarily rest in the ands of a few people; thus, genetic engineering could be used for political and economic ends. People with inferior genes, for example, could be discriminated against in employment, health care, and insurance. In addition, the specter of the Nazis experimentation with eugenics during World War II haunts many critics and raises issues of ethnocentrism, racism, and indigenous rights. German National Socialist racial policy was based in large part on the anti-Semitic views of Doll Hitler, coupled with the geopolitical and living state theories of Karl Hauser, and evened with theories taken from the Social Darwinist school of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Mary and the eugenics and scientific racism expounded by Francis Gallon. This mixture provided the ideological foundation of Nazism. Anti-Semitism loomed large in Hitters thinking, and he found support for his hatred in the works of learned men such as Gallon. Gallon had written too friend in 1884: It strikes me that the Jews are specialized for a parasitical existence upon the nation. Hitler concurred, Deer Swage Jude (The Eternal Jew), as parasites. The Nazis found support for their ideas of the existence of Internments (subhuman) n the academic world of Germany. The Institutes for Racial Hygiene staffed by professors and doctors such as Erwin Barr, Eugene Fischer, and Frizz Lend, built a pseudoscience framework around Hitters racist views. These scientists put together comparative charts with different types of eyes, noses, and mouths that purported to allow the researcher to identify a persons race through physical morphology. It was said to be particularly easy to spot Jews Just on appearance, a farcical proposition belied by the fact that Jews were compelled to wear an identifying mark (Star of David) on their garments. These sorts of contradictions were the hallmark of Nazi racial theory. Alfred Rosenberg also contributed heavily to Nazi race theory with his books on Baltic Germans and the supposed role of Jews in history. Nazi racial theories also held that Gypsies (Room) were subhuman, and they too were slated for extinction. Nazi racial policies were codified in 1935 with the passage of the Murderer Laws. One of them, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, took many of its sections directly from U. S. Eugenics laws on the books in the state of Virginia. The Murderer Laws made the discrimination against Jews and Gypsies legal, and made them stateless persons. The Nazis also targeted other racial groups as being inferior, and therefore marked for destruction. Of particular concern were the Slavs, second only in Hitters hatred to the Jews. The Poles were particularly reviled by the Nazis, and were eventually all to be eliminated. The Russians were seen as an admixture of two inferior races: the Asiatic/Mongol and the Slav. Russians were to be selectively bred in limited numbers to serve as slaves, the rest were marked for death. The flip side of this discriminatory racism, was the identification of true Aryans believed by the Nazis to be the seed of the Germanic races). A number of expeditions were sent to far-flung corners of the world in search of the origin of the German superman. Different types of Aryans were identified: Nordic German, Baltic German, and so on. Every German couple who wished to marry had to produce documents showing freedom from hereditary diseases, and ancestry charts that went back at least four generations showing no Jewish blood. Ironically, it is believed that leading Nazis including Hitler and Reinhardt Hydride could not legitimately meet these requirements. The Nazi New Order was a far-reaching and complex scheme to weep away Rupees existing governments and impose a new form of society. The goals of the New Order were to completely remold society economically, socially, racially, and militarily, in order to create ideal conditions for National Socialism. It was nothing short of a Nazi vision of utopia in which Nationalist Socialist Germany reigned supreme. It was to be a society where Nordic/Germanic supermen lived in violists harmony with their fellow Germans. The Nazis saw this as a world free of merely to serve the Master Race. Nazi social ideology espoused a community where everyone was an active participant n the building of the society. Ideological orthodoxy was the main requirement, as well as enthusiastic support for the regime. Dissent was to be reported, and dissenters isolated from the rest of society. Lesser races, which mainly meant the Slavs, were to be enslaved to serve the Master Race. They were to receive only such education as was necessary and reduced in numbers through sterilization and birth control. The Nazis envisioned a return to the Middle Ages, with rural Germanic lords farming large estates in the former Soviet Union, worked by Slavic serfs. Each Nazi lord would be a soldier/farmer, who would defend the frontier against barbarian incursions. Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, and political dissidents would have no place in such a society and were to be exterminated, as would be the weak, mentally challenged, and those deemed unfit. The ideological underpinnings of this vision are to be found in Doll Hitters book, Mien Kampala, and were a loose synthesis of German nationalism, Social Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific racism. Economically, this New Order called for big business to remain free to pursue profit, s long as the industrialists worked at state bidding. Employment would be guaranteed through movements such as the Reestablishments (German Labor Service?RADAR), which provided Jobs for all. The RADAR also acted in lieu of labor unions, which were prohibited, and assured affordable housing for workers, cheap transportation, and even state-paid holidays through the Kraft Durra Freud (Strength Through Joy organization). Those countries that became part of the Greater German Reich and allied states such as France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, and Britain would have their economies subsumed into that of German, and would be expected o implement Nazi labor and industrial policies. Those countries slated for subjugation, such as Poland and the Soviet Union, were to be stripped of any industry and would become vast agricultural belts, run by the new Teutonic Knights, the AS, and worked by their serf laborers. Racially, certain groups were slated for extinction. Jews were first on the list along with Room (Gypsies). Those born with physical disabilities or the mentally challenged would also be killed. Nazi texts refer to such people as life unworthy of life. Socially and politically heterodox persons would also be removed from society, much like a eases. The Slavs were to be ground down, as workers in the German agricultural belt in the east. Militarily, the old German Army would gradually be phased out in favor of the new political soldiers of the AS, who were to form a new politically aware and ideologically pure Teutonic knighthood. A large portion of the industrial sector would continue to produce and develop new weaponry to enable the Nazi state to dominate the world. The Preliminary Report of the Governors Task Force to Determine the Method of report presents recommendations on how to compensate victims of forced theorization under state law and evaluates previous recommendations. Between 1929 and 1974, more than 7,500 men and women, including some as young as 10, were sterilized under the auspices of North Carolina Eugenics Board and its predecessors. In March 2011, Gob. Bee Purdue of North Carolina issued an executive order creating a task force to examine the problem of compensating surviving victims. The letter of transmittal from the report appears below; the full text (93 pages) can be found in the inset PDF. Dear Governor Purdue: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to study North Carolinas former eugenics aerogram and recommend to you what we believe is a fair and meaningful compensation package for those who were sterilized by the state. All of us heard the painful testimony in June from victims of the states program and we know you are familiar with the details of this shameful period in our history. Between 1929 and 1974, about 7,600 men, women and children were determined to be unfit to reproduce by the N. C. Eugenics Board and sterilized, in most cases without their consent. State officials estimate that 2,944 men and women who were sterilized by the Eugenics Board are still living, though we understand that this figure s probably an overestimate. Its clear to us that they deserve compensation and that no value or amount can provide complete closure. In seeking to provide sincere recommendations to the state and victims of this past scar on North Carolinas history, we each acknowledge that the state of North Carolina must move beyond Just an apology. We also understand that many differences of opinion exist regarding the best ways to provide Justice to North Carolinas Eugenics Board program victims. We are grateful that we have six more months to consider these issues in more detail. We offer these as our preliminary recommendations: Lump Sum Financial Damages for Living Victims of the N. C. Eugenics Board program Mental Health Services for Living Victims Funding for Traveling N. C. Eugenics Exhibit Continuation and Expansion for the N. C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation The preliminary recommendations listed above are not final but serve to provide insight to our current mindset as we proceed. The following report also highlights our current examination of past recommendations made by previous commissions. The Task Force will continue our work over the next few months to review feedback n these preliminary recommendations, seek more information from additional state agencies and stakeholders, and have more intentional conversations before developing the final report and recommendations by February 1, 2012. As a lump sum payment. We need more time to consider these and other figures. The Task Force strongly believes that any damages awarded to victims should be exempt from state taxes. Some victims have requested that victims estates also be eligible for compensation. We need more time to consider that request. We also want to fully explore the possibility of offering state health benefits to living victims. By February, we also will make a recommendation on the staffing and other administrative costs to administer the program and aggressively reach out to victims so that all those entitled to compensation may receive it. A timeline for victims to come forward for potential compensation also will need to be determined. The state also has an obligation to make sure such violations of basic human rights are never repeated. We believe that education will serve as a deterrent. Several years ago, the Department of Cultural Resources put together a traveling exhibit that tells the story of Eugenics in North Carolina. The exhibit is in need of some repair and updating. We will come back to you in February with more detailed recommendations for an updated traveling exhibit and other documentary work that can be used to reach large numbers of North Carolina citizens. We know that in a period of tight budgets compensation may not be popular among your constituents. For many citizens, it may be hard to Justify spending millions when the state is cutting back on other essential services. But the fact is, there never will be a good time to redress these wrongs and the victims have already waited too long. The editorial pages of the states leading newspapers have all called for compensation. The John Locke Foundation?a leading conservative think tank?has also called for compensation. We urge you to use your office to build upon this emerging consensus and to ask the General Assembly to take up the matter as soon as possible. We also invite you to meet with us as a group, or individually, as we are eager to hear your response to our preliminary recommendations and to help you in whatever way we can to bring about Justice. Thank you for standing up for the men and women who were deeply harmed. We acknowledge the huge tasks and responsibilities of the Task Force, the Legislature, and the State of North Carolina and the states efforts to redress an injustice that other states have ignored. We also acknowledge that no amount of money can replace or give value to what has been done to nearly 7,600 people?men, women, boys, girls, African Americans, Whites, American Indians, the poor, undereducated, and disabled who our state and its citizens Judged, targeted, and labeled morons, unfit, and blindsided. Respectfully submitted this first day of August, 2011 North Carolina Digital Collections Women of All Red Nations (WARN) was formed in the middle asses to address issues directly facing Indian women and their families. WARN has some notable alumnae. For example, Winnow Allude, who ran for vice president of the United States on the member. When the American Indian Movement (AIM) began in the asses, women memb ers found themselves playing supporting (and, some asserted, subservient) roles. In 1974, at Rapid City, South Dakota, Native women from more than 30 nations met and decided, among other things, that truth and communication are among our most valuable tools in the liberation of our lands, people, and four-legged and winged reaction. The formation of WARN enabled politically active Native American women to speak with a collective voice on issues that affected them intensely. At the same time, WARN members, with chapters throughout the United States, worked to support a large number of Native American men in prisons. Members of WARN also form liaisons with non-native feminist groups, such as the National Organization of Women, to advocate policies of concern to minority women. The groups main priorities include the improvement of educational opportunities, health and medical care (including reproductive rights), resistance to violence against omen, an end to stereotyping, support for treaties, and protection of the environment, including campaigns against uranium mining and milling, a long-time threat to Alaska and Navajo women as well as men. One critical issue raised by WARN is the widespread sterilization of Native American women in government-run hospitals, an extension of a eugenics movement aimed at impeding the population increase of groups believed by some in government to be poor and/or mentally defective. These programs had ended for most of non-landing groups after World War II (Germanys Nazis having given eugenics an extremely bad petition), but they continued on Indian reservations through the asses. Wherever Indian activists gathered during the Red Power years of the asses, conversation inevitably turned to the number of women who had had their tubes tied or their ovaries removed by the Indian Health Service. Communication spurred by activism provoked a growing number of Native American women to piece together and name what amounted to a national eugenics policy carried out with copious federal funding. WARN and other womens organizations publicized the sterilizations, which were performed after pro formal consent of the women being sterilized. The consent sometimes was not offered in the womens language, and often followed threats that they would die or lose their welfare benefits if they had more children. At least two 1 5-year-old girls were told they were having their tonsils out before their ovaries were removed. The enormity of government-funded sterilization, as well as its eugenics context, has been documented by Sally Torpor in her thesis, Endangered Species: Native American Womens Struggle for Their Reproductive Rights and Racial Identity, asses-asses, written at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. No one even today knows exactly how many Native American women were sterilized Office, whose study covered only four of 12 IIS regions over four years (1973-1976). Within those limits, the study documented the sterilization of 3,406 Indian women. Another estimate was provided by Lehman Brighten (Alaska), who devoted much of his life to the issue. His educated guess (without exact calculations to back it up) is that 40% of Native women and 10% of Native men were sterilized during the decade. Brighten estimates that the total number of Indian women sterilized during the cascade was between 60,000 and 70,000. The women of WARN played a central role in bringing involuntary sterilization of Native American women to an end. Further Reading American Indian Movement (http://www. Movement. Org); Johannes, Bruce E. Reprise/Forced Sterilizations. Native Americas 1 5 (Winter 1998): 4, 44-47; Torpor, Sally J. Endangered Species: Native American Womens Struggle for Their Reproductive Rights and Racial Identity: asses-asses. Masters thesis, University of Nebraska, 1998. MEAL Citation Women of All Red Nations. American History. BBC-CLIO, 2013. Web. 9 Par. 2013. Improving National Health in the Progressive Era During the Progressive Era, the concept of eugenics was intertwined with many health reform crusades including prohibition (intentional), social hygiene (prevention of sexually transmitted diseases), and tuberculosis (TAB) movements. These crusades culminated in changes to public policy and the creation of mandatory health education programs. Although the 1912 Progressive Party standardize, Theodore Roosevelt, advocated national heath insurance, most Progressive health reformers were largely interested in preventing various health problems in the first place. One of the central tenets of such thinking was the new science of eugenics, which, according to its founder Francis Gallon, was the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race [humankind]. During the first three decades of the 20th century, the eugenics movement aimed to improve the health and vitality of Americans and to prevent disease and social problems, which reformers believed to be weakening the human race; many health reformers of the Progressive Era subscribed to eugenic theory. Eugenics was based on the theory of The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics reposed in 1800 by Jean-Baptists Lamarckian. This theory of heredity was still accepted by some scientists and social reformers into the late asses, although in 1866 Gregory Mendel had discovered the basis of genetics?physiology of heredity and its variations. These principles were rediscovered in 1900. Individuals for centuries had recognized that traits and behaviors?both good and bad?ran in families. Health and social reformers had noted that alcoholism, tuberculosis, mental illness and disability, and pauperism (or inherited poverty) appeared to be passed from one enervation to the next. They believed that damage to germ cells?ovum and sperm ?was caused by certain environmental factors. These included racial poisons, such as tobacco, alcohol, and other substances and diseases. This damage in turn could be passed down to offspring and lead to mental and physical debility and the degeneration of society. Formers proclaimed that if toxic substances and diseases were eliminated, and individuals practiced a healthier lifestyle, there would be an increase in health, fitness, and longevity, and a decrease in debility, crime, and social problems. These levels influenced the intentional and tobacco, sexually transmitted disease (Studs), and tuberculosis movements of the Progressive Era. They were also a factor in the pro-personal hygiene, diet, exercise, birth control, and sex education movements. All of these health reform movements culminated in the implementation of public policy or educational programs and their effects are still seen. A major health and social movement of the era with an underpinning of eugenic theory was the intentional or prohibition movement. The saloon at the end of the 19th century was seen as a breeding ground for major health and social problems. Men would spend all their wages, become alcoholic, and consort with prostitutes at the saloon. This led to family poverty, spousal or child abuse, and the transmission of Studs to wives and offspring. Campaigns against saloons and alcohol emerged in 1893, with the formation of the Anti-Saloon League. By 1913, half the states had local option or state prohibition laws. The Eighteenth Amendment, which established national prohibition, was fostered by the League and passed in 1918 with the aim of eliminating alcohol forever in the United States. However, this public policy did not eliminate alcohol. Instead, the law as largely unenforceable and spawned a large criminal black market. (Due to these factors and the Great Depression, Prohibition would be repealed in 1932. Ignorance and syphilis, the primary Studs of the era, were major health concerns. Their prevalence was thought to be due to prostitution, a lack of sex education, and the double standard of sexuality which gave men the freedom to experiment sexually. To eliminate these diseases, social-hygiene reformers and eugenicists campaigned for sex education in the schools, changes in marriage laws, and the elimination of prostitu tion. Mandatory premarital health exams and a blood test for yuppyish before a marriage license was granted were instituted as a health and eugenic measure in several states by 1912. Mandatory reporting of sexually transmitted disease to public health authorities was implemented around 1910, along with the routine application of silver nitrate (and later antibiotics) to the eyes of newborns to prevent blindness from ignorance. These measures resulted in a decrease of Studs and are still legally required in most states. However, the premarital exam or blood test for syphilis was phased out in many states over the last decades of the 20th century as antibiotics were developed that generally cured Hess diseases. The tuberculosis movement was one of the most visible health crusades of the Progressive Era and became a model for other health campaigns. It had both an educational and public policy component. TAB was a leading cause of death and debility at the beginning of the 20th century. It ran in families, was associated with poverty, and was a concern of eugenicists and public health professionals. By the turn of the 20th century, laws that banned spitting had been implemented to curtail the spread of TAB. In New York City, bastardization of milk was implemented in the first decade of the century, and mandatory reporting of cases