The Controversy on Eugenics in the American Culture

Heredity improvement by genetic control. Why would people want to control

heredity? What exactly is genetic control? These are some things that people have been

questioning for decades. Eugenics can not be ignored because it is suddenly coming up

everywhere. People are experimenting and taking huge risks not to their knowledge. At

one point in time it was said that eugenics could change the world for the better. That is

how some people could look at it, and others frightened that it would change the entire

universe. Early in the twentieth century science had to deal with the conditions that

improve the inborn qualities of a race. Eugenesists not only wanted to improve the

well-being of others, but enclose to fewer races and religions. This was all a part of the

American eugenics movement.

The eugenics movement advocated both positive and negative eugenics, which

referred to attempts to increase reproduction by fit stocks and to decrease reproduction by

those who were constitutionally unfit. Positive eugenics included eugenic education and

tax preferences and other financial support for eugenically fit large families. Eugenical

segregation and usually, sterilization restrictive marriage laws, including

anti-miscegenation statutes, and restrictive immigration laws formed the three parts of the

negative eugenics program. From the beginning, the eugenics movement was a racialist

and elitist movement concerned with the control of classes seen to be socially inferior. In

proposing the term eugenics, Galton had written, "We greatly want a brief word to

express the science of improving the stock...to give the more suitable races or strains of

blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise

would have had.

Modern eugenics was rooted in the social Darwinism of the late 19th century, with

all its metaphors of fitness, competition, and rationalizations of inequality. Indeed, Francis

Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and an accomplished scientist in his own right, coined

the word eugenics. Galton promoted the ideal of improving the human race by getting rid

of the "undesirables" and multiplying the "desirables." Eugenics began to flourish after the

rediscovery, in 1900, of Mendel's theory that the biological make up of organisms is

determined by certain factors, later identified with genes. The application of mendelism to

human beings reinforced the idea that we are determined almost entirely by our "germ

plasm."

In the US, the eugenics movement started from a belief in the racial superiority of

white Anglo-Saxons and a desire to prevent the immigration of less desirable racial stocks.

In 1910, the Committee on Eugenics solicited new members with a letter that read, "The

time is ripe for a strong public movement to stem the tide of threatened racial

degeneracy....America needs to protect herself against indiscriminate immigration, criminal

degenerates, and...race suicide." The letter also warned of the impending "complete

destruction of the white race."

In the early 1900's when they were first discovering eugenics, they had a hard time

defining traits. Eye color and blood groups were an easy trait to measure, but eugenisists

looked for other things, such as behavioral traits, including epilepsy, intelligence,

alcoholism, and criminality. In the early years there problem was wrongly accusing some

traits, which sent some people to mental facilities, and in some cases prison. Not

necessarily because they were doing something wrong, but because they were different

from "normal standards."

Eugenics today is defined as efforts to improve the gene pool in a particular

population. The word eugenics is very unfamiliar among intellectuals. So there might not

be that much opposition among the ordinary voter about the topic. However, there are

two different opinions when it comes to eugenics, and they are either for it or against it. A

legislator in Texas took a poll and found that 3,533 to 2,604 people were in favor of the

eugenics process.(Reilly, S., 1991, News in Eugenics). The Boston Globe also found, in a

call in telephone poll, that 49% supported sterilization of the mentally ill. Other people feel

that eugenics is what will in plain terms, make the world a better place. Its been said that

using a eugenics program will rid people of future diseases, and other illnesses. That is

why many think that using this procedure is good for all, but in fact it comes along with

many hidden deformities and abnormalities. Some people believe that improving genetic

control is a commendable idea, but others think that it seems a little immoral to try to

change something, that in the long run is better left alone.

This is where the arguments against eugenics