Question

We are moving towards "eugenics." What is "eugenics" and what should we consider a defect and so a trait to be eliminated?

Answer 1

As an intellectual and social movement in the early twentieth century, eugenics came to mean, in the words of one of its strongest American supporters, Charles B. Davenport (1866–1944), "the improvement of the human race by better breeding." For both Galton and Davenport, better breeding involved using the known scientific principles of heredity.

The ideology of eugenics was characterized by a strong belief in the power of heredity in determining physical, physiological, and mental traits; an inherent ethnocentrism and racism that included belief in the inferiority of some races and superiority of others (a view extended to ethnic groups and social classes as well); and a belief in the power of science, rationally employed, to solve social problems, including ones so seemingly intractable as pauperism, crime, violence, urban decay, prostitution, alcoholism, and various forms of mental disease, including manic depression and "feeblemindedness" (retardation).

Despite its popularity, the eugenics movement was doomed from the start because most of the traits studied by eugenicists had little genetic basis. Among those characteristics targeted for elimination from the human population were such complex and subjectively defined traits as "criminality," epilepsy, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and "feeblemindedness," a catchall term used to describe varying degrees of mental retardation and learning disabilities. The possibility that environmental factors (such as poor housing, poor nutrition, and inadequate education) might influence the development of these traits was dismissed.