Eugenics: what it is, types, and social implications

Since time immemorial, humans have tried to improve what nature had given them, for better and for worse.

Eugenics is an idea that defends that humanity must take control of its own evolution, selecting those individuals that, when reproducing, suppose a qualitative improvement of the society.

In this article we will address the eugenicist postulates, explaining what eugenics is, as it has been carried out throughout the last century and its social implications.

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What is eugenics?

The word eugenics is made up of the Greek roots eu, "good, correct" and genia "origin". So that, means "the science of the good birth". In essence, it is the science originated at the beginning of the 20th century that defended that the human being should take part in his own evolution. The idea was that governments, through laws of biological perfection, improve the qualitative characteristics of society.

The followers of this current wanted an ideal world, a utopian society in which, thanks to

the selection of those with the best characteristics and promoting their reproduction, there were no diseases of genetic origin, psychological disorders, disabilities or social problems.

Types of eugenic ideas

Although the idea is attractive as it is raised, the truth is that doctors, psychiatrists and other health professionals, together with the scientific community at the beginning of the last century, carried out terribly immoral practices to reach the much desired society perfect.

Many considered that it was not only necessary to promote the reproduction of those who had characteristics beneficial to mankind, such as great physical strength, great intelligence and status good health. Those considered inferior should also be prevented from reproducing.

The concept of the inferior person was clearly very subjective and is not scientific, but moral. The category included both people with disabilities, psychological disorders and illnesses, as well as, in some cases, criminals, prostitutes or people of a race other than Caucasian.

Thus, based on what has been explained so far, we can talk about two types of eugenics:

• Positive: the one that encourages the strongest individuals to reproduce.
• Negative: the one that prevents those considered less fit to have offspring.

History and social implications

Eugenecist ideas have deep roots in Darwin's theory of evolution. The naturalist, at the end of his life, was preoccupied with the belief that in the society in which he lived the laws of natural selection were not followed. Francis Galton, his cousin, took his ideas and, in 1903, created the idea of ​​eugenics.

Concern for the evolution of humanity made the eugenic doctrine very popular in Europe and the United States. Great philanthropists, such as Rockefeller and Carnegie, supported institutions of this type. From the perspective of the early twentieth century, encouraging the strong to reproduce and preventing the weak from doing so it was seen as a great step towards the perfect society and there were even those who considered it the beginning of the process to achieve the long-awaited state of well-being.

Many eugenicists argued that if people with inherited problems stopped reproducing, there would no longer be new generations of people who would incur social expenses. Less spending on people who did not benefit society meant being able to allocate those resources to those who could work or offer something to the world.

These ideas were gaining greater social recognition and associations began to be created to guarantee the application of eugenics under a Darwinian perspective. It was feared for the degeneration of mankind.

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Dissemination of political and repressive eugenic measures

In 1905 the first eugenic organization was founded in Berlin: the Society for Racial Hygiene, run by a doctor, Alfred Ploetz, and a psychiatrist, Ernst Rüdin. Two years later, in the United States, the first sterilization laws were passed. With these laws it was intended to sterilize all those people who were considered harmful to society: disabled, misfits, criminals ...

One of the great figures in North American eugenics was Harry Laughlin, who in 1914 calculated that it was due sterilize about 15 million U.S. citizens, roughly 10% of the nation's population in that moment. He argued that doing this would save a great social cost.

Several years later, Adolf Hitler was inspired by ideas related to eugenics to write his famous book Mein kampf (My Struggle) and systematically put eugenics into practice already in the early years of Nazi Germany.

At first, Nazism sterilized those individuals considered inferior, but eventually it went on to morph into the great genocide that he involved the Holocaust, in which Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, the sick, the disabled, and many more people were executed "for the good of the race aria".

Despite the fact that once the Second World War ended in 1945, the Nazi eugenicist plan was ended when Germany was defeated, it is surprising that Laws of this type continued to exist until relatively recently in other western countries.

The Nordic countries and several states of the USA maintained laws of sterilization of those who considered the mentally weak until almost the end of the last century and, to this day, hundreds of victims of these laws can be found who still claim Justice.

Eugenics today

In the society we live in, preventing someone from reproducing constitutes a violation of their right to sexual and reproductive freedom. That a person suffers from a certain condition is not reason enough to force them to be sterilized and to prevent her inherited problem from passing to the next generation.

However, humanity still wants to reach a society in which there are no such diseases and other disorders, since many of them are limiting, require a great economic expense and suppose a great suffering both for the affected person and for their environment. This has favored research in the selection and manipulation of genes, perfecting genetic engineering.

For several years now, it has been possible to prevent children from suffering from the same diseases as their parents, and we are getting closer and closer to make certain diseases of genetic origin disappear, such as certain types of cancer, diabetes, or blindness, among others many.

It seems that the utopian world presented in the film Gattaca, by Andrew Niccol, in which there are no longer people with problems of hereditary origin and parents can select on demand as their children will be is not as far as we could think.

Bibliographic references:

• Galton, F. (1904). Eugenics: its definition, scope, and aims. The American Journal of Sociology, 10 (1).
• Farrall, L.A. (1970), The Origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement 1863-1925. (Doctoral thesis) Indiana University, Indiana, United States.