Eugenics

                                            Eugenics

What is eugenics? Eugenics is the study of belief in the posibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, ecspecially by discouraging reproduction by having gentic defects or inheritable undesirable traits or encouraging reproduction by inheritable desirable traits. American eugenics developed in the wake of turbulent economic and social problems following the civil war. Their was a rapid growth of American Industry, it increased mechaniztion of agriculture, created the first major migration awas from farms, and cities expanded. Starting in 1873, there were price fluctuations bankrupted many businesses and series of depressinons, this reoccured about every decade through the earlsy 1900's. Eugenicists argued that society paid a high price by allowing the birth of defective individuals who would have to be cared by the state. Sterilization of one defective adult could save future generations thousands of dollars. There was an increasing strength of militant labor unions and the rise of the American Socialist party ecspecially after the success of the Bolshevlk Revolution in 1917. Eugenics was seen as a way to solve all of these combined problems because it placed the cause in the defective germ plasm of individuals and ethnic groups an dnot in the structure of society itself. In an era troubled by rapid and seemingly chaotic change, eugenics offered the prospect of a planned, gradual, and smooth transition to a more harmonious future. Eugenics probide the biological counterpart to new theories of scientific contol and rational mangement in business. They emerged as scientists with a special expertise in the solution of perennal social problems. Eugenics provided what seemed to offer an objective, scientific approach to problems that previously had been cast almost wholly in subjective, humanitarian terms. Charity and state welfare had treated only symptoms, eugenics promised to attack social problems at their roots.

The scientific origins of eugenics movement was in the twentyith century as two wings of a common philosophy human warth. Francis Galton coined eugenics in 1883, percieved it as a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and eugenics is usually termed positive eugenics. Negative eugenics advocated culling the least able from the breeding population. United States, Germany, and Scandinovia favored the negative approach. Concerns about environmental influences that might damage heredity, leaading to ill health, early death isnanity, and defective off spring were formalized in the early 1700's as degeneracy theory. By the mid ninteenth century most scientises believed bad environments caused degenerate heredity. The Sociologist Richard Dugdale believed that good environments could tantsform degenerates into worthy citizens within three generations. At the beginning of the twentyith century, Welsmanns views were absorbed by degenracy theorists who embraced negative engenics as their favored model. Evolutionary models of natural selction and dysgenic hereditary practices in society also contributed to eugenic theory. There was fear that highly intelligent people would have smaller families while the allegedly degenerate elements of society were having larger families. Eugenics argued that "defectives" should be prevented from breeding, through custody in asylums or compulsory sterilization.

Research methods for eugenics became a popular movement in the United States, as its core was a research effort to apply Mendels laws to the inheritance of hyman traits. Eugenics researchers attempthed to trace the inheritance of a trait through a family tree or pedigree. In the beginning of the 1900's, Mendellan iinheritance was extended to other plants, to animals, and to humans. Mendal stated that each visisble trait is governed by a pair of genes. One member of each gene pair is inherited from the mother and one from the father. Genes may be dominant or recessive. Eugenics also used data pooled form inasaneasylums, prisons, orphanages, and homes for the blind. Superintendents were used to calculate the ethnic makeup of societal "dependants" and the costs of maintaining them in public institutions. Flaws in eugenics research displayed organizes in 1926 by the American Eugenics Society. Traits such as eye color, stature, and blood group are easy to define and measure. Eugenicists however were most interested in mental and behavior traits. Relfication is the tendancy to treat complex traits as if they were a single entity. They had poor survey and statistical methods. Conclusions were typically based by the manner in which was collected data. The institutional data was collected in 1921, during the peak of southern/eastern European immigration and primarily from the northeastern states where these populations were concentrated. False quantification is the assumption that if you can produce a umerical value then it must be a valid measure. IQ tests were accurate and culture-free measures of native intelligence, even though they contained questions that were dependent on cultural background and experience.

The eugenics research impact American Society by not really helping at all. By the mid 1930's eugenics research came under increasing scrutiny and independent analysis revealed thet most eugenic data were useless. The American Neurological Association reporthed that "invalidates we believe, the earlier work which comes from Davenport Rosanoff and the American Eugenics school with its headquartes at Cold Spring Harbor." Among other factors prompted the Carnegie Institution to withdraw its funding and permanetly close down the ERO in December 1939.