Eugenics

Eugenics which means “well born” was introduced in the 1880′s by Sir Francis Galton.  The whole idea of eugenics is to rid the human race of its imperfections. What imperfections? That’s all in the eye of the beholder, it could be race, hair color, eye color, disabilities you name it could be unwanted.

• What is eugenics?

Eugenics is the scientific study of improving human population through breeding and desirable traits found in humans.

• What were the social origins of eugenics?

Social origins can be liked back to right after the Civil War because of the economic and social problems after the war.

• What were the scientific origins of eugenics?

The scientific origins of eugenics can be traced back to Francis Galton who perceived it as a moral philosophy who encouraged the healthiest humans to have more children.

• What research methods were used to study eugenics and what were their flaws?

The types of method used were usually family trees. Their flaws were from the family tree, you can’t really tell which genes are recessive or dominant.

• How did eugenics research impact American society?

Research on eugenics impacted American society because it got people thinking about making changes to enhance the human race by getting rid of the bad genes. It also sparked a very big discussion about if its ethical or not.

The way they researched eugenics was pretty basic, based on what we know now at least. From what I took from the reading it was all based on recessive and dominant genes, and which ones show through. They could go through a family tree and find out if they had the bad qualities being passed on. The study of Eugenics has been around since after the Civil War because of the economic problems. People needed jobs that would support them and help America. If most of the population was perfectly healthy and smart, then we would be in good shape because it would boost our economy because of the income. Also having highly intelligent people running our country would be very good and it would insure our country would be going in the right direction. 

The link I used to learn about eugenics is http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/.