EugenicsFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
"Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution": Logo from the Second International Eugenics Conference, 1921, depicting Eugenics as a tree which unites a variety of different fields.[1]Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to the manipulation of human populations.[2][3] The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance, and the theories of August Weismann.[4]
Eugenics was widely popular in the early decades of the 20th century.[5] The First International Congress of Eugenics in 1912 was supported by many prominent persons, including: its president Leonard Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin; honorary vice-president Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty and future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Auguste Forel, famous Swiss pathologist; Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone; among others.[6]
Eugenics was a controversial concept even shortly after its creation.[7] The first major challenge to conventional eugenics based upon genetic inheritance, was made in 1915 by Thomas Hunt Morgan, who demonstrated the event of genetic mutation occurring outside of inheritance involving the discovery of the birth of a fruit fly with white eyes from a family and ancestry of the red-eyed Drosophila melanogaster species of fruit fly.[8] Morgan claimed that this demonstrated that major genetic changes occurred outside of inheritance and that the concept of eugenics based upon genetic inheritance was severely flawed.[8]
By the mid-20th century eugenics had fallen into disfavor, having become associated with Nazi Germany. This country's approach to genetics and eugenics was focused on Eugen Fischer's concept of phenogenetics[9] and the Nazi twin study methods of Fischer and Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer. Both the public and some elements of the scientific community have associated eugenics with Nazi abuses, such as enforced "racial hygiene", human experimentation, and the extermination of "undesired" population groups. However, developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century have raised many new questions and concerns about the meaning of eugenics and its ethical and moral status in the modern era, effectively creating a resurgence of interest in eugenics.[citation needed]
Contents [hide]
1 Overview
2 Meanings and types
2.1 Implementation methods
3 History
3.1 Pre-Galtonian philosophies
3.2 Galton's theory
3.3 Charles Davenport
3.4 United Kingdom
3.5 United States
3.6 Australia
3.7 Brazil
3.8 The Rockefeller Foundation in Brazil
3.9 Canada
3.10 Germany
3.10.1 German colonies in Africa
3.10.2 German colonies in the Pacific
3.10.3 German European Ost (East)
3.10.4 Caribbean and South America
3.11 Japan
3.12 Korea
3.13 China
3.14 Sweden
3.15 Singapore
3.16 Other countries
3.17 Marginalization after World War II
