Eugenics essays

Eugenics essays The eugenics movement first became known in the late twentieth century. Francis Galton, a distant relative of Charles Darwin, was the first man to define eugenics as a way to improve the human race by allowing the fit, healthy humans to reproduce more often and the humans with less desired traits were discouraged from reproducing. People possessing the desired traits were wealthy white males with no trace of mental illness in past generations; white women were second after that. Minority groups were considered inferior and found to have undesired traits. Undesirable traits were found in people who have had a history of mental illness in the family, lived in poverty, and had something called feeblemindedness (Carlson 1). Feeblemindedness was defined as an individual that has no sign of intelligence and they cannot think for themselves. According to Gould, scientists before the eugenics movement thought that that a persons intelligence depended on the size of their brain (1980) . This began the idea that bigger is better and more advantageous to an individual; in other words, the fittest will survive. Charles Darwin and his theory of Natural Selection became the basis of the eugenics movement. The development of this new science helped to explain differences among races and species coexisting with each other. Why do some organisms of the same species survive longer than others? According to Carlson, it was found that the wealthiest male humans in a competent mental state are the most fit to live. The purpose of the newly developed science of eugenics was to have only the fit reproduce and pass on their genes to future generations in the hope that the purest of the species will successfully continue the human race. Until the twentieth century, eugenics was not known or understood by the general public. Charles Darwins discoveries on the Galapagos Islands that helped bring about the t...