Essays on Eugenics

Eugenics is defined by Coutts and McCarrick (1995, p.163) as the methods used in perfecting the human race thorough genetic technologies or the traditional genetic selection (Sparrow, 2010, p.288). But this definition was twisted to defend the enhancement of human beings by sterilizing those who are considered to be inadequate (Coutts and McCarrick, p.1995, p.163). The definition of an inadequate genetic heredity was defined by the 1924 Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act to include feeblemindedness and sexual promiscuity, which is believed to be be passed on to the next generation (Claude, 2004). The first test subject for the sterilization law ...

Modernity refers to the approaches, behavior, and ideas of the post-traditional period. Originally, modernity can be defined as a critique of tradition, and a movement toward a new point of view rooted in new paradigms and insights. Recently, modernity has embodied present-day thoughts and present-day lifestyle. One important aspect that arises from this definition of social change and its impact on human experience is the formation of a newly constructed self-image and identity. In essence, the concept of modernity differentiates the modern person from the traditional individual. Such newly founded freedom in connection to modernity involved an experience and ...

Eugenics entails how sexual reproduction can be restructured. Positive eugenics entails the restructuring of sexual reproduction to enhance sexual reproduction of persons with preferred traits. Alteration of sexual reproduction to reduce the sexual reproduction of persons with negative traits is negative eugenics. Deductively, the case in case study one is a case of negative eugenics because it entails the modification of sexual reproduction to promote the sexual reproduction of a child who is free from Huntington’s Disease, which is an undesirable trait. It would be acceptable for the married couple in case study one to select the sex ...

In the modern era of high and sophisticated technologies, one cannot imagine his/her daily life without numerous technological developments and advancements of the 21st century. The prevalence of modern technology in society and around the world taken as a whole as well as its profound impact on every aspect of an individual’s life, including healthcare, education, and business activities, cannot be underestimated. Therefore, “technology, and the constantly new world it brings, is an abiding concern for human beings” (Hanks, 2010, p. 1). It should be taken into consideration that one of the basic purposes of modern technological development ...

During each historical epoch was only her peculiar attitude towards people with disabilities and to people something different from the majority. Everything depended on how disability is understood in society, as explained by its appearance and physical manifestations in life she had. Depending on the understanding also varied and the resources that are available to this category of citizens, including access to quality education. Education has always been considered the key to the development of society. Especially important is education for children with disabilities, because it is just a tool that helps these children to become independent and to ...

Eugenics is usually a desire by the superior class of humans to create a society whose members are superior and have supernatural abilities. In the world of certain eugenics sections of the society who are considered defective and do not warrant to mix and interbreed. In an attempt to create a perfect society, the beliefs of the eugenicists took into consideration application of the theories of evolution in outrageous mannerism to thwart the influence of defective members of the society (Allen 314-25). In their quest, they supported the application of Darwin’s theories that projected survival only to the ...

Eugenics is a teaching that calls people to struggle with the phenomena of degeneration of the gene pool of humanity with the help of selection with regard to people. The very first concepts about eugenics were introduced to the public in 1865's article "Heredity Talent and Character" by Francis Galton, an English psychologist, where he suggested investigating the phenomena that could improve mental abilities, physical health and talent of subsequent generations. The very term eugenics was introduced later in 1883, and Galton himself described it as a science that analyzed the factors that could improve the inherent qualities of ...

English

DISCUSSION ON TWO DIFFERENT TOPICS RELATING EACH OTHER

In both the cases Buck V. Bell & the abstract it’s over Debbie we see that attempts are made to relieve the human race. Be it in the case of Carrie Buck being compulsorily sterilized or in case of Debbie intentionally given morphine sulphate so that she dies & is relieved permanently of her extreme condition. Endorsement of negative eugenics decision was hugely seen - the attempt to improve the human race by eliminating defectives from the gene pool. Such stern actions were taken against her without any proper proof of ...

Discuss some of the key ideas, people, and consequences associated with theories of evolution (focusing on Darwin).I. Intro and Background Darwin started researching on the evolution of animals and plants and was motivated by the fact that other creatures were able to survive while others could not. For this reason, competition for various elements that are specific to the growth and expansion of the population are the basis for evolution. This article will therefore try and establish the facts behind Darwin’s findings.

Malthus and competition

Malthus fronts the fact that, in every system that contains living organism, evolution in ...

In late 19th century, the term eugenics was coined to represent the notion that selective breeding could in time produce a superior race. On the other hand, the idea required that populations deemed unfit for any reason, should be restricted from procreating. This idea spread rapidly and by the early 20th century, eugenics activists were trying to prove the benefits of eugenics methods, such as sterilization and abortion. The target populations were in particular mentally disabled people, called “feebleminded”, who were considered a burden for the society, and who were believed to carry the genes of the disability and transmit it ...

The book ‘When the Sleeper Wakes’ is one of the unique works of H.G. Wells originally published in the year 1899. The protagonist of the story is a nineteenth-century man named Graham, an insomniac who falls asleep for 203 years and wakes up in the year 2100. After a two-century long sleep, Graham discovers himself in the mechanized city of New London, which greets him with urbane steel and glass . He finds powerful men in a combination of political tyrants and capitalist exploiters. Wells describes the future society as a herd of prole masses along a luxuriant transport system consisting of sidewalks. The society ...

Carole Vance’s article, “Social Construction Theory: Problems in the History of Sexuality,” explains how the social construction theory can be used to help understand LBGTQ+ identities. As discussed previously, essentialism assumes that all things, at the essence, are the same or share a similar experience. However, this does not take culture into consideration, and just how far humans are constructed socially. Vance explains that the LBGTQ+ community would benefit from identifying as a socially constructed group, because assuming that sexuality is finite or natural is an essentialist argument that completely undermines people who are sexually fluid and rejects the idea ...

Screening is a vital medical exercise. It helps in identifying victims at higher risks at early stages of the disease making it possible to develop medical intervention measures that can reduce the risk of illness and death. Notwithstanding the fact that screening helps in identifying the level of risks, there are certain implications that make it undesirable. There are medical conditions in which screening is an inevitable exercise. For instance, blood pressure is a non-controversial screening program. Nevertheless, genetic screening for prostate or breast cancer, mandatory HIV screening, or obesity screening are some of the most controversial screening programs. This paper ...

Between the 1890s and the 1920s, the state of American society motivated a time of social reform and political activism within the country focused on driving corruption out of government by exposing political machines for what they were and setting up additional paths for direct democracy to work. The progressives also wanted regulation of corporations through the use of antitrust laws, which reformers saw as a way to develop fair levels of competition for consumer benefit. The national leaders of this movement included Robert M. LaFollette, Charles Evans Hughes and Theodore Roosevelt from the Republicans and Woodrow Wilson, Al Smith and ...

Social construct has been embedded in various societies by implementing a form of functional and structural laws that govern individuals in a given community. The Power of Illusion is a film that examines how race and ethnicity is a social construct through biology. The film is about students of different races taking a DNA test as a replica of the eugenics movement. Most students of different race and ethnicity presumed that their DNA would be closely linked based on their phenotype. This was not the case. Instead, race and ethnicity is an illusion that has been engrained in the society to divide people. The ...

33. Has post 9/11 immigration policy made us safer The immigration politics of the United States has a long history. The first Act of Naturalization was accepted in 1790 and it confined the naturalization to “good white people” of “good moral character” who had lived for two years in the country and one year after they had kept the current state of stay. In 1795 this periods were increased respectively to five years of living in the country and three years after their notice to apply for citizenship. In 1798 this time limits were increased to fourteen years of ...

‘Instructor’s Name’

Holocaust Holocaust is a political mass murder which does not have any precedence in history and hopefully should not occur in the future too. The term holocaust denotes the systematic and planned elimination of Jews, by the German Government headed by the Nazi party and its leader Adolf Hitler. The number of people killed during holocaust is estimated to be six million and this genocide took place in Germany and other European nations occupied by the Nazi force. There are many reasons that led to holocaust, but its origin can be attributed to the ingrained anti-Semitism in the Christian ...

Compare and contrast Wundt and Galton.

Undoubtedly the father of psychology, Wundt brought psychology out as a science, distinguishing it from philosophy and biology. Wundt, who institutionalized psychology, is prominently associated with structuralism and voluntarism. His approach to understanding the human mind was quite different from that of Galton because, in Wundt’s views, all human brains were the same, and had to be studied using the same metrics (Malone, 2009). As such, Wundt split the understanding of human brain and behavior into two – subjective and objective aspects. Wundt was undoubtedly the psychologist who explained the essence of the primary and secondary qualities as they could ...

The advancement of technology has precipitated a revolution in scientific understanding over the last several decades. Advancements in research tools has led to new insights into every facet of scientific discovery within the realms of chemistry, physics, and biology and all the sub-disciplines forming their constitution. Increased discovery has brought with it opportunities for cross discipline cooperation which has resulted in the formation of new disciplines and has galvanized scientists to press the boundaries of research and application as has never been seen in human history. One such field testing those limits is genetics. Today’s geneticists have expanded beyond ...

Native Americans from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present

Native Americans from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present The issues that Native Americans have faced since 1865 are largely related to a struggle for survival and relevance in a modern age. Although scholars present considerable differences in estimate of the number of Native Americans present in North America at the time of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in 1492, ranging anywhere from 100 million (Schapp, 2010, p. 367) to 900,000 (Hoxie, 1996, p. 500) people, scholars agree that there was a great decline in Native American population lasting until the 20th century. Factors influencing the decline of the Native population ...

The eugenics movement is a movement that advocates for measures that would improve the genetic makeup of the population. Prior to its discrediting after the Second World War, eugenics played a significant role in the United States. The American eugenic movement traces its background to Francis Galton, who was a cousin of Charles Darwin. The eugenics movement had many famous and well-known backers such as Henry Ford and J.H. Kellogg as well as the support of various institutions. Michigan was the first state to attempt to pass laws promoting eugenics and Indiana became the first state to pass eugenics laws in 1907. ...

Few issues today raise as much heated emotion as the subject of eugenics and bioengineering. Hardly a day goes by when we do not see Congressional hearings on the ethics of stem cell research or debate in the media over some proposal to expand to boundaries of our artificial reproductive technologies. Hollywood and popular culture constantly bombard us with scenarios related to genetic engineering. Aldous Huxley’s controversial book Brave New World introduced the possibility of selective breeding of human beings as far back as 1932 (Huxley, 1932). More recently in 1970, the book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler portrayed ...

Scientists in the world are quickly deciphering the genetic coding of life, making mysteries on the biological evolution of human beings dating to millions of years being unlocked. The immense advances in the biotech industry has made Global life science companies ready to exploit the economic benefits that will be enjoyed in this century which is presumed to be a Biotech century. Arguably, the new commercial genetics industry will have the biggest impact in this century than any other field of study. In fact, in less than 10 years, global life science companies will be holding patents on the more ...

Introduction

Throughout history, eugenics has been enshrouded in controversy. As an applied science that started out as a biosocial movement, eugenics advocates for the improvement of the genetic composition of the human population, though the concept can also be applied to other populations. As a social philosophy, eugenics advocates for the improvement of the human hereditary characteristics by promoting higher procreation of more desired traits and people and reducing the procreation of people with less desired traits. Eugenics gained its greatest popularity in early 20th century. However, it was still being practiced in the late decades of the 19th century. In the ...

ABSTRACT

Anne Fausto-Sterling is a biologist who has written Sex/Gender for a non-scientist audience of students and faculty in the humanities and social sciences. This book addresses a wide variety of topics including infant and childhood development, genetics, gender identity, brain development and structure, sexual orientation, and the future of gender in an engaging style that neither talks down to the readers nor goes over their heads. She completely rejects and idea of eugenics, Social Darwinism or genetic or biological determinism, as well as the worn out Nature/Nurture debate in relation to human development. Instead she maintains that all living organisms are part ...

Essay Question No. 1 -

The Holocaust, more than any other event in modern history, is important for the witnesses who lived to bear testimony to Nazi genocide. The sheer mind-boggling numbers involved tend, over time, to separate people who were not there from what really mattered, from what happened and what it was like on a very personal level. Firsthand accounts of survival in Primo Levi’s highly personal novel, and the stories assembled in the collections of Ed Niewyk, and Carol Rittner and John Roth are testaments not only to survival but to the determination of survivors to tell the story, so that ...

According to Kolin, "Wars allow state power to expand in scope and scale so that government can create a steady, permanent erosion of civil liberties and the rule of law" (Kolin, Chapter 2). In the case of World War I, this was indeed the case - the First World War changed and shaped our nation in many ways, giving us both a unique hold on the world economy and responsibilities toward our citizens and those abroad. The expanding state of power and propaganda in the US as a result of the First World War a very bad thing, having made America responsible for a ...

The book “Killing the Black Body” is a brilliant piece of work done by Dorothy Roberts. The author in her book covers illegal encroachment on reproduction of black American-African women. Dorothy in her book step by step described use of slave women by their masters, eugenics policies which do not allow black women to give birth and increase black population. The author mentioned that these acts of controlling birth of black children were in favour of white people. Author further raises her concerns about women freedom and right to have or abort children. Dorothy raises this issue in large social ...

Introduction

Andrew Cherlin’s (2009) account of the ‘Evolution of Marriage’ within the American society in his work Marriage-Go- Round forces readers to stop and contemplate the value of this institution in twenty-first century America; how necessary it is in upholding family values and the effects changing elements has on the institution in determining the way younger America perceive marriage. In the following pages of this document the writer will offer a book review which will encompass a summary of Cherlin’s work; show how it connects with the course being undertaken in sociology and finally give my personal opinion on ...

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a dystopian future is described that is meant to directly comment on our own consumerist culture. The World State keeps the citizens of the world under control by enforcing social classes and brainwashing them to value consumption above all else. In today's society, our need for material goods, and our deeply held beliefs about the 'haves' and 'have-nots' match Huxley's world, but our world allows resistance to those ideas.

The World State is dependent heavily upon a world in which consumerism is king - products are revered, and Henry Ford's principle of the assembly line ...

Abstract

This paper gives a brief account of the contents of the movie Gattaca. The paper represents a critical analysis of eugenics and genetic engineering as related to the movie. However, the main issue comprehensively discussed is the dangers of such technologies if they were not restricted

Introduction

Gattaca is a world that represent a time when eugenics and genetic engineering has turn out to be the standard advancement to reproduction. The society entails a tradition of self-advancement via the means of genetic determinations, a caste scheme of valid and in-valids in addition to societal prejudice rooted in genetics. This sterilized and cold civilization of superior associations ...

Abstract

The Human Genome Project promises a revolutionary insight to the genetic "blueprint" of the human body. In this paper, the social, ethical, and economic implications of this project to the society are considered. The potential for applications of this research is as well mentioned in this research paper. The paper discusses the HGP in relation to the broader context of genetic engineering and its applications, thereby considering issues like the extent to which the Frankenstein metaphor applies to the project in terms of the potential for genetic engineering.

The issue of ethics of genetic research and the relationship between genetic ...

Before World War II, German scientists were engaged in various medical experiments as a way of revolutionizing Germany state by cleansing all the human species that were perceived as threatening to the country. The medics were involved in establishing various medical approaches, mostly associated with the human genetics in order to develop a master race. Their plans were directed towards racial cleansing at which the German population was perceived as pure and was not supposed to be interfered with by other seemingly dangerous races. Development of eugenics is one of the issues that the government-funded medics and scientists were in a ...