Eugenics Project

Many people question things about life and thanks to eugenic we are able to answer almost all of them. Eugenics is the ideal that human behaviors are determined by single genes and that you can create the perfect child by isolating the "best" genes. There are two separate origins of eugenics and as we study them, we study to separate areas. One is social origins of eugenics and another one is scientific origins of eugenics. Throughout this conversation you will read about methods Eugenicits use to study their theory of eugenics. Also you will read about how eugenics research impacted American society.

When the Civil War started, eugenics became a big thing. This started because different types and different colored of skin people moved into cities. Some people brought up Darwinism, which is survival of the fittest. Many wealthy people began to give birth and the less wealthy saw this as a threat. The only thing they could look at was science. They thought science was the only cure. They thought they could bring in a new era where they could control human nature and society. Due to all of this, a new science of genetics gave birth to eugenics. Genetics is what everyone looked at when it came to human social problems. A couple human social problems are nomadic, criminality, prostitution, feeblemindedness, alcoholism, and rebelliousness. It was said that sterilization of one defective individual could save future generations thousands of dollars, because they wouldn't have to pay for past generations mistake.

The people that moved into the city were seen as threats. They thought controlling who came in and out would help control it. They would only let people with good genes in. Eugenics was used to help solve all the problems and it placed the cause with certain groups of people and offers a solution to their current problems. Eugenicits seemed to have all the scientific evidence on their slide. Eugenitics got followers and emerged as scientist with a special expertise in finding solutions of social problems. Eugenics was used as a threat to make sure people from the outside wont come in but there are two parts to story.

Here is information on scientific origins of eugenics. Francis Galton invented the term eugenics, and he perceived it as a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and the healthiest people to reproduce. This was called positive eugenics but there are also negative eugenics. The least able were not allowed to reproduce in order to help preserve humanities fitness. Harry Clay Sharp and his medical colloquies recommendations and pleadings were eventually reached their final stage in an Indiana law that mandated compulsory sterilization of degenerates. It was enacted in 1907 and it was the first eugenic sterilization law in the U.S.

Scientists always use to look at eugenics as vulgar and an unproductive field for research. Two scientists ideas were seen and taken into consideration. Eugenicits took a special interest in the Mendellan analysis of pedigrees of human plants and animals. There are two eugenicits ran a Eugenics record office and were shared through an interest in chicken breeding. Their names are Daven Port and Laughlin and have agriculture background, which is common in eugenic its. An example of negative eugenics, similar to the least productive humans. A fear oh highly intelligent people were having little families while "degenerate" people of society were having larger families. This lead people to think the less intelligent were going to over populate the intelligent. Less fit people were being allowed to live and reproduce which caused the natural selection of fitter people to be upset.

Ochsner and Sharp were physicians that were convinced social failure was a medical problem. Virchow's public health movement fused in with eugenics. Eugenicits felt as if "defectives" should not be allowed to breed. Most doctors lent towards sterilization over custody in asylums because sterilization still allowed a person to participate in society, instead of being institutionalized. The doctors did not see this as a punishment because they believed the people being sterilized were irreversibly unfit to reproduce.

At eugenics core was a research effort that tried to apply mendel's law to the inheritance of human traits. Mendel stated that each visible trait is controlled by a pair of factors. One member of each gene pair is inherited from each parent. They can be dominant or sex-linked. A sex-linked trait is expressed when males inherit a recessive gene on their single X chromosome. When examining a family pedigrees, eugenic its attempted to discern the pattern of one of the three basic models of inheritance.

The first element involved is finding relatively large families that express the trait that is being studied at the moment. Another element was "scoring" each member of the family, looking for the presence of the trait. At this time DNA had not been shown to the molecule of heredity. Today scientists can use DNA markers to follow trait inheritance, but eugenics didn't have technology.

Many flaws were later found in the eugenetics research. One fault was eugenic its had difficulty in defining traits. The eugenetics were very interested in mental and behavioral traits. These traits presented themselves differently in each person. Reification was the next flaw found, which is the tendency to treat complex traits as if they were a single entity that stemmed from a single cause. Experts found out there may be many "types" of intelligences.

Due to poor survey and statistical methods, eugenicists rarely go to interview family members more than 2 or 4 generations back. Proper medical records were kept. Laughlin, a eugenicist, based on many of his studies only of self-reported information. The next flaw was false quantification a IQ test was given to the immigrants were very of them were dependent on cultural background, making them an invalid measure. After this some people were sent home and some were consigned to mental institutions and some were even sterilized. The last flaw found with eugenics research was social and environmental influences. Families share more than genes, they share customs, life styles, and health practices. These things affect physical, intellectual and emotional traits. While all this was taking place, laboratory geneticists began to recognize most physical and physiological traits are the product of the interaction between the environment and genes. In the mid-1930's, eugenics came under scrutiny and revealed that most of the eugenic data was useless.

There were many people writing about what was going on at this time. The U.S. was already against interracial marriage, but the eugenics movement gave new arguments for restrictions n interracial marriage. There were legal restrictions on who could get a marriage license. Richard Loving was a white man that married Mildred Jeter which is a black woman, and moved to Virginia where the Racial Integrity Act had been passes. They were arrested and pleaded guilt in court. Eventually the Supreme Court rid Virginia of the Racial Integrity Act.

Immigration restriction caused by eugenics affected the U.S.. Due to the fact that people from certain places were unfit to live in the U.S., made it harder to get through the U.S.. Eugenics was a very big movement that effected the whole entire world. All of it started by the thought of a humans behavior being determined by single genes and from a moral philosophy to improve humanity. Thousands were sterilized because of this and others were denied access to the U.S., and others were denied marriage with someone they truly love. I feel as if the eugenics Movement should never be forgotten because it mafe a huge impact on the world.

Down below is the site where I got all my information from.
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eugenicsarchive.org%2Feugenics%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNErwVVWBshxQTvl8a4O0jmmJWq2Ww