Eugenics
“With Savages, the weak in body or mind, are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. We institute poor laws, and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumb to small pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals would doubt, that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worse animals to breed.” ~Charles Darwin
Thoughts of the ‘superior race’ did not begin with Hitler. No, for decades science had experimented with the idea of one race being of a higher status than another. The American Civil War was predicated with the idea that Africans were some how less than human. At least, they were not seen as on the same level as the white man.
What is now called Eugenics began gaining more of a front seat to science in 1899 with the publication of Albert Ochsner’s “Surgical Treatment of Habitual Criminals”. Albert was a doctor who helped spearhead surgery advancements in America. His article was based upon experiments done on, well, criminals. His article begins with “More than twenty-three centuries ago Plate advocated castration as a punishment for certain crimes.” His thesis was that such a forward punishment might not be the best way. What he introduced was a small surgery that would be just as effective but not as evasive.
We spade and neuter our pets, why not our pesks? The full title of the esteemed Dr. Ochsner was “The Surgical Treatment of Habitual Criminals, Imbeciles, Perverts, Paupers, Morons, Epileptics, and Degenerates.” Here was a single-stroke solution for all of societies ails. Poor? Just keep them from reproducing. Mentally retarded? Just a simple surgery. Criminal? Well you won’t have to worry about any of their descendants.
This was a horrid idea. One that has no scientific merit. There have been cases upon which two “imbeciles” have produced a child with no mental handicaps. One criminal does not mean the family will be so as well.
The motto of this movement was this “Eugenics - The self-direction of human evolution.” They thought they could build a better race of humans by eliminating those deemed unfit. Sound familiar? The Aryan race was the ultimate eugenics project, but it was not the only one, and eugenics is not dead. It still lives in systems and in the practices of our very nation.
The movement began in America, supported by the scientific consensus, in particularly the universities of the United States spearheaded the movement. There are two types of eugenics. Positive eugenics and Negative eugenics. Positive eugenics is the propagation of those who are the “elite”. In other words, those who are a benefit to society, we want them to have kids. Then there is negative eugenics. Keeping those unfit from propagating.
Over 60,000 people were sterilized here in America. Many without knowing it. In the words of Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, after giving the order to sterilize a mentally handicapped woman, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
When did our heads get so big as to think that we could play God? Eugenic programs still exist. Abortion. Euthanasia. Although the idea fell out of the Universities good graces in the 1960’s, there are still remnants of it. It is a bad memory, a memory some Americans are only now waking up to, but it is still there. And we need to continue to fight against it.
Jared Williams
Thoughts of the ‘superior race’ did not begin with Hitler. No, for decades science had experimented with the idea of one race being of a higher status than another. The American Civil War was predicated with the idea that Africans were some how less than human. At least, they were not seen as on the same level as the white man.
What is now called Eugenics began gaining more of a front seat to science in 1899 with the publication of Albert Ochsner’s “Surgical Treatment of Habitual Criminals”. Albert was a doctor who helped spearhead surgery advancements in America. His article was based upon experiments done on, well, criminals. His article begins with “More than twenty-three centuries ago Plate advocated castration as a punishment for certain crimes.” His thesis was that such a forward punishment might not be the best way. What he introduced was a small surgery that would be just as effective but not as evasive.
We spade and neuter our pets, why not our pesks? The full title of the esteemed Dr. Ochsner was “The Surgical Treatment of Habitual Criminals, Imbeciles, Perverts, Paupers, Morons, Epileptics, and Degenerates.” Here was a single-stroke solution for all of societies ails. Poor? Just keep them from reproducing. Mentally retarded? Just a simple surgery. Criminal? Well you won’t have to worry about any of their descendants.
This was a horrid idea. One that has no scientific merit. There have been cases upon which two “imbeciles” have produced a child with no mental handicaps. One criminal does not mean the family will be so as well.
The motto of this movement was this “Eugenics - The self-direction of human evolution.” They thought they could build a better race of humans by eliminating those deemed unfit. Sound familiar? The Aryan race was the ultimate eugenics project, but it was not the only one, and eugenics is not dead. It still lives in systems and in the practices of our very nation.
The movement began in America, supported by the scientific consensus, in particularly the universities of the United States spearheaded the movement. There are two types of eugenics. Positive eugenics and Negative eugenics. Positive eugenics is the propagation of those who are the “elite”. In other words, those who are a benefit to society, we want them to have kids. Then there is negative eugenics. Keeping those unfit from propagating.
Over 60,000 people were sterilized here in America. Many without knowing it. In the words of Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, after giving the order to sterilize a mentally handicapped woman, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
When did our heads get so big as to think that we could play God? Eugenic programs still exist. Abortion. Euthanasia. Although the idea fell out of the Universities good graces in the 1960’s, there are still remnants of it. It is a bad memory, a memory some Americans are only now waking up to, but it is still there. And we need to continue to fight against it.
Jared Williams
