The eugenics movement started at the end of the nineteenth century with the application of scientific methods to human behavior and even to then human organism itself. Eugenics is the study of human genetics and of methods to improve inherited characteristics, physical both and mental, of the race. Eugenicists analyze human beings to see what characteristics are to be promoted and what characteristics are to be eliminated and then encourage breeding accordingly. In terms of the evolution of society at large, social Darwinism refers to a kind of social eugenics. Critics from the first insist that human beings cannot be treated as animals and that neither human behavior nor human evolution can be reduced to such simplistic ideas about improving the stock. While eugenics in its early forms has fallen into disfavor, more recent discoveries about human genetics threaten to revive the ideas of eugenics in a different form.
Francis Galton introduced the term eugenics and is usually regarded as the founder of the modern science of eugenics. He placed his emphasis on the role of factors under social control that could either improve or impair the qualities of future
generations. Modern eugenics has been directed chiefly toward the discouragement of propagation among the unfit (negative
eugenics) and encouragement of propagation among those who
are healthy, intelligent, and of high moral character (positive
eugenics). The eugenics movement has had many consequences. Early in this century, some governments accepted the ideas of this supposedly scientific approach and passed miscegenation laws and even instituted enforced sterilization of the insane. Eugenics was a central tenet of Nazi Germany. Eugenics continues to be promoted under new names, such as with genetic
screening by which prospective parents can be tested for the
presence of undesired allelomorphic forms of particular genes
rather than depending o...