Eugenics: Plaguing scientific community with dark history | Opinion … – The Arkansas Traveler

Eugenics is the practice of breeding out diseases, unwanted characteristics and various disabilities. Early scientists wanted to take mental illness, poverty and criminal behavior out of the gene pool. This problematic gene science encouraged people with desirable traits to reproduce and people with undesirable traits to not have children. It is a form of scientific racism and ableism that plagues both the scientific community and general society, according to History.

The most common association with eugenics is Adolf Hitler and his concept of the so-called perfect Aryan race: blond-haired, blue-eyed and white. This instance of scientific racism is one of many instances of eugenics used throughout history and dates back to around 375 BCE Ancient Greece.

Eugenics means good creation, and one of the first mentions of eugenics was in Greek philosopher Platos The Republic. He wrote about a superior society where high-class people reproduce and discouraged anyone from procreating with lower-class people. In that same vein, he created a series of mating rules, such as men could only have arranged relationships by their ruler and promoted relationships between brothers and sisters.

One of the founding scientists of eugenics was Charles Darwins cousin Francis Galton. He hoped to make humankind better through procreating with the British elite. Instead, the concept became more popular in the United States.

The first instance of eugenics within Americas legislation was in 1896 when Connecticut made it illegal for feeble-minded people as well as people with epilepsy to marry. A few years later, in 1906, Americas Breeders Association was formed to study eugenics. This same association dealt with both animal and human genetic selection using Mendels Laws, according to the University of Washington Newspaper.

Kelloggs cereal creator, John Harvey Kellogg, created the Race Betterment Foundation in 1911 and established a pedigree registry to promote the concept of eugenics. This foundation and the Eugenics Records Office attempted to justify racism with fake science that said it caused flawed genes in minorities, immigrants and impoverished people.

From 1909 to 1979, California state mental institutions administered 20,000 sterilizations to stop people with mental illness people from having children. Later on, this would be done to minorities, which was legal in 33 states. During that time period, Hitler believed Germans should do whatever means necessary to eradicate non-Aryan races through genocide to make the gene pool stay pure. He was inspired by Americas eugenics laws, even going as far as to reference the countrys laws in his 1934 book, Mein Kampf, according to History.

Geneticist and co-founder of the double-helix James Watson has very racist beliefs when it comes to genetics and heavily believes in differences between the races. He attests that the differences in intelligence are because of race, still fundamentally believing Black people are not as smart as white people and upholding ideas of white supremacy, according to the New York Times.

Another surprising figure who promoted eugenics was Helen Keller. She was a blind and deaf activist and author but was a leading proponent of eugenics and the infanticide of disabled children. In her article in The New Republicin 1915, she calls disabled children a poor, misshapen, paralyzed, unthinking creature.

Keller was close friends with Alexander Graham Bell, a leading eugenist, who reportedly heavily influenced her views. Despite their friendship, he advocated for the sterilization of people he considered defective, including deaf people. Bell believed deaf people should not be allowed to marry, which makes their relationship contradictory and confusing, according to Autism Spectrum News.

Kellers views are very surprising because of the ableism and problematic ideas she and Bell perpetuated. She supported killing disabled children like herself while also advocating for the communitys rights. It is incredibly contradictory and upsetting, especially considering she was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Eugenics has many racist as well as ableist implications.

Eugenics is an incredibly scary genetic science with a dark history that spans centuries. With a past ranging from Helen Kellers advocacy for the sterilization of disabled individuals to John Harvey Kelloggs fake science promoting racism, there are still lasting effects within science and societal institutions as a whole.

Originally posted here:
Eugenics: Plaguing scientific community with dark history | Opinion ... - The Arkansas Traveler