In In Defense of Evil part 2 of 3: A Wide Scale Eugenics program would be beneficial to the U.S.A

I think this is a very forgotten topic in the U. S. today since it’s been abandoned. I will now give reasons for thinking why Eugenics is wrong. Who invented Eugenics? Sir Francis Galton, a famous geographer and statistician, invented "eugenics" in 1883. Galton also got the idea of Eugenics partly from Charles Darwin’s Evolution Theory. [3] Eugenics: the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). [2] Major Problems with Eugenics Studies during the Late 19 and Early 20th Century: One of the main problems with the Eugenics movement during the 19th and 20th century, was that some of the traits done by Scientists and Eugenicists had little backing and grounds. The movement was categorized as “Criminality” because it would plan on removing people with weak or deficient genes/traits. Such persons that would be eliminated were: Epileptics Bipolar Alcoholics Feebleminded Over the course of 29 years, the ERO collected hundreds of thousands of pedigrees that documented the heritability of the aforementioned undesirable traits. When direct interviews were not possible, family members were categorized in absentia as either affected or unaffected based on hearsay evidence or on records kept by prisons and psychiatric hospitals. [1] The Immorality of Eugenics: I will now list some main reasons why Eugenics is morally ‘wrong’. 1. Why “Perfection” is subjective: It would be hard to argue that a parent who wanted a child with better memory or greater physical dexterity was simply indulging his or her biases or prejudices. As long as people are not forced to make choices about their children that are in conformity with particular visions of what is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, there would seem to be enough consensus about the desirability of some traits to permit parents to make individual choices about the traits of their children in the name of their health. Of course everyone wants or desires perfect vision, stamina, higher IQ level, dexterity, but none of these things can be achieved absolutely from a test tube. It would be un-ethical to think that we should force upon Americans and others this idea of pulling the plug on someone who does not have these things. 2. Coercion: In what way does the government or third party have the ‘right’ to infringe evil upon humans? The right to reproduce without interference from third parties is one of the fundamental freedoms recognized by international law and moral theories from a host of ethical traditions. America would be just as worse as Nazi-Germany since they did the same thing in practice on the Jews. 3. Equality: The idea of performing un-ethical treatments to other human beings would be unfair. What about those of a different social-class or gender? It would lead to homogenisation in society where diversity and difference disappear in a rush to produce only perfect people, leaving anyone with the slightest disability or deficiency at a distinct disadvantage. 4. God: We as human beings want to have power and authority over people. Imposing eugenics would be playing God. God has the power to give life and take it away. We on the other hand don’t have the power to do either. When you take the life of another human being, you can’t bring it back to life. This would be murder. [4] Lessons from the Holocaust: On July 14, 1933, the Nazi dictatorship fulfilled the long-held dreams of eugenics proponents by enacting the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, based on a voluntary sterilization law drafted by Prussian health officials in 1932. The new Nazi law was coauthored by Falk Ruttke, a lawyer, Arthur Gütt, a physician and director of public health affairs, and Ernst Rüdin, a psychiatrist and early leader of the German racial hygiene movement. Individuals who were subject to the law were those men and women who “suffered” from any of nine conditions assumed to be hereditary: feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, genetic epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea (a fatal form of dementia), genetic blindness, genetic deafness, severe physical deformity, and chronic alcoholism. Nearly all better-known geneticists, psychiatrists, and anthropologists sat on such courts at one time or another, mandating the sterilizations of an estimated 400,000 Germans. Vasectomy was the general sterilization method for men, and for women, tubal ligation, an invasive procedure that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of women. [5] American Medicine and Technology in the 21st Century Is Eugenics even necessary in the United States today? No, it’s not. In the past few decades, through Science and Research, doctors, surgeons, and scientists have been able to come up with medicines and treatments that can help save lives, cure diseases, in order to pass on genes to the next generation. Below will be a Top 8 list of such Medical Breakthroughs. 1. Human Genome Discoveries: In 2000, scientists with the International Human Genome Project released a rough draft of the human genome to the public. For the first time the world could read the complete set of human genetic information and begin to discover what our roughly 23,000 genes do. This incredible breakthrough has helped doctors develop a genetic test for a gene associated with prostate cancer. 2. Information Technology: has made life safer for the patient. Once admitted to a hospital, they get a bar code which matches their blood samples and their IVs. 3. Anti-Smoking laws and Campaigns Reduce Public Smoking: 27 states and the District of Columbia have enacted smoking bans, including seven states that ban smoking in bars and casinos in recent years. 4. Therapies for Cancer Expand With New Drugs: Clyde Yancy, MD, of Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. "As of today, we have seen a near 40 percent reduction in death due to coronary artery disease since 1998/2000. Yancy remarked that research shows about half of the gains in heart disease came from new treatment interventions, the other half (up to 60 percent) are due to prevention. 5. Drug Therapy Extends HIV Survival: Thomas Coates, MD, of the University of California Los Angeles, pointed out that the HIV death rates are still dropping due to continual HIV research. "The drop in death rates from HIV in the developed world (is) due to improved medications," Coates said. "There was the 10 percent drop in deaths due to HIV in the US between 2006 and 2007. " 6. Robotic Techniques Revolutionize Surgery: What would normally leave a 10 inch scar, has now been left to one incision. in late 2007 the surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic began removing kidneys through a single incision in the patient's navel by using robotic technology. 7. Study Finds Heart, Cancer Risk with Hormone Replacement Therapy: Hormone replace therapy, or HRT, was is thought to be good for the bones, the brain, the skin, the figure, and the libido, and was considered the best treatment to control the annoying and sometimes disabling symptoms of menopause such as hot flashes, depression, and sleep disturbances. 8. Scientists Peer Into Mind With Functional MRI: developed in the early 1990s, fMRI began to shape research at the beginning of the decade. Using this technique, researchers are learning valuable information about disease such as depression, brain cancer, autism, memory disorders, and even conditions such as the skin disorder psoriasis. [6] First Conclusion: As we can see, there are so many negative factors that make Eugenics wrong on all levels. Sources: [1] . http://www.nature.com... [2] . http://dictionary.reference.com... [3] . http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [4] . http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [5] . http://www.ushmm.org... [6] . http://www.medpagetoday.com...