Genetics 06: The Dark History of Eugenics
遺傳學 06: 優生學的黑歷史
Yiler
Article A
Eugenic is the concept of improving the genes of our offsprings, it was first proposed by Plato and popularized by Francis Galton in the beginning of the 20th century. From 1907, Charles Davenport led the movement of involuntarily sterilizing those people who carried deleterious genes in the US, about 80000 people were sterilized in the process. This method is also used by Nazi Germany to sterilize those people who have physical or mental diseases. Approximately 400000 people are forcefully sterilized in Germany during that period of time.
Article B
Forced sterilization happened in 32 states in the US during the 20th century. Approximately 20,000 sterilization cases happened in California, which takes up around one third of the entirety of people who got sterilized. During 20th century in the US, people might get sterilized if they are poor, disabled, in different race, mentally ill, or had committed crime. It was reported that a prison in California sterilized around 150 women in year 2006 to 2010. “Reproduction justice” is the promotion of ending forced sterilization and leave the choice of having babies to individuals.
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Steve
Article A
One of the earliest observations of eugenics was from the 19th century by Gregor Mendel who made that observation when breeding pea plants. That was followed by Darwin and Mendel who were both researching DNA and evolution at the same time. Then, in the 20th century, Darwinian evolution was resolved with Mendelian genetics which is still being taught as schools today. Next, countries took this idea and started sterilizing people in the name of purification. However, the person who took this to the furthest was Hitler, who had 400,000 people sterilized under his policy.
Article B
A big portion of the German medical profession had joined the Nazi Party and participated in the murder of Jews, Sinti, and Roma; the disabled; the mentally ill; and other “unfit” persons under the guise of improving public health and Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene, the German version of eugenics). They had joined because before the Nazis, German doctors were unemployed or under-employed and witnessed a decline of honor and prestige which the Nazi Party reestablished. At first, the performed euthanasia on babies with disabilities, however, that eventually led to them rationalizing mass genocide. All this started from the desire of preventing people from having children people with disabilities so, some argue that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Today we can see some parallels in to the past, a few countries have legalized euthanasia with consent and even fewer have legalized euthanasia without consent in some situations which has some people worried where this will lead humanity to.