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Ryann Mata
Meagan Dodd
English101
18 April 2013
Eugenics in America
Over the last century many countries around the world have practiced eugenics, despite
the negative ethical and moral implications and human rights violations associated with this
controversial science. Eugenics is the study of methods to improve the human race by controlling
reproduction (Cavanaugh.) This term was officially coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, cousin of
Charles Darwin. Unlike his cousin, Galton did not believe in natural selection, instead he argued
that the government should select the perfect citizens to remain being able to reproduce and the
unfit ones to be non-reproductive (Cavanaugh.) U.S. scientists saw this as an opportunity to
better America. The U.S. Supreme Court decided to give rights to states to be able to serialize
individuals if they felt it was going to help cleanse the community of all the unfit genes.
This began in 1906 and spread like wildfire throughout the country. One of the first cases
of this sterilization was the Carrie Buck case. Carrie Buck was in her third year at the State
Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Lynchburg, Virginia, when the U.S. Supreme Court
affirmed the state's right to sterilize her. Seventeen at the time she had been institutionalized, the
child of a feeble-minded mother and the mother to an illegitimate daughter of her own, Buck had
refused the sterilization, and the case had finally made its way to the nation's highest court. Buck
had the intellectual capacity of a nine year old child. The court actually called her a, low grade
moron, in the court. The court justices had no idea of her background or childhood, nor had they
ever met or seen her. Dr. Harry Hamilton Laughlin passed over the possibility that Buck's

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supposed imbecility might be the sullen withdrawal of an abused, frightened girl with little
formal education, who had been given away by her mother at the age of four. He almost certainly
had no knowledge that she had been raped and impregnated by a friend of her foster parents and
sent away to have her baby in the confines of an institution so there would be no public scandal.
For Laughlin, the notion that Buck's feeble-mindedness could be anything but hereditary was
exceptionally remote. The court justices were very cruel in their ruling, Justice Holmes, saying
that, three generations of imbeciles are enough (Quinn.) The Supreme Court then decided to
sterilize her, her daughter, and her mother.
A year after the Carrie Buck case, in 1907, Indiana was the first state to sterilize
criminals, idiots, and rapists (Quinn.) Then a year later, in 1908, Connecticut was the first state
to ban marriages for the epileptic, imbeciles, and the feeble-minded (Quinn.) By 1932, twentyeight states had laws to sterilize whoever they felt was a threat to national and racial life
(Quinn.) The average of sterilizations in the country, in those twenty-eight states, went to an
average of 230 to 2,300 in one year, and at one point got up to 4,000. By 1950 more than 60,000
Americans had been sterilized (Morton.)
Most would say that the issues of sterilization and creating the perfect-race is all in the
past after World War II the eugenics movement had been well forgotten. Quite the opposite is
true, in fact a whole new movement has come about with new technology it is Designer
Babies. The Designer Baby procedure includes choosing different genes that your unborn
child will receive; this can include the selection of genes for inherited diseases, savior siblings,
or sex selection. For inherited diseases this technology would mean that if the parents had a
hereditary disease and it could be life threatening to the child, then the parents could choose to
get the gene that carries that disease removed or replaced with a non mutated gene. Few people

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would dispute the benefits of a genetic procedure that could replace a gene that causes a horrific
disease with a healthy version of the gene, even if the replacement was done on a fetus. Such a
procedure would spare the child great suffering and provide the child a chance to lead a normal
life. Although the goals of such a procedure appear ethical and incredible helpful, the same
procedure could be used to enhance traits that are not classified as diseases. For example, Parents
could choose to give their unborn child blond hair rather than brown and blue eyes rather than
green. The parents could also select to introduce or modify genes that would make the child taller
and more muscular than the genes the child inherited naturally. The parents could also be
tempted to alter genes to make the child more intelligent and more aggressive in an effort to
make their child more likely to succeed in life. The savior siblings is a hypothetical situation in
which an individual already has a child that is deathly ill or needs a bone marrow transplant or a
liver transplant which can only be donated by someone related to the child such as a sibling. In
this situation the parents then can choose which genes the fetus will get in order to help the child
that is ill, so that the savior sibling can potentially save the ill childs life. A parent would choose
to have the sex selection process done if the parent preferred a certain sex over another then the
parent could choose which sex their child would be so that they wont have to try again and they
know for sure what they are getting, no surprises (Schibeci.)
A poll conducted by Time magazine reveals that 46 percent of parents in America would
chose favorable traits for their children if the opportunity was available. Of those, 33 percent said
intelligence would be the trait they would be most interested in enhancing; 11 percent said they
would like the chance to choose the sex of their baby. Alarmingly, in another poll, almost half the
people interviewed said they would choose to abort a fetus if genetic tests showed that it was
likely to grow up to be obese. These possibilities raise a number of troubling ethical concerns

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decades to come. This designer baby theory has far-reaching implications for our understanding
of what it is to be a human being and for what kind of society we will create for future
generations (Verlinsky.)
On the other hand, eugenics could also be viewed as a good thing. Everyone would have
better health if they had the ability to control troublesome genes, which would be much easier on
the Health Care System and the government debt. Removing problematic medical traits would
also take finical strain off of a lot of families who have history of genetic diseases, making
families less dependent on the government for support. As for the United States as a whole our
numbers for high school and college graduates would dramatically increase because parents
would be able to make sure their kids will grow up to be smart and successful. It would give
parents more control over their children, they would be able to pick out how their child would
look, their athletic abilities, and their intelligence, and parents will never be let down. It would
strengthen the bonds between American families (Verlinsky.)
Many people are worried about the possibilities of a society controlled at the genetic level
associated with the new technologies of eugenics. One of the biggest fears regarding eugenics is
that if the technology is available, then it will be available for use by all the doctors who have
access to it, regardless of their ethical standpoints on the issue. This raises two different
problems. First, how can the public ever be sure that the manipulation of genes will be free from
error? What if, in an attempt to enhance the genes responsible for intelligence, scientists
mistakenly create a whole new class of diseases? Such a tragic result may not become obvious
until the gene-altering procedure has been in use for decades. "In modern science as in ancient
agriculture, the underlying theory, however coherent and satisfying, may not underpin the
resulting technology as seems to be the case," Science writer Colin Tudge says. So the success

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of the resulting technology does not and cannot demonstrate that the underlying theory is correct
and adequate in every respect. The theory must have been good enough to succeed in the
particular case that was observed, but if the conditions were changed somewhat, inadequacies
could well be revealed (Anita.) Second, even if we do master the technology, which forces in
society will determine who gets to benefit from it and who does not? Nazi Germany is a great
example of what can happen when a society attempts to create the perfect race. With the
government in charge of such major decisions, we could have a repeat of what happened in the
early 1900s with the sterilization craze. But then again without regulation, people can misuse the
technology and the poor tend to get left behind.
All of this had been taken into account after World War II and the U.S. government had
no choice but to change the way they went about the eugenics movement, but it did not die there.
The problem of an ethical code for genetics remains. There is general agreement but not
unanimity that it must embody four principles. One, laws relating to genetic aspects of
population policy must be non-coercive and not discriminate by race, class or religion. Two,
expression of population policy through taxation or other legitimate means must not be cruel or
unusual and must protect children. These ethical constraints make education, provision of genetic
and other medical services, and appeal to self-interest the most effective expression of population
policy. Finally, population policy (A population policy is a set of measures taken by a State to
modify the way its population is changing, either by trying to increase its size by promoting
immigration, or by trying to decrease its size through limitation of births. A population policy
can also aim to modify the distribution of the population over the country, by
encouraging migrations or by displacing populations) must be without genetic bias unless human
rights are protected and the consequences of bias are well understood and acceptable to most

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people. It is doubtful that this understanding and consensus could be reached in the next century.
The term eugenics is so ambiguous and the claim to be a science so specious that its use in
scientic literature and statements of policy should be abandoned (Morton.)
Although these laws seem like great solution to this rising eugenics problem with new
technology, there is always room for people that want to take technology in order to abuse it and
use it for bad. Despite the fact that there are currently laws in place to prevent this from
happening again in America, there will always be scientists/doctors out there breaking the rules
to further their research or achieve what they think is right. With humans naturally wanting to be
the strongest, wealthiest, and most beautiful, this technology will help people try to achieve such
goals and if that keeps happening who knows where society will be in the next thirty to fifty
years (Munsterhjelm.) People have forgotten about the 1900s to the 1970s when that was just
the beginning of all of this. Science has come so far since then the last monumental time for the
eugenic scientists was the engineering and founding of birth control. With that not many people
or religions agree with contraception either. When scientist actually start preforming gene
altering procedures and we have designer babies in this world people are going to be scared of
what comes next. [We] are already discarding embryos and babies that are diseased, what is
stopping [us] from discarding because of physical, physiological or psychological traits? This is
an alarming achievement in the world of science today (Verlinsky.)
Within the past couple decades, most of the states have examined their past regarding
eugenic policies and have issued apologies. Unfortunately, however, it appears that eugenics is
still being practiced around the globe. Furthermore, ethicists are becoming worried at the
possibility that advances in genetic technology will lead to a new appearance of eugenics based
on the increasing unwillingness of individuals to accept imperfections in their offspring, or the

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increasing desire to enhance desired characteristics such as intelligence, strength, or beauty in

their children. In order for this new technology to work and be use how it was meant to be used
there must be some thoughts about the moral and ethical issues that come along with this new
uprising of eugenics.

Word Count: 2,113

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Works cited
Anita Shaw, et al. "What Choices Should We Be Able To Make About Designer Babies? A
Citizens Jury Of Young People In South Wales." Health Expectations 9.3 (2006): 207217. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.
Cavanaugh, John. "Introduction to Eugenics ." . N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Apr 2013.
Meghan L. Brinson, et al. "AN EXERCISE Demonstrating The Effects Of Eugenic On Altering
Gene Frequencies In Population." American Biology Teacher (National Association Of
Biology Teachers) 67.8 (2005): 487-492. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.
Morton, Newton E. "Genetic Aspects Of Population Policy." Clinical Genetics 56.2 (1999): 105109. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Apr. 2013.
Munsterhjelm, Mark. "'Unfit For Life': A Case Study Of Protector-Protected Analogies In Recent
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Ramsden, Edmund. "Eugenics From The New Deal To The Great Society: Genetics,
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