The ‘Science’ of Eugenics: America’s Moral Detour
By Marilyn M. Singleton,
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
| 12. 15. 2014
[For references and the original pdf format, see here.]
When most people think of eugenics, they think of the unspeakable acts of Adolf Hitler and Dr. Josef Mengele. But history tells us that some of America’s best and brightest promoted eugenics as settled science and necessary for the preservation of society. Within 100 years, our deep thinkers went from declaring that in our new country “all men are created equal” to espousing the idea that “some animals men are more equal than others.”
Untitled Document
Eugenics was popularized in the in the United States in the 1890s. High school and college textbooks from the 1920s through the 1940s often had chapters touting the scientific progress to be made from applying eugenic principles to the population. Many early scientific journals focusing on heredity in plants and lower organisms were published by eugenicists and included “scientific” articles on human eugenics-promoting studies of heredity. When eugenics fell out of favor after World War II, most references to eugenics were removed from textbooks and subsequent editions of relevant journals. We cannot erase history....
Related Articles
Not the species, certainly, but the Institute of that name, which was founded by transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2005 as a research group at Oxford University. According to a recently posted Final Report, its goal was “to pursue the big questions in a transdisciplinary way” by pulling together “researchers from disciplines such as philosophy, computer science, mathematics, and economics.” This evolved before long into the study and promotion of “effective altruism” and “longtermism” as...
By Yelena Biberman and Jonathan D. Moreno, Bioethics Forum | 04.16.2024
A quiet biological revolution in warfare is underway. The genome is emerging as a new domain of conflict. The level of destruction that only nuclear weapons could previously achieve is fast becoming as accessible as a cyberattack.
Now for the...
By Tristan Manalac, BioSpace | 04.02.2024
Verve Therapeutics has suspended enrollment in the Phase Ib Heart-1 study evaluating its lead gene editing program VERVE-101 following a serious adverse event, the company announced Tuesday.
A patient, who received a 0.45-mg/kg dose of VERVE-101, developed a grade 3...
By Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, First Monday | 04.14.2024
The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an imagined system with more intelligence than anything we have ever seen. Without seriously questioning whether such a system can...