How Do Eugenics Address The Line Between Utopia And Dystopia

The documentary War on the Weak: Eugenics in America discussed the eugenics movement in the United States. The movement pushed positive and negative eugenics in our society. “Positive eugenics” encouraged healthy people to reproduce in order to create a healthier population. “Negative eugenics” encouraged or forced people labeled as unhealthy to become sterilized. Although this movement happened quite some time ago, the beliefs of the movement can still be found in our scientific community and our social lives.

The Pros and Cons of Genetic Engineering also show that genetic engineering can lead to overpopulation and wars. First of all, in Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., everyone is the same and they have strict laws. In Harrison Bergeron, people are made to be the same by putting weights on strong people, making beautiful people wear ugly masks, and hindering smart people’s thoughts. In Jonas’ community, there is Sameness, which is making everything the

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, eugenics is: “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed”. ("Definition of Eugenics by Merriam-Webster") The most common example of this concept would be the Holocaust, which was the extermination of Jewish people and others deemed “unfit” for society in World War Ⅱ. But little do many know, the Nazi’s were not the only people practicing eugenics in the early 1900’s, eugenics was being practiced in the United States long before the Holocaust. The American Eugenics Society aimed to educate American people on the science of Eugenics.

It is impressive that this idea originated from a period of time where there was little knowledge about genes. In conclusion, the idea of eugenics develops during the progressive era and it affect many people during this period of time. This idea of eugenics was where more progress occurs in science. Well not all about the idea of eugenics is bad is has some good points like it can reduce number of babies born with some mental illness or some with really bad illness.

In "Building Baby from the Genes Up" by Ronald M. Green, Green expresses his view that genetically modifying humans is not necessarily a good thing for human, but that it’s not such a bad thing or inevitable. Green claims that genetic modification is beneficial to society and would help improve living. Green exclaims that genetic modification is an inevitable future and that the quality of the human population will improve. Green proposes the idea that genetic modification will improve the quality of the human population by using it with health related issues such as obesity and dyslexia and that no children will have to suffer anymore because of those problems. Knowing about our gene will give us more freedom according to Green.

In the article, The Case for Eugenics in a Nutshell, Marian Van Court claims that “human intelligence is largely hereditary”. This is a very unusual statement because intelligence depends on a large amount of factors, not on genetics. Human intelligence cannot be hereditary. For starters, when a child is being created, the genes of two people are mixed together, but there is assurance that the child will not be exactly like either parent (Ridley 12). This might explain that the intelligence of the parents won’t be passed down to the child when the offspring cannot even be so similar to parent.

Eugenics is the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. This belief that eugenics was not scientific was shown by a scientific article entitled "The Progress of Eugenics." In this article, biologists state that eugenics is not scientific because people will never know what traits will be desired in the future, and it is best to just let natural selection take its course. This is shown by biologist Huxley when he states that there is "no hope that mere human beings will ever possess enough intelligence to select the fittest. " This shows that some aspects of the Progressive Era, such as the belief that eugenics was bad, were

As discussed in the article, the ethical issues surrounding pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PES) are genetic fatalism and the 'new' eugenics movement. Drawing on these concepts and my stance on the interconnection between Eugenics and PES, this essay argues that selecting genetic traits through PES is unethical. This essay's argument will be achieved by first discussing the context of the article. Secondly, in an isolated analysis, I will discuss how genetic essentialism and fatalism can potentially undermine the autonomy and dignity of individuals whilst using a phenomenological framework and discussing choices involved in one's life. Then I will discuss the issue of 'new' eugenics, a free market system of eugenics, which can lead to further social inequalities for those deemed less desirable.

On one hand, Eugenic can make the life of human future generation longer, more talented and therefore be more achievement. Otherwise On the other hand, eugenic also can prevent the next generation inherit the unsound genetic, the future generation will be healthier. On the other hand, the extreme eugenic is inhuman. 1907, Indiana adopted a birth control law, which forced the mental patients, prisoner and poor people to do the sterilization operation. There were nine states adopted the compulsory sterilization operation law since then.

Human enhancement and eugenics may have their difference but they are also similar. By definition, human enhancement is “any attempt to temporarily or permanently overcome the current limitations of the human body through natural or artificial means.” Eugenics on the other hand is “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.” The obvious way these are similar is because they both focus on making the lives of individuals worth living. The way they are different is eugenics focuses on basically “weeding out the weak” which in this case would be the traits that people wouldn’t want to possess.

Over two thousand years ago, Plato wrote in his work Republic ideas about selective breeding, a concept that seemed, at the time, like something akin to science fiction. Millennia later, science fiction became science fact as a new form of science emerged, combining the principles of heredity with social values of human perfection: eugenics. Eugenics can be defined as the process of enhancing future generations through the perpetuation of positive heritable characteristics and the termination of those heritable characteristics deemed negative (“Eugenics”). The status of eugenics has, over time, oscillated, but despite this, aspects of its ideology endure to this day.

This procedure’s purpose is to switch out genes for more preferred ones, especially to improve the health of the child. Genetic engineering could permit selection of desired physical and pleasurable traits for non-medical reasons, which has created concern in some people. The process of switching out the genes of a fetus to install genes that are more preferred has brought up debate about whether or not parents should be able to alter their babies genes to make them more appealing to the parents interests. There are many different ways of looking at this procedure and in contrast to other scientific procedures it can be for greater good or for unnecessary enhancement that could potentially create problems in society. Designer babies aren’t morally correct or incorrect, but are in between depending on what it is being used for.

Editing of the human genome in the past has been only a sight seen in dystopia works such as Brave New World. Now, genetic enhancement is a prevalent today and people are beginning to realize the issues that can arise from creating these designer babies. Gene editing can be helpful to eradicate life changing disabilities. Yet, the term disability does not correctly label these differently abled people, as the idea of what is considered disabled has changed overtime. To fully understand the consequences and implications of genetic selection and enhancement of human embryos, society must mature and declare lines of what is and is not ethically moral.

There are a few appealing aspects to the act of eugenics. If eugenics were applied, the world could potentially see a decrease in disease, a rise in intelligence, and heightened physical aesthetic in humans. But, ethically it crosses many boundaries that have prevented this idea from going into world-wide effect in the past. A benefit to eugenics is it could lead to the reduction of genetic diseases in the gene pool.

Eugenics could make the human race more tough in terms of surviving epidemics or apocalyptic conditions which could wipe us off the face of the Earth as it is an attempt to improve the human gene pool .It could get rid of genetic diseases(from common ones like type 1 diabetes to severe ones like cystic fibrosis) which cause grief to family members, reduce quality of life and costs a lot of maintain life or treat, furthermore it could greatly increase our lifespan which is all good individually but it may have consequences as a species since competition for already scarce resources may increase if the birth rate is not controlled (is that ethical as well?), overpopulation could cause a greater anthropogenic pollution of the Earth leading to our doom which started off as a way to improve our lifestyle could lead to more industry to support the higher population leading to larger ozone holes more melting of polar icecaps and higher rising of sea levels and more cases of skin cancer. We would be playing god, altering a sort of natural cycle which regulates the population or cause a frenzy where everyone wants perfection where there could be discrimination where people can’t afford or are in no situation to receive the advantages of eugenics. In this case we should make eugenics widely and cheaply available but a question arises whether that is practically possible. Therefore eugenics also touches on other controversial topics like IVF, PID an