Talk:Eugenics

Eugenics still exists, it is not a past tense thing. Nancy Sculerati 18:43, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

This article is worded in a very U.S.-centric way, while eugenics laws were passed in Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia as well as the U.S. and Canada. Also, some eugenicists, including Margaret Sanger, encouraged "superior" people to have more children, contrary to the statement in the article That families with more children dispersed and diluted the "moral force" of each offspring. "More children from the fit, less from the unfit-that is the chief issue of birth control," according to Sanger.

As Nancy points out, eugenics is still embodied in government policy, in Singapore and China. Anthony Argyriou 19:40, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

I'd just say, as I would with any CZ entry, that if there is more to be told, go ahead and tell it! I don't think that the article in its current form is all that U.S.-centric -- if there is more to be said about other countries, let's add it (though perhaps nationality per se may not be the best organizing principle, if there's strong evidence for Eugenics as an international phenomenon).

The ideas in the bulleted list are not meant to be a list of common beliefs, just examples of some of the beliefs of different followers of this idea (the idea of more children diluting 'moral force', interestingly enough, was espoused by Thomas Edison!

And again, if eugenicist ideas are still embodied in law (I know some of the U.S. laws were never removed from the books) in some places, let's mention and document that. I'll tweak the tense so as to set the stage for such materials. Russell Potter 20:15, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

Well, I only point it out because I'm going to add stuff about human diseases. You see, Eugenics can be a terrible thing, but on the other hand- for example with inherited diseases like Huntington's chorea or phenyketonuria or Tay sachs disease, the diseases are inherited and are a terrible thing and how you go about preventing it is not clearly a wrong thing to do-to give you an example- i can't think of the name, it's Hebrew, it means "The passing of the generations" in New York among the Hassidic communities where most of the marriages are arranged, or at least discussed between the rabbi and couple and most often a match maker, there is a system of eugenics that I think is rather smart and kind. Since there is a fairly high chance of a couple of Ashkenazi Jews having a baby with that dreadful disease- in which the baby is born normal and then deteriotes neurolgicxaly and dies- and worse than that, if both parents are carriers- and follow the traditions, they may have many children and many such babies, this is how it works. All the young men and women of marriagble age have gene testing to see if they are carriers. The rabbi and only the rabbi gets the results. When the matchmaker goes to the Rabbi and says Boy A and Girl B? The Rabbi may say, it's a match, but if he knows they are both carriers he will say- it's not a match. And the matchmaker keeps looking. Now I myself am not saying that arranged marriages are the best way, or that a Hassidic lifestyle is the best way- but if you have arranged marriages, and if you have a lifestyle and religious traditions that by and large end up with big families, and there are known recessive genes in te population that are horrible if homozygous, then I think that this is a briliant system. But it is eugenics, no matter how you look at it. Yet it is a voluntary and humane way to avoid a tragic death for a child. Now, on the other hand, much of Eugenics in social history wasn't actual eugenics, it involved genocide and forced sterilization and all sorts of things- but on a misplaced idea that the people involved were going to pass on their genes and somehow destroy humanity. I'm just saying that - although this may still go on, unfortunately, there is also a "real" eugenics (not without its controversies) where people control reprduction according to deleterious genes. Nancy Sculerati 20:22, 1 June 2007 (CDT)