The movement was later lead by Charles Darwin's son Leonard. Three of its most well-known advocates were Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Hitler and Margaret Sanger.
It lost a lot of popularity after the horrors of the Holocaust were exposed. However, it has come back in full force with Roe v. Wade, the euthanasia movement and now embryonic stem cell research.
A very good reason to not under-define Eugenics. It has always been controlled, not for science, but for philosophy and politics. In turn, this has expanded it far beyond its scientific origins into a pillar of secular humanism.
People have long selectively bred animals, the thinking goes, so why not apply that, and other science, into creating a “better” human? The great problem lies in what the best definition of “better” is.
Sterilization of undesirables has only recently been discovered to have been in widespread use for decades in most of the western nations. And France had a recent scandal of its top medical people intentionally distributing HIV tainted blood products to hemophiliacs, with the idea of eliminating the disease entirely from France—by killing all the hemophiliacs.
Certainly the decline of medical ethics can be seen in both abortion and euthanasia. But it is just as insidious in research and development.
Disregarding their duty to patients is a hideous shame on the US medical community.
Allowing hundreds of thousands of black children to suffer pellagra, while giving white children inexpensive brewer’s yeast supplements to prevent it.
Allowing large numbers of black men to suffer from untreated syphilis, for no particular reason, as the untreated disease progression was well known.
Intentionally giving toxic radiological substances to people to determine the effects of radiation poisoning.
Forced sterilization courts. Involuntary testing of new drugs on emergency room patients right now.
While it is not all derived from the idea of Eugenics, Eugenics is so intertwined with it that it must take the blame as well.
We really don’t as a culture remember what happened. I was a bit unique in that every year in high school, we were made to watch “Night and Fog”, and had a WWII vet come in and talk about the camps. But many of those who were there are now gone, and the next generation has no idea of history.
The Holocaust is about to be repeated, because the world has forgotten it.