ETHICS AND MORALS

Report 1—Eugenics - Conflict between Ethics and Morals

Report 1—Eugenics - Conflict between Ethics and Morals

Introduction

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of hereditary traits humans through various forms of intervention (Eugenics Watch 2012). The targets have ranged from creating people healthy and smart, saving the resources of society and relief the suffering human. The former means proposed to achieve these objectives focused on artificial selection, while the modern focus on prenatal diagnosis and fetal examination, the genetic counseling, the birth control, the in vitro fertilization and genetic engineering. Opponents argue that eugenics is immoral and is based on, or is itself, a pseudoscience (Nourse 2008).

Historical overview of Eugenics

Historically, eugenics has been used as justification for discrimination enforcement and violations of human rights promoted by the state, such as forced sterilization of people with genetic defects, the institutional murder and, in some cases, the genocide of races considered inferior. The artificial selection of humans was suggested from very ancient times, at least since the time of Plato (Nourse 2008). After the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust, eugenics took other, more politically-acceptable forms (but still anti-human). Margaret Sanger, for example, who once said that “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it,” was a founder of Planned Parenthood. While Planned Parenthood's contraception programs are relatively uncontroversial, the organization has historically advanced abortion and sterilization as standard public policies. Eugenics was popular in the early decades of the twentieth century, but it is associated with later practices of Nazi Germany which led to the deterioration of his reputation as a science. In the period after World War II, eugenics is calculated on the Nazi crimes such as genocide

Moral Implications

For Galton, social classes have unique qualities, transmitted hereditarily. Preservation of the qualities of good lineage requires families to avoid the mixture of blood which can only lead to the disappearance of the highest character of the human race (Cahn 2009). This representation of the world, which predates his work "eugenics", leads him to bring social differences on strictly biological terms. It explicitly promotes a model of man that corresponds precisely to the social group which is derived from Galton. From Galton's point of view, civilization, by halting the mechanism of natural selection, is doomed. Social mechanisms to protect poor, sick and weak in general are the first of their targets (Nourse 2008). For Clemence Royer, the first translator of Charles Darwin in France, proposed values ??of solidarity developed with democratic ideas that can only lead to degeneration of the human race.

Ethical Implications

Almost all governments and researchers have seen the need to assess the ethical implications of this Eugenics and its influence on culture and society. Efforts have been made to prevent possible distortions and negative effects associated with the concept. Applied ethics examines controversies regarding abortion, eugenics, environmental protection, gay rights or the death penalty (Black ...