Allen - American Eugenics and the Genome. Eugenics, the attempt to improve the genetic quality of the human species by ‘better breeding’, developed as a worldwide movement between 1900 and 1940.
It was particularly prominent in the United States, Britain and Germany, and in those countries was based on the then-new science of Mendelian genetics. Eugenicists developed research programs to determine the degree to which traits such as Huntington's chorea, blindness, deafness, mental retardation (feeblemindedness), intelligence, alcoholism, szhiophrenia, manic depression, rebelliousness, nomadism, prostitution and feeble-inhibition were genetically determined.
Eugenicists were also active in the political arena, lobbying in the United States for immigration restriction and compulsory sterilization laws for those deemed genetically unfit; in Britain they lobbied for incarceration of genetically unfit and in Germany for sterilization and eventually euthanasia. Kevles - Eugenics and the Genome. This article assesses the potential impact of current genomics research on human rights against the backdrop of the eugenics movement in the English-speaking world during first third of the twentieth century, The echo of eugenic interventions in societies far beyond Nazi Germany reverberates in the ethical debates triggered by the potential inherent in recent molecular biological developments.
Mandatory eugenic restrictions of reproductive freedom seem less likely in countries committed to civil liberties than under authoritarian governments. More likely, consumer choice might sustain a trend towards voluntary “improvement” of biological inheritance in the future. Loucas - Statistics and Eugenics. Paul Popenoe, eugenics, and marriage counseling. Marriage in America is in disarray, or so they say.
Americans, among the marryingest people in the world, are also the divorcingest. Even during the downturn, business is up at eHarmony, which has taken credit for one out of every fifty weddings in the United States, but “The State of Our Unions,” an annual report issued jointly by the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, warns of a “mancession”: in a lousy economy, more men than usual are working fewer hours than their wives, making for unhappier husbands and angrier rows.
A spike in the divorce rate is anticipated, although this may be mitigated by the fact that divorce isn’t cheap and people are broke. You might think that the mancession would also foretell a falloff in couples counselling, which isn’t cheap, either, but there’s no sign of a, ah, therapycession. “I have a pretty good marriage,” Elizabeth Weil wrote in a December cover story in the Times Magazine, but “it could be better.”