Open AccessEUGENICS
Author(s) -
Marija Stojanović
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
facta univrsitatis. series: law and politics/facta universitatis. series: law and politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2406-1786
pISSN - 1450-5517
DOI - 10.22190/fulp1802153s
Subject(s) - eugenics , galton's problem , pseudoscience , nazism , race (biology) , sociology , law , environmental ethics , criminology , genealogy , political science , history , gender studies , philosophy , politics , medicine , statistics , alternative medicine , mathematics , pathology
Eugenics is a pseudoscience aimed at improving and controlling the genetic structure of the human species by selective breeding, which implies preventing inferior people from having children (negative eugenics) and encouraging superior ones to reproduce (positive eugenics). The Eugenics movement originated in the early 19th century and it was largely developed under the influence of Francis Galton in the United Kingdom and Charles Davenport in the United States. These two scientists advocated the selective breeding of desirable traits and reproductive control of undesirable traits in the human race. Racially-oriented eugenics had a dramatic expansion and its peak in Nazi Germany. Being the essence of many racial laws, eugenics was atrociously applied in practice by means of mass euthanasia, mass sterilization, extermination in gas chambers, and horrible experiments on people of lower races or those unworthy of living.