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The American eugenics movement was rooted in the biological determinist ideas of Sir Francis Galton, which originated in the 1880s. In 1883, Galton first used the word eugenics to describe scientifically, the biological improvement of genes in human races and the concept of being "well-born". [9]
The first official organized movement of eugenics in South America was a Eugenics Conference in April 1917, which was followed in January 1918 by the founding of the São Paulo Society of Eugenics. This society worked with health agencies and psychiatric offices to promote their ideas.
The Eugenics Record Office (ERO), located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States, was a research institute that gathered biological and social information about the American population, serving as a center for eugenics and human heredity research from 1910 to 1939.
Eugenics proponents also taught classes to teachers on identifying the "feeble-minded." [ 4 ] Throughout this era, the most popular belief was that intellectual and developmental disabilities, as well as mental illness, were entirely genetic and resulted in poverty, drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, crime, violence, and other social ills.
Sociologist Barbara Katz Rothman, describing the "gene myth", stated, "Yes, this is a dangerous idea - and if you want to better understand why, watch this film and see the history, development and presentation of this idea that there is a book of life, a program that determines, from the moment of conception, all that we are and can be."
The American Eugenics Society (AES) was a pro-eugenics organization dedicated to "furthering the discussion, advancement, and dissemination of knowledge about biological and sociocultural forces which affect the structure and composition of human populations".
Former President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric recalls the eugenics movement and the influence it had on American life in the early 1900s, writes Paul Moses.
A 1930s exhibit by the Eugenics Society.Some of the signs read "Healthy and Unhealthy Families", "Heredity as the Basis of Efficiency" and "Marry Wisely".Eugenics (/ j uː ˈ dʒ ɛ n ɪ k s / yoo-JEN-iks; from Ancient Greek εύ̃ (eû) 'good, well' and -γενής (genḗs) 'born, come into being, growing/grown') [1] is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality ...