Eugenics Refers to the Social Research Paper

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Currently, in the health care setting, patients are protected from involuntary acts of eugenics through laws that require doctor's to get the patient's full consent for all procedures done. Further, if a doctor fails to get such consent, they can be held liable under the malpractice laws of torts.

Eugenics and Immigration

Eugenics has also played a historical role in immigration and immigration reform during the twentieth century. Staring with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, eugenics was called on to play a central role in the congressional policy debate as to the allegedly "inferior stock" of immigrants coming from eastern and southern Europe.

Typically, eugenics as it applies to immigration reform deals with placing limits on the number of immigrants allowed from certain races, ethnicities or geographic locations. This practice is considered to be eugenics as it is used to systematically control or eliminate a specific population from the make up of the population of the nation enacting the legislation.

The Immigration Act of 1924, for example, reduced the number of immigrants from abroad to fifteen percent in order to control the number of so-called "unfit" individuals from entering the United States.

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The Immigration Act of 1924 was based on the expert testimony of various highly regarded eugenicists who argued that the racial superiority of "old stock" white Americans would be significantly compromised by the race and ethnic mixing that would occur with the influx of immigrants.

The argument made to congress by such eugenics leaders as Lothrop Stoddard and Harry Laughlin was that inferior races coming from Southern and Eastern Europe would "pollute the national gene pool if their numbers went unrestricted." The result was that the government based its immigration decisions on a hierarchy of nationalities, rating the various immigrant groups from most desirable to least desirable. The most desirable were of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic backgrounds and the least desirable being Chinese and Japanese immigrants.

Conclusion

As can be seen, eugenics has, and continues to play, numerous roles in the development of human societies and communities. From the horrors of genocide to its use in medicine as a method of eliminating potentially dangerous genes to its continued role in the immigration debate, eugenics is far from being a theory or practice of the past.

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