PubMed · 16011070
The source did not provide an abstract. Follow the original record for more information.
Explore connections, maps & timelines
S Stern. 2005. Never forget.... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16011070/
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.
KEEP EXPLORING
Eugenics constitutes an important subject of debate, associated with current biogenetics improvements. Considering that the central point in eugenics has always been the preoccupation with future generations' health and constitution, and that the use of scientific means and knowledge for the birth of a physically and mentally healthy child can be considered a eugenic action, this paper tries to analyze the meanings and contradictions of negative and positive eugenics actions, constructed concomitantly with 20th-century technical-scientific improvements. The meanings range, respectively, between limiting or stimulating human reproduction, at the beginning of this century, and preventing diseases or improving physical and mental characteristics, nowadays. In the implantation of actions, contradictions were produced, such as the discrimination and elimination of many people in view of one ideal man, the biologization of eminently social factors, the defense of a supposed scientific neutrality and the indiscriminate use of the reproductive choice right.
Tuberculosis was clearly one of the most predominant diseases of the early twentieth century. At this time, Americans involved in the eugenics movement grew increasingly interested in methods to prevent this disease's potential hereditary spread. To do so, as this essay examines, eugenicists' attempted to shift the accepted view that tuberculosis arose from infection and contagion to a view of its heritable nature. The methods that they employed to better understand the propagation and control of tuberculosis are also discussed. Finally, the essay explores the interpretative analyses of data that the Eugenics Record Office used in an attempt to convince contemporaries of the hereditary transmission of tuberculosis.
In 1905 the first German association of Social Medicine was founded. Out of its now 100 years of history two aspects which were of peculiar importance for its development are studied here by the method of historic analysis of the sources and the examination of secondary literature: the noteworthiness of this foundation is characterized by the fact that the society was based from its beginnings on multidisciplinarity and the appliance of different scientific methods. It is showed which fascination had exclusively biological and genetic explanations for the genesis of diseases and human attitude characteristics. In transformation to practical action these ideas led to the extermination of disease causing genetic attributes and often their bearers as well. This aim was followed up even when the genetic causation of specified attitudes was not clearly proved. These biological interpretations of disease phenomenons neglected social causes for the process of the appearance of certain diseases and the emergence of health. They were responsible for medical interventions into the physical integrity of hundreds of thousands of human beings under the political terms and conditions of National Socialism.