The Historical Origin of Eugenics

The word eugenics was first put forward by British naturalist Gao Erdun in 1 1883. It originated from the Greek eugenes, which means "well-born", that is, "to study the motives that can improve or weaken the racial (genetic) quality of future generations under social control." This genetic quality includes both physique and intelligence. " Later, people used to divide eugenics into negative eugenics and positive eugenics. American geneticist C Stern suggested calling it preventive eugenics and aggressive eugenics. The former studies the method of reducing the allele frequency that produces unfavorable phenotype, while the latter studies the method of increasing or maintaining the allele frequency that produces favorable phenotype. Because there is no specific genetic background, genes cannot produce favorable or unfavorable results, so eugenics also includes eliminating disadvantages and increasing favorable allele combinations. These two aspects of eugenics are consistent in purpose, because reducing the unfavorable genetic structure means increasing the favorable structure, and vice versa.

The ideas and measures of eugenics have existed since ancient times. Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, pointed out in his book The Republic that the influence of mate selection and childbearing age on the health of future generations. His student Aristotle added a content of health care during pregnancy to his book Politics. The ancient Spartans even carried out strict measures to choose their descendants. There is also a record in China's ancient book Zuo Zhuan that "men and women share the same surname, but they are born the same", and it is generally acknowledged that offspring married by close relatives are often difficult to survive and reproduce. All these reflect the early ideas and measures about eugenics.

/kloc-in the middle of the 9th century, after C.R. Darwin put forward the theory of evolution, people soon realized that human beings, as one of the living things, have gradually evolved into modern people through long-term natural selection. Considering the changes of modern human civilization (including science, technology, law, religion, ethics, morality, etc.). There are two views on the natural environment and lifestyle, which are opposite on the surface but complementary in fact. One view is that human civilization may create an environment where not only the fittest survive and reproduce, but also individuals who could not survive and reproduce, which will lead to the increase of bad gene structure in the population. Another view is that human society can use its own knowledge and talents to improve the genetic quality of future generations more effectively and successfully than nature. Gao Erdun was the first person to realize these two possibilities.