Eugenics to medical genetics

Genetics, eugenics and evolution.

On 7 May 1988 a commemorative conference for Bernard Norton was held at the University of Leicester, sponsored by the British Society for History of Science and organized by W. H. Brock and myself. The papers commissioned for that conference have been rewritten for publication in this special issue of the British Journal for the History of Science. The historians of biology and medicine whose w...

Eugenics, human genetics and human failings: The Eugenics Society, its sources and its critics in Britain

PAULINE M. H. MAZUMDAR, Eugenics, human genetics and human failings: The Eugenics Society, its sources and its critics in Britain, London and New York, Routledge, 1992, pp. x, 373, illus., £40.00 (0-415-04424-3). Several studies have recently come out on the British eugenics movement, and this is one of the best. Displaying an impressive mastery of a range of different source materials, Pauline...

Beyond abortion: human genetics and the new eugenics.

A Promise for a Better Future: Distinguishing Genetics from Eugenics

Chapter 1 Genetics , Politics and Society 1 . 1 Eugenics

Francis Galton coined the word eugenics in his 1883 book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development . The term itself derives from the Greek prefix eu (eu) meaning good or well and the Greek word genos (genosv ) meaning race, kind or stock. In 1904, Galton gave a presentation to the Sociological Society in London about eugenics. His presentation, along with invited public commentary, appe...