Eugenics

The word eugenics (from the Greek for "well-born") was coined by [Francis Dalton]?, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to refer to the study and use of selective breeding (of animals or humans) to improve a species over generations. In modern usage it more commonly refers to human selective reproduction with the intent to create children with desirable traits, especially those that best meet some ideal of racial purity.

Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler is infamous for its eugenics program, which attempted to maintain a "pure" German race. Among other acts, the Nazis performed extensive, often cruel, experimentation on live human beings to test their genetic theories.

Eugenics was popular in the United States. Beginning with Connecticut in 1896, many states enacted marriage laws with eugenic criteria, prohibiting anyone who was "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded" from marrying. See [1] Eugenic considerations also lay behind the adoption of incest laws in much of the U.S. Some states also practiced sterilization of "imbeciles" in the early 20th century.

Sweden forcibly sterilized women as part of a eugenics program over a forty year period. See [2].

See Race.