Nicolae Sfetcu
2019
The term eugenics as a practice and field of study was invented by Francis Galton in 1883, in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (F. Galton 1983) based on the recent work of his cousin, Charles Darwin, the Mendelian genetics and August Weismann's theory of germ plasma, that says that hereditary information is transmitted only by germ cells from the gonads (ovaries and testicles), not somatic cells. (Blom 2008) Galton defined eugenics as "the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations." Eugenics was later described as a social movement to improve the human species by using technology. (Harding 2012) The term has a strong negative valence due to its historical connotations about selective reproductive programs, concentration camps, and medical experiments and mass extermination promoted by the German Nazi regime in the Second World War. (Sara 2014)
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