http://shr.stanford.edu/shreview/5-Sup/text/thurtle.html
Phillip Thurtle
the creation of genetic identity: the implications for the biological
control of society
"In the April 29, 1911 issue of the Scientific American Supplement No.
1843, G. Clark Nuttal summarized the relationship between genetics and
eugenics in his article "Eugenics and Genetics: 'Good Breeding' and its
significance." Both sciences were born from the desire to understand the
age old dilemma of inheritance:
The terms are new-the problems they stand for are as old as Cain and Abel.
And yet it is well that the nomenclature should be of today, for these
terms represent the points of attack at which we of the present, with the
latest weapons of modernity, are attempting to storm the hitherto
impregnable strongholds of the mysterious heritage of the children of men.[12]
Eugenics was seen as the moral aspect of the problem while genetics was
more concerned with mechanism. In Nuttal's eyes, "Genetics is the handmaid
of Eugenics" because it will supply the facts that will inform the
eugenicists in their delineation of the best way to increase the genetic
contribution of "the best classes in the community," while discouraging the
"degenerate and unfit
from perpetuating their weaknesses."[13] Genetics, the pure science, dealt
with mechanisms of inheritance and studied any organism, while eugenics was
considered the branch of the applied science that studied humans".
Phil
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