Eugenics And The History Of Medical Ethics - 1490 Words

â€Å"It is impossible to understand the history of eugenics and its enduring legacies in California outside the framework of Chicana/o history†. Sterilization practices in Puerto Rico and California, pre- and post- legal eugenics can be examined through the context of eugenics and the history of medical ethics. â€Å"Although steady or increasing rates of sterilization in some cases reflected women’s demands for birth control, the lines between voluntary and coerced were often quite blurred† and a case can be made that negative eugenics were being implemented on a societal level in both countries.1 It is impossible to talk about eugenics in the United States and Puerto Rico without some context of the history. With the troubled history of†¦show more content†¦Years and much unethical conduct in the United States later the Belmont Report established ethical guidelines for treating patients in 1979. The main three principals are respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. These categories include things like informed consent, weighing risk to benefit, and fairness. It also established rules behind informed consent such as all information must be available and comprehensible to the patient and coercion never being acceptable. This and Principles of Biomedical Ethics by Beauchamp and Childress, which came out in the same year, marked a major turning point in the laws regarding ethical medical practices in the United States. However, the underlying principle of medical ethics had been around since 1780 or so when Hippocrates directed physicians â€Å"to help and do no harm†. Puerto Rican birth control regulation gained official support in 1937 when the reason for the sterilizations moved to being about health reasons instead of economic reasons. However, poor health is often caused by poverty so these are really one and the same. This movement was also an attempt by the government to keep the â€Å"surplus population† low. Post-partum sterilization was encouraged but birth control clinics also became increasingly common. Studies were conducted that showed a â€Å"demand† for permanent sterilization after which the US government openly supported Puerto Rico’s efforts. However much of this