6. Revista Colombiana de Bioética - Cosecha

Eugenics in Colombia. A Social Justice Problem

Resumen

Eugenics established itself as a deterministic movement of the human condition that raises major bioethical problems and concerns, due to the horrors of its history and its possible impact on the future of genetics. This article addresses the first component and shows how the eugenics movement entered the socio-political thinking in Colombia in the first half of the twentieth century, generating serious problems of social injustice in the political, economic, and cultural spheres. Of the different areas that comprise social life, education is an important part of this article, due to the impact of eugenic measures that aim to medicalize, bolster, and recreate the Colombian population morally and racially through intervention during early childhood and early school years. Nancy Fraser’s view of Social Justice allows us to analyze, from a bioethical perspective, the ethical issues raised by the stigmatization of the national race as a weak, sickly, uncivilized and inexorably degenerating people.

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