Racial hygiene

Racial hygiene (sometimes maligned by the perjorative "scientific racism") is the use of a government for the selection of the most physical, intellectual and moral persons to raise the next generation (selective breeding) and a close alignment of public health with eugenics. In the past, this has been done by using deportation, segregation, compulsory sterilization, and even genocide of persons or groups with various mental disibilities, ethnicities, handicaps, criminal backgrounds, religious affiliations, etc.

It was the German doctor Alfred Ploetz who introduced the term rassenhygiene in his "Racial hygiene basics" (Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene) in 1895.

Adolf Hitler formed a key part of Nazi ideology around the concept of racial hygiene and during his rule the field was elevated to the primary philosophy of the German medical community. Racial hygienists played key roles in the Holocaust, which was itself in part a massive attempt to purge individuals with undesireable traits (notably Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals, but also the mentally retarded and insane). After World War II it has been widely reviled as cruel and brutal.