Eugenics: the

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Eugenics the well-born science

• Science of eugenics genetic determinism
• Disabilities and social ills are inheritable
  traits.
• Medical model (and moral).
• Policies rationally improve human biological
  quality by controlling who reproduces
• Scientific knowledge applied to better
  breeding.
• Fewer offspring from unfit people more from
  fit.
• What kinds of people do we want? Who should we
  prevent from being born?

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Definitions

• from Greek eugenes meaning wellborn The eugenics
  movement of the late nineteenth and early
  twentieth centuries sought to "improve" the human
  species and preserve racial "purity" through
  planned human breeding. Eugenicists supported
  anti-miscegenation laws and other, sometimes more
  extreme measures such as sterilization.
• The practice of trying to influence human
  heredity by encouraging the transmission of
  'desirable' characteristics and discouraging the
  transmission of 'undesirable' ones.

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Eugenics movement, 1900-1945

• Word coined by Francis Galton 1860s.
• 30 countries had their own versions.
• Organizations of social reformers, biologists,
  doctors, other professional experts.
• Politically and scientifically progressive.
• Apply the new science of human genetics to
  control/engineer population health fitness.
• Economic rationale reduce the burden of
  welfare services, increase efficiency.

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Sources Image Archive on the American Eugenics
Movement

• http//eugenicsarchive.org
• Hosted by the Human Genome Projects Cold Spring
  Harbor Laboratory.
• Which was originally the Eugenics Record Office,
  the center of US human genetics research and
  advocacy for eugenics policy, 1910-1939.

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How to improve the hereditary make-up of the
race?

• Positive eugenics
• Encourage fitter people to have more kids who
  share their good genes.
• Negative eugenics
• Persuade, pressure, or compel unfit people not
  to pass on defective genes.
• Permanent segregation.
• Forced sterilization.

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Eugenics in Nazi Germany

• 1933 Forced sterilization law applied to 400,000
  hereditary defectives.
• 1939 Killing programs (euthanasia) against
  200,000 institutionalized adults and children
  with disabilities.
• Economic logic lives not worth living,
  useless eaters
• 1941 Gas chambers from that program moved to the
  concentration camps to murder 6 million Jewish
  people.

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Negative eugenics in US 30 states had
sterilization laws by 1930s
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60,000 legally sterilized 1907-1970s
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How much does degeneracy cost society? Who is
born to be a burden as a criminal,
feebleminded, etc? State fair exhibit promoting
eugenics.
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• Eliminate all inherited and congenital
  disabilities, e.g. results of conception when
  the father was intoxicated.

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Good heredity for the sake of health
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Hereditary defective groups invading the body
politic

• Infectious germs symbols for Jews, communists,
  gays.
• With his poison, the Jew destroys the sluggish
  blood of weaker peoples so that a diagnosis
  arises, of swift degeneration. With us, however,
  the case is different The blood is pure we are
  healthy!

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Racist agenda outcome of US eugenics 1924
Immigration Act

• Eugenicists expert testimony on race IQ.
• Law set quotas for Eastern and Southern European
  immigrants.
• Disability justified discriminatory policies
  since 1882, excluded undesirable lunatics,
  idiots, likely to become a public charge.

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Congressman Albert Johnson, R-WA, 1924 speech

• With this immigration act, the US is undertaking
  to regulate and control the great problem of the
  commingling of races. Our hope is in a
  homogeneous nation. At one time we welcomed all
  and all helped to build the nation. But now
  asylum ends. This nation must be as completely
  unified as any nation in Europe or Asia.
  Self-preservation demands it.

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1913 Ellis Island mental testing

• moron detectors
• 80 immigrants scored feebleminded
• Deportation rate increased

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• 1918 IQ tests
• US Army
• For recruits who were non-English speaking or
  illiterate.
• Complete the picture.
• 40 found to be FM.

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Actual Test Questions, Army Alpha

• SAMPLE People hear with their eyes\ears\nose\m
  outh
• 1. Pinochle is played with
• rackets\cards\pins\dice
• 2. Habeus corpus is a term used in
• medicine\law\pedagogy
• 3. Bud Fisher is a famous
• actor\author\athlete\comic
• 4. Velvet Joe appears in ads for
• tooth powder\soap\dry goods\tobacco
• 5. The number of a Kaffirs legs is . . . 2\4\6\8

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WWI Army Mental Tests Racial Rankings
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Positive eugenics Fitter Families contests and
the Cross of Honor of the German Mother
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US Eugenic Euthanasia and Disability
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1917 eugenic film The Black Stork There are
times when saving a life is a greater crime than
taking one.
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1927 re-titled Are You Fit to Marry?

• Haiseldens autobio We have been invaded. Our
  streets are infested with an Army of the Unfita
  dangerous, vicious army of death and dread....
  Horrid semi-humans drag themselves along our
  streets.... What are you doing to do about it?

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Negative eugenics

• Voluntary measures
• Eugenic education, propaganda aimed at general
  public, e.g. school textbooks, films, state fair
  exhibits.
• Coercive policies
• Permanent confinement in institutions.
• Surgical sterilization, sometimes as condition
  for parole.

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Who was targeted as unfit?

• Charles Davenport, head of the Eugenics Record
  Office, the scientific branch of the US movement
• It is a reproach to our intelligence that we
  as a people should have to support about half a
  million insane, feebleminded, epileptic, blind
  and deaf 80,000 prisoners and 100,000 paupers
  at a cost of over 100 million dollars per year.

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Alexander Graham Bell

• 1872 founds deaf school in Boston.
• Invents devices to aid hearing.
• Studies heredity in deaf families.
• 1883 avoid creating a deaf-mute variety of the
  human race by intermarriages.
• Becomes leader of eugenics movement.

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Perkins School for the Blind 1928 family
pedigree and expenses
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• 1921 legislation inspired by hereditarian
  beliefs prevent marriages of blind people.

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Carrie Buck

• By 1924, approximately 3,000 people had been
  involuntarily sterilized in America the vast
  majority (2,500) in California. That year
  Virginia passed a Eugenical Sterilization Act
  based on Laughlins Model Law. It was adopted as
  part of a cost-saving strategy to relieve the tax
  burden in a state where public facilities for the
  "insane" and "feebleminded" had experienced rapid
  growth. The law was also written to protect
  physicians who performed sterilizing operations
  from malpractice lawsuits. Virginias law
  asserted that "heredity plays an important part
  in the transmission of insanity, idiocy,
  imbecility, epilepsy and crime" It focused on
  "defective persons" whose reproduction
  represented "a menace to society."

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• Carrie Buck, a seventeen-year-old girl from
  Charlottesville, Virginia, was picked as the
  first person to be sterilized. Carrie had a
  child, but was not married. Her mother Emma was
  already a resident at an asylum, the Virginia
  Colony for the Epileptic and the Feebleminded.
  Officials at the Virginia Colony said that Carrie
  and her mother shared the hereditary traits of
  "feeblemindedness" and sexually promiscuity. To
  those who believed that such traits were
  genetically transmitted, Carrie fit the laws
  description as a "probable potential parent of
  socially inadequate offspring." A legal challenge
  was arranged on Carries behalf to test the
  constitutional validity of the law.

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(No Transcript)
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• At her trial, several witnesses offered evidence
  of Carries inherited "defects" and those of her
  mother Emma. Colony Superintendent Dr. Albert
  Priddy testified that Emma Buck had "a record of
  immorality, prostitution, untruthfulness and
  syphilis." His opinion of the Buck family more
  generally was "These people belong to the
  shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of
  anti-social whites of the South." Although Harry
  Laughlin never met Carrie, he sent a written
  deposition echoing Priddys conclusions about
  Carries "feeblemind-edness" and "moral
  delinquency."

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• Sociologist Arthur Estabrook, of the Eugenics
  Record Office, traveled to Virginia to testify
  against Carrie. He and a Red Cross nurse examined
  Carries baby Vivian and concluded that she was
  "below average" and "not quite normal." Relying
  on these comments, the judge concluded that
  Carrie should be sterilized to prevent the birth
  of other "defective" children.

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• It is better for all the
• world, if instead of waiting
• to execute degenerate
• offspring for crime or to
• let them starve for their
• imbecility, society can prevent
• those who are manifestly unfit
• from continuing their kind...
• Three generations of imbeciles
• are enough.
• Supreme Court Justice
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• in Buck v. Bell

Oliver Wendell Holmes