Eugenics Notes

Eugenics

Exam Questions

• Define Eugenics.
• Differentiate between positive and negative eugenics.
• Scientific concepts against eugenics.

The Jukes Family

• Article in USA Today. The Jukes family lived in Upstate New York.
• Not a well-to-do family.
• Observed by Elijah Harris (late 1800s), a well-regarded doctor and academician. He described them as criminals and paupers.
• Margaret, the "mother of the whole criminal".
• Commissioned sociological study by Richard Dudell.

Richard Dudell's Study

• Studied crime, pauperism, disease, and heredity in the Jukes family.
• Estimated 1200 members, documented 700.
• 80 received 800 years of poverty assistance.
• 18 brothel keepers, around 100 common prostitutes.
• 40 with sexually transmitted diseases, spreading to approximately 450 others.
• 60 habitual thieves, 30 cases of bastardy.
• Minimum of two confirmed cases of feeblemindedness.
• Dudell's conclusion: Environmental factors (lack of money, medical care, education).
• Harris made Dudell rewrite, allowing for the role of genetics.

Sir Francis Galton and Eugenics

• Galton coined the term eugenics: "well born".
• Improvement of the human race through selective breeding.
• Cousin of Charles Darwin.
• Developed the pedigree chart.
• Nature versus nurture.
• Believed nature was better than nurture; genetics of aristocracy.
• In Britain, it was a class distinction issue.
• Concern about biological degeneration of the aristocracy.

Eugenics in the United States

• Also class distinctions but more focused on race and ethnicity.
• Post-Civil War context.
• Immigration was huge in the early 1900s.
• Ellis Island: Six-second physicals, marking with chalk.
• LCD: Loathsome contagious disease.
• H: Heart problem.
• L: Lame.
• Those marked were sent back.
• Family planning and prenatal care emerged from eugenics ideas.

Positive Eugenics

• Medals for families meeting standards.
• "Yay, I have a goodly heritage".
• Fitter family competitions at state fairs.
• Anthropometry: Measuring skull and head to determine intelligence; feeling for bumps and bone structure to asses intelligence.
• Pitted "us" against "them".

Negative Eugenics

• Marriage restrictions led to segregation.
• Forced sterilization.
• Teddy Roosevelt: "Any group of farmers who permitted their best stock to breed and let all the increase come from the worst stock would be treated as fit inmates or asylum. And forbid, we mix".
• American Eugenics Party platform: race and stock purity.
• Quantity control and quality control of offspring.
• Encouraging better genetic types to reproduce.

Eugenics Record Office (ERO)

• Established in 1910 at Cold Spring Harbor, New York.
• Harry Laughlin.
• Gathered family background information nationwide.
• Eugene Estebrook revisited the Jukes family and concluded defects were genetic.

Congressional Involvement

• Congressional hearings on immigration.
• Harry Laughlin's testimony: Blaming Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Greeks for crime.
• Immigration Law of 1924: Severely curtailed immigration.
• Laughlin wrote a paper on eugenical sterilization in the US.
• Model eugenical sterilization law.
• 1922: 3,200 individuals involuntarily sterilized. 1938: 30,000.

Buck versus Bell

• Supreme Court case from Virginia.
• Virginia State College for Epileptics and Feebleminded.
• Carrie Buck, 18 years old.
• Doctor Al McCready.
• Argument - Carrie Buck was adopted by a fairly wealthy family, did fairly well in school for 6 years, up until the Aunt's son sexually assaulted her while her adopted family went on a trip. When Carrie got pregnant, that was the argument they used to commit her to the Virginia State College of Legal Aid.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior: "Three generations of imbeciles is enough".

Eugenics in Education

• Taught in universities like Cornell, Harvard, Syracuse, Tulane, Case Western Reserve.
• 1914: 44 courses. 1935: Over 500.

Eugenics in Europe

• Rise of Nazi Germany. Ideas of eugenics were in full force.
• 1920, German scholars promoted the destruction of unworthy life.
• 1933 Law: forced sterilization to prevent offspring with hereditary diseases.
• Harry Laughlin received an honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg for his work on racial cleansing.
• 1939: Adolf Hitler signed Action T4, euthanasia of people deemed unfit.
• Jewish population decrease due to sterilization and euthanasia.

Post-World War II

• Eugenics fell out of favor in the US.
• 1939: ERO closed.
• 1945: Alabama was still passing laws about eugenic crime.
• 1973: Southern Poverty Law Center (Ralph versus Weinberger) - Minnie and Mary Alice Ralph were sterilized after their illiterate mother signed a form believing it was for birth control injections. Frank Johnson ruled that you can no longer use state or federal funds to pay for anything that would resemble that type of action.

Problems with Eugenics

• Most traits are polygenic; controlled by multiple genes.
• Genetic variation is important to maintain.
• Hybrid vigor: Mixing different characteristics for improvement.
• Genetic drift, where you can lose a particular trait for some reason, for many generations.
• Who gets to choose the traits? Choice made by those with the most power.

New Eugenics / Consumer Eugenics

• Prenatal genetic testing: embryos with Down syndrome are often aborted.
• In vitro fertilization with genetic testing.
• The concept of "designer babies" is it ethical to design what you want your baby to look like?
• Gene therapy: Great for fighting diseases, but not for other uses.

Ethical Considerations

• Importance of understanding history.
• Rationing of goods and choices made during events such as COVID-19 which sequestered elder populations, that has historical context.