In this special issue devoted to the study of pigmentation, it is only fitting that we reflect on how this trait has been utilized to promote specific political and social agendas in both the United States and Europe. It was Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin, who coined the term eugenics in 1883 while advocating that society should promote the marriage of what he felt were the fittest individuals by providing monetary incentives.1 Shortly thereafter, many intellectuals and political leaders (e.g., Alexander Graham Bell, Winston Churchill, John Maynard Keynes, and Woodrow Wilson) accepted the notion that modern societies, as a matter of policy, should promote the improvement of the human race through various forms of governmental intervention. While initially this desire was manifested as the promotion of selective breeding, it ultimately contributed to the intellectual underpinnings of state-sponsored discrimination, forced sterilization, and genocide.
From the perspective of an academic in 2008, it can be hard to fathom how pioneering studies of chromosomal segregation would be juxtaposed to studies of Pedigrees of Pauper Stocks in England, Individual and Racial Inheritance of Musical Traits or Heritable Factors in Human Fitness and Their Social Control. These examples come from the 1923 report of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, titled Eugenics, Genetics, and the Family.2 In the opening address, Henry F. Osborn, then president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York (the site of the meeting), stated,
In the US we are slowly waking to the consciousness that education and environment do not fundamentally alter racial values. We are engaged in a serious struggle to maintain our historic republican institutions through barring the entrance of those unfit to share in the duties and responsibilities of our well-founded government.In the matter of racial virtues, my opinion is that from biological principles there is little promise in the melting-pot theory. Put three races together (Caucasian, Mongolian, and the Negroid) you are likely to unite the vices of all three as the virtues.For the worlds work give me a pure-bloodedascertain through observation and experiment what each race is best fitted to accomplish.If the Negro fails in government, he may become a fine agriculturist or a fine mechanic.The right of the state to safeguard the character and integrity of the race or races on which its future depends is, to my mind, as incontestable as the right of the state to safeguard the health and morals of its peoples.
It is important to appreciate that within the U.S. and European scientific communities these ideas were not fringe but widely held and taught in universities. The report of the Eugenics meeting was the lead story in the journal Science on October 7, 1921, and this opening address was published, in its entirety, beginning on the first page of the issue.3
To understand why eugenics became a serious scientific movement in the 1920s, it is useful to look back 20 years earlier. In 1902, Charles B. Davenport, then a Professor of Zoology at the University of Chicago, approached the Carnegie Institution with a request for $45,000 to create a Biological Experiment Station for the study of evolution on the Cold Spring Harbor Campus.4 His aim would be the analytic and experimental study of the causes of specific differentiationof race change. He proposed to accomplish this by the cross breeding of animals and plants to find the laws of commingling of qualitiesthe study of the laws and limits of inheritance.4 Within this brief two-page proposal, Davenport commingles the scientific genetic approach that dated back to Mendel with his personal fascination with the perceived human racial differences of his day.
Within 5 years the Experimental Evolution Department had established over 100 animal stocks that included 20 mammals and dozens of insects (including crickets and Drosophila), and over 400 flowering plants.5 It took until 1910 for Davenport to begin studies on human inheritance with the creation of the Eugenics Record Office. Financial support came from Mrs. E.H. Harriman (a wealthy philanthropist), John Harvey Kellogg (the breakfast cereal magnate), and the American Breeders' Association. This association was the first membership-based group whose mission included the promotion of eugenics research in the United States through a subcommittee chaired by ichthyologist and Stanford University President David Starr Jordan.6,7 By 1918, H.H. Laughlin was hired as the superintendent of the Eugenics Records Office, which transitioned from a freestanding, self-supporting endeavor to a sub-department of the Experimental Evolution Department under the control of the Carnegie Institution.8 Davenport conceived of this office to mainly serve eugenical interests in the capacity of repository and clearing house and to provide data adequate to making eugenical studies.8 Their method was to collect family histories from better families and subnormal families based upon methods previously described by Galton.
By the 1920s, three major efforts pushed the eugenic agenda in the United States and subsequently throughout Europe: (1) The Eugenics Research Association with Laughlin and Davenport as leaders and in affiliation with the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (2) The American Eugenics Society founded by Laughlin, Harry Crampton, Madison Grant, and Henry Fairfield Osborn with the purpose of promoting the eugenical movement at both the scientific and popular level. (3) The Eugenics Records Office, directed by Davenport and run by Laughlin with the express purpose of providing the scientific data to support the eugenics movement.
A concerted effort of this magnitude with the expressed support of the mainstream scientific establishment (e.g., AAAS as operator of the journal Science; the American Breeders' Association, which later became the American Genetics Association; and the Carnegie Institution) had an effect throughout both the scientific and governmental establishments worldwide. Specifically, by 1936 when both England and the U.S. genetic scientific communities finally condemned eugenical sterilization, over 60,000 forced sterilizations were already performed in the United States on mostly poor (and often African-American) people confined to mental hospitals.9,10 The practice of forced sterilizations for the unfit was almost unanimously supported by eugenicists. The American Eugenics Society had hoped, in time, to sterilize one-tenth of the U.S. population, or millions of Americans.11
Laughlin's publication of Eugenical Sterilization in the United States in 1922 included the drafting of a model law for compulsory sterilization that was the bedrock of forced sterilization programs throughout the country. According to Davenport, Laughlin's book on sterilization is recognized as the standard.12 In 1930, Laughlin comments about the U.S. Supreme Court upholding a Virginia sterilization statute as, the establishment of the eugenical authority of the state[enabling] the prevention of hereditary degeneration by a method sound from the legal, eugenical and humanitarian points of view.It is now possible for any state, if it desires to do so, to enact a sterilization statute.12 A typical study prepared by Laughlin and used to justify these laws is excerpted below:
The Problem of the Feeble-Minded in Connecticutthe 11,962 feeble-minded personsthe total number who came under the purview of the Surveyhave been studied individually in reference to nine subject as follows: (1) sex, (2) age, (3) recidivism, (4) diagnostic class, (5) intelligence quotient, (6) race descent, (7) nativity, (8) citizenship, (9) kin in institutions.At the present rate every inhabitant of Connecticut is expending5 and 1/3 as many dollars on the socially inadequate and the individually handicapped as the average inhabitant was spending for the same purpose 20 years ago.13
Davenport's eugenical research is very typical of countless studies purporting to link perceived human differences to the burgeoning field of Genetics. This work is best appreciated by quoting the author directly:
Successful naval officers are of various types.The three commonist traits are: (1) love of sea; (2) capacity for fighting; (3) capacity for commanding or administering.The performance of a man depends in large degree upon his inherent, inheritable traits.The sea makes to different people varied appeal.The love of the sea, sea-lust or thalasssophilia is apparently a specific trait to be differentiated from wanderlust or love of adventure.One of the most striking characteristics of sealust is that it is wholly a male characterso the appeal of the sea develops under the secretion of the germ gland in the boy. It is theoretically possible that some mothers are heterozygous for love of the sea, so that when married to a thalassophilic man half of their children will show sea-lust and half will not.14
What is often not appreciated is that Nazi efforts were bolstered by the published works of the American eugenics movement as the intellectual underpinnings for its social policies. One of Hilter's first acts after gaining control of the German government was the passage of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhtung erbkranken Nachwuchses) in July 1933.15 The Nazis, when proposing their own sterilization program, specifically noted the success of sterilization laws in California documented most notably by the American eugenicist P.B. Popenoe.16 The Nazi program ultimately resulted in the sterilization of 360,000375,000 persons.9 The intellectual linkage between the United States and Nazi eugenic programs is further illustrated by Davenport's presence on the editorial boards of two influential German racial hygiene journals, Zeitschrift fr Rassenkunde und ihrer Nachbargebiete and the Zeitschrift fr menschliche Vererbungs- und Konstitutionslehre.17 Sadly, with the benefit of 70 years hindsight, we can see the alignment of the stated goals of the Eugenics Records Office with Nazi social engineering programs as revealed by Davenport:
To investigate the nature of those forces or agencies which improve or impair racial or family-stock qualities. These forces which act upon immigration, mate selection and fertility, differential by race and family-stock quality are those which have been given most attention. In the field of immigration, studies have been made in Europe and America on the selection of immigrants have played as recruits to the breeding stock of the American people. Many of these researches were conducted in collaboration with the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the House of Rep. and the Immigration Service of the U.S. Government.18
It wasn't until 1935 that a review panel convened by the Carnegie Institution concluded that the Eugenics Research Office research did not have scientific merit, and subsequently withdrew funding in 1939.19 In examining this dark history of American science, it is equally important to appreciate that eugenics was but a small part the work of the Carnegie. The Department that Davenport created, which under his tenure later became the Genetics Department in 1920, was not focused on eugenics. In fact, often eugenics-related work represented less than 1 page in what was typically a 30-page summary of the department's yearly activities. This was a department that went on to support the efforts of Thomas Hunt Morgan (genes are carried on chromosomes, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933), Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase (DNA as genetic material), A.H. Sturtevant (first genetic chromosomal map, 1 map unit=1% frequency of recombination), and Barbara McClintock (transposons, for which she received the 1983 Nobel Prize).
In this special Pigmentation Issue, and on the eve of the election of our first President of European/African ancestry, it is useful to revisit the history of the eugenics movement to recognize the contributions of the scientists who have eliminated it from today's scientific life and analyze and learn from our mistakes.
In 1925, T.H. Morgan clearly identifies an important criticism of the eugenics movement. He directly attacks Davenport's and Laughlin's approach (without mentioning their names) by pointing out that despite all their exhaustive family pedigrees, they failed to really understand the nature of the trait they thought they were studying.
In the case of man's physical defects, there are a few extremely abnormal conditions where the evidence indicates that something is inherited, but even here there is much that is obscure. The case most often quoted is feeble-mindedness that has been said to be inherited as a Mendelian recessive, but until some more satisfactory definition can be given as to where feeble-mindedness begins and ends, and until it has been determined how many and what internal physical defects may produce a general condition of this sort, and until it has been determined to what extent feeble-mindedness is due to syphilis, it is extravagant to pretend to claim there is a single Mendelian factor for this conditionuntil all the social conditions surrounding the childhood of the individual are examined and given proper weight, serious doubts will arise as to what form of inheritances is producing the results.20
Some have argued that the lesson of this period was that:
Genetics was corrupted in the 1920s by the confusion of folk knowledge with scientific inference. For whatever reasons, outsiders who recognized it were shunned, and insiders were, as they say, a day late and a dollar short. The fairly obvious lesson to be learned is that where science appears to validate folk beliefs, it needs to be subjected to considerably higher standards of scrutiny than ordinary science.21
We may want to ask ourselves: What (if anything) that we research today will seem as unfathomable as the sex-linked trait, love of the sea?
Link:
U.S. Scientists' Role in the Eugenics Movement (19071939 ...
- Ridding the Race of His Defective Blood Eugenics in the Journal, 19061948 | NEJM - nejm.org - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- The Progressive Ideas That Fueled America's Eugenics Movement | Bradley Thomas - Foundation for Economic Education - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Few People Know The Real Story About North Carolinas Eugenics Program - Only In Your State - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- University Art Museums Become Unlikely Homes for These Portraits - The New York Times - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Real-world Influences of Frank Herbert's 'Dune' - Dune News Net - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Everything you don't know about neurodiversity The Mass Media - The Mass Media - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Details of Japans experiment with eugenic sterilization released - BioEdge - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Give more people with learning disabilities the chance to work ... - EurekAlert - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- 'They Cloned Tyrone' ending explained - Mashable - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Failing Learning Disabled People: The Contradictions of 1945 ... - Byline Times - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- What happened during Marc Tessier-Lavigne's tenure as Stanford ... - Palo Alto Online - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Planned Parenthood: 'Virginity is a social construct' - The Christian Institute - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Is evolutionary biology racist? Why Evolution Is True - Why Evolution Is True - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Beware the anti-democratic liberal centre - Morning Star Online - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Unveiling the dark past: eugenics and its role in legitimising racism - Epigram - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Has the MCU's Scariest Villain - CBR - Comic Book Resources - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Fox News in Spanish bombards viewers with right-wing propaganda - MSNBC - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- The Reproductive Movement Must Reclaim Its Radical Roots and Be ... - Literary Hub - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- 3 judges who chipped away abortion rights to hear federal abortion pill appeal - ABC News - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Eugenics: Definition, Movement & Meaning - HISTORY - HISTORY - January 22nd, 2023 [January 22nd, 2023]
- Iris flower data set - Wikipedia - December 28th, 2022 [December 28th, 2022]
- Canadas policies are a death sentence for disabled people. The country must reckon with its modern eugenics - Toronto Star - December 28th, 2022 [December 28th, 2022]
- Op-Ed: Eugenics is making a comeback. Stop it in its tracks - Los ... - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Eugenics, Anti-Immigration Laws Of The Past Still Resonate Today ... - November 21st, 2022 [November 21st, 2022]
- Eugenics: Its Origin and Development (1883 - Present) - Genome.gov - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- 150000 Black Women Were Forced Into the Eugenics Program - History of Yesterday - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- 20 million black babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade. Where is the equity in that? - Washington Examiner - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- What Is a 'Healthy' Cereal, Anyway? - Lifehacker - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Eugenics and Scientific Racism - Genome.gov - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Eugenics Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- The shameful support of eugenics by the Lewiston Evening Journal - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Understanding "longtermism": Why this suddenly influential philosophy ... - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- NYU Local: Women's Health: Involuntary Sterilization Then and Now - Government Accountability Project - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- A Desire to Cure, Not to Punish: Women Physicians and Eugenics in the American West, 19001930 by Jacqueline D. Antonovich - Smith College Grcourt Gate - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- In unaired portions of Tucker Carlson interview, Ye made antisemitic remarks, spoke of fake children infiltrating his home - The Hill - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Black women and reproductive freedom meet a crossroad in the fight for abortion rights - Afro American - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- The difference between race and ethnicityand why it matters - Fast Company - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Letter to the Editor Removal of Luther West's name is just - North Wind Online - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL - Boing Boing - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- I Lived In An Asylum Turned Childrens Institution, Said To Be Haunted By Its Horrifying Past. - HuffPost - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- The Evolution of Godless Practices: Eugenics, Infanticide, and Transhumanism - The Epoch Times - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Disability campaigners accuse government of 'back-door eugenics' as families struggle to survive inflation - Morning Star Online - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Fox News host predicts that clean energy will lead to eugenics - Media Matters for America - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Rockwell Kent at the Fleming: Art into hands of many, rather than the few - Rutland Herald - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Review: 'Amsterdam' is a star-filled comedy that loses its way - Star Tribune - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Pros & Cons of Eugenics | Healthfully - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- History Highlight: Proponents of eugenics, population control, and ... - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- 31 days of horror movies: 2007s Frontiers is a masterpiece of French Extremity - 1428 Elm - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Explaining Church Teaching on IVF The Torch | Boston College's Catholic Newspaper - The Torch - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- The Vaccine That Could Cure America: Reversing Roe - The Chattanoogan - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Takeaways from Episode 1 of The U.S. and the Holocaust - - St. Louis Jewish Light - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- Lloyd Benes: Challenging 8 arguments that support unrestricted abortion - Loveland Reporter-Herald - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- 11 Disability Rights Activists on Where the Fight for Justice Stands - Teen Vogue - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- What Ballot Initiatives Will Californians Face in the Nov. 8th Election? - California Globe - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- The U.S. and the Holocaust. Revisiting America's Role | THIRTEEN - New York Public Media - MetroFocus - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- A new University of Virginia board member once brought a eugenicist to campus. Students are angry. - Higher Ed Dive - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- World Wars, Eugenics, Mass Extinctions: Would You Believe Were Talking About Splatoon? - Kotaku Australia - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Freaks Controversy Explained: Was Tod Browning's 1932 Horror Movie Exploitative Or Progressive? - /Film - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Eugenics Wars | Memory Alpha | Fandom - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Behind the Scenes: The U.S. and the Holocaust - GBH News - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- The 32 Most Anticipated TV Shows of Fall 2022 - TIME - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- BSO and GBH Host 'An Evening With Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, And Sarah Botstein' at Symphony Hall Next Month - Broadway World - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Paper: Train future psychologists to dismantle racism, injustice in society - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Croydons Pearson feels the pressure in MasterChef kitchen - Inside Croydon - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- SCOTUS Claims Abortion Proponents Are Motivated by Eugenics and Eliminating the 'Unfit'But History Says Otherwise - Ms. Magazine - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Birth of the Abortion Industrial Complex: Eugenics Evolves - Capital Research Center - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Mendels genetic revolution and the legacy of scientific racism - Peoples Dispatch - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- When Sperm And Eggs Are Monetized, Existence Is Transactional - The Federalist - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Historian shares history of the dark ending of the diverse Malaga Island community - Press Herald - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Why We Are Not 'In This Together' - LA Progressive - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- How Close Are We to War with China? | Guests: Rep. Chris Stewart & Eric Schmitt | 8/2/22 - The Glenn Beck Program - iHeartRadio - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- STAM: Alma Adams, eugenics and radical abortion The North State Journal - North State Journal - July 29th, 2022 [July 29th, 2022]
- Moving from Rights to Justice: Uprooting Ableism and Cultivating Disability Justice - Next City - July 29th, 2022 [July 29th, 2022]
- Body politics: the secret history of the US anti-abortion movement - The Guardian - July 29th, 2022 [July 29th, 2022]
- 'The View' will tap Alyssa Farah Griffin as permanent co-host following Meghan McCain exit, sources say - FOX Bangor/ABC 7 News and Stories - July 29th, 2022 [July 29th, 2022]
- There's a straight line from eugenics to 'biblical family values' to white supremacy and the anti-abortion movement - Baptist News Global - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]
- Viewpoint: In response to historical misuse of genetics to defend eugenics, some egalitarians call for defunding. Here's why that's not the solution -... - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]
- To Be or Not to Be a Mother: A Timeless Question with New Urgency - Justia Verdict - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]
- Another point of view - Arkansas Online - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]
- A Vasectomy Historian on Why Male Sterilization Won't Solve the Abortion Problem - MEL Magazine - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]