Eugenics was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton to mean “well

born” It was the combinations of Mendelian genetics and

agricultural breeding positive eugenics

encouraged "fit" families to have more children negative eugenics

Set in place for "unfit" families to have few or no children at all

Did not take into account environmental factors, only bad genes.

Early Popularity

Many prominent Americans saw eugenics as a progressive solution to social problems Theodore Roosevelt Alexander Graham Bell Luther Burbank (the California seed producer) Henry Fairfield Osborn (president of the

American Museum of Natural History) David Starr Jordan (first president of Stanford

University)

Founders of Eugenics

Francis Galton (1822-1911) Born to upper class

British family 9th child and

youngest child Earned bachelor’s

degree in Mathematics in 1844 from Cambridge University

GALTON’S RESEARCHHereditary Talents and Character (1865)

Physical and Mental Characteristics were inherited Acquired Characteristics were not inherited High intelligence was no associated with physical weakness

Hereditary Genius: An inquiry into its laws and consequences (1869)

normal distribution and mean deviation used to show variability in math scores.

family trees to show how generations of families produced eminent people.

Charles Benedict Davenport

Born in 1866 1892 Graduated from Harvard

with a PhD in Biology 1910 Became director of Cold

Spring Harbor Laboratory Eugenics Record Office was

founded at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory financially supported by

Mary Williamson Averell John Harvey Kellogg Carnegie Institution of

Washington

Davenport’s Research

Human heredity Mendelian school of genetics

Miscegenation gave stats for biological and cultural

degradation following interbreeding between whites and blacks

Henry Herbert Goddard

Earned PhD under G. Stanley Hall at Clark University

1906

Became director of the Training School for the feeble minded at Vineland, New Jersey.

1912

“The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble Mindedness”

Kallikak Family StudyCompared two sides of a

New Jersey family

‘Kallikak’ came from Greek kalos= good kakos= bad

Take home message: Feeble minded people will produce more feeble minded people if they are allowed to breed with regular people.

Normal Side Feeble Side

Three Levels of Classification

1910 Goddard proposed a system for classifying individuals with mentalretardation based on IQ.

Moron IQ of 51-70Mild mental Retardation

ImbecileIQ of 26-50 Severe and Moderate Retardation

Idiot IQ of 0-25Profound Mental Retardation

Restricting Immigrants

1913 Ellis Island – Intelligence Testing80% of Immigrants as "feeble-minded”83% of Jews80% of Hungarians79% of Italians87% of the Russians

Harry Hamilton Laughlin Born 1889 Gradated from First

District Normal School (Truman State University)

Later interested in breeding and got in contact with Davenport and joined him

1917 he earned his Doctor of science from Princeton in Cytology

Immigration Act of 1924

Restricted numbers of immigrants from "undesirable" racial groups

Laughlin asked to testify in support of the bill. Stats on "excessive" insanity among immigrants

from southern Europe and eastern Europe.

Sterilization

Laughlin help with compulsory sterilization legislation

1914 - 12 states passed sterilization laws In 1907, Indiana was first to pass the laws

Laughlin help clarify and rewrite the lawsSoon 18 more states passed sterilization

laws.

Sterilization cont.

Candidates for Sterilization Feeble Minded People The Insane Criminals Epileptics Alcoholics Blind Persons Deaf Persons Deformed Persons Indigent Persons

Upheld in Court Carrie Buck

The first person in Virginia ordered to be sterilized Lawsuit ensued against the state

Laughlin and other ERO scientists testified at the trial in support of her sterilization

The state won the case It went to the United States Supreme Court

upheld the constitutionality of the laws that Laughlin helped write. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “Three generations of

imbeciles are enough.”

Five months later Carrie Bell was sterilized between 1907 and 1963 when over 64,000 individuals were

forcibly sterilized

Eugenics and Nazism

1934-1937 400,000 Germans were sterilized

1936 - 1939 Rockefeller fellowships allowed German genetic

researchers to travel to U.S. medical laboratories for collaboration.

Euthanasia programs were setup to kill tens

of thousands disabled persons

Modern Eugenics

Falling away after revelations of Nazi abuses

Human Genome Project (1986-2003)Designer BabiesGenius Sperm BankEgg Donors get $3500

References

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Hum

an_Genome/home.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenicshttp://galton.org/