EUGENICS

EUGENICS . The term eugenics, from the Greek meaning "good birth," was coined by British scientist Francis Galton (1822–1911). As Galton defined it in Essays in Eugenics (1909), eugenics is "the study of agencies under social control which may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations" (p. 81). Eugenics seeks to improve the human gene pool by encouraging reproduction among "desirable" members of society (positive eugenics) and by discouraging reproduction among the "undesirable" (negative eugenics).

The Origins of Eugenics

Influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Galton researched the ancestry of eminent men in Great Britain and believed that the characteristics that led to their success—especially disposition and cognitive ability—were inherited. Environment might have had some influence, but for Galton heredity was central to an individual's traits and personality.

In addition to believing that talent and character could be inherited, Galton recognized that society was interfering with natural selection. Though evolution by Darwinian natural selection had produced humanity, developed society was drastically altering its course. In nature, natural selection eliminated the weak and the sick, allowing only the swift and strong to survive. In civilized societies, however, weak and "feebleminded" persons were cared for and provided for through charities, government programs, and religious groups, so that natural selection was no longer operating on humanity. Galton believed that if nothing were done, society would suffer the deleterious effects of having "fit" traits diluted by "unfit" traits.

Consequently, Galton believed that civilized human society ought to take control of its own breeding practices by encouraging eugenic behavior that promoted the future health of society. He suggested that, much as farmers breed only the best livestock, humans should promote reproduction among only the best of the human stock. Only then would the human race be able to maintain its level of civilization and prevent the regression of humanity toward greater feeblemindedness and greater physical weakness. Galton's solution to the problem was to encourage individuals in the upper classes—whose success Galton attributed to inherited traits—to have more children.

After 1900, when the work of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) was rediscovered, the true impact of heredity permeated both the scientific community and society, and eugenics seemed to gain momentum. In his experiments with pea plants, Mendel had shown how individual characteristics such as pea color and plant height were inherited according to a regular pattern. Eugenicists applied Mendel's results to human trait inheritance, assuming that intelligence, attitude, and other complex human behaviors were the result of a clear-cut pattern of inheritance. Examining an individual's pedigree, then, could yield powerful clues about what traits that individual's offspring might inherit.

Building on this apparently solid scientific foundation, eugenic scientists in both the United Kingdom and the United States attempted to persuade governments and society to embrace eugenic measures. Established in 1910 by Charles Davenport (1866–1944), the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, served as the central clearinghouse for family pedigree information and eugenic research in the United States. Davenport and his colleague Harry H. Laughlin (1880–1943), superintendent of the Eugenics Records Office, developed pedigree surveys and trained fieldworkers to gather family pedigree information for hundreds of individuals. Based on their examination of such pedigrees, Davenport and Laughlin became convinced that the nation's gene pool faced threats on two fronts. Internally, "feebleminded" individuals were outbreeding the graduates of Ivy League universities, lowering the overall intelligence of the gene pool. Externally, waves of new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe threatened to overtake the Anglo-Saxon stock in the United States. Both problems were "dysgenic" because they caused a decline in the quality breeding population, so urgent action was required to prevent the further deterioration of society.

In dealing with the dysgenic effects of immigration, the Eugenics Records Office was influential in convincing the U.S. Congress to pass restrictive new laws. Psychologist Henry H. Goddard (1886–1957) had performed intelligence tests on immigrants at Ellis Island that seemed to support the eugenic argument that immigrants were of lower intelligence than native stock. Using Goddard's research as well as his own, Laughlin testified before Congress that the waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were diluting the "purity" of older American immigrant populations from northern Europe, as well as costing taxpayers millions of dollars in social services. Heavily influenced by the eugenicists' arguments, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which set immigration quotas based on the 1890 census. Consequently, immigrants of "eugenic" stock from northern and western Europe were admitted in larger numbers than the "dysgenic" stock from southern and eastern Europe.

In addition to its work with the U.S. Congress, the Eugenics Records Office provided model sterilization laws for states trying to implement "negative" eugenic measures. Scientists and fieldworkers from the Eugenics Records Office offered expert testimony in sterilization and institutionalization cases for those who had been diagnosed with a range of inherited "defects," such as alcoholism, pauperism, criminality, feeblemindedness, and insanity. Yet even before the coordinated efforts by the Eugenics Records Office, states began passing eugenic sterilization laws, beginning with Indiana in 1907. Other states soon followed, including California in 1909. In 1913 and 1917, amendments to the California law expanded the state's power to involuntarily sterilize the "feebleminded," certain prisoners, and criminals with more than three convictions.

In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court heard an appeal by a seventeen-year-old woman from Virginia named Carrie Buck. Buck, along with her mother Emma, had been labeled "feebleminded" and placed under the care of the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. After the unmarried Carrie Buck gave birth to a baby girl who was diagnosed as "feebleminded" at eight months of age, the superintendent of the institution ordered her sterilization under a new Virginia law. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, who, having heard testimony in favor of sterilization from eugenic experts including Laughlin, ruled that the state of Virginia did indeed have the constitutional right to involuntarily sterilize Carrie Buck. In the majority opinion (Buck v. Bell 274 U.S. 200, 1927), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes argued that the public good demanded that action be taken to sterilize Carrie Buck, because "three generations of imbeciles are enough."

The Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell allowed states to continue forcibly sterilizing and institutionalizing those deemed unfit for reproduction. California had involuntarily sterilized nearly twenty thousand individuals by the time its sterilization law was overturned in 1951, more than had been sterilized in any other state. All told, over sixty thousand people in thirty-three states were sterilized for a variety of inherited "defects."

In Germany, the eugenics movement (Rassenhygiene ) gained momentum as the Nazis rose to power and passed forced sterilization laws beginning in 1933. Nazi scientists and politicians approvingly cited the American experiment with eugenics, particularly in California, in their arguments for broader powers in determining who should be sterilized. When the horrors of the Nazi regime's racial hygiene program were fully revealed, eugenics programs in the United States and elsewhere were largely discredited. Some have argued, however, that though state-sponsored eugenics is now roundly condemned, eugenic attitudes persist in less overt forms.

Religion and Eugenics

Galton recognized the potential power of eugenic ideals and the necessary conditions for their acceptance. He wrote in 1909 in his Memories of My Life, "I take Eugenics very seriously, feeling that its principles ought to become one of the dominant motives in a civilized nation, much as if they were one of its religious tenets" (p. 322). The success of eugenics lay not only in its ability to present pertinent information in support of eugenics, but also in its ability to influence one's entire way of living. Thus, the eugenicists appealed not only to the science behind their efforts but also to religious sensibilities by providing an ultimate explanation for an individual's existence: responsibility to the future of the gene pool. Eugenics required an attitude of individual submission, an ethical orientation toward the greater good. To many scientists who argued for eugenic measures, religion motivated ethical behavior better than any other social phenomenon. Hence, eugenicists went to great lengths in analyzing and appropriating religion for eugenic ends.

Davenport grounded religious belief on the apparent science of eugenics in a lecture he delivered in 1916, "Eugenics as a Religion." Noting that every proper religion has its own statement of belief, Davenport proceeded to annunciate a twelve-point creed to serve as the basis for the new religion of eugenics. For Davenport, believing in eugenics meant believing that one is the "trustee" of one's genetic material; that one believes in the power of pedigree over environment; that one should have four to six offspring; that immigration should be limited to weed out the "socially unfit"; and that one is responsible ultimately to the race. Davenport's eugenic religion required that one be responsible both to one's genetic past and to society's genetic future. Along with Davenport's creed, the American Eugenics Society provided A Eugenics Catechism (1926) in question-and-answer form. The catechism assured readers that eugenics was not antagonistic to the Bible, for eugenics was concerned with the well-being of the totality of humanity. The catechism also promised immortality through one's genetic inheritance, passed on from generation to generation.

Likewise, Paul Popenoe and Roswell Johnson's Applied Eugenics (1933) gave immortality a firm grounding in scientific knowledge. In a passage describing the long line of human descent, Popenoe and Johnson argue that one's genetic makeup is immortal because genes, as the factors that determine who one is, can be passed on to innumerable generations. The authors argue that immortality is no longer merely hope but a real possibility. Even as the body dies, the genes that contain the information to produce the body live on in one's offspring. Popenoe and Johnson conclude, "To the eugenist, life everlasting is something more than a figure of speech or a theological concept—it is as much a reality as the beat of a heart, the growth of muscles, or the activity of the mind" (p. 41). Popenoe and Johnson go so far as to argue that one passes on one's soul from generation to generation by the propagation of the genetic material; religion has but speculated about the nature of the soul and its immortality, but eugenic science has proven their relationship. According to eugenics, then, an individual passes on his or her very soul to his or her offspring. As Davenport had argued in his creed, the proper attitude is one of submission to the greater good of society and to the precious inheritance of genetic material.

Popenoe and Johnson devote an entire chapter to the subject of eugenics and its relationship to religion. Interestingly, Popenoe and Johnson begin by asserting that "natural selection favors the altruistic and ethical individual because he is more likely to leave children to carry on his endowment and his attitude" than the merely selfish, shortsighted individual. As Galton had first observed, modern society has interfered with the operation of Darwinian natural selection. But unlike Galton, Popenoe and Johnson see the problem not only in society's failure to eliminate the weak and unintelligent, but also in its failure to rid itself of selfish and shortsighted individuals. They argue that selfishness creates problems for eugenicists since eugenics is based on placing the good of the race ahead of the good of the individual. Thus, the eugenics movement requires a structure for encouraging altruism and selflessness, a structure provided by religion.

For Popenoe and Johnson, science can offer religion a solid basis for ethics, one amenable to eugenic ideals, as well as present a rational explanation for the immortality of the soul. Religion need not retreat from the field of ethics; instead, religion should reexamine its ethical groundings. Dogmatic moral injunctions are no longer tenable in a eugenic world. Popenoe and Johnson conclude that the success of eugenics depends on the individual placing the present and future good of humanity above the good of the individual. Though many societal organizations foster selfless giving, the church is the most effective at encouraging altruism. Religion and the church can be a driving force behind eugenic change if they will but base their ethical systems on a science.

The "Report and Program of the Eugenics Society of the United States of America" (1925) pointed to the central role that religion had played in fostering both dysgenic and eugenic attitudes. Still, the society wondered whether the social value of religion could be used to further eugenic ends. No doubt, religion influenced dysgenic behavior by encouraging charity and providing social services. But like Popenoe and Johnson, both of whom sat on the Eugenics Society's advisory council, the society recognized religion's potential to influence individual behavior toward eugenic ends. The Eugenics Society concluded that if further research showed that religion were in fact primarily dysgenic, then eugenics had to devise a means of using religion's moral authority while altering its message.

One way in which the Eugenics Society encouraged religious engagement with eugenic principles was by sponsoring a sermon contest for clergy. Submissions were judged according to their ability to present eugenic ideals in clear and coherent fashion. Most did so by interpreting religious teachings in light of eugenic ideals. One sermon claimed that the Bible was a book of eugenics because it chronicled the lineages of important leaders and prophets. Jesus was seen as the product of the highest religious and moral stock of priestly and prophetic individuals. Another sermon claimed it a sin to bring feebleminded and diseased children into the world. Finally, one sermon argued that Jesus endorsed eugenics in saying that it would have been better if Judas had never been born (Mt. 26:24; Mk. 14:21). In this view, eugenics could be a crucial tool in bringing about the ordered society of which Jesus seemingly spoke.

Because marriage was an important focus of eugenic measures, some clergy took the initiative to aid the eugenic movement by enforcing a version of "negative" eugenics. In 1912, W. T. Sumner, the dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of Chicago, announced that he would not marry couples who failed to produce a physician's certificate of good health, a move endorsed by two hundred clergy. The hope was that the clergy would aid eugenicists by preventing unprofitable unions that would pass on undesirable traits.

Eugenic scientists embraced religious language even as they critiqued the dysgenic impact of various religions. Still, they recognized religion's unequalled social power in influencing individual behavior and in urging action. Even as they criticized the dysgenic effects of unconditional religious charity and threatened to take over the entire field of ethics, eugenicists urged religion to incorporate scientific analyses into its ethical systems and embrace eugenic ideals.

Eugenics in Recent History

Interest in the history of the eugenics movement has increased markedly since the 1980s as new genetic technologies have been developed and as the Human Genome Project has completed the map of human DNA. Prenatal screening for genetic disorders, along with the legalization of abortion in the United States and the United Kingdom, has increased the debate over the social consequences of genetic knowledge. Debates have swirled around the proper use of such new technologies and the social consequences of their availability. Key concerns include the difference between notions of treatment versus notions of improvement. For example, if it becomes possible, should the genes for Tay-Sachs disease or cystic fibrosis be removed from the gene pool? Would such action constitute eugenic improvement or disease prevention?

The history of eugenics has also been invoked in debates surrounding the connection between intelligence and race. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve (1994) worries about the dysgenic effects of variable breeding rates because, the authors argue, racial groups with lower intelligence levels are reproducing at a higher rate than races with higher IQs. Critics of The Bell Curve assert a more environmental explanation for variations in intelligence and argue that genetics are not decisive in determining an individual's intelligence.

Other scholars have maintained that the use of new genetic technologies tends to support existing social hierarchies and vested economic interests. They worry that economic interests will determine for whom and for what purpose genetic technologies will be used, which will in turn reinforce social stratification as those unable to afford genetic enhancements are left behind. If the means for enhancement are available, some argue, parents will demand that such technology be used. In this case, consumer demand, not government control, will drive a new eugenics based on the desire for "designer babies." Though they recognize the eugenic dangers, a number of theologians and ethicists have endorsed certain forms of genetic research because of their potential to relieve human suffering. For them, the promise of healing offered by genetic therapies outweighs the concerns over the misuse of new technologies and new therapies.

Bibliography

Allen, Garland E. "The Eugenics Records Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910–1940: An Essay in Institutional History." Osiris 2 (1986): 225–264.

American Eugenics Society. A Eugenics Catechism. New Haven, Conn., 1926.

Carlson, Elof Axel. The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., 2001. Traces the broad history of the idea of certain people as "undesirable" in connecting previous eugenic impulses with the eugenics movement in the twentieth century and the emerging issues raised by the genetic technologies of the twenty-first century.

Davenport, Charles. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. New York, 1911. Contains Davenport's research on trait inheritance and proposes a number of eugenic measures that were successfully implemented with Davenport's aid.

Duster, Troy. Backdoor to Eugenics. 2d ed. New York, 2003. A sociologist's exploration of the potential for eugenics in social and economic policies.

Galton, Francis. Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development. London, 1883. Chronicles Galton's proposals for eugenic measures.

Galton, Francis. Memories of My Life. 3d ed. London, 1909.

Galton, Francis. Essays in Eugenics. New York, 1909.

Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York, 1994.

Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge, Mass., 1995. The most comprehensive history of eugenics in the United States and the United Kingdom, connecting the early twentieth-century eugenics movement with subsequent developments in genetics and with debates over the role of genetics in human behavior and intelligence.

Larson, Edward J. Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South. Baltimore, Md., 1995.

Paul, Diane B. Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present. Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1995. Provides a good introduction to eugenics, examining its appeal to scientists and intellectuals.

Popenoe, Paul, and Roswell Johnson. Applied Eugenics. 2d ed. New York, 1933. Two leading American eugenicists explore the wide-ranging implications of eugenics for society.

Nathan J. Hallanger (2005)