Transforming Better Babies into Fitter Families: archival resources and the history of American eugenics movement, 1908-1930 (original) (raw)
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Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia For Promoting Useful Knowledge, 2005
In the early 1920s, determinist conceptions of biology helped to transform Better Babies contests into Fitter Families competitions with a strong commitment to controlled human breeding. While the earlier competitions were concerned for physical and mental standards, the latter contests collected data on a broad range of presumed hereditary characters. The complex behaviors thought to be determined by one's heredity included being generous, jealous, and cruel. In today's context, the popular media often interpret advances in molecular genetics in a similarly reductive and determinist fashion. This paper argues that such a narrow interpretation of contemporary biology unnecessarily constrains the public in developing social policies concerning complex social behavior ranging from crime to intelligence.
Resuscitating Bad Science: Eugenics Past and Present
2012
One hundred years ago, the discourse among America's economic, political, and scientific elite focused on "weeding out" the "unfit" people of the nation in order to make way for "well-born, " "superior" people to flourish and achieve the socalled "American Dream. " Now, in the 21st century, we are witness to a modern version of the same agenda, an agenda that serves to devalue people. The push for privatization and corporate models of education provides structure around the assumption that some people are worth more than others (Kohn, 2004; Woods, 2004). Reformers who wave around international test score comparisons in support of their ever more draconian pursuit of test-driven mandates fail to see the irony: What those comparisons show is not that the United States is behind, but that the United States fails its poor, Black, and Brown children. If we compare American White, middle-class and wealthy students with similar students in other industrialized countries, the test scores are comparable, if not better (Berliner, 2005). Current school reform agendas do not seek to rectify this problem. Rather, these agendas show that profit margins now outweigh humanity in the public sphere (Gould, 1996; Iverson, 2005). The message we hear today is less caustic than it was a century ago: We no longer talk about forced sterilization of the feebleminded, but the basic ideological rationale that allows us to live in a society that is so rewarding of the wealthy, and so punishing of the poor, remains intact (Winfield, 2007). Nineteenth-century social Darwinism and 20th-century eugenics spell out in stark terms who among us is worthy and who among
The 'Science' of Eugenics: America's Moral Detour
2014
Eugenics was popularized in the in the United States in the 1890s. High school and college textbooks from the 1920s through the 1940s often had chapters touting the scientific progress to be made from applying eugenic principles to the population. Many early scientific journals focusing on heredity in plants and lower organisms were published by eugenicists and included “scientific” articles on human eugenics-promoting studies of heredity. When eugenics fell out of favor after World War II, most references to eugenics were removed from textbooks and subsequent editions of relevant journals. We cannot erase history. To do so would allow it to repeat itself. Definition of Eugenics Eugenics is a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed. 2 The word is derived from the Greek word eu (good or well) and the suffix -genes (born). Eugenics is sometimes broadly applied to describe any human action whose goal is to impro...
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2001
A Critique and Commentary on "The Road to Eugenics
1996
Preparing my paper on Medicaid managed care and reproductive genetics gave me the opportunity to reflect on Dr. Bowman's very thoughtful and incisive essay on eugenics. Bowman explains how eugenics has been practiced from ancient times to the present. He further describes how some policies and programs, laws and regulations, have intentionally and inadvertently brought about eugenic practices and/or results. Bowman stresses that minorities and other social undesirables are particularly at risk to eugenic practices. With the mapping of the human genome, problems which were once considered social in nature like alcoholism and criminal behavior will be linked to genetics. Thus, rather than being treated through traditional psycho-social remedies, these behaviors may be approached like other genetic disorders. This approach may allow us to dismiss our responsibility to address these problems as a society. Bowman notes that laws and practices with eugenic implications are often designed for other purposes. Medicaid managed care was developed to capture soaring health care costs and to increase access to health care among the poor. Reproductive genetics creates a unique set of circumstances in the context of managed care which may also have unintended implications for low-income people and people of color. Medicaid managed care models ration the delivery of health care through gatekeepers and coordinators who decide what types of and how much health care will be available to an enrollee. These models raise serious questions about what kinds of health care problems deserve attention and care, how much care recipients should receive, and from whom they should recieve it. Decisions regarding these questions ultimately influence the health care choices people make, such as whether to keep or abort a "defective" fetus when the service may or may not be available or paid for. Thus, while the actions of gatekeepers and coordinators may not constitute intentional eugenics, the effect of these actions may be the same. As Bowman so clearly articulated in his presentation, "[s]cientific advances in genetics create a fertile ground for eugenics, because inequities in the delivery and costs of health care