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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1999

From state eugenics to private eugenics.

Eugenics--or 'the cultivation of a race'--is a concept dating from the latter part of the 19th century. It preceded the new science of genetics by merely 25 years. Negative eugenics stressed especially the exclusion of negative characteristics and was associated with the practice and theory of radical eugenics between the two World Wars. In order to redress 'the decline of the race', reinforcement by positive eugenics was also advocated. After the atrocities committed by the Nazis there was a lull in the practice and discourse of eugenics. More recent technical advances in assisted reproduction techniques and the genome project, however, have revived the eugenics debate. State eugenics and eugenics as an individual choice ought to be distinguished.

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PubMed2000

[The dispute over eugenics in interwar Poland].

The eugenic problem seems not as well known as it was in the period between the world wars. The word "eugenics" was introduced into the scientific language by the British biologist, Francis Galton at the end of the XIX century. In general, it means the study of the methods of protecting and improving the quality of the human race by selective breeding. Galton's remarks initiated a wider (social and political) movement, which was active in some countries. The eugenic tendency was visible in American immigration policy before the Great War - making it difficult for people suffering from particular diseases to enter the USA. After the war, the eugenic movement became much stronger. In some countries (e.g. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and over half of the states of the USA) some components of the eugenic programme were introduced into legislation. The eugenic movement also appeared in reconstructed Poland. In 1918 it published it own magazine "Zagadnienia Rasy" (Problems of Human Race), later "Eugenika Polska" (Polish Eugenics). This did not imply however, that interest in the eugenic programme was generally very strong. In fact, it was limited by the influence of the Catholic Church. Another significant factor was lost Polish - German hostility. In the late thirties eugenic slogans lost popularity because of their use in Germany racist policy.

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PubMed1995

Healing society: medical language in American eugenics.

American eugenics developed out of a cultural tradition independent of medicine. However, the eugenicist Harry Hamilton Laughlin and some legal experts involved in eugenic practice in the United States used medical language in discussing and evaluating enforced eugenic sterilizations. They built on medicine as a model for healing, while at the same time playing down medicine's concern with its traditional client: the individual patient. Laughlin's attitude toward medicine was ambivalent because he wanted expert eugenicists, rather than medical experts, to control eugenic practice. In contrast, legal experts saw eugenics as an integral part of medicine, though one expert challenged basing the judicial system on eugenically minded medicine. All in all, the medicalization of American eugenics involved expanding the scope of medicine to include the mutilation of individuals for the benefit of society. The judicial system was medicalized in that an expanded medicine became the basis of legislation in the thirty states that permitted eugenic sterilizations.

Castration↗
PubMed1997

Experiences and voices of eugenics field-workers: 'women's work' in biology.

Experiences and ideas of eugenic 'field-workers' offer a new historical perspective on American eugenics, while highlighting terms of women's early twentieth-century scientific education and research employment. To advance knowledge of heredity, the US Eugenics Record Office (ERO), between 1910 and 1924, trained 258 students (85% of them women) to collect information about individuals, families and communities. Though some historians have dismissed eugenic field-workers as careless or uncritical, many had scientific or medical backgrounds, and took research seriously. While gendered expectations and other obstacles limited women's hopes for professional advance, the female field-workers created a strong community and culture of their own. Comparing notes, some recognized that their results did not support eugenic assumptions, and cautioned against letting enthusiasm overwhelm scientific integrity. These women field-workers raised serious questions about methodology and ethics, but the situation of eugenics work at the time undermined chances for such criticism to be acknowledged. After World War I, military-related research and political manoeuvring dominated eugenics, further marginalizing field-workers. Ironically, while ERO head Charles Davenport had wanted students to promote eugenics, some demonstrated more fundamental commitment to scientific ideals--but to little avail.

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PubMed1997

Beyondism: Raymond B. Cattell and the new eugenics.

A significant confusion has arisen out of the mass of work done on the history of eugenics in the last two decades. Early scholars of the subject treated eugenics as a marginalized or obsolete movement of the radical right. Subsequent research has shown that eugenic ideas were adopted in diverse national settings by very different groups, including--among others--liberals, communists and Catholics, as well as radical rightists. This complexity is sometimes taken to mean that eugenic has no special ideological associations, that it is historically and potentially a beast of a thousand heads. It is not. Although people of varied ideological commitments have been attracted to eugenics, ideologues of the radical right, and above all interwar fascists, have been uniquely and centrally involved in its development. Fascism and the radical right are also complex entities, but for all the heterogeneity of both eugenics and fascism, the special historical relationship between the two cannot be ignored. This relationship is exemplified in the work of the influential psychologist, Raymond B. Cattell. Cattell was an early supporter of German national socialism and his work should be understood in the context of interwar fascism. The new religious movement that he founded, 'Beyondism', is a neo-fascist contrivance. Cattell now promulgates ideas that he formulated within a demimonde of radical eugenists and neo-fascists that includes such as associates as Revilo Oliver, Roger Pearson, Wilmot Robertson and Robert K. Graham. These ideas and Cattell's role in the history of eugenics deserve deeper analysis than they have hitherto received. Far from being of merely antiquarian interest, his work currently encourages the propagation of radical eugenist ideology. It is unconscionable for scholars to permit these ideas to go unchallenged, and indeed honored and emulated by a new generation of ideologues and academicians whose work helps to dignify the most destructive political ideas of the twentieth century.

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PubMed1997

Leilani Muir versus the philosopher king: eugenics on trial in Alberta.

The Province of Alberta in Canada was the only jurisdiction in the British Empire where a eugenic sterilization law was passed (in 1928) and vigorously implemented. The pace of sterilization orders accelerated during the Nazi era and remained high after World War II, terminating only in 1972 when the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed. The Alberta Eugenics Board operated away from public and legislative scrutiny, and many things done in the name of eugenics were clearly illegal. Eugenics was put on trial in Alberta in 1995 and a judge of the Court of Queen's Bench ruled in 1996 that the government had wrongly sterilized Leilani Muir. After hearing evidence about the history of the eugenics movement, the origins of Alberta's Sexual Sterilization Act, the operation of the Eugenics Board, and details of Muir's life, Madam Justice Joanne B. Veit found that 'the damage inflicted by the operation was catastrophic', the 'wrongful stigmatization of Ms. Muir as a moron ... has humiliated Ms. Muir every day of her life', and 'the circumstances of Ms. Muir's sterilization were so high-handed and so contemptuous of the statutory authority to effect sterilization, and were undertaken in an atmosphere that so little respected Ms. Muir's human dignity that the community's, and the court's, sense of decency is offended'. Veit awarded Muir damages of $740,780 CAD and legal costs of $230,000 CAD. The order for Muir's sterilization was signed by John M. MacEachran, founder of the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Alberta and chairman of the Eugenics Board from 1929 to 1965. An exponent of Platonic idealism, MacEachran believed sterilization of children with a low IQ test score was a means of 'raising and safeguarding the purity of the race'. However, the Alberta Sterilization Act was passed and implemented with cavalier disregard for the principles of genetics as well as the rights of children.

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