EUGENICS
Books on Eugenics, Sociologyindex, Eugenics Abstracts, Eugenics Bibliography, Sociology Books 2012
"In the civilized world, human rights cannot include the right to procreate, but certainly include the right of the unborn to receive good genes" - vpr
Eugenic: "Hereditarily endowed with noble qualities" or more simply "wellborn." - Francis Galton, the man who coined the term “eugenics”
Eugenics theory is that we can improve future generations of humans through selective breeding.
The eugenics movement, active in many parts of the Western world, was driven by the belief that social intervention should occur in order to protect the best gene pool.
This was achieved by encouraging people who were considered to represent ‘good’ genes to breed, and, more importantly, to support interventions by the state to prevent those considered to have ‘bad’ genes from breeding.
Eugenics is the science dealing with factors that influence the hereditary qualities of a race and with ways of improving these qualities, especially, by modifying the fertility of different categories of people. Eugenics translates roughly as ‘good genes’.
In Alberta, for example, the Sexual
Sterilization Act, in force from 1928 to 1972, allowed the state to sterilize 2,832
people, most, or all, without their consent.
As a plural noun eugenics means racial improvement, controlled or selective breeding,
planned evolution.
Eugenic is of, or pertaining to eugenics.
Eugenesis [EU- + -GENESIS.] The production of fit and healthy offspring, esp. by deliberate outbreeding or selection of individuals.
Eugenically is the adverb.
Eugenicist is an expert in, or a student or advocate of, eugenics.
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Future Generations [eugenics.net]
"If we ever hope to solve the problems which face our species, it's
imperative that we first look at them objectively, and assess the scientific evidence
without bias. If the truth about genetics and behavior, about eugenics, or about race, is
considered "taboo," and falsehoods are the only socially acceptable opinions,
then this is truly a sad state of affairs, but we won't let it deter us".
Future Generations is about humanitarian eugenics. Humanitarian eugenics strives to leave
a genuine legacy of love to future generations: good health, high intelligence, and noble
character.
Future Generations advocate measures to improve the innate quality of humankind which are
entirely voluntary. Please be forewarned that most ideas expressed on this website are
"politically incorrect."
Future Generations aspire to total honesty, believing that it is the only policy for
people with integrity, and furthermore, that in the long run, honesty is far-and-away the
most compassionate policy.
"THE AMERICAN BREED" - NAZI EUGENICS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE PIONEER
FUND by Paul A. Lombardo
ABSTRACT: The goal of this article is to fill the existing gap in the history of eugenics
by presenting an analysis of the origins of the Pioneer Fund. Pioneer is a foundation
chartered in 1937 to support and publicize study on "heredity and eugenics" and
"the problems of race betterment." Harry Laughlin was one of the most successful
publicists of the "racial radical" branch of the American eugenics movement, and
Wickliffe Draper, a wealthy New Yorker who endowed the Pioneer Fund. The paper traces
contacts among Laughlin, Draper, and the Nazi scientists whose work informed Hitler's
"racial hygiene" movement.
Harry Laughlin received an honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg as "a
pioneer in the science of race cleansing," three months before the Pioneer Fund was
incorporated. Wickliffe Draper recognized Laughlin's successes in the eugenics movement by
then naming him as the first President of Pioneer.
Draper's vision for eugenics matched Laughlin's. He traveled to Berlin to view a Nazi
"Population Conference" in 1935 in the company of an American eugenicist who
publicly saluted Hitler. Draper's funding supported immigration restriction, eugenical
essay contests, and distribution of books advocating the repatriation of Blacks to Africa.
The early program of Pioneer "research" and publicity is described through
minutes of Pioneer Board meetings in 1937-'38. Pioneer Fund's first project was an
incentive plan to encourage Army aviators, a group of "eugenically superior"
white men, to have additional children.
Pioneer support and publicity for racially charged research continues today and is
reflected in books like The Bell Curve.
Selected Publications on Eugenics:
Taking Eugenics Seriously: Three Generations of ??? Are Enough? 30 Florida State
University Law Review 191 (Winter, 2003) - healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/bio-ethics/
takingeugenicsseriously.pdf
Review: A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics,
by Nicholas Wright Gillham, New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 347, (Nov, 2002)1537. -
healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/bio-ethics/ NewEnglandJournalGaltonReview.pdf
The American Breed: Nazi Eugenics and the Origin of the Pioneer Fund, 65 Albany Law Review
(May, 2002) - healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/bio-ethics/ americanbreed.cfm
Eugenics at the Movies A Review of the Black Stork, by Martin Pernick, The Hastings Center
Report, vol 27 (March-April 1997) p. 43. - healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/bio-ethics/
eugenicsmovies.pdf
Medicine, Eugenics and the Supreme Court: From Coercive Sterilization to Reproductive
Freedom 13 Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy 1-25 (Fall 1996). -
healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/bio-ethics/ eugenicsarticle.pdf
Miscegenation, Eugenics & Racism: Historical footnotes to Loving v. Virginia.
University of California, Davis Law Review, 21 (1988) 422-452. -
healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/bio-ethics/ miscegenation.pdf
"Three Generations, No Imbeciles: New Light on Buck v. Bell" 60 New York
University Law Review 30 (April, 1985).
Involuntary Sterilization in Virginia: From Buck v. Bell to Poe v. Lynchburg. Developments
in Mental Health Law 3 no. 3, (1983) 17-21.
Increasing attention is being paid to issues of human heredity as a result of the Human
Genome Project (HGP) with its mandate to analyze all human DNA.
The H.G.P. has kindled renewed interest in the possibility of amending our genetic legacy through preventive reproductive strategies, and perhaps eliminating certain diseases or disabilities that may be genetically linked.
As a consequence, there is a renewed awareness of earlier attempts to manipulate
heredity during the first quarter of this century under the aegis of the eugenics
movement.
A second factor has also contributed to the resurgence of interest in eugenics. New work
on the history of the Holocaust has followed the opening of previously secret archives of
the Nazi era in the former East Germany and Soviet Russia. The wave of memorials marking
the 5Oth anniversary of the end of World War II, the liberation of the Nazi concentration
camps and the prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg tribunals have also added
to the interest in study of the so-called "scientific racism" that characterized
the Nazi regime.
A list of reference sources on the history of the eugenics movement in America, including
many classic works from the "heyday" of eugenical thought (approximately 1900 to
1935..
Since the appearance of Mark Haller’s Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American
Thought in 1963, every decade since has seen at least one major book on the history of the
American branch of the international eugenics movement.
The most recent milepost was the 1985 publication of Daniel Kevles In the Name of Eugenics, which provided a timely reference text for a number of scholars who would explore eugenics in the following dozen years.
Between Haller and Kevles several histories of American eugenics appeared:
Donald Pickens, Eugenics and the Progressives (1968),
Kenneth Ludermerer, Genetics and American Society : A Historical Appraisal (1972), and
Allan Chase, The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism
(1977).
Since Kevles, several more focused investigations have been completed, and the study of
eugenics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives continues to yield new volumes every
year.
In the nineties alone more than ten books have been published, including a history of the eugenical sterilization movement: Phillip R. Reilly,
The Surgical Solution(1991); a study of the linkages between the American and German eugenics movements by Stefan Kuhl,
The Nazi Connection (1994); an investigation of the scientific and political vestiges of eugenics in America: William H. Tucker,
The Science and Politics of Racial Research (1994); a regional history of eugenics in the American South: Edward J. Larson,
Sex, Race, and Science (1995); a study that connects trends in evolution and eugenics to modern genetic study: Diane B. Paul,
Controlling Human Heredity (1995); a close analysis of the making of an American film on eugenics: Martin Pernick,
The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915 (1996); a cultural and linguistic analysis of U.S. eugenics: Marouf A. Hasian,
The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought (1996); a history of psychiatry and eugenics in North America: Ian Robert Dowbiggin,
Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada 1880-1940 (1997); a study of eugenic criminology: Nicole H. Rafter,
Creating Born Criminals: Biological Theories of Crime and Eugenics (1997); an analysis of education and eugenics: Steven Selden,
Inheriting Shame (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999); and a study of the eugenics movement in Vermont: Nancy L. Gallagher,
Breeding Better Vermonters (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999).
During this same period, several volumes have appeared that treat the eugenics movement in
the international context, such as
Nancy Leys Stephan’s The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (1991);
The Wellborn Science : Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil and Russia by Mark Adams (1993); and
Gunar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen’s collection on Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland (1996).
Numerous works covering the German history of eugenics as the science of "racial hygiene" have also been published, notably
Race Hygiene and National Efficiency: The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer by Sheila Faith Weiss(1987);
Paul Weindling’s Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (1989) and
The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (1991) by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman.
