Difference between revisions of "Eugenics"
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Charles Darwin declared in Descent of Man:<ref>Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: John Murray, 1901), pp. 241-42 (footnote * is a reference to Anthropological Review, April, 1867, p. 236) http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-descent-of-man/chapter-06.html</ref> | Charles Darwin declared in Descent of Man:<ref>Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: John Murray, 1901), pp. 241-42 (footnote * is a reference to Anthropological Review, April, 1867, p. 236) http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-descent-of-man/chapter-06.html</ref> | ||
| − | :At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked,* will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the | + | :At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked,* will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla. |
Darwin was not the first to claim racial superiority. But he was the first to suggest that some races of man "will almost certainly exterminate, and replace" other races of man. Although Darwin never advocated this action, and instead decried it, those that took the idea to its extreme developed a new intellectual field called "eugenics" for this mythical biological struggle. Darwin decried the use of eugenics in chapter 5 of the same book, where he wrote: | Darwin was not the first to claim racial superiority. But he was the first to suggest that some races of man "will almost certainly exterminate, and replace" other races of man. Although Darwin never advocated this action, and instead decried it, those that took the idea to its extreme developed a new intellectual field called "eugenics" for this mythical biological struggle. Darwin decried the use of eugenics in chapter 5 of the same book, where he wrote: | ||
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== Eugenics in America == | == Eugenics in America == | ||
| − | Between 1907 and 1937, 32 American states passed eugenics laws requiring sterilization of citizens deemed to be misfits, such as the mentally infirm. Oliver Wendell Holmes and all but one conservative Democratic Justice upheld such laws in a Supreme Court decision that included Holmes' offensive statement that "three generations of imbeciles are enough." Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927).<ref>http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html</ref> In fact, the third generation "imbecile" was very bright, but was declared by a eugenics "expert" as "supposed to be a mental defective," apparently without an examination. The cases were later forcibly overturned under [[substantive due process]] cases holding sterilization to be an abridgment of a fundamental right.<ref>Skinner v. Oklahoma (316 U.S. 535)</ref> This era of case law, overturning eugenics, actually culminated in | + | Between 1907 and 1937, 32 American states passed eugenics laws requiring sterilization of citizens deemed to be misfits, such as the mentally infirm. Oliver Wendell Holmes and all but one conservative Democratic Justice upheld such laws in a Supreme Court decision that included Holmes' offensive statement that "three generations of imbeciles are enough." Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927).<ref>http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html</ref> In fact, the third generation "imbecile" was very bright, but was declared by a eugenics "expert" as "supposed to be a mental defective," apparently without an examination. The cases were later forcibly overturned under [[substantive due process]] cases holding sterilization to be an abridgment of a fundamental right.<ref>Skinner v. Oklahoma (316 U.S. 535)</ref> This era of case law, overturning eugenics, actually culminated in enlargements of "fundamental rights" into other spheres as well. |
Eugenics was taught as part of the evolution curriculum of many science classes in America in the early 1900s. For example, it was featured in the textbook used in the famous Scopes trial in 1925.{{fact}} | Eugenics was taught as part of the evolution curriculum of many science classes in America in the early 1900s. For example, it was featured in the textbook used in the famous Scopes trial in 1925.{{fact}} | ||
Revision as of 15:26, May 16, 2007
Eugenics was a movement which tried to eliminate "dangerous human pests" and "the rising tide of imbeciles" through what has been euphemistically called "selective breeding". What this meant, in actual practice, was forced sterilization of American immigrants and minorities (particularly in California). [1]
Connection with The Theory of Evolution
The Theory of Evolution suggests that humans evolved to their present state like all living organisms. This implies that, should selective pressures change, humans as a species may also change. In the early 20th century, the term Social Darwinism was in fashion. This idea stated that the fittest people did the best in life, and, tautologically, those who did the best were the fittest. This was often used as a justification for racism and other oppression. Since evolutionary theory does not really apply to individuals, but to populations, this was never a valid application of the theory. However, this idea has continued to be a popular topic.
Charles Darwin declared in Descent of Man:[1]
- At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked,* will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.
Darwin was not the first to claim racial superiority. But he was the first to suggest that some races of man "will almost certainly exterminate, and replace" other races of man. Although Darwin never advocated this action, and instead decried it, those that took the idea to its extreme developed a new intellectual field called "eugenics" for this mythical biological struggle. Darwin decried the use of eugenics in chapter 5 of the same book, where he wrote:
- The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.[2]
The importance of this quote vis a vis the other, cited above, is often minimized, but the two cannot be read apart from each other.
The term "Eugenics" was coined by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton.[Citation Needed]
Etymology and History
The word "eugenics" is based on Greek roots meaning "well born." The Merriam-Webster dictionary provides 1883 as the date of origin for the term, which was coined by Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton. Later Darwin's son, Leonard, served as the president of the First Congress of Eugenics in 1912 in London.
Richard Dawkins has stated in one letter that it no longer be banned from polite discussion, but did not actually advocate it; in fact he stated in the same letter his distaste for the idea.[3]
In the early 1900s, many influential officials advocated Darwinism and eugenics. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes became a strong proponent. So did many others in prominent government and academic positions. Members of the British Eugenics Society, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation, are listed [2].
Eugenics in America
Between 1907 and 1937, 32 American states passed eugenics laws requiring sterilization of citizens deemed to be misfits, such as the mentally infirm. Oliver Wendell Holmes and all but one conservative Democratic Justice upheld such laws in a Supreme Court decision that included Holmes' offensive statement that "three generations of imbeciles are enough." Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927).[4] In fact, the third generation "imbecile" was very bright, but was declared by a eugenics "expert" as "supposed to be a mental defective," apparently without an examination. The cases were later forcibly overturned under substantive due process cases holding sterilization to be an abridgment of a fundamental right.[5] This era of case law, overturning eugenics, actually culminated in enlargements of "fundamental rights" into other spheres as well.
Eugenics was taught as part of the evolution curriculum of many science classes in America in the early 1900s. For example, it was featured in the textbook used in the famous Scopes trial in 1925.[Citation Needed]
"By 1928, the American Genetics Association boasted that there were 376 college courses devoted exclusively to eugenics. High-school biology textbooks followed suit by the mid-1930s, with most containing material favorable to the idea of eugenical control of reproduction. It would thus have been difficult to be an even moderately educated reader in the 1920s or 1930s and not have known, at least in general terms, about the claims of eugenics."[6]
Holmes once wrote favorably in a letter to a future Supreme Court Justice about "restricting propagation by the undesirables and putting to death infants that didn't pass the examination."[7] As noted above, though, United States law has abandoned this perspective long ago.
Eugenics in Europe
German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel promoted evolution by drawing fraudulent pictures of humans embryos, to pretend that their developmental stages imitate an historical evolution of humans from other species.[8]
In 1904, Haeckel reiterated the view of Darwin quoted above: "These lower races … are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to civilized Europeans; we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives." [9]
It wasn't long before intellectuals viewed war as an essential evolutionary process. Vom Heutigen Kriege, a popular book by Geberal Bernhardi, "expounded the thesis that war was a biological necessity and a convenient means of ridding the world of the unfit. These views were not confined to a lunatic fringe, but won wide acceptance especially among journalists, academics and politicians."[10] In America, Justice Holmes similarly wrote that "I always say that society is founded on the death of men - if you don't kill the weakest one way you kill them another."[11]
World War I entailed a brutality unknown in the history of mankind. Gregg Easterbrook, a senior editor of the liberal New Republic magazine, observed that "prior to the Scopes trial [in 1925, William Jennings] Bryan had been on a revival tour of Germany and had been horrified by the signs of incipient Nazism. Before this point, Bryan had been a moderate in the evolution debate; for instance, he had lobbied the Florida legislature not to ban the teaching of Darwin, only to specify that evolution must be taught as a theory rather than a fact. But after hearing the National Socialists talk about the elimination of genetic inferiority, [historian Gary] Wills wrote, Bryan came to feel that evolutionary ideas had become dangerous; he began both to oppose and to lampoon them."
The march of evolution/eugenics continued unabated in Germany. By the 1920s, German textbooks were teaching evolution concepts of heredity and racial hygiene. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927.
In 1933, Germany passed the Law for the Protection of Heredity Health. Next was the Nazi sterilization law entitled "Eugenics in the service of public welfare." It required compulsory sterilization for the prevention of progeny with hereditary defects in cases including congenital mental defects, schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis and hereditary epilepsy.
The German schools indoctrinated their students. In 1935, a German high-school math textbook included the following problem: "… how much does it cost the state if:
a. 868 [mentally infirm] patients stay longer than 10 years? b. 260 [mentally infirm] patients stay longer than 20 years? c. 112 [mentally infirm] patients stay longer than 2 years?"
See Science misapplied, supra.
One German student was Josef Mengele, who studied anthropology and paleontology and received his Ph.D. for his thesis entitled "Racial Morphological Research on the Lower Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups." In 1937, Mengele was recommended for and received a position as a research assistant with the Third Reich Institute for Hereditary, Biology and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfort. He became the "Angel of Death" for directing the operation of gas chambers of the Holocaust and for conducting horrific medical experiments on inmates in pursuit of eugenics.
The liberal Journal of the American Medical Society provided this summary: "The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 led to the rise of the eugenics movement in Europe. Eugenics supporters believed that races could be improved by selective breeding. The Nazi Party adopted this belief and began a campaign against the Jews. Many physicians joined the Nazi Party because they needed jobs." "Medicine against society: lessons from the Third Reich," The Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 27, 1996 (Vol. 276, No. 20), at p. 1657(5), by Jeremiah A. Barondess. Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionist, was more succinct: "The Nazi racial hygiene program began with involuntary sterilizations and ended with genocide." http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/scopenotes/sn28.htm
References
- ↑ Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: John Murray, 1901), pp. 241-42 (footnote * is a reference to Anthropological Review, April, 1867, p. 236) http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-descent-of-man/chapter-06.html
- ↑ Darwin, the Descent of Man, Ch. 5
- ↑ http://www.sundayherald.com/life/people/display.var.1031440.0.eugenics_may_not_be_bad.php
- ↑ http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html
- ↑ Skinner v. Oklahoma (316 U.S. 535)
- ↑ See "Science misapplied: the eugenics age revisited," Technology Review, August-Sep 1996 (Vol. 99, No. 6), at p. 22(10), by Garland E. Allen.
- ↑ 9/3/21 Letter to Felix Frankfurther. For a detailed criticism of Justice Holmes' support of eugenics, see Professor Albert W. Alschuler's Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes (Univ. of Chicago Press 2000).
- ↑ See Haeckel Fraud. These fraudulent drawings remain a part of American textbooks and were only exposed a century later as false by the New York Times.
- ↑ Ernst Haeckel, The Wonders of Life (New York: Harper 1904), 56-57 (emphasis added).
- ↑ A history of Germany 1815-1990, 4th ed., at 205, by W. Carr.
- ↑ 2/26/22 Letter to Sir Frederick Pollock.
External References
Stephen Jay Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man", W.W. Norton and Co., 1981, 1996.