In a book that seeks to re-assert the importance of the government in charting humanity’s genetic course without avoiding the abuses that are associated with eugenics, there are nonetheless some contentions made that are consistent with the goal of this website. From pages 9-10: The Shadow of Eugenics Even the brightest aspirations of the new …
Category: American Eugenics
Guy Irving Burch: Darwin, Eugenics, and War
Guy Irving Burch was a staunch eugenicist and early advocate for population control on both environment grounds and eugenic grounds. He rests his arguments explicitly on Darwin and Malthus, as this introduction to chapter 4 of his Human Breeding and Survival: Population Roads to Peace or War illustrates (pg 40). ————————- Chapter Four Freedom from …
The Geneticists Manifesto (1939) or Social Biology and Population Improvement, by H.J. Muller
Social Biology and Population Improvement (aka, the Geneticist’s Manifesto) by H.J. Muller [Source #1, Source #2] The Seventh International Congress of Genetics adjourned at Edinburgh only three days before World War II got under way. It is interesting to recall that just before the shooting started a group of geneticists at that Congress-informally formulated what …
Bentley Glass: “No parent will have the right to burden society with a defective child”
Excerpt from Dangerous Diagnostics by Dorothy Nelkin and Laurence R. Tancredi (pg 12, 1994) [Source] And in the same year [1970], Bentley Glass, in his retirement address as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, called for “the use of the new biology to assure the quality of all new babies. … …
Eugenics and Christianity in a Letter to the Eugenics Review
Norman A. Thompson, “Eugenics and Christianity”, published in The Eugenics Review, pages 346-347 (1933) [Source] To the Editor, Eugenics Review Sir, In these latter days of the general liquefaction of ideas, philosophies, and policies, whether founded on dogma or tradition, or on other bases, which may have satisfied our understanding at earlier stages of the …
Eugenics Quote of the Day: Eugenics is Not likely to Infringe on Individual Freedom
Paul Popenoe in his widely used 1920 textbook, Applied Eugenics. pg 364-365. “Not likely” indeed! It is charged that eugenics infringes on the freedom of the individual. This charge (really that of the individualists more than of socialists, strictly speaking) is based mainly on a misconception of what eugenics attempts to do. Coercive measures have …
Eugenics Quote of the Day: Compulsory Abortion is Constitutional–says John Holdren
QUOTE: Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society. [HT] Other quotes by John Holdren: AND: One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate …
Buck vs. Bell Supreme Court Decision, Opinion by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1927)
Oliver Wendell Holmes delivering the Supreme Court’s decision in Buck vs. Bell [Source] 274 U.S. 200 Buck v. Bell (No. 292) Argued: April 22, 1927 Decided: May 2, 1927 143 Va. 310, affirmed. Syllabus 1. The Virginia statute providing for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions supported by the State who shall be found …
Eugenics Quote of the Day: ‘Defective (ie, ‘disabled’) people should not be allowed to reproduce for the good of the state.’ RZ Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI
R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and obligations to these unfortunate classes. At …
The Duty of the State in the Treatment of the Deformed: R. Z. Mason, Appleton WI, 1879
R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source / Italics added, bold text added] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and …
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