A Horvath

Most commented posts

  1. Helen Keller: Physicians Juries for Defective Babies, Article in the New Republic, 1915 — 9 comments
  2. Crypto-Eugenics: Quotes of Eugenicists Discussing the Need for a Covert Eugenics Program — 7 comments
  3. Joseph Fletcher, A Right to Die; Down Syndrome people are not persons and OUGHT to be killed — 6 comments
  4. Frederick Taylor and the Connection Between Eugenics, Capitalism, and Communism: Scientific Management — 5 comments
  5. The Duty of the State in the Treatment of the Deformed: R. Z. Mason, Appleton WI, 1879 — 4 comments

Author's posts

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 …

Continue reading

Black People Should Patriotically Eliminate Themselves: “Put Patriotism to the Test” Cartoon

Helg, Aline, “Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912”, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1995, p. 236 (Figure C-7).  [Source] Translation:  Want to make a patriotic sacrifice?  Inoculate yourself with the Bubonic [Plague] and join Ivonet! Text accompanying this cartoon from the source link: Using Bubonic Plague to remove black people: …

Continue reading

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.  … …

Continue reading

On the Elimination of Defectives: Hitler, in Mein Kampf

Note the utilitarian appeal to the reduction of suffering, the appeal to the ‘common good’, and the basic belief that all he is doing is applying biological principles. Hitler, in Mein Kampf.  [Source] In this field the People’s State will have to repair the damage that arises from the fact that the problem is at …

Continue reading

Francis Galton Coins the Word ‘Eugenics’ as the Science of Better Breeding: Men, Brutes, and Plants. Quote of the Day

A little known fact is that eugenics was seen as the application of principles of heredity, in particular those principles as understood by Darwin.  In this excerpt, Francis Galton (Darwin’s cousin), coins the word eugenics and explicitly refers to it as a science.  The principles of heredity thus applied, he says, are “applicable to men, …

Continue reading

Religion an Obstacle to Science; Socialism Fights For Eugenics, a Letter to the Editor

A letter to the editor found in The Eugenics Review, pages 346-347 (1933) [Source] The Church has always opposed progress in sexual reform. Scientists are continually cavilling at its reactionary influence. It is an appendage of the capitalist State which serves the purpose of doping the people with its promise of pie (in the next …

Continue reading

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 …

Continue reading

Guy Irving Burch: Sterilize or Segregate

[Source] Context, etc, to be determined. [T]here is almost unanimous agreement among competent authorities that those who are definitely mentally defective should not reproduce their kind. This can be accomplished either by segregation or by voluntary sterilization.

Excerpt from “Propaganda” by Jacques Ellul: People WANT to Hate, Propaganda gives them what they WANT

Propaganda by Jacques Ellul.  Pg 148-152, 155, 160  [Let us accept as a premise that modern man] is more susceptible to suggestion, more credulous, more easily excited. Above all he is a victim of emptiness–he is a man devoid of meaning. He is very busy, but he is emotionally empty, open to all entreaties and …

Continue reading

The cursed cure for Malaria: kept alive to live more miserably, William Vogt

The following is a vignette included by William Vogt in his 1948 The Road to Survival.  The eugenic implications of a cure for malaria was often considered by eugenicists, many of whom became fixated on the ‘over-population’ crisis.  Vogt was an early instigator of this ‘crisis.’  He strongly recommends the writings of eugenicist Guy Irving …

Continue reading