defectives Archives | Eugenics and Other Evils

The ‘Minimum Wage’ as a way to make ‘defectives stand out’ for possible eugenic selection, 1913

Filed under 1913, birth defects, compulsory sterilization, concentration camps, defectives, dysgenic breeding, Efficiency Movement, idiots, legislative eugenics, Progressive Era, Progressives, race, right to reproduce, segregation camps, sterilization, unemployable, Year

Henry R. Seager, “The Minimum Wage as Part of a Program for Social Reform.” 1913. [SOURCE] As the enumeration of these benefits suggests, important reform to accompany minimum wage be comprehensive provision for industrial and trade education vocational guidance. Starvation wages are due frequently to exploitation, frequently to physical, mental and moral defects in the …

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Carrel: eugenics asks for the sacrifice of many individuals.

Filed under 1939, applied biology, aristocratic, Biological Laws, birth defects, birth rate, civilization, compulsory marriage, conscious selection, defectives, degeneration, democracy, dysgenic breeding, education, eugenics, feeble-minded, feebleminded, Fit and Unfit, Genetics, hereditary courts, human breeding, IQ, laws of heredity, Laws of Nature, lunacy, man as animal, marriage, mental defectives, miscegenation, national degeneration, national stock, Natural selection, planned evolution, population control, positive eugenics, poverty, psychiatry, rational selection, society, Soviet Union, unfit, Year

Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize Winner. Man the Unknown, 1939. [Source] A choice must be made among the multitude of civilized human beings. We have mentioned that natural selection has not played its part for a long while. That many inferior individuals have been conserved through the efforts of hygiene and medicine. But we cannot prevent …

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Nobel Prize Winner Carrel: Euthanize the Defectives and Criminals

Filed under 1939, carbonic acid gas, criminals, defectives, euthanasia, insane asylums, insanity, lethal chamber, national efficiency, negative eugenics, self-defense, sentimentalism, social body, society, Year

Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize Winner. Man the Unknown, 1939. [Source] There remains the unsolved problem of the immense number of defectives and criminals. They are an enormous burden for the part of the population that has remained normal. As already pointed out, gigantic sums are now required to maintain prisons and insane asylums and protect …

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Foster Kennedy: Euthanasia for “Nature’s Mistakes” up to the age of 5

Filed under 1941, Action T4 Program, adaptation, After-birth abortion, American Eugenics, American Psychiatric Association, applied biology, birth defects, breeders, breeding horses or cattle, Charity, civilization, compulsory sterilization, compulsory vaccination, conscious selection, death as creative, defectives, democracy, dysgenic breeding, eugenics, euthanasia, Evolution, feebleminded, Fit and Unfit, Foster Kennedy, genetic counseling, German Eugenics, hereditary courts, human breeding, humanitarianism, infanticide, IQ, medical killing, mental defectives, national degeneration, national stock, Oliver Wendell Holmes, sentimentalism, social body, social organism, Spartans, sterilization, suffering, The God Committee, unfit, useless eaters, vaccination, Year

Kennedy’s address at the 97th annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1941 encapsulates well how the acceptance of evolution and utilitarian thinking are tied into arguments for eugenics (and euthanasia), which is ironic, of course, since many advocates for euthanasia deny such connections and modern proponents of evolution become apoplectic at the insinuation …

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Taussig: The breeding of men, eugenics, and progress. 1911

Filed under 1911, American Eugenics, aristocratic, birth rate, breeding horses or cattle, civilization, criminals, death rate, defectives, duty, eugenics, family (the institution of), family planning, Frank Taussig, human breeding, John Stuart Mill, laws of heredity, national stock, Parasitism, pauperism, paupers, Political Economy, poverty, progress, Progressive Era, Progressives, race suicide, racial progress, rational selection, science, Scientific Management, society, Year

SOURCE: Frank Taussig, Principles of Economics, Volume II, 1911. Pages 233-237. This movement is steadily extending, and is gradually affecting not only those who are usually thought of as being in a more special sense “native born,” but the descendants of the immigrants as well. The influence of free institutions and of free opportunities is …

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Sydney Webb: The parasites should not be allowed to compete as wage-earners, for it prevents natural selection from working…

Filed under 1920, Charitable organizations, Charity, criminals, death as creative, defectives, degeneration, Fit and Unfit, idiots, lunacy, mental defectives, minimum wage, moral perverts, morality, national efficiency, Natural selection, Parasitism, pauperism, poverty, Progressive Era, public welfare, social organism, Year

Sydney Webb in Industrial Democracy (regarding the minimum wage) – 1920 The problem of the Unemployable is not created by the fixing of a National Minimum by law. The Unemployable we have always with us. With regards to certain sections of the population, this unemployment is not a mark of social disease, but of social …

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Julian Huxley: Population Control, Eugenics, and Birth Control all part of the same Program

Filed under 1962, altruism, American Eugenics, Andrew Carnegie, artificial insemination, birth control, birth defects, Britain, China, compulsory sterilization, compulsory vaccination, Contraception, Darwinism, defectives, degeneration, duty, dysgenic breeding, dysgenics, education, Efficiency Movement, eugenics, Evolution, Evolutionary Humanism, family planning, family size, fertility control, Ford Foundation, Francis Galton, genetic counseling, genetic load, Genetics, H.J. Muller, homosexuality, human breeding, Humanism, India, insane asylums, insanity, intelligence, IQ, Jamaica, Japan, John Rockefeller, Julian Huxley, liberalism, marriage, medical genetics, mental defectives, national efficiency, national stock, nature vs nurture, negative eugenics, Negro, over-population, Parasitism, philanthropy, planned evolution, population control, population explosion, positive eugenics, poverty, Progressives, public health, public welfare, race, race hygiene, rational selection, science, social organism, social problem group, sterilization, technology, United Nations, vaccination, vasectomy, Year

Contemporary advocates for birth control exhibit no awareness whatsoever that birth control was always conceived in the context of ‘eliminating the unfit,’ ie., eugenics. Eugenics, in turn, was considered a straight-forward logical extension of Darwinism. Eugenics was seen as human control of human evolution, and was always tied into discussions on ‘population control.’ These are …

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Davenport: Death is Nature’s Great Blessing to the Race. Why Keep Defectives Alive?

Filed under 1914, American Eugenics, Artificial Selection, birth defects, Charity, Charles Davenport, criminals, death, death as creative, death rate, defectives, education, eugenics, feebleminded, laws of heredity, legislative eugenics, marriage, mental defectives, Natural selection, negative eugenics, Oops!, positive eugenics, race betterment, race hygiene, racial progress, rational selection, religion, segregation, society, sterilization, the State, Year

Charles Davenport, in The Eugenic Programme And Progress in its Achievement (1914) [italics in original, bold added] The lowest stratum of society has, on the other hand, neither intelligence nor self-control enough to justify the State to leave its matings in their own hands. On the contrary, the defectives and criminalistic are, so far as …

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Defective Genes are Like Pathogenic bacteria and viruses the Law Must Control

Filed under 1989, abortion, American Eugenics, applied biology, Biological Laws, birth defects, compulsory abortion, compulsory sterilization, compulsory vaccination, defectives, degeneration, dysgenics, Efficiency Movement, eugenics, eugenics as a science, every child a wanted child, Frederick Osborn, genetic counseling, genetic engineering, Genetics, Year

As quoted in The New Diagnostics by Dorothy Nelkin and Laurence Tancredi, 1989 (pg 13-14) Although the old eugenic generalizations have been cast off, the logic behind them persists, refueled from diagnostic tests and justified in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and cost. Thus some geneticists suggest the social importance of improving the “gene pool.” For …

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Charity a Hindrance to Natural Selection

Filed under 1914, alcoholism, American Eugenics, Artificial Selection, Biological Laws, birth rate, breeders, breeding horses or cattle, Charitable organizations, Charity, conscious selection, Darwinism, death as creative, death rate, defectives, definition of eugenics, education, eugenics, eugenics as a science, Evolution, family planning, Francis Galton, human breeding, laws of heredity, Laws of Nature, legislative eugenics, man as animal, Plato, poverty, race betterment, science, tuberculous, Year

In the following foreword from a compilation of 12 eugenic lectures (1914), we see that eugenics is perceived as merely applied evolution. Furthermore, ‘modern man,’ being a sympathetic being, keeps alive those that should die. With luck, principles of breeding already used with animals will be brought to bear on humans. ——————- Foreword by Lewellys …

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Category: defectives