Category: Genetics

Carrel: eugenics asks for the sacrifice of many individuals.

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

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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Excerpt: Darwin’s Dilemma as told by Bertrand Russell, from Designing Babies

From Designing Babies: The Brave New World of Reproductive Technology by Roger Gosden.  W.H. Freeman and Company, New York.  1999.  Page 3-4 According to Darwin’s theory, natural selection decides which individuals are fit to survive and breed.  So powerful was this idea that it quickly engaged not only fellow biologists but also intellectuals who were …

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

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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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 …

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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 …

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Frederick Osborn, Galton and Mid-Century Eugenics, 1956 Eugenics Review published lecture and “Voluntary Unconscious Selection”

Frederick Osborn, president of the Population Council and steadfast advocate for eugenics, in a 1956 speech recorded in the Eugenics Review.  [SOURCE] […] Galton never envisaged any system of arbitrary controls, except for the more serious mental and physical handicaps, which should be treated like a form of communicable disease.  But he did propose that …

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Josef Mengele and creating a human super-race, as though you were breeding horses

As quoted in Mengele: The Complete Story by Gerald L. Posner and John Ware (1986) on page 43: … [Josef] Mengele’s main aim, as interpreted by Dr. Puzyna, the inmate anthropologist, was wholly unscientific: I found Mengele a picture of what can only be described as a maniac.  He turned the truth on its head.  …

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Gordon Rattray Taylor: “The Biological Time Bomb” — the remaking of society via eugenics, family planning, and education

Gordon Rattray Taylor’s 1968 book, The Biological Time Bomb, was referenced in the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling as providing insight on future developments in America.  Taylor’s book was released at a time when the term ‘eugenics’ had not yet fallen out of favor.  Though he does not explicitly endorse many of the things …

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Elaine Freeman in “The ‘God’ Committee”: infanticide and euthanasia logically flow from arguments for aborting children with birth defects

Elaine Freeman, The ‘God’ Committee, published May 21, 1972, in the New York Times [excerpt] [Opening vignette by Freeman] The baby is a mongoloid born with duodenal atresia, an intestinal obstruction.  The parents, professional people in Maryland, refuse permission for the surgery that will enable the infant to survive, deciding that it would be unfair …

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