Laws for Designer Babies in the United States

By Teryn Bouche and Laura Rivard

The United States has an imperfect history. Some of our darker chapters include slavery, the decimation of Native American populations, and atrocities committed during our diverse wars. A quick survey will reveal that well-nigh Americans take learned well-nigh or at least heard of these events. Still, ask the average person nigh the " eugenics movement" and you are probable to get blank stares. We at Genetics Generation believe it is time to enhance awareness of this tragic time in our country'south history.

"Eugenics" comes from the Greek roots for "skilful" and "origin," or "skilful birth" and involves applying principles of genetics and heredity for the purpose of improving the man race. The term eugenics was showtime coined by Francis Galton in the tardily 1800's (Norrgard 2008). Galton (1822-1911) was an English language intellectual whose torso of work spanned many fields, including statistics, psychology, meteorology and genetics. Incidentally, he was also a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton'southward beginning academic foray into eugenics analyzed the characteristics, such as superior intelligence, of England's upper classes and concluded they were hereditary; therefore, desirable traits could be passed down through generations (Norrgard 2008). Galton advocated a selective breeding program for humans in his book Hereditary Genius (1869): "Consequently, as it is easy, ….. to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running, or of doing anything else, and then it would exist quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several sequent generations."

The eugenics movement took root in the United States in the early 1900'due south, led past Charles Davenport (1866-1944), a prominent biologist, and Harry Laughlin, a former instructor and main interested in breeding. In 1910, Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at Cold Jump Harbor Laboratory on Long Island "to improve the natural, physical, mental, and temperamental qualities of the human being family" (Norrgard 2008). Laughlin was the first director. Field workers for the ERO collected many dissimilar forms of "data", including family pedigrees depicting the inheritance of physical, mental, and moral traits. They were particularly interested in the inheritance of "undesirable" traits, such as pauperism, mental disability, dwarfism, promiscuity, and criminality. The ERO remained active for three decades.

Eugenics was not just the purview of academics, and information technology became a pop social movement that peaked in the 1920s and 30s. During this menses, the American Eugenics Guild was founded, in addition to many local societies and groups around the state (PBS 1998). Members competed in "fitter family unit" and "amend baby" competitions at fairs and exhibitions (Remsberg 2011). Movies and books promoting eugenic principles were popular. A film called The Black Stork (1917), based on a true story, depicted as heroic a doctor that immune a syphilitic infant to die after convincing the kid's parents that it was better to spare social club ane more outcast.

The English eugenics motility, championed past Galton, promoted eugenics through selective convenance for positive traits. In contrast, the eugenics motility in the United states of america speedily focused on eliminating negative traits. Not surprisingly, "undesirable" traits were concentrated in poor, uneducated, and minority populations. In an attempt to prevent these groups from propagating, eugenicists helped drive legislation for their forced sterilization (Norrgard 2008). The showtime country to enact a sterilization law was Indiana in 1907, rapidly followed by California and 28 other states past 1931 (Lombardo n.d.). These laws resulted in the forced sterilization of over 64,000 people in the United States (Lombardo northward.d.). At first, sterilization efforts focused on the disabled but afterwards grew to include people whose only "crime" was poverty. These sterilization programs found legal support in the Supreme Court. In Cadet v. Bell (1927), the state of Virginia sought to sterilize Carrie Cadet for promiscuity as evidenced by her giving birth to a baby out of wedlock (some suggest she was raped). In ruling against Buck, Supreme Court Justice Wendell Holmes opined, "It is better for all the globe, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for imbecility, club tin prevent those who are obviously unfit from continuing their kind....Three generations of imbeciles is enough" (Black 2003). This decision legitimized the various sterilization laws in the United States. In item, California's program was so robust that the Nazi's turned to California for advice in perfecting their ain efforts. Hitler proudly admitted to following the laws of several American states that allowed for the prevention of reproduction of the "unfit" (Black 2003).

The US eugenics movement began to lose power in the 1940s and was completely discredited post-obit the horrors of Nazi Federal republic of germany. With modern advances in genetic testing, it is important to keep America's eugenics history in mind. Yet, can nosotros avert repeating this dark affiliate, if so many in our country don't know about it?

Delight take our unproblematic poll below then consider leaving a longer respond to the post-obit question in our comments section: "Why aren't most people taught about the American Eugenics Movement as part of US History?".

References

Black, Edwin. "The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics." History News Network. N.p., Sept. 2003. Web. 07 May 2014. <http://hnn.united states of america/article/1796>.

"Eugenics Move Reaches Its Height 1923." Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). N.p., 1998. Web. 06 May 2014.

Galton, Francis. Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences. London: Macmillan, 1869. Print.

Lombardo, Paul. "Eugenic Sterilization Laws." Eugenics Archived. Northward.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2014. <http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay8text.html>.

Norrgard, M. (2008) Man testing, the eugenics move, and IRBs. Nature Educational activity 1(1):170.

Remsberg, Rich. "Found In The Athenaeum: America's Unsettling Early on Eugenics Move." National Public Radio. N.p., 01 June 2011. Web. 07 May 2014.

Epitome credit to Gennie Staford (Via Flickr)

kissingerloneve77.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/?error=cookies_not_supported&code=a8221591-7718-4b2c-9f41-281e5d8664d4

Share this post