http://www.all.org/abac/eugen02.htm

Eugenics

http://www.all.org/abac/eugen02.htm

Eugenics

Galton believed that the proper evolution of the human race
was thwarted by philanthropic outreach to the poor: misguided charity
encouraged the "unfit" to bear more children. This upset the mechanism of
natural selection.

HISTORY OF EUGENICS
In 1798, an English _CLERGYMAN_ and economist named Thomas Robert Malthus
published the Essay on the Principle of Population. The central idea of his
book is that population increases exponentially and will therefore
eventually outstrip food supply. If parents failed to limit the size of
their families, then war or famine would kill off the excess. The idea has
been remarkably resilient,

http://www.all.org/abac/eugen02.htm

Eugenics
Introduction to Eugenics
The principal manifestations of eugenics are racism and abortion; eugenics
is the basis for "scientific racism" and laid the foundation for
legalizing
abortion. It is the driving force behind euthanasia, in vitro
fertilization,
and embryo and fetal research. It is the driving force in global
population
policy, which is a key element in American foreign policy. It is the force
driving much of the environmentalist movement, welfare policy, welfare
reform, and health care. It is found in anthropology, sociology,
psychology-all the social sciences. It is reflected in much American
literature, especially science fiction. So it is worth some study.
DEFINITION
Eugenics is the study of methods to improve the human race by controlling
reproduction. The word was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a cousin of
Charles Darwin. Galton believed that the proper evolution of the human
race
was thwarted by philanthropic outreach to the poor: misguided charity
encouraged the "unfit" to bear more children. This upset the mechanism of
natural selection. Hence, the human race needed a kind of artificial
selection, which he called "eugenics," from Greek for good birth. Galton
wanted eugenics to develop from a science to a policy and finally into a
religion.1
A Study . . .
Galton defined eugenics as "the science of improvement of the human race
germ plasm through better breeding." He also said: "Eugenics is the study
of
agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial
qualities of future generations, whether physically or mentally." This
definition was used for years on the cover of the Eugenics Review, a
journal
published by the Eugenics Education Society (later simply the Eugenics
Society).
A Program . . .
The American Journal of Eugenics 2 in 1906 called eugenics a "science,"
but
also noted that the Century Dictionary defined it as "the doctrine of
Progress, or Evolution, especially in the human race, through improved
conditions in the relations of the sexes."
In 1970, I. I. Gottesman, an American Eugenics Society director, defined
it
actively: "The essence of evolution is natural selection; the essence of
eugenics is the replacement of 'natural' selection by conscious,
premeditated, or artificial selection in the hope of speeding up the
evolution of 'desirable' characteristics and the elimination of
undesirable
ones."
A Religion . . .
Galton's suggestion that eugenics should function as a religion was ehoed
by
George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russel and others.3 A pungent assertion of
the
religious character of eugenics comes from Julian Huxley, the first
Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) and a member of the Eugenics Society: "We must face
the fact that now, in this year of grace, the great majority of human
beings
are substandard: they are undernourished, or ill, or condemned to a
ceaseless struggle for bare existence; they are imprisoned in ignorance or
superstition. We must see to it that life is no longer a hell paved with
unrealized opportunity. In this light, the highest and most sacred duty of
man is seen as the proper utilization of the untapped resources of human
beings."
"I find myself inevitably driven to use the language of religion." Huxley
continued, "For the fact is that all this does add up to something in the
nature of a religion: perhaps one might call it Evolutionary Humanism. The
word 'religion' is often used restrictively to mean belief in gods; but I
am
not using it in this sense...I am using it in a broader sense, to denote
an
overall relation between man and his destiny, and one involving his
deepest
feelings, including his sense of what is sacred. In this broad sense,
evolutionary humanism, it seems to me, is capable of becoming the germ of
a
new religion, not necessarily supplanting existing religions but
supplementing them."4
The Population Council, one of the new eugenics organizations that emerged
after World War II, no longer spoke of eugenics as a religion, but
launched
"studies relating to the social, ethical and moral dimensions" of
population
studies, recognizing that these questions involved matters "of a cultural,
moral and spiritual nature."5 The new field of bioethics is a response to
issues raised by eugenics.6 Bioethics is based on situation ethics, which
was developed largely by Joseph Fletcher, a member of the American
Eugenics
Society. In 1973, Daniel Callahan, a prominent Catholic dissenter and a
member of the American Eugenics Society, outlined the new field in the
first
issue of Hastings Center Studies.7



HISTORY OF EUGENICS
In 1798, an English clergyman and economist named Thomas Robert Malthus
published the Essay on the Principle of Population. The central idea of
his
book is that population increases exponentially and will therefore
eventually outstrip food supply. If parents failed to limit the size of
their families, then war or famine would kill off the excess. The idea has
been remarkably resilient, although the specific predictions that Malthus
made were wrong. Malthus argued that the island of Britain could not
sustain
a population of 20 million, but 150 years later the population was more
than
triple Malthus' ceiling.
Charles Darwin, the biologist, was immensely impressed by Malthus' ideas,
and the Malthusian theories are embedded in Darwin's theory of evolution
and
natural selectio (The Origin of Species, 1859, and The Descent of Man,
1871). But after Darwin borrowed ideas from economics and inserted them
into
biology, his cousin reversed the process and discovered ideas in biology
that could be applied to humans. This is one of the first tricks that
amateur magicians learn, like "finding" a coin in a child's ear. The
amazing
thing about Galton's stunt is that it has fooled so many people for so
long.
At least one contemporary understood what Galton was doing. Friedrich
Engels, a collaborator with Karl Marx, was contemptuous of the way
Malthus'
ideas about economics were inserted into biology and then retrieved as
gospel: "The whole Darwinist teaching of the struggle for existence is
simply a transference from society to living nature of Hobbes' doctrine of
bellum omnium contra omnes and of the bourgeois doctrine of competition
together with Malthus' theory of population. When this conjurer's trick
has
been performed...the same theories are transferred back again from organic
nature into history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal
laws of human society has been proved. The puerility of this proceeding is
so obvious that not a word need be said about it."8
When it began, eugenics was embraced by conservatives and denounced by
Engels. It is noteworthy that over time this ideology of arrogance proved
to
be appealing on the right (Galton), then the left (British Socialists),
then
the right (German National Socialists), then the left (American
environmentalists and the abortion movement), then the right (see the Bell
Curve debate).
Galton's work is still used today. He used statistical methods, including
the now-famous "bell curve," to describe the distribution of intelligence
within a population. He devised various methods for measuring
intelligence,
and concluded that Europeans are smarter than Africans, on average. And he
suggested systematic studies of twins to distinguish the effects of
heredity
from the effects of environment.
Galton's work was carried on, especially at the University of London,
where
he endowed a Chair of Eugenics. According to eugenics scholar J. Philippe
Rushton, Galton's work was carried on especially by Karl Pearson and
Charles
Spearman, then by Cyril Burt, and in our time by Raymond Cattell, Hans
Eysenck and Arthur Jensen.9 The work of these academics is built
explicitly
on Galton's theories, but the eugenics ideology spread far beyond this
core
of true believers.



EUGENICS SOCIETIES
In 1904, Galton endowed a research chair in eugenics at University
College,
London University. In Germany in 1905, Dr. Alfred Ploetz and Dr. Ernst
Rüdin
founded the Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, or Society of Race-Hygiene. In
1907 in England, the Eugenic Education Society (later the Eugenics
Society)
was founded. In 1910, the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was founded in the
United States. The ERO had a different emphasis from the Birth Control
League, which sought "fewer childrenfor laboring classes"; the ERO felt
that
"ultimate economic betterment should be sought by breeding better people,
not fewer of the existing sort."10
The First International Eugenics Congress was held at London University in
1912. Representatives came from a number of nations, and the congress
demonstrated the growing strength of the movement, especially in England,
Germany and the United States.
In October 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in
the United States. Several months later, she founded the Birth Control
Review. She and her co-workers incorporated the American Birth Control
League in 1922. (The organization was renamed the Birth Control Federation
of America in 1939, and in 1942 was renamed the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America.11) She wrote: "Birth control is thus the entering
wedge for the Eugenic educator...the unbalance between the birth rate of
the
'unfit' and the 'fit' is admittedly the greatest present menace to
civilization... The most urgent problem today is how to limit and
discourage
the overfertility of the mentally and physically defective."12
In 1922, the American Eugenics Society was founded. Founders included
Madison Grant, Henry H. Laughlin, Irving Fisher, Henry Fairfield Osborn,
and
Henry Crampton. Grant was the author of The Passing of the Great Race
(1916), and wrote the preface to The Rising Tide of Color Against White
World Supremacy. Laughlin was the Superintendent of the Eugenics Record
Office from 1910 to 1921; he later became President of the Pioneer Fund, a
white supremacist organization that is still functioning today. Fisher,
who
taught economics and political economy at Yale University for 40 years,
said
that the purpose of the society was to "stem the tide of threatened race
degeneracy" and to protect the United States against "indiscriminate
immigration, criminal degenerates, and race suicide."13
Henry Fairfield Osborn was the president of the American Museum of Natural
History from 1908 to 1933; he wrote about evolution in From the Greeks to
Darwin. In 1923, during a national debate on restricting immigration,
Osborn
spoke enthusiastically about the results of intelligence testing carried
out
by the Army: "I believe those tests were worth what the war [World War I]
cost, even in human life, if they served to show clearly to our people the
lack of intelligence in our country, and the degrees of intelligence in
different races who are coming to us, in a way which no one can say is the
result of prejudice. We have learned once and for all that the negro is
not
like us."14
This list of organizations is far from exhaustive. The point here is
simply
that eugenics in the first part of the 20th Century was not an academic
exercise. Eugenicists were organizing, particularly in Germany, England
and
the United States, to implement policies consistent with their theories.
The work of the eugenicists included racism and white supremacy, promoting
birth control among the "dysgenic," restricting immigration, sterilizing
the
handicapped, promoting euthanasia, and seeking ways to increase the number
of genetically well-endowed individuals.



HITLER'S EMBRACE
A key program of the eugenicists was cleansing the human race by
sterilizing
the "unfit." By 1931, sterilization laws had been enacted in 27 of the
United States, and by 1935 sterilization laws had been enacted in Norway,
Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany.15 But the efficiency of the
German
eugenicists caused trouble.
Galton's ideas had been taken up in Germany by Friedrich Nietzsche in the
19th century. In the early 20th century Ploetz and Rüdin laid the
foundations of an effective eugenics program in Germany. In 1922, two
men-a
lawyer and a psychiatrist, Karl Binding, J.D., and Alfred Hoche,
M.D.-cooperated on a short book entitled Die Freigabe der Vernichtung
lebensunwerten Lebens (Permission to Destroy Life Devoid of Value). The
book
encouraged Austrian physicians who were beginning to practice euthanasia
illegally. A decade later Adolf Hitler, who had described his own eugenic
ideas in Mein Kampf, came to power.
Hitler's determination to establish his "master race" was embraced by
German
eugenicists,16 and eugenicists elsewhere failed to criticize the Germans.
In
the United States, the Birth Control Review praised the effectiveness of
the
Germans, and published articles by Rüdin and others.17
In the United States today, there is a great deal of confusion about
Hitler's view of abortion. Pro-lifers denounce abortionists furiously for
imitating Hitler, who legalized abortion, and proponents of abortion
denounce pro-lifers furiously for imitating Hitler, who outlawed abortion.
In fact, both sides are half right. Hitler was a eugenicist, and for
eugenic
reasons he outlawed aborting Aryan babies, but encouraged aborting Slavs
and
Jews-also for eugenic reasons.
After Hitler had killed millions of people, including one-third of the
Jews
in the world, he lost the war. The name of his political party became and
remains one of the most offensive words in the language, and ideas that
are
tightly associated with him are universally condemned. So the idea of
building a master race became extremely unpopular. However, the eugenics
movement did not die.



EUGENICS AFTER WORLD WAR II
Most people have never heard of eugenics, and most of those who have heard
of it think it died with Hitler. Among the handful who are aware that
eugenics was still a force after World War II, many believe that its
remnants were reformed. In fact, the eugenics movement continued to
thrive,
without reform:
The development and promotion of birth control was a major eugenic
success.
The discovery of the "population explosion" and the hysteria about the
need
to control it was a major eugenic success.
The field of genetics grew faster than fruit flies in the 1950's, and
although the accumulating knowledge was valuable, the field was dominated
by
eugenicists, who could use their knowledge for eugenic purposes.
UNESCO, founded in 1948, was directed by Julian Huxley, a determined
eugenicist who used his global platform very effectively.
The welfare state in Britain was based largely on the work of Richard
Titmuss, John Maynard Keynes and William Henry Beveridge, members of the
Eugenics Society.
Historians who rely too heavily on the eugenicists themselves will
overlook
a great deal. Daniel Kevles, for example, makes the post-war eugenics
movement sound like a group of dusty academics. But one of their
activities
in Britain beginning in the 1960's was running a flourishing abortion
business. Beginning in the 1960's, a few members of the Eugenics Society
built and controlled almost the entire private abortion industry. Whether
you think abortion is killing a child or exercising a fundamental liberty,
this bloody and emotional activity is not the work of dusty academics: at
least some of the eugenicists were activists.
The influence of the eugenicists on abortion in America is perhaps best
seen
by comparing Roe v. Wade and a book by Professor Glanville Williams, The
Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law. The book is cited in the 1973
abortion decision, but the citations alone do not reveal the full extent
of
the influence. The central ideas in Roe v. Wade are about personhood, and
that section is virtually plagiarized from Williams. Justice Blackmun
lifted
his whole argument from Williams, including the history of abortion,
ancient
attitudes, the influence of Christianity, common law, Augustine's and
Aquinas' teaching, canon law and English statutory law. Williams was a
member of the Eugenics Society.18 Roe v. Wade was based on eugenics.
Even in Germany, the eugenics movement did not die out. The most offensive
example of its resurgence after Hitler was the rehabilitation of Professor
Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer. In 1935, von Verschuer said that he was
"responsible for ensuring that the care of genes and race, which Germany
is
leading worldwide, has such a strong base that it will withstand any
attacks
from outside." In 1937, he was Director of the Third Reich Institute for
Heredity, Biology and Racial Purity. Von Verschuer was Josef Mengele's
mentor before the Nazi holocaust, and his collaborator during the
holocaust.19
Mengele's horrific experiments at Auschwitz have put his name alongside
those of Hitler and Eichmann. Yet, a few years after the war, von
Verschuer
founded the Institute of Human Genetics in Münster, where he worked
educating another generation until his death in 1969. He had not turned
away
from his old ideas: he was a foreign member of the American Eugenics
Society.
There can be no pretense that the rehabilitation of Mengele's mentor and
collaborator was an accidental oversight due to unfamiliarity with his
views. Eugenicists in America were aware of von Verschuer; several stories
about him appeared in English in the Eugenical News in the 1930's. The
first, a review of his book Erbpathologie, said: "Race culture, the
selection of proposed cases for sterilization or marriage advice [i.e.,
genetic counseling] are impossible without the earnest collaboration of
the
entire medical profession. In this book the author clearly outlines the
duties of the physician to the nation. The word 'nation' no longer means a
number of citizens living within certain boundaries, but a biological
entity. This point of view also changes the obligation of the
physician...Dr. von Verschuer has successfully bridged the gap between
medical practice and theoretic scientific research."20
Another article about von Verschuer appeared in the May/June 1936
Eugenical
News, which specifically mentioned that von Verschuer intended to use
studies of twins to test a racist idea (Mengele's horrors at Auschwitz
were
studies of twins), and there was a follow-up article in October 1937.



CRYPTO-EUGENICS
In 1968, the Eugenics Review ran an article summarizing some of the
activities of the Eugenics Society. The article quoted a proposal made in
the late 1950's by Dr. Carlos Paton Blacker, who had been an officer in
the
Eugenics Society since 1931 (Secretary, then General Secretary, then
Director, then Chairman):
That the Society should pursue eugenic ends by less obvious means, that is
by a policy of crypto-eugenics, which was apparently proving successful in
the US Eugenics Society.21
In 1960, Blacker's proposal was adopted by the Eugenics Society. A
resolution which was accepted stated (in part):
The Society's activities in crypto-eugenics should be pursued vigorously,
and specifically that the Society should increase its monetary support of
the FPA [Family Planning Association, the English branch of Planned
Parenthood] and the IPPF [International Planned Parenthood Federation] and
should make contact with the Society for the Study of Human Biology, which
already has a strong and active membership, to find out if any relevant
projects are contemplated with which the Eugenics Society could assist.22
Planned Parenthood grew out of the eugenics movement. At the time this
resolution was adopted by the Eugenics Society, Blacker was the
Administrative Chairman of IPPF. When IPPF was founded in 1952, it was
housed in the offices of the Eugenics Society.
The dominant figure in the eugenics movement in the United States,
considered by the English to be a model of crypto-eugenics, was Major
General Frederick Osborn, a master propagandist. In 1956, he said people
"won't accept the idea that they are in general, second rate. We must rely
on other motivation." He called the new motivation "a system of voluntary
unconscious selection." The way to persuade people to exercise this
voluntary unconscious selection was to appeal to the idea of "wanted"
children. Osborn said, "Let's base our proposals on the desirability of
having children born in homes where they will get affectionate and
responsible care." In this way, the eugenics movement "will move at last
towards the high goal which Galton set for it."23
Osborn stated the public relatons problem bluntly: "Eugenic goals are most
likely to be attained under a name other than eugenics."24 He pointed to
genetic counseling as a prime example: "Heredity clinics are the first
eugenic proposals that have been adopted in a practical form and accepted
by
the public. . . . The word eugenics is not associated with them."25
Osborn is often credited with reforming the eugenics movement after World
War II, and purging its racism. However, during the time of this "reform,"
he was President of the Pioneer Fund, holding that office secretly from
1947
to 1956. The Pioneer Fund is a notorious white supremacist organization.
Obviously, a secret racist wouldn't purge racism; he would purge open
racism, leaving a policy that critics might call "crypto-racism."
In 1960, a member of the Eugenics Society, Reginald Ruggles Gates, founded
a
new periodical to advance racist ideas. The Advisory Council of the new
journal, Mankind Quarterly, included von Verschuer and a member of the
Darwin family, Charles Galton Darwin. One idea advanced in the journal is
the belief that anthropology, if it is understood honestly, shows that
mankind is divided into four species. The first issue stated that
desegregation happened because "American anthropologists were responsible
for introducing equalitarianism into anthropology, ignoring the hereditary
differences between races, . . . until the uninstructed public were
gradually misled. Equality of opportunity, which everyone supports, was
replaced by a doctrine of genetic and social equality, which is something
quite different."26



THE SHIFT TO GENETICS
Before the war, the American Eugenics Society laid out its research aims,
including many investigations in sociology, psychology, anthropology and
biology. But they noted especially two important new fields: population
study and genetics.27
After the war, research in genetics was led by one of the German
eugenicists
besides von Verschuer who had continued his work: Dr. Franz J. Kallmann.
He
had been "associated with Dr. Ernst Rüdin, investigating in genetic
psychiatry."28 He was half Jewish, so he was driven out of Germany in 1936
by Hitler. Nonetheless, he testified on behalf of von Verschuer after the
war. Kallmann taught psychiatry at Columbia, and in 1948 he founded the
American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG). He became a member of the
American Eugenics Society. The ASHG developed hundreds of prenatal tests
but
did not look for cures, although every test was hyped as a potential lead
towards a cure.29
Over the next years, at least 124 people were members of both Kallmann's
ASHG and the American Eugenics Society. The overwhelming evidence of a
commitment to eugenics at the ASHG is especially troubling when you note
that members of this society promoted, developed and now lead the
billion-dollar Human Genome Project.
Negative eugenics, or ending the over-production of the "unfit," is
obviously well underway with widspread contraception, sterilization and
abortion. But positive eugenics, or the increased production of the "fit,"
can be advanced through artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization
and
genetic engineering. The Human Genome Project would certainly help in a
scheme of positive eugenics.



SECOND NEW FIELD: POPULATION CONTROL
After World War II, the eugenics movement discovered (or invented) the
"population explosion," and whipped up global hysteria about it. From 1952
on, a major part of the eugenics movement was the population control
movement. The population explosion made it possible for the eugenics
movement to continue its work-more from the fit, less from the unfit-with
the same people doing the same things, but with a new public rationale.
The transformation from open eugenics to population planning is described
well by Germaine Greer: "It now seems strange that men who had been
conspicuous in the eugenics movement were able to move quite painlessly
into
the population establishment at the highest level, but if we reflect that
the paymasters-Ford, Mellon, Du Pont, Standard Oil, Rockefeller and
Shell-are still the same, we can only assume that people like Kingsley
Davis, Frank W. Notestein, C. C. Little, E. A. Ross, the Osborns
(Frederick
and Fairfield), Philip M. Hauser, Alan Guttmacher and Sheldon Segal were
being rewarded for past services."30 That is, the population control
movement was the same money, the same leaders, the same activities-with a
new excuse.
One of the organizations that promoted eugenics under the new population
rubric was The Population Council. It was founded in 1952 by John D.
Rockefeller III, and spent $173,621,654 in its first 25 years.31 That is
not
a bad budget for one of the organizations in a dead movement! Clearly, the
people who think the eugenics movement died in the rubble in Berlin do not
understand crypto-eugenics, genetics or population control.
The extent of the population control movement is hard to imagine, and
harder
to exaggerate. For example, during the past 25 years, there have been over
1.5 billion surgical abortions globally; the figure is simply
unimaginable.
The United Nations Population Fund has sponsored three meetings bringing
together the heads of state from most of the world to develop a global
population strategy, in Bucharest in 1974, Mexico City in 1984, and in
Cairo
in 1994. No other global problem has been the occasion for meetings
comparable to these three. The World Bank, the U.S. Agency for
International
Development, and governmental agencies from nearly all the industrialized
nations have contributed billions of dollars to campaigns designed to
decrease population growth.
The population control movement has not been noted for respect for human
rights. In 1972, for example, essays by members of the American Eugenics
Society appeared in Readings in Population. Kingsley Davis explained the
need for genetic control, and examined the obstacles, including a
widespread
attachment to he ideal of family life. But he saw some hope of developing
a
more effective program of improving the human race, although improvement
would be slow:
Under the circumstances, we shall probably struggle along with small
measures at a time, with the remote possibility that these may eventually
evolve into a genetic control system. . . . The morality of specific
techniques of applied genetics-artificial insemination, selective
sterilization, ovular transplantation, eugenic abortion, genetic record
keeping, genetic testing-will be thunderously debated in theological and
Marxian terms dating from ages past. Possibly, within half a century or
so,
this may add up to a comprehensive program.32
What he wanted, though, was "the deliberate alteration of the species for
sociological purposes," which would be "a more fateful step than any
previously taken by mankind. . . . When man has conquered his own
biological
evolution he will have laid the basis for conquering everything else. The
universe will be his, at last."
In the same book, Philip M. Hauser, also a member of the American Eugenics
Society, explained the difference between family planning, which relies on
the voluntary decisions of individuals or couples, and population control,
which would include abortion, a commitment to zero population growth,
coercion, euthanasia and restrictions on international migration.33
Perhaps the clearest example of the power of the eugenics movement today
is
in China, with its one-child-only family policy. This policy is an assault
on both prenatal life and on women's privacy. The program was described
and
praised in 16 articles in a remarkable issue of IPPF's quarterly journal,
People, in 1989, on the eve of the massacre in Tiananmen Square.34 But
this
anti-life, anti-choice policy is not unique to China; most of the nations
of
Asia have some coercive elements in their population policies.35
The coercive Chinese policy has a great deal of acceptance and support in
the United States, including a defense offered by "pro-choice" feminist
leaders such as Eleanor Smeal and Molly Yard. When the Reagan
administration
cut off funds for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA, formerly
United
Nations Fund for Population Activities) because of its support for the
Chinese population program, two American organizations sued to restore
funds: Rockefeller's Population Council, and the Population Institute in
Washington. A 1978 survey of members of the Population Association of
America found that 34 percent of members agreed that "coercive birth
control
programs should be initiated in at least some countries immediately."36
In fact, the United States government is responsible for much of global
population control. In 1976, a formal definition of national security
interests, NSSM 200, described the major threats to the United States.
Some
of these threats were obvious. The first, of course, was Communism in
Europe, with the military charged with principal responsibility for
defending American national security from this threat. In the Pacific, the
threat was the possibility of losing bases; the military was charged with
the principal responsibility for defending this national interest. In
Latin
America, there was the threat of incipient Communism; the CIA had
principal
responsibility for our defense. In Africa, according to the American
government in 1976 and ever since, there is a threat to American national
security interests: population growth. The Agency for International
Development was given the responsibility of defending America from this
grave threat. NSSM 200 was classified until 1992; when it was
declassified,
the Information Project for Africa distributed it, ad the covert
depopulation policy tucked into the American foreign aid program caused a
great deal of resentment.37



CURRENT DEVELOPMENT
In late 1994, the publication of The Bell Curve revived the word
"eugenics."
The research quoted in the book is drawn overwhelmingly from members of
the
American Eugenics Society and other eugenics groups. Curiously, most
commentators focused on one chapter in the lengthy book, and debated
whether
it was racist. The book concludes that all men are not equal, and that the
Declaration of Independence is badly worded. This lengthy restatement of
eugenics was on the best seller list for weeks.
The book was generally praised by conservatives (see The National Review ,
December 5, 1994, an issue devoted to The Bell Curve) and attacked by
liberals (see The New Republic, October 31, 1994, which included a lengthy
defense of the book by its authors and 21 critical or hostile responses).



SYSTEMATIC RESPONSE
One excellent way to understand the eugenics movement is to read a list of
the members of the Eugenics Society and its successor, the Society for the
Study of Social Biology. Eugenics is not a conspiracy; it is a movement
and
an ideology. But its pieces are often considered in isolation (perhaps
because of the success of the strategy of crypto-eugenics) and reading the
list of members is one efficient way to see the whole picture.
A list of members of the American Eugenics Society, with notes, is
available
from American Life League.
In 1925, John Thomas Scopes was charged with teaching evolution in a
public
school in Tennessee, in violation of state law. The trial became a highly
visible confrontation between Fundamentalist views of Scripture and the
theory of evolution. Shaping the debate this way allowed the proponents of
evolution to score a tremendous public relations victory. Nonetheless, the
questions, then and now, are theological and moral, not just scientific.
Darwin and the evolutionists and eugenicists had indeed precipitated a
religious crisis, and were debating the existence of God and the meaning
of
human life.
From the beginning, the great obstacle to the eugenics movement has been
the
Roman Catholic Church, and the Church's position has been repeatedly
distorted. A sketch of the Church's position can be found in:
Gaudium et Spes or The Church in the Modern World-the Vatican II document
explaining to all people of good will why the Church wants to be involved
in
discussions of the problems facing the world and what she can contribute
to
solving them;
Humanae Vitae-Pope Paul VI's letter on human life, best known for his
re-statement of the Church's unwavering assertion that contraception is
objectively wrong and cannot be made moral, but also containing a sharp
warning about the threat of coercive population control;
Populorum Progressio-Pope Paul VI's powerful letter on development, urging
the wealthy nations to help the poor generously, and calling development
the
"new name for peace";
Laborem Exercens-Pope John Paul II's letter on work, offering a radically
new approach to the place of work in the life of an individual and in
society;
Familiaris Consortio-Pope John Paul II's letter on family life, best known
for re-stating the Church's opposition to contraception, but also
defending
the rights of families, including the right to migrate in search of a
better
economic life; and
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis-one of Pope John Paul II's letters on the crises
facing the modern world, declaring that the measure of a social program is
its impact on the dignity of the individual, and that the route to freedom
from social evil is solidarity with the victims of the evil.
The social sciences in our time are thoroughly imbued with eugenic theory.
It would be a noble work to rescue them, to work through the basic texts
and
theories of each field, identifying the eugenic taint and replacing it
with
an unswerving devotion to the dignity of the individual, including the
poor.



Footnotes
1 Francis Galton, "Eugenics, Its Definition, Scope and Aims," Sociological
Papers (London, 1905)
2 Formerly Lucifer the Light Bearer
3 Diane B. Paul, "Eugenics Anxieties, Social Realities, and Political
Choices," in Are Genes Us: The Social Consequences of the New Genetics
(New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), p. 149
4 Julian Huxley, Evolution in Action (New York: Signet, 1957), p. 132.
Huxley's career is indispensable to understanding eugenics. His
grandfather
Thomas Henry Huxley was a champion of Darwin's theories. Julian Huxley was
the founder of the World Wildlife Fund, a member of the Euthanasia
Society,
a leader in the Abortion Law Reform Association. He served in the English
Eugenics Society in various capacities over several decades, including
three
years as president.
5 The Population Council: A Chronicle of the First Twenty-Five Years,
1952-1977 (New York: Population Council, 1978), pp. 16-17
6 The word was first used to refer to questions about population and
environment, in the late 1960's. In the 1970's, it came to refer to
questions including abortion, contraception, euthanasia and artificial
insemination.
7 Daniel J. Callahan, "Bioethics as a Discipline," Hastings Ceter Studies
1,
No. 1 (1973), pp. 66-73
8 Letter to P. L. Lavrov, 12-17 November 1875, cited by R. C. Lewontin,
Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human
Nature (New York: Pantheon, 1984), p. 309
9 J. Philippe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction, 1995), pp. 9-13
10 Eugenical News, 1917, p. 73
11 Robert G. Marshall and Charles A. Donovan, Blessed Are the Barren (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991)
12 Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Review, October 1921, p. 5
13 Barry Mehler, "Sources in the Study of Eugenics," Mendel Newsletter,
Nov., 1978
14 Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton and
Co.,
1981), p. 231
15 Frederick Osborn, "Eugenics," Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago,
London,
et al.: 1970), Vol. 8, p. 816 ff. Osborn was an officer-treasurer, former
president-of the American Eugenics Society when he wrote this article for
the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is impossible to understand the history
of
eugenics without grasping the extent to which the eugenicists have been
able
to write their own story. Osborn, for example, is frequently considered to
be a key reformer in the eugenics movement, purging it of racism after
World
War II. But he was president of the Pioneer Fund, a secretive white
supremacist organization, from 1947 to 1956.
16 Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science (New York: Oxford University
Press,
1988)
17 Stefan Kuhl, The Nazi Connection, (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University
Press, 1994). This is an excellent study of the extent of cooperation
between eugenicists inside and outside Germany.
18 Katharine O'Keefe, "Crypto-Eugenics," unpublished paper (available
through American Life League, Stafford, VA). Williams, who taught
Jurisprudence at Cambridge University, was also president of the Abortion
Law Reform Association and later Vice President of the Voluntary
Euthanasia
Society.
19 Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science (New York: Oxford University
Press,
1988), pp. 18-20
20 Eugenical News, January/February 1936, pp. 21-22
21 Faith Schenck and A. S. Parkes, "The Activities of the Eugenics
Society,"
Eugenics Review, vol 60 (1968), pp. 154-155
22 ibid.
23 Frederick Osborn, Galton Lecture, Eugenics Review, 1956-1957, pp. 21-22
24 Frederick Osborn, Future of Human Heredity (New York: Weybright and
Talley, 1968), p. 104
25 ibid, p. 91
26 Mankind Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1
27 Eugenics Review, October 1938, p. 195
28 Eugenical News, 1938, p. 34
29 Katharine O'Keefe, index to list of American Eugenics Society
(available
through American Life League)
30 Germaine Greer, Sex and Destiny (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 377
31 The Population Council: A Chronicle of the First Twenty-Five Years,
1952-1977 (New York: Population Council, 1978), p. 210
32 Kingsley Davis, "Sociological Aspects of Genetic Control" in Readings
in
Population, edited by William Petersen (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 379
33 Philip M. Hauser, "Population Control: More Than Family Planning" in
Readings in Population, edited by William Petersen (New York: Macmillan,
1972), pp. 422-423
34 People, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1989. IPPF's quarterly, from London, is not the
same as the American magazine about celebrities.
35 William O'Reilly, USAID's Agenda of Fear (Gaithersburg, MD: Human Life
International, 1987)
36 PAA Affairs, Fall 1978, p. 2, quoted by John S. Aird in Slaughter of
the
Innocents (Washington: AEI Press, 1990), p. 8. Aird, a former research
specialist on China at the U.S. Bureau of the Census, documents the
coercive
nature of the Chinese program.
37 Population Control and National Security (Washington: Information
Project
for Africa, 1991)
38 Richard J. Herrnstein, and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence
and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994). In an
excellent review in the December 1, 1994, New York Review, Charles Lane
showed the extensive influence of the Pioneer Fund and Mankind Quarterly
on
the book.



Bibliography
History of Eugenics
Adams, Mark, ed., The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France,
Brazil
and Russia (New York and Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1990)
Bajema, Carl L., ed., Eugenics, Then and Now (Stroudsburg, Penn-sylvania:
Hutchinson & Ross, 1976)
Baker-Benfield, G. J., The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes
Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Harper
Colophon, 1976)
Bigelow, Maurice A., "Brief History of the American Eugenics Society,"
Eugenic News, 31 (1946): 49-51.
Chase, Allen, The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New
Scientific
Racism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977).
Degler, Carl N., In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of
Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York: Oxford University Press,
1991)
Haller, Mark H., Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New
Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1963)
Kevles, Daniel J., In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human
Heredity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986)
Kuhl, Stefan, The Nazi Connection, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1994)
Lifton, Robert, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of
Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986)
Ludmerer, Kenneth M., Genetics and American Society (Baltimore and London:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972)
Mehler, Barry, "A History of the American Eugenics Society, 1921-1940,"
dissertation, University of Illinois, 1988.
Pernick, Martin S., The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of Defective
Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915 (New York:
Oxford
University Press, 1992)
Pickens, Donald K., Eugenics and the Progressives (Nashville, Tennessee:
Vanderbilt University Press, 1968)
Rosenberg, Charles E., No Other Gods: On Science and American Social
Thought
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976)
Shapiro, Thomas M., Population Control Politics: Women, Sterilization and
Reproductive Choice (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985)
Stepan, Nancy, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800-1960
(London:
Macmillan, 1982)
Stepan, Nancy, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin
America (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1991)
Trombley, Stephen, The Right to Reproduce: A History of Coercive
Sterilization (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988)
Weinreich, Max, Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany's
Crimes Against the Jewish People (New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute,
1946)
Weiss, Sheila F., Race Hygiene and National Efficiency: The Eugenics of
Wilhelm Schallmayer (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of
California
Press, 1987)
Reproductive Technology
Corea, G., The Mother Machine (New York: Harper & Row, 1985)
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Instruction on Respect for
Human
Life in Its Origins and on the Dignity of Procreation (Vatican City: 1987)
De Marco, Don, Biotechnology and the Assault on Parenthood (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1991)
Fletcher, Joseph, Morals and Medicine (Boston: Bacon Press, 1960)
Frank, Diana, and Vogel, Marta, The Baby Makers (New York: Carroll & Graf,
1988)
Howard, Ted, and Rifkin, Jeremy, Who Should Play God? (New York: Dell
Publishing, 1987)
Lejeune, Jerome; Ramsey, Paul; and Wright, Gerard, The Question of In
Vitro
Fertilization (London: SPUC Educational Trust, 1984)
McLaughlin, Loretta, The Pill, John Rock, and the Church (Boston: Little,
Brown & Co, 1982)
Rini, Suzanne M., Beyond Abortion: A Chronicle of Fetal Experimentation
(Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1988)
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Infertility: Medical and
Social Choices (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988)
Population Control
Aird, John S., Slaughter of the Innocents: Coercive Birth Control in China
(Washington: AEI Press, 1990)
Greer, Germaine, Sex and Destiny (New York: Harper & Row, 1984)
Hartmann, Betsy, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs (New York: Harper & Row,
1987)
Information Project for Africa, Population Control and National Security
(Washington, 1991). IPFA has four other studies that have also been used
by
opponents of population imperialism throughout the developing world.

--
The fundamental principle of our Constitution . . . enjoins [requires]
that
the will of the majority shall prevail.
George Washington
--------------------------------------------------------------
The will of the majority [is] the natural law of every society [and] is
the
only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this may sometimes
err. But its errors are honest, solitary and short-lived
Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to
be
rightful must be reasonable - the minority possess their equal rights
which
equal law must protect
Thomas Jefferson