Eugenics: the skeleton in the left's closet

[BWV 1080]

This is a British piece, but the same applied to the US- particularly with people like Margaret Sanger and the AFL

http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/co ... loset-left
Eugenics: the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left's closet | Jonathan Freedland


William Beveridge, who argued that those with 'general defects' should be denied not only the vote, but 'civil freedom and fatherhood'. Photograph: Hans Wild/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Read by 461 people

Friday 17 February 2012
Socialism's one-time interest in eugenics is dismissed as an accident of history. But the truth is far more unpalatable


Does the past matter? When confronted by facts that are uncomfortable, but which relate to people long dead, should we put them aside and, to use a phrase very much of our time, move on? And there's a separate, but related, question: how should we treat the otherwise admirable thought or writings of people when we discover that those same people also held views we find repugnant?

Those questions are triggered in part by the early responses to Pantheon, my new novel published this week under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. The book is a thriller, set in the Oxford and Yale of 1940, but it rests on several true stories. Among those is one of the grisliest skeletons in the cupboard of the British intellectual elite, a skeleton that rattles especially loudly inside the closet of the left.

It is eugenics, the belief that society's fate rested on its ability to breed more of the strong and fewer of the weak. So-called positive eugenics meant encouraging those of greater intellectual ability and "moral worth" to have more children, while negative eugenics sought to urge, or even force, those deemed inferior to reproduce less often or not at all. The aim was to increase the overall quality of the national herd, multiplying the thoroughbreds and weeding out the runts.

Such talk repels us now, but in the prewar era it was the common sense of the age. Most alarming, many of its leading advocates were found among the luminaries of the Fabian and socialist left, men and women revered to this day. Thus George Bernard Shaw could insist that "the only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man", even suggesting, in a phrase that chills the blood, that defectives be dealt with by means of a "lethal chamber".

Such thinking was not alien to the great Liberal titan and mastermind of the welfare state, William Beveridge, who argued that those with "general defects" should be denied not only the vote, but "civil freedom and fatherhood". Indeed, a desire to limit the numbers of the inferior was written into modern notions of birth control from the start. That great pioneer of contraception, Marie Stopes – honoured with a postage stamp in 2008 – was a hardline eugenicist, determined that the "hordes of defectives" be reduced in number, thereby placing less of a burden on "the fit". Stopes later disinherited her son because he had married a short-sighted woman, thereby risking a less-than-perfect grandchild.

Yet what looks kooky or sinister in 2012 struck the prewar British left as solid and sensible. Harold Laski, stellar LSE professor, co-founder of the Left Book Club and one-time chairman of the Labour party, cautioned that: "The time is surely coming … when society will look upon the production of a weakling as a crime against itself." Meanwhile, JBS Haldane, admired scientist and socialist, warned that: "Civilisation stands in real danger from over-production of 'undermen'." That's Untermenschen in German.

I'm afraid even the Manchester Guardian was not immune. When a parliamentary report in 1934 backed voluntary sterilisation of the unfit, a Guardian editorial offered warm support, endorsing the sterilisation campaign "the eugenists soundly urge". If it's any comfort, the New Statesman was in the same camp.

According to Dennis Sewell, whose book The Political Gene charts the impact of Darwinian ideas on politics, the eugenics movement's definition of "unfit" was not limited to the physically or mentally impaired. It held, he writes, "that most of the behavioural traits that led to poverty were inherited. In short, that the poor were genetically inferior to the educated middle class." It was not poverty that had to be reduced or even eliminated: it was the poor.

Hence the enthusiasm of John Maynard Keynes, director of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944, for contraception, essential because the working class was too "drunken and ignorant" to keep its numbers down.

We could respond to all this the way we react when reading of Churchill's dismissal of Gandhi as a "half-naked fakir" or indeed of his own attraction to eugenics, by saying it was all a long time ago, when different norms applied. That is a common response when today's left-liberals are confronted by the eugenicist record of their forebears, reacting as if it were all an accident of time, a slip-up by creatures of their era who should not be judged by today's standards.

Except this was no accident. The Fabians, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and their ilk were not attracted to eugenics because they briefly forgot their leftwing principles. The harder truth is that they were drawn to eugenics for what were then good, leftwing reasons.

They believed in science and progress, and nothing was more cutting edge and modern than social Darwinism. Man now had the ability to intervene in his own evolution. Instead of natural selection and the law of the jungle, there would be planned selection. And what could be more socialist than planning, the Fabian faith that the gentlemen in Whitehall really did know best? If the state was going to plan the production of motor cars in the national interest, why should it not do the same for the production of babies? The aim was to do what was best for society, and society would clearly be better off if there were more of the strong to carry fewer of the weak.

What was missing was any value placed on individual freedom, even the most basic freedom of a human being to have a child. The middle class and privileged felt quite ready to remove that right from those they deemed unworthy of it.

Eugenics went into steep decline after 1945. Most recoiled from it once they saw where it led – to the gates of Auschwitz. The infatuation with an idea horribly close to nazism was steadily forgotten. But we need a reckoning with this shaming past. Such a reckoning would focus less on today's advances in selective embryology, and the ability to screen out genetic diseases, than on the kind of loose talk about the "underclass" that recently enabled the prime minister to speak of "neighbours from hell" and the poor as if the two groups were synonymous.

Progressives face a particular challenge, to cast off a mentality that can too easily regard people as means rather than ends. For in this respect a movement is just like a person: it never entirely escapes its roots.

Twitter: @j_freedland

• This article was edited on 18 February 2012 to amend the final paragraph.

[Teresa B]

It's always good to remember what the misuse/abuse of a scientific theory can wreak--although there is no one, even on the most radical "left", that would condone eugenics today. (In fact my late friend S.J. Gould wrote a book on it, and he was about as left-leaning as anyone, barring communists.) While the eugenics movement in the pre-WW II 20th Century may have been associated with the left, and it may have been based on Darwinism, it is a fallacy and a scare tactic to say "watch out, the left could bring this skeleton out any minute again", as though any modern-day liberal might be an acolyte of Hitler. This has clearly never been the case in this country.

It's good to remind people of horrible ideas in history and where they can take us; but it is a disservice to everyone to imply that modern-day liberals might still hold these ideas.

Teresa

[jbuck919]

It's always good to remember what the misuse/abuse of a scientific theory can wreak--although there is no one, even on the most radical "left", that would condone eugenics today. (In fact my late friend S.J. Gould wrote a book on it, and he was about as left-leaning as anyone, barring communists.) While the eugenics movement in the pre-WW II 20th Century may have been associated with the left, and it may have been based on Darwinism, it is a fallacy and a scare tactic to say "watch out, the left could bring this skeleton out any minute again", as though any modern-day liberal might be an acolyte of Hitler. This has clearly never been the case in this country.

It's good to remind people of horrible ideas in history and where they can take us; but it is a disservice to everyone to imply that modern-day liberals might still hold these ideas.

Teresa

Thank you, Teresa.

It is dismaying to think that even mandatory sterilization was once considered a respectable opinion held by people we associate with progress. But then, many of these people also took for granted that women's place was in the home and that homosexuality was a serious illness. Also, the implication is that the political right favored no such thing and argued against it, something I doubt very much. Through most of history, everybody has held what we now think to be the "wrong" opinion about a variety of things.

The article doesn't even mention the most notorious case, in the US anyway, the 1927 Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell, which upheld a Virginia law mandating sterilization for certain classes of the "feeble-minded." From the Wikipedia article (and note the interesting twist at the end):

The ruling was written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. In support of his argument that the interest of the states in a "pure" gene pool outweighed the interest of individuals in their bodily integrity, he argued:

“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. ”

Holmes concluded his argument by declaring that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough".[5] The sole dissenter in the court, Justice Pierce Butler, a devout Catholic, declined to write a dissenting opinion.


While eugenics may be discredited, Social Darwinism (defined at dictionary.com as the theory "by which the social order is accounted as the product of natural selection of those persons best suited to existing living conditions and in accord with which a position of laissez-faire is advocated") is alive and well, but not on the political left. Libertarians and removed-from-center conservatives hold to a program that is socially Darwinian, even if many will not admit or face the Darwinian implication that many people, and I don't mean "defectives," will fall out of the bottom of a society so structured.

(Incidentally, much as we would like to think otherwise, Darwin himself was sympathetic to the then nascent idea of social Darwinism. There's another great figure of human history lost to perfection. )

[THEHORN]

Straw man . Being a liberal does not necessarily mean you approve of eugenics.
Right-wingers are always bringing up the tired old canard about Margaret Sanger being an evil racist who wanted to wipe out blacks in America . This story has been long discredited.
I've enen heard Cathoilics make the asinine claim that Sanger "hated large families" .
This is ludicrous. She came from a desperately poor large family herself, and knew the misery of poor women being reduced to baby-making machines, and the utter misery of
large poor families . She wasn't opposed to large families per se, just forcing the poor to have them, which is extremely destructive to society .

[Teresa B]

Thank you, Teresa.

It is dismaying to think that even mandatory sterilization was once considered a respectable opinion held by people we associate with progress. But then, many of these people also took for granted that women's place was in the home and that homosexuality was a serious illness. Also, the implication is that the political right favored no such thing and argued against it, something I doubt very much. Through most of history, everybody has held what we now think to be the "wrong" opinion about a variety of things.

The article doesn't even mention the most notorious case, in the US anyway, the 1927 Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell, which upheld a Virginia law mandating sterilization for certain classes of the "feeble-minded." From the Wikipedia article (and note the interesting twist at the end):

The ruling was written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. In support of his argument that the interest of the states in a "pure" gene pool outweighed the interest of individuals in their bodily integrity, he argued:

“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. ”

Holmes concluded his argument by declaring that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough".[5] The sole dissenter in the court, Justice Pierce Butler, a devout Catholic, declined to write a dissenting opinion.


While eugenics may be discredited, Social Darwinism (defined at dictionary.com as the theory "by which the social order is accounted as the product of natural selection of those persons best suited to existing living conditions and in accord with which a position of laissez-faire is advocated") is alive and well, but not on the political left. Libertarians and removed-from-center conservatives hold to a program that is socially Darwinian, even if many will not admit or face the Darwinian implication that many people, and I don't mean "defectives," will fall out of the bottom of a society so structured.

(Incidentally, much as we would like to think otherwise, Darwin himself was sympathetic to the then nascent idea of social Darwinism. There's another great figure of human history lost to perfection. )

Great comment, John...In fact, aside from his book "the Mismeasure of Man", Gould wrote an excellent essay titled "Carrie Buck's Daughter" (-which is online in its entirety here:

http://faculty.uca.edu/benw/biol4415/pa ... iebuck.pdf )

In it, he described some history behind the Buck vs Bell case. There was actually no indication that Carrie Buck (who was the first woman involuntarily sterilized under the Virginia sterilization bill) or her daughter Vivian were "feeble-minded". In fact, Gould dug up Vivian's report cards from Venable school in Charlottesville showing her grades were about average! (I found this an especially interesting connection, as I lived right across the street from Venable School for two years. It is still a working elementary school.)

About Darwin himself being sympathetic to the idea of "Social Darwinism", I think we can forgive Darwin for living in his own historical milieu, just as we mostly forgive Thomas Jefferson for owning slaves. There is evidence that Jefferson held conflicting emotions on that, and we can assume Darwin (whose own cousin Galton was one of the originators of Social Darwinism) held such conflicting ideas about his theory being used to justify a eugenics program also. Read this quote from his "Descent of Man":

We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected...Charles Darwin
--italics mine.

Clearly Darwin, (although he wasn't perfect!) did not go as far as supporting any sort of mandatory social program to prevent society's "weaker and inferior members" from marrying and having children.

Teresa

[BWV 1080]

This article was focused on the UK, the US left was actually less involved. While there were some direct ties between the American Eugenics movement and Nazi Germany, the politics of much of the American Eugenics movement was more Theodore Roosevelt-type progressivism rather than socialism. Aside from Margaret Sanger, American Socialists like Eugene V Debs or the IWW were not particularly involved in promoting Eugenics.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 1.DTL&ao=3

Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection
Edwin Black
Sunday, November 9, 2003
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.

In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as Pasadena's Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations -- which functioned as part of a closely-knit network -- published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics,

and propagandized for the Nazis.

Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863,

Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people married only other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported to the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenics advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.

In a United States demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early 20th century. Elitists, utopians and so-called progressives fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: Populate the Earth with vastly more of their own socioeconomic and biological kind -- and less or none of everyone else.

The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the Earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark- haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.

How? By identifying so-called defective family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior -- the so-called unfit. The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.

Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point No. 8 was euthanasia.

The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in the United States was a "lethal chamber" or public, locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, "Applied Eugenics," which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution . . . Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." "Applied Eugenics" also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."

Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Ill., fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to 40 percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.

Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first 25 years of eugenics legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At the Sonoma State Home, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.

In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes' words in their own defense.

Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German officials and scientists.

Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti- Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, but the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.

During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In "Mein Kampf," published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."

Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenics leader Madison Grant, calling his race-based eugenics book, "The Passing of the Great Race," his "bible."

Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.

During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.

In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe, upon returning from Germany, ebulliently bragged to a colleague, "You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."

That same year, 10 years after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."

More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions.

By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in today's money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 toward creation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.

Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's complex of eugenics institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.

Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.

Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society, declared of Nazism, "While we were ***-footing around ... the Germans were calling a spade a spade."

A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades,

American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity.

The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND

Dollars over three year period to kwg institute anthropology for research on

Twins and effects on later generations of substances toxic for germ plasm.

At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenics press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenics doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."

Verschuer had a longtime assistant. His name was Josef Mengele.

On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer (captain) and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer (Himmler)."

Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them,

he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.

Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenics studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the great institutions they helped found, and the science they helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.

After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity -- an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense -- to no avail. They were found guilty.

However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re- established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946, when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany . . . I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenics luminaries and then sent various eugenics publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.

Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."

Soon, Verschuer again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.

In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.

Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California, have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.

Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late 20th century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.

There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On Oct. 14,

the United States' first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.

Edwin Black is author of the award-winning "IBM and the Holocaust" and the recently released "War Against the Weak" (published by Four Walls Eight Windows), from which this article is adapted.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 2QSKB1.DTL

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

[Mark Harwood]

Astonishing stuff. This sentence stands out for me: "Hitler studied American eugenics laws."

[jbuck919]

Astonishing stuff. This sentence stands out for me: "Hitler studied American eugenics laws."

I always assume everyone has seen this movie, but maybe not. Advance to 4:00.

[keaggy220]

The left are still staunch defenders of a form of eugenics today. 9 out of 10 babies with Down Syndrome are killed simply because they have Down Syndrome. We are barbarians.

Here are two awesome new adds by Target and Nordstrom using models with Down Syndrome:

[jbuck919]

The left are still staunch defenders of a form of eugenics today. 9 out of 10 babies with Down Syndrome are killed simply because they have Down Syndrome. We are barbarians.

And you know for a fact that all those women aborting Down Syndrome fetuses are liberals?

[keaggy220]

The left are still staunch defenders of a form of eugenics today. 9 out of 10 babies with Down Syndrome are killed simply because they have Down Syndrome. We are barbarians.

And you know for a fact that all those women aborting Down Syndrome fetuses are liberals?

I don't know if all those women are liberals. But according to the latest CNN abortion poll taken early this month support for abortion overall is down to 44% with 50% disapproving - promising.... Republican support is at 12% and Democratic support is at 70%.

I would imagine if that poll asked if killing Down Syndrome kids should be a right than the Republican number would be non-existent.

[Teresa B]

The left are still staunch defenders of a form of eugenics today. 9 out of 10 babies with Down Syndrome are killed simply because they have Down Syndrome. We are barbarians.

Speak for yourself. This comment is despicable.

[jbuck919]

I would imagine if that poll asked if killing Down Syndrome kids should be a right than the Republican number would be non-existent.

And I wonder what it would be if the question was "Do you think the government should force women to carry fetuses with genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome to term against their will?"

[keaggy220]

The left are still staunch defenders of a form of eugenics today. 9 out of 10 babies with Down Syndrome are killed simply because they have Down Syndrome. We are barbarians.

Speak for yourself. This comment is despicable.

Eugenics doesn't die easy, does it?

[keaggy220]

I would imagine if that poll asked if killing Down Syndrome kids should be a right than the Republican number would be non-existent.

And I wonder what it would be if the question was "Do you think the government should force women to carry fetuses with genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome to term against their will?"

Does the word fetus make you feel better about killing a human? Thank God for science and ultrasounds.

[jbuck919]

I would imagine if that poll asked if killing Down Syndrome kids should be a right than the Republican number would be non-existent.

And I wonder what it would be if the question was "Do you think the government should force women to carry fetuses with genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome to term against their will?"

Does the word fetus make you feel better about killing a human?

All right, replace it with the word "baby" in the same question and see what response you get. Many Americans have a curious lack of connection between what they theoretically want and what they think that realistically implies. (On another thread I posted a column about how people who vote for Republicans to end government programs don't think of the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security they receive as government programs.) I'd like to know how many people think that banning abortion is a good idea but at the same time think forcing women to carry their whatever to term and undergo labor or a caesarean to bring it into the world is a bad idea.

[Mark Harwood]

Abortion debates address the rights of mother & fetus; the laws reflect society's will, which takes into account the likely health of the baby.
Let's not confuse that with eugenics, which addresses the genetic pool at large, and relegates the rights of mother & fetus to a minor role at best.
In the case of Down's, the trisomy of chromosome 21 impairs sterility, so it is not a eugenics issue anyway.

Perhaps not everyone here is aware of Sweden's eugenics program? It ended in the 1970s.

[jbuck919]

Abortion debates address the rights of mother & fetus; the laws reflect society's will, which takes into account the likely health of the baby.
Let's not confuse that with eugenics, which addresses the genetic pool at large, and relegates the rights of mother & fetus to a minor role at best.
In the case of Down's, the trisomy of chromosome 21 impairs sterility, so it is not a eugenics issue anyway.

I think you mean "imparts" sterility. I wasn't sure about that and didn't want to make any potentially offensive remark like "they don't have babies anyway," so thanks for clearing it up (and also for the rest of your sensible post).

[Mark Harwood]

Abortion debates address the rights of mother & fetus; the laws reflect society's will, which takes into account the likely health of the baby.
Let's not confuse that with eugenics, which addresses the genetic pool at large, and relegates the rights of mother & fetus to a minor role at best.
In the case of Down's, the trisomy of chromosome 21 impairs sterility, so it is not a eugenics issue anyway.

I think you mean "imparts" sterility. I wasn't sure about that and didn't want to make any potentially offensive remark like "they don't have babies anyway," so thanks for clearing it up (and also for the rest of your sensible post).

Thanks. I had a feeling that I'd done that. Actually, I meant "impairs fertility", because some Downs folks have had kids.

[Teresa B]

The left are still staunch defenders of a form of eugenics today. 9 out of 10 babies with Down Syndrome are killed simply because they have Down Syndrome. We are barbarians.

Speak for yourself. This comment is despicable.

Eugenics doesn't die easy, does it?

What apparently doesn't die easily is the trait of stubbornly arguing points about which you have no understanding. The aborting of fetuses with Downs, whatever you feel about it, has ZERO to do with eugenics. If you could empathize with parents who are faced with raising a child with Downs, you would realize that it is a deeply emotional and personal issue.

Now let's not hear any more nonsense about liberals and eugenics.

[keaggy220]

I would imagine if that poll asked if killing Down Syndrome kids should be a right than the Republican number would be non-existent.

And I wonder what it would be if the question was "Do you think the government should force women to carry fetuses with genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome to term against their will?"

Does the word fetus make you feel better about killing a human?

All right, replace it with the word "baby" in the same question and see what response you get. Many Americans have a curious lack of connection between what they theoretically want and what they think that realistically implies. (On another thread I posted a column about how people who vote for Republicans to end government programs don't think of the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security they receive as government programs.) I'd like to know how many people think that banning abortion is a good idea but at the same time think forcing women to carry their whatever to term and undergo labor or a caesarean to bring it into the world is a bad idea.

You're correct, when the rubber hits the road opinions change. While conservative states have had the freedom to champion life giving legislation, I believe they should ultimately be given the right to choose if killing unborn babies is a practice they want to continue in their states. We do this for the death penalty. If it's good for the guilty, why not the innocent?

Also, I think this question could go along with your reworded poll question:

Do you think the government should force the collective to pay for the care of alzheimer's patients or should we have the option to terminate their dependance?

[keaggy220]

The left are still staunch defenders of a form of eugenics today. 9 out of 10 babies with Down Syndrome are killed simply because they have Down Syndrome. We are barbarians.

Speak for yourself. This comment is despicable.

Eugenics doesn't die easy, does it?

What apparently doesn't die easily is the trait of stubbornly arguing points about which you have no understanding. The aborting of fetuses with Downs, whatever you feel about it, has ZERO to do with eugenics. If you could empathize with parents who are faced with raising a child with Downs, you would realize that it is a deeply emotional and personal issue.

Now let's not hear any more nonsense about liberals and eugenics.

Have you seen videos of a "fetus" moving and jerking violently trying to avoid the suction of an abortionists instrument? Do you have any understanding? Can you empathize as we practice the barbarism on millions of babies.

This sentence deleted by the moderators. PLEASE, no name calling on this forum! An apology should be forthcoming to the person to whom that remark was made.

[Teresa B]

The left are still staunch defenders of a form of eugenics today. 9 out of 10 babies with Down Syndrome are killed simply because they have Down Syndrome. We are barbarians.

Speak for yourself. This comment is despicable.

Eugenics doesn't die easy, does it?

What apparently doesn't die easily is the trait of stubbornly arguing points about which you have no understanding. The aborting of fetuses with Downs, whatever you feel about it, has ZERO to do with eugenics. If you could empathize with parents who are faced with raising a child with Downs, you would realize that it is a deeply emotional and personal issue.

Now let's not hear any more nonsense about liberals and eugenics.

Have you seen videos of a "fetus" moving and jerking violently trying to avoid the suction of an abortionists instrument? Do you have any understanding? Can you empathize as we practice the barbarism on millions of babies.

This is what you call nonsense you beast.

Eugenics and the abortion issue are separate topics.

keaggy, It's clear you live in your own world. I have been insulted on this board in the past, but never in quite such a brutish and stupid manner.

As a physician for the past 34 years, I have devoted much of my life to helping ease the pain of other human beings. I will not be spoken to this way by anyone.

I hope that you will wise up and decide to delete your post, or whoever is moderating this board will ensure that it is deleted, at the very least.

Teresa

[keaggy220]

The left are still staunch defenders of a form of eugenics today. 9 out of 10 babies with Down Syndrome are killed simply because they have Down Syndrome. We are barbarians.

Speak for yourself. This comment is despicable.

Eugenics doesn't die easy, does it?

What apparently doesn't die easily is the trait of stubbornly arguing points about which you have no understanding. The aborting of fetuses with Downs, whatever you feel about it, has ZERO to do with eugenics. If you could empathize with parents who are faced with raising a child with Downs, you would realize that it is a deeply emotional and personal issue.

Now let's not hear any more nonsense about liberals and eugenics.

Have you seen videos of a "fetus" moving and jerking violently trying to avoid the suction of an abortionists instrument? Do you have any understanding? Can you empathize as we practice the barbarism on millions of babies.

This is what you call nonsense you beast.

Eugenics and the abortion issue are separate topics.

keaggy, It's clear you live in your own world. I have been insulted on this board in the past, but never in quite such a brutish and stupid manner.

As a physician for the past 34 years, I have devoted much of my life to helping ease the pain of other human beings. I will not be spoken to this way by anyone.

I hope that you will wise up and decide to delete your post, or whoever is moderating this board will ensure that it is deleted, at the very least.

Teresa

When you call the plight of millions of babies nonsense you deserve it. I'm sure you're a nice person and I enjoy reading most of your posts, even when I don't agree. However, I find your position on this issue reprehensible. I'm sure this is what you've been taught and you find abortion to be an amoral practice. I should have more tolerance for your ignorance, but this issue is about life.

I, along with millions of other Americans, find this to be an issue as barbaric as the practice of slavery. I'm sure there were many hurt feelings during those debates 150 years ago. I'm confident that eventually justice will win - and legislation is certainly moving in this direction.

[lennygoran]

When you call the plight of millions of babies nonsense you deserve it.

I'm very surprised at your poor manners here--it seems to me that eugenics is quite different than the subject of abortion. Eugenics has shamefully been used by groups from all political persuasions and I believe Teresa was pointing that out--you definitely owe her an apology. Regards, Len

[keaggy220]

When you call the plight of millions of babies nonsense you deserve it.

I'm very surprised at your poor manners here--it seems to me that eugenics is quite different than the subject of abortion. Eugenics has shamefully been used by groups from all political persuasions and I believe Teresa was pointing that out--you definitely owe her an apology. Regards, Len

Controlled breeding is eugenics. Killing unwanted babies prior to birth is a form of controlled breeding. My manners do on occasion go out the window on this subject.

[jbuck919]

Controlled breeding is eugenics. Killing unwanted babies prior to birth is a form of controlled breeding. My manners do on occasion go out the window on this subject.

There are countries in which women choose abortions because the baby would not be a boy (and countries where this is against the law even though it is practiced), but that is still neither eugenics nor controlled breeding. None of the common reasons for abortion, including the highly problematic if not reprehensible one I just mentioned, is intended to improve the genetic makeup of the species.

As more than one person has now pointed out, you are offending here not by offering an opinion on an important social issue, but by diminishing your credibility as a critical thinker.If you can't see that you are confusing two issues, then there's not much we can do but tolerate your confusion, but if you do get the point, then stop flailing around trying to make points in the wrong context and then defending yourself for it, and start a new thread for a new topic. No one will think ill of you if you take a step back and reorganize your presentation so that it is not just railing against all you see of evil in the world juxtaposed to whatever the current topic is.

[Mark Harwood]

To Keaggy:

Controlled breeding is eugenics.
No, friend, it isn't, unless it is used as a tool to make changes to the genetic pool. The woman who has her fetus killed may have no such intention, but may have that effect in a statistically tiny manner.

Killing unwanted babies prior to birth is a form of controlled breeding.
A form of, yes; a tool, maybe; but abortion is not necessarily part of a breeding program.

My manners do on occasion go out the window on this subject.
I empathise with that, believe me. But, for clarity, please allow me to suggest, let's keep this thread close to State-sponsored eugenics and discuss abortion per se elsewhere.

[jbuck919]

Killing unwanted babies prior to birth is a form of controlled breeding.
A form of, yes; a tool, maybe; but abortion is not necessarily part of a breeding program.

And is not in fact anywhere in the world that I am aware of. And I don't think Keaggy was talking about hypothetical situations.

[Agnes Selby]

Keaggy, you owe Teresa an apology.
This carrying your political convictions too far and if you are
a gentleman you will apologise to Teresa.

Agnes.

[The Management]

Keaggy, please apologize to Teresa B. While we are an open forum, name calling is not a part of our culture on these boards.

[lennygoran]

My manners do on occasion go out the window on this subject.

Yes and it did here--why not an apology--I remember Teresa praising you on a man being able to be more flexible--btw I objected strongly! I would say this--Teresa was pointing out that all political sides have gotten into eugenics so as we discuss that subject criticizing today's liberals or conservatives doesn't quite fit in. Read Wiki on American eugenics--everyone got into the act!

For example here's wiki on some of America's great entrepeneurs:

"The American eugenics movement received extensive funding from various corporate foundations including the Carnegie Institution, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune.[6] In 1906 J.H. Kellogg provided funding to help found the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan."

Regards, Len

[keaggy220]

Keaggy, please apologize to Teresa B. While we are an open forum, name calling is not a part of our culture on these boards.

You know I figured a long time ago that abortion would get me in trouble on this forum. The amoral attitude on this forum regarding this issue has always infuriated me. Over the years not much else has raised my blood pressure. I've enjoyed the debate and I liked to dish it out and didn't mind taking it. Some of my opinions have even been shaped a little due to the discourse.

This abortion issue is right up there with slavery in its utter depravity. So I guess it's fitting my last post is defending the defenseless. I was hoping to get to 5,000 posts first. But it seems it only takes one... Hard to believe, but I've been posting here since 2005.

I think this forum is now down to two conservatives and one libertarian. Go get 'em!

I apologize for breaking the rule. Management, please delete my account.

May God bless you all - even Theresa!

[Teresa B]

Keaggy, please apologize to Teresa B. While we are an open forum, name calling is not a part of our culture on these boards.

You know I figured a long time ago that abortion would get me in trouble on this forum. The amoral attitude on this forum regarding this issue has always infuriated me. Over the years not much else has raised my blood pressure. I've enjoyed the debate and I liked to dish it out and didn't mind taking it. Some of my opinions have even been shaped a little due to the discourse.

This abortion issue is right up there with slavery in its utter depravity. So I guess it's fitting my last post is defending the defenseless. I was hoping to get to 5,000 posts first. But it seems it only takes one... Hard to believe, but I've been posting here since 2005.

I think this forum is now down to two conservatives and one libertarian. Go get 'em!

I apologize for breaking the rule. Management, please delete my account.

May God bless you all - even Theresa!

Keaggy, I will take your apology for breaking the rule as a personal apology.

Teresa

[rwetmore]

I think this forum is now down to two conservatives and one libertarian. Go get 'em!

I know. I'm feeling more and more alone. Best of luck to you - it's been fun.

[nut-job]

I think this forum is now down to two conservatives and one libertarian. Go get 'em!

I know. I'm feeling more and more alone. Best of luck to you - it's been fun.

Right, how is it even possible to put forward a conservative point of view if you are not allowed to call your interlocutor a beast (with satanic overtones) and a reprehensible person?

[Mark Harwood]

I think this forum is now down to two conservatives and one libertarian. Go get 'em!

I know. I'm feeling more and more alone. Best of luck to you - it's been fun.

Right, how is it even possible to put forward a conservative point of view if you are not allowed to call your interlocutor a beast (with satanic overtones) and a reprehensible person?

Oy!

[RebLem]

I have interviewed lots of women as a public aid caseworker. I have interviewed many women who have had abortions. When asked why, none of them ever said, "It had Downs Syndrome [or some other mental defciency or physical deformity] and I did not want to contribute to the degradation of my race's genetic stock."

What they do sometimes say is that they know it is a constant battle to get a Downs Syndrome child the kind of educational environment they need to grow and develop to their full potential. It is especially difficult in systems headed by right wing Republicants who think cutting taxes is the way a politician gets to heaven. It is right wing resistance to providing opportunities to Downs Syndrome children and others with developmental disabilities which is one of the prime motivators which lead women to seek abortions.

Experience has shown that in periods in which the safety net for such people is relatively generous, such as during the Clinton Administration, abortion rates decline, and that when there are cutbacks, as there were during the Cheney Administration, abortion rates increase.

Maybe you ought, keaggy, to clean up the mess in your own ideological house before you batter us with your holier than thou attitudes.

[jbuck919]

With all due respect to those who choose for have the Down Syndrome child with all that implies, I think it's plenty that one doesn't want that set of problems to begin with, which might be alleviated but would never be eliminated by perfect social services. Parents only have one go-around at raising a family and shouldn't feel under pressure to take on more of a challenge or adjust their investment/reward system more than is going to happen anyway.