Eugenics Research Paper

Eugenics was a movement based on a pseudoscience based on the improvement of the human population by way of controlled breeding to increase the rate of more desirable heritable genes and characteristics. Controlled breeding was done by several means including sterilization and infanticide and commonly occurred throughout the late 19th and 20th century. Even Ancient Greeks and Romans supported infanticide. Famed ancient philosopher Plato writes in The Republic, the government should monitor and control the reproduction of its people because

‘The good must be paired with the good, and the bad with the bad, and the offspring of the one must be reared and of the other destroyed; in this way the flock will be preserved in prime condition.’ This

thinking was in line with, although more humane than, the common practice of infanticide in Sparta, which was used to keep that population in fighting shape.” (Today I Learned, 2014)

In 1833, the term “eugenics” was coined by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwinism founder Charles Darwin, who felt that the upper crust of society was due to superior genetic makeup. Perhaps eugenics was Galton’s way of piggybacking or to countering cousin Darwin’s biological evolution through natural selection. What it lead to was the start of the mass sterilization, institutionalization, and murder of millions of people.

After establishing The Eugenics Records Office (ERO) in 1911 Cold Spring Harbor, New York, eugenicists began documenting and tracking family histories and determined that people who they considered to be unfit often came from families that were poor, lower class, immigrant, people of color, the disabled, the diseased and minorities. The ERO also felt that low class and low income was due to poor genes that led to lack of work and thus creating an income.

With the support of discriminatory anti-immigrant laws such as The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Alien Contract Labor laws of 1885 and 1887 prohibited certain laborers from immigrating to the United States. The Immigration Act of 1882 also charged a tax on immigrants and excluded the legal entry of idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become a public nuisance that needed care and financial support from society and government. A waste of life and/or waste of money was the theory behind these laws. The “undesirables” that existed in the United States were still here and needed to be filtered out of society. This came via sterilization of “unfit” people to prevent them from passing their unfit genes further into society. By the 20th century 33 states had legal sterilization, including Virginia. The most famous case of forced sterilization and institutionalization of a person with a disability was that of Carrie Buck.
In a New Yorker article titled The Forgotten Lessons of the American Eugenics Movement, Andrea DenHoed describes the unfortunate downfall of Carrie Buck by saying,

“Morons were considered particularly dangerous: they were smart enough to pass undetected and possibly breed with their superiors. Carrie, moreover, had had a child as an unmarried teen-ager, demonstrating the heightened sexuality and fertility—or “differential fecundity”—said to be common among the mentally deficient. Her mother and daughter had been labelled defective as well—the latter, still an infant, without any testing—providing evidence that Carrie’s reported shortcomings were hereditary. All of this added up to a terrifying spectre: Carrie was a walking womb, a pot of genetic poisons that might seep into purer bloodlines. And that is how Carrie Buck came to be at the center of the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, which, in an 8–1 decision, made forced sterilization for eugenic purposes legal in the United States.” (DenHoed, 2016)

Sterilization was also administered for various reasons such as alcoholism, poverty, promiscuity, criminality, intelligence levels, mental illnesses, and physical disabilities. Most people were subjected to and forced into these procedures without their consent due to the fact that it was government approved. Across the world, eugenics also took on the form of the mass murder of Jews, gypsies, gays and lesbians, and the disabled during World War II Europe. After defeating Hitler and the Nazi regime, eugenics died out with the millions of people it helped to kill.

In Tom Koch’s article, The Difference that Difference Makes: Bioethics and the Challenge of Disability, he describes two paradigms on eugenics and bioethics. He begins with the first what it means to be considered a person and notes “one favors eugenics, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and other methods for those with severely restricting physical and cognitive attributes” (Koch, 2004). The second paradigm opposes this and instead supports “persons of difference” and their families or loved ones.” (Koch, 2004). The first paradigm allowed the courts to decide whether a living entity is to be considered entirely human. If widely prescribed to, it would not be outside of scientific ability for someone who was once considered human, to now (based upon the proper conditions) be subject to any number of testing which was once unethical to perform. The other paradigm however, works for an understanding that all individuals should be considered living persons and thus, hold their right to be treated as such regardless of disability.

In Edwin Black’s War Against the Weak, we learn that in Nazi Germany, eugenics was in full force and society was strongly in favor of the survival of the fittest; this is, of course, unsurprising considering the Aryan master race was so central to the Nazi movement. However, eugenics movements existed within the United States concurrently to the movements in Germany. An American newspaper called Eugenical News even promoted German notions of eugenics in the United States, suggesting that Hitler’s eugenics movement was being adopted by non-Nazi Europeans, thus did “not only concern Germany but all European peoples” (Black, 2003). With movements existing on both axes of World War II, it stood to reason that the “war against the weak” was strongly in effect and in opposition to the critics from difference.

The aftermath of WWII, The Holocaust and eugenics was the establishment of proper laws and procedures to help protect human rights. Due to the tortured experimentation, forced sterilization and killing of people in Germany by Nazi doctors, judges in the 1947 created the Nuremburg Code which
“provided guidelines for research that are still adhered to today. Other more recent protocols for research involving human subjects require such things as informed consent and adherence to strict policies aimed at protecting the welfare of subjects. Moreover, within the United States, any research program involving human trials must now be scrutinized by an impartial institutional review board (IRB) before the program can begin, and any adverse events that occur during experimentation must be reported and reviewed.” (Norrgard, K. 2008).

As time progressed eugenics seemingly slowly faded from use. However, one could argue that as times advanced, so did medical technologies; creating genetic testing. But how far off from eugenics is this new health movement? Recent advances and access to information thanks to the internet, has shown an increase in the amount of genetic testing among expectant parents. Research highlights the importance of testing for genetic factors as an etiology for developmental disabilities (DDs). The following is a description of what DDs are and which ones can be screened in a genetic test:
“Developmental disabilities (DDs) are a group of conditions due to an impairment in physical, learning, language, or behavior areas.

According to this definition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) categorize a broad range of conditions as DDs, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders (ASD), cerebral palsy, fragile X syndrome, hearing loss, learning disability, intellectual disability (ID), Tourette syndrome, vision impairment, and others. DDs, such as ID and ASD, affect up to 3 percent of the U.S. population, respectively. When including other developmental disabilities (e.g., ADHD, cerebral palsy, language disorders, learning disorders and others) the prevalence of having any developmental disorder increases to over 15% in children 3 to 17 years of age. These disorders may have a profound impact on patients, families, and society, given the need for potentially lifelong individual and family support or treatment.”

(2014)

Oddly enough, the idea of abortion of unwanted disabled or genetically inferior fetuses may also have ties to reproductive rights pioneer and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. She “has long been accused of advocating for Black genocide. Several people have come to her defense, instead highlighting her ableist comments about the “over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.” In 1921, she even penned an essay entitled The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda. Her feminism went hand in hand with eugenics, and regardless of her alleged opposition to racial containment, eugenics is still a tool of white supremacy.”

But does modern day eugenics occur?

Earlier this year, an elderly Japanese woman filed a Supreme Court lawsuit claiming she had been the subject of forced sterilization during her teens thanks to the 1948 Eugenics Protection Law and her intellectual disability. During a news conference on the case, the woman’s sister-in-law said “We stood up so that we can realize a society without discrimination against people with disabilities.” The article also goes on to say note that “The state has not apologized or provided compensation to the around 25,000 people who were sterilized due to mental or other illnesses under the law, which remained in force until 1996, saying it was legal at the time. Of the total, 16,500 people are believed to have undergone the surgery without their consent.” (Kyodo,

2018)

In Iceland, almost 100% of women have terminated their Down Syndrome fetuses when given a genetic test that proved positive for the disability. Now almost all Down Syndrome cases have been eliminated from the country. So it the aim to be a Downs free country? DeCODE Genetics founder, geneticist Kari Stefansson studied nearly all of Iceland’s genomes. He notes "I don't think there's anything wrong with aspiring to have healthy children, but how far we should go in seeking those goals is a fairly complicated decision."

Although many physicians recommend routine natal care, genetic testing can be a costly supplemental pregnancy care screening. In an interview with University of Michigan genetic counselor Rajani Aatre, the geneticist notes that “The science is easy to process; the emotional component is not.” He also goes on to say “finding out that a gene mutation is absent can offer a deep sense of relief. And others who find out that they are carriers can take comfort in having more control. Still, says Aatre: “This crystal ball, all of a sudden, can pop in front of you.” That may spark deep feelings of guilt (regardless of findings) or difficult decisions.” (Joy, 2017)

The term "eugenics" may be dated it still occurs one way or another to this day such as prenatal testing that results in the aborting of a disabled fetus or parents who choose ideal attributes from the sperm/egg donation catalog. And aside from psychical differences that were considered deviations, there are also racial undertones as we know. The weeding out of undesirables still continues today via genetic testing, abortions, euthanasia,