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America’s Hidden History: The Eugenics Movement

The United States has an imperfect history. Some of our darker chapters include slavery, the decimation of Native American populations, and atrocities committed during our various wars. A quick survey will reveal that most Americans have learned about or at least heard of these events. However, ask the average person about the “ eugenics movement” and you are likely to get blank stares. We at Genetics Generation believe it is time to raise awareness of this tragic time in our country’s history.  “Eugenics” comes from the Greek roots for “good” and “origin,” or “good birth” and involves applying principles of genetics and heredity for the purpose of improving the human race. The term eugenics was first coined by Francis Galton in the late 1800’s (Norrgard 2008). Galton (1822-1911) was an English intellectual whose body of work spanned many fields, including statistics, psychology, meteorology and genetics. Incidentally, he was also a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton’s first academic foray into eugenics analyzed the characteristics, such as superior intelligence, of England’s upper classes and concluded they were hereditary; therefore, desirable traits could be passed down through generations (Norrgard 2008). Galton advocated a selective breeding program for humans in his book Hereditary Genius (1869): “Consequently, as it is easy, ….. to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running, or of doing anything else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations.” The eugenics movement took root in the United States in the early 1900‘s, led by Charles Davenport (1866-1944), a prominent biologist, and Harry Laughlin, a former teacher and principal interested in breeding. In 1910, Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island “to improve the natural, physical, mental, and temperamental qualities of the human family” (Norrgard 2008). Laughlin was the first director. Field workers for the ERO collected many different forms of “data”, including family pedigrees depicting the inheritance of physical, mental, and moral traits. They were particularly interested in the inheritance of “undesirable” traits, such as pauperism, mental disability, dwarfism, promiscuity, and criminality. The ERO remained active for three decades.

[MagaMaharaju]

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23 minutes ago, MagaMaharaju said:

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