engineering american society: the lesson of eugenics

P E R S P E C T I V E S

1. Kaiser, J. Environment institute lays plan for gene hunt.Science 278, 569–570 (1997).

2. Guengerich, F. P. The environmental genome project:Functional analysis of polymorphisms. Environ. HealthPerspectives 106, 365–368 (1998).

3. Shalat, S. L., Hong, J. Y. & Gallo, M. The environmentalgenome project. Epidemiology 9, 211–212 (1998).

4. Brown, P. O. & Hartwell, L. Genomics and humandisease — variations on variation. Nature Genet. 18,91–93 (1998).

5. Schafer, A. J. & Hawkins, J. R. DNA variation and thefuture of human genetics. Nature Biotechnol. 16, 33–39(1998).

6. Wang, D. G. et al. Large-scale identification, mapping,and genotyping of single-nucleotide polymorphisms inthe human genome. Science 280, 1077–1082 (1998).

7. Taylor, J. A. et al. The role of N-acetylationpolymorphisms in smoking-associated bladder cancer:evidence of a gene–gene exposure three way interaction.Cancer Res. 58, 3603–3610 (1998).

8. Holtzman, N. A., & Marteau, T. M. Will geneticsrevolutionize medicine? N. Engl. J. Med. 343, 141–144(2000).

9. Hughes, T. R. et al. Functional discovery via acompendium of expression profiles. Cell 102, 109–126(2000).

10. Sharp, R. R. & Barrett, J. C. The environmental genomeproject: ethical, legal, and social implications. Environ.Health Perspect. 108, 279–281 (2000).

have to be improved. Predictions on thebasis of genetic polymorphisms will be farmore complex than can be envisaged at thepresent time. Furthermore, improvedunderstanding of disease susceptibility willintensify the need to identify the most bene-ficial and cost-effective intervention andprevention strategies.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for theEGP will be to manage its influence in thearena of public policy: how will those whoformulate environmental and health policyaccommodate the extraordinary newknowledge available to them? In the face ofthese challenges, we will need broader edu-cation and communications tools to findways to make effective use of this knowledgeand its enormous potential for biomedicineand human health.

Kenneth Olden and Samuel Wilson are at theNational Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes

of Health, Department of Health and HumanServices, Research Triangle Park,

North Carolina 27709, USA.Correspondence to K.O.

e-mail: [email protected]

NATURE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 1 | NOVEMBER 2000 | 153

ability to understand the importance ofnew molecular indicators of exposure.

Ethical, legal and social implications. It is rec-ognized that the new knowledge and under-standing of human disease risk emergingfrom the EGP is accompanied by a burden ofresponsibility to use that knowledge fairlyand wisely. Therefore, the transformation ofpublic health policy and healthcare in thelight of the goals of the EGP is burdened withsignificant social, ethical and legal concerns10.For example, how will we deal with the factthat we may be able to predict risk for manycommon diseases long before effective andacceptable medical interventions are avail-able to treat them? What are the ethical andeconomic implications for people whoknowingly ignore a risk about which theyhave been informed? Personal complianceand responsibility will take on a whole newmeaning. How do we protect research partic-ipants from discrimination, stigmatizationand psychological stress? How will we dealwith the concern that many, on learning thatthey carry a predisposing genotype, willdevelop a fatalistic attitude and assume thatthey can do nothing to prevent the disease?How do we deal with the issue of informedconsent given that the risks and benefits can-not be fully anticipated at the outset of a par-ticular study? And ultimately, how can a per-son be assured that their personal geneticinformation will remain private? Policies areurgently needed to ensure the appropriateand ethical use of susceptibility data.

Addressing these ethical, legal and socialimplications (ELSI), and developing safe-guards that appropriately protect us in thefuture, will represent an important challengefor the EGP. So the EGP has made ELSI issuesa priority topic. The EGP is promotingresearch projects and broad-based discus-sions on these issues, and will try to ensurethat the public is adequately protected. This isessential even to allow the EGP to move for-wards towards completion.

Although ELSI issues are one importantchallenge for the EGP, the knowledge ofhuman disease susceptibility that may soonemerge will also raise scientific and techno-logical challenges. For example, developingrapid screening to identify predisposingpolymorphisms can be difficult; humangenes are often large, carry many mutations,and may vary significantly from populationto population. Therefore, the use of a singletest may not be feasible. As more complexmodels of the genetic and exposure frame-work of disease are discovered, mathemati-cal modelling and data management will

Links

FURTHER INFORMATION EGP | SNP catalogue | Center for Environmental Health Sciences |Coriell Institute for Medical Research | NHGRI | NIGMS | CDC

We stand at the threshold of a newcentury, with the whole human genomestretched out before us. Messages fromscience, the popular media, and the stockmarket suggest a world of seeminglylimitless opportunities to improve humanhealth and productivity. But at the turn ofthe last century, science and society faceda similar rush to exploit human genetics.The story of eugenics — humankind’s firstventure into a ‘gene age’ — holds acautionary lesson for our currentpreoccupation with genes.

Eugenics was the effort to apply the princi-ples of genetics and agricultural breedingtowards improving the human race. Theterm “eugenics” — meaning well born —was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton1, aBritish scientist who used data from bio-graphical dictionaries and alumni records atOxford and Cambridge Universities to con-

Engineering American society:the lesson of eugenics

David Micklos* and Elof Carlson‡

T I M E L I N E

clude that superior intelligence and abilitieswere traits that could be inherited2.

Most people equate eugenics with atroc-ities that were committed in Nazi Germanyfor the sake of racial purity. In this context,eugenics is easy to dismiss as purely aber-rant behaviour. However, the story ofeugenics in the United States is, perhaps,more important than that of Nazi Germanyas a cautionary tale to take with us into ournew century. Here we describe the tale ofthe subtle ways in which the science ofgenetics was, by degrees, transformed froman agricultural experiment into a popularmovement to engineer American society.The fact that eugenics flourished in the landof liberty, involved numerous prominentscientists and civic leaders, and made itsintellectual home at the forerunner of thenow prestigious Cold Spring HarborLaboratory shows just how far America fellfrom grace during this period.

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dardize the methods and nomenclature forpedigree studies. Eugenical News, publishedby the ERO from 1920–1938, was the domi-nant mouthpiece for the racist and anti-immigration agenda of eugenics research.The ERO also published several forms tosimplify data collection. Many familiesproudly submitted their pedigrees to com-petitions at State fairs (FIG. 3), while otherssought advice on the eugenic fitness of pro-posed marriages. Budding eugenicsresearchers convened at Cold SpringHarbor each summer to learn how to con-duct field work, such as interviewing subjects, taking medical histories, and con-structing pedigrees. During its years ofoperation, 1910–1939, the ERO amassedhundreds of thousands of family records,pedigrees and articles on eugenics11.

Positive and negative eugenicsGalton’s primary interest in improving thehuman race through voluntary selectivebreeding became known as ‘positive eugen-ics’. However, the American eugenics movement independently had its roots indegeneracy theory, which was advanced inthe eighteenth century in texts such as theOnania12. Degeneracy theory propoundedthe idea that unfit people arose from badenvironments that damaged heredity andperpetuated degenerate offspring13. TheAmerican Richard Dugdale followed in this

Department of Genetics, and many experi-mental evolutionists joined the first genera-tion of geneticists.

During this period, Davenport began tofocus on heredity in human beings. He con-ducted early studies on the genetics ofepilepsy3, Huntington disease4, neurofibro-matosis5 and albinism6. He also becameinterested in eugenics, and was activelyinvolved in the American BreedersAssociation (ABA). Established in 1903, theABA was one of the first scientific organiza-tions in the United States to recognize theimportance of Mendel’s laws. The ABA’scommittee on eugenics (1906) was the firstscientific body to actively support eugenicresearch7. The subtitle of Davenport’s firsteugenics text8, ‘The science of humanimprovement by better breeding’, made theeugenic movement’s connection to agricul-ture clear.

In 1910, Davenport convinced a wealthywidow, Mrs Edward H. Harriman, to con-tribute $10,000, and a later endowment, toset up a Eugenics Record Office (ERO) onproperty adjacent to the Station forExperimental Evolution. Davenportrecruited Harry Laughlin as the superinten-dent of the ERO and together (FIG. 2), withalmost religious zeal, they set out to popu-larize eugenics. A series of ERO bulletins,including Davenport’s Trait Book9 andMaking a Family Pedigree10, helped to stan-

The origins of American eugenicsEarly in the twentieth century, eugenics wasorganized as a scientific field by the conflu-ence of Mendelian genetics, experimentalbreeding and human biology (FIG. 1). Thissynthesis was embodied by Charles BenedictDavenport, who is considered to be thefather of the American eugenics movement.

In 1898, Davenport assumed the direc-torship of The Biological Laboratory atCold Spring Harbor, New York — a pro-gressive ‘summer camp’ founded in 1890for the study of marine biology and evolu-tion. Although he had been trained in zool-ogy and comparative morphology,Davenport became interested in testingevolution through controlled experimentsusing domestic plants and animals. Heshared this interest with other biologists,including Thomas Hunt Morgan, whosestudies in the fruitfly Drosophilamelanogaster largely established the physicalbasis of genetics. Davenport secured fund-ing from the Carnegie Institution ofWashington to establish a Station forExperimental Evolution at Cold SpringHarbor in 1904. Davenport populated theStation with like-minded researchers, whoincreasingly used Mendel’s laws to followtraits through their experimental crosses.For many, genetic analysis became an endin itself. The Station for ExperimentalEvolution was later renamed the Carnegie

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Figure 1 | The eugenic tree. This emblem, showing the far-flung roots of eugenics, was part of acertificate awarded to ‘meritorious exhibits’ at the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in1921 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (Image courtesy of the AmericanPhilosophical Society, Philadelphia, USA.)

Figure 2 | Leaders of the American eugenicsmovement. Harry Laughlin (left) and CharlesDavenport (right) photographed outside theEugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor,circa 1912. (Photograph courtesy of Truman StateUniversity, Missouri, USA.)




to natural selection. Social interpretationsof Darwinian evolution viewed humans as aflawed species that required pruning tomaintain its health19. Therefore negativeeugenics seemed to offer a rational solutionto certain age-old social problems.

American eugenicists were largely suc-cessful in lobbying for eugenic social legisla-tion on three fronts: to restrict Europeanimmigration; to prevent racial mixing; andto sterilize the ‘genetically unfit’.

Immigration restriction. At the same timethat Mendel’s laws were revolutionizingbiology, a tide of immigration was rollinginto the United States. During the first twodecades of the twentieth century,600,000–1,250,000 immigrants per yearentered the United States through New York(except during World War I). During thisperiod, the origin of most immigrants shift-ed from northern and western Europe —the regions that had been the source ofmost immigrants during the Colonial,Federal and Victorian eras — to southernand eastern Europe, from where came largenumbers of displaced Jews20.

Many Americans believed they had reasonto resent the influx of new immigrants.Labour organizations fanned fears that nativeworkers would be displaced from their jobsby an oversupply of cheap immigrant labour.Anti-Communist factions predicted a ‘red

vein with his 1877 study of the Jukes family,a clan of 700 petty criminals, prostitutes andpaupers who were descended from‘Margaret, the Mother of Criminals’, inUlster County, New York14.

Although Dugdale’s work predated theAmerican eugenics movement by 30 years,it was the model for early twentieth-centurystudies of degenerate families or tribes15–17.The American eugenicists proposed thatdegeneracy was caused by faulty genes, andthey coined the term cacogenics to describethe deterioration of a genetic stock overtime. This emphasis on ‘bad’ heredity, andthe accompanying attempts to halt it,became known as ‘negative eugenics’. Bothpositive and negative eugenics had support-ers on either side of the Atlantic. However,British eugenicists tended to look for waysto perpetuate the privileged classes, whereasAmerican eugenicists tried to slow downthe supposedly corrupting influence of thedegenerate classes.

Eugenics researchers attempted to tracethe inheritance of dysgenic traits through afamily tree, and constructed pedigrees byinterviewing living family members and byscrutinizing the records of poorhouses, pris-ons and insane asylums. Then, theyattempted to discern one of three basicmodes of Mendelian inheritance — domi-nant, recessive or sex-limited (X-linked).The implication of these studies was that aconstellation of degenerate behaviours —including alcoholism, pauperism, socialdependency, shiftlessness, nomadism and‘lack of moral control’ — were caused bysingle-gene defects inherited in a simpleMendelian fashion.

‘Feeblemindedness’ became an increasing-ly important concern of American eugenicistsafter 1910, when intelligence testing provideda means to ‘quantify’ several grades of mentalretardation. In addition to low scores on IQtests, ‘feeblemindedness’ was also frequentlylinked to abnormal behaviour, promiscuity,criminality, and social dependency.Eugenicists especially feared the ‘high-gradefeebleminded’, or ‘morons,’ because theycould potentially seem to be normal and, so,reproduce with unaffected people.

‘Feeblemindedness’ and other dysgenictraits were closely associated with poverty.So to many observers today, the eugenicists’pedigrees of faulty genes are striking exam-ples of lack of education and opportunity.However, most American eugenicists placedthemselves squarely on one side of thenature versus nurture debate, and soughtgenetic explanations of human behaviourto the near exclusion of environmental

influences. Dugdale, whose study of theJukes had helped to launch the eugenicsmovement, held the Lamarckian view thatthe environment actually induced heritablechanges in traits and that degenerate traitscould be reversed by moving people into agood social environment. However, mosteugenicists adopted August Weismann’sgerm-plasm theory, which propoundedthat specialized sex cells are inherited with-out influence from environmental changesin somatic cells18.

The eugenic social agenda and lawEugenics arose in the wake of the industrialrevolution, when the fruits of science andtechnology were improving public and pri-vate life. During this time, a growing pro-fessional middle class believed that scientif-ic progress could be used to cure all socialills, and many educated people acceptedthat humans, like all animals, were subject

“The science of geneticswas, by degrees,transformed from anagricultural experiment intoa popular movement toengineer American society.”

Figure 3 | Eugenics Pavillion at Texas State Free Fair, 1920. During the 1920s, the American EugenicsSociety used state fairs as venues for popular education. The placard on top of the building to the leftannounces ‘Fitter Families for Future Firesides’, a contest that judged the eugenic fitness of competingfamilies. (Photograph courtesy of the Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, Cold SpringHarbor, New York, USA.)




enforced, heavy fines and long prison termsshowed how seriously American society con-sidered miscegenation to be at that time.

As in the case of immigration restriction,eugenicists were more than willing to providea supposed scientific rationale for existingracial prejudice. In his influential book, ThePassing of the Great Race, Madison Grantwarned that racial mixing was a social crimethat would lead to the demise of white civi-lization28. Eugenicists actively supportedstrengthening pre-existing laws and enactingof new ones, including the Virginia RacialIntegrity Act of 1924 (REF. 29). The VirginiaAct and all other similar state laws werestruck down by the United States SupremeCourt in 1967 in Loving versusCommonwealth of Virginia 30.

Eugenic sterilization. Of all the United Stateslegislation enacted during the early twentiethcentury, the sterilization laws, which wereadopted by 30 states, most clearly bear thestamp of the eugenics lobby. The first eugenicsterilization law was passed in Indiana, in1907, at the urging of the prison physicianHarry Clay Sharp31. Speaking at meetings ofthe American Medical Association, Sharpconvinced fellow physicians to lobby theirlegislatures for laws to allow the involuntarysterilization of sex offenders, habitual crimi-nals, epileptics, the ‘feebleminded’ and‘hereditary defectives’. The intent was to pre-vent alleged degenerates from breeding witheach other or from contaminating ‘goodgenetic stock’ by reproducing with normalpeople.By contrast, even though Britain hadits share of advocates for negative eugenics,the British parliament did not enact laws toallow compulsory sterilization32.

Many of the early sterilization laws werelegally flawed and were not upheld in thestate courts. To address this problem,Laughlin designed a model eugenic law thatwas reviewed by legal experts. The use of thislaw by the State of the Virginia was tested inBuck versus Bell, in the Supreme Court in1927 (BOX 1). Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr deliv-ered the Court’s decision to uphold the legal-ity of eugenic sterilization, which includedthe infamous phrase “Three generations ofimbeciles are enough!”33,34 The Buck case wasnever overturned, and sterilization of thementally ill in the United States continuedinto the 1970s, by which time around 60,000Americans had been sterilized without theirconsent or that of a legal guardian35.

The downfall of eugenicsIt is clear that growing knowledge of theNazi ‘final solution’ to achieve racial purity

from each country according to their pro-portion in the United States population in1890 — a time before the main waves ofsouthern and eastern European immigra-tion. Immigration to the United States didnot regain pre-Johnson Act levels until thelate 1980s (REF. 25).

Race mixing. Laws against interracial mar-riage had existed in some states since colonialtimes, but their number increased after theCivil War. The idea that race mixing, or mis-cegenation, causes genetic deterioration wasproposed by Joseph Arthur Gobineau andother anthropologists in the late nineteenthcentury26. It is worth noting that eugenicists’conception of race included the classic divi-sions by skin colour, as well as differences innational origin. Most lay-eugenicists sub-scribed to the Biblical idea of ‘like with like’and that the ‘half-breed’ offspring of parentsfrom two different races were geneticallyinferior to the parental stock. Davenport’scompilation in 1913 showed that 29 stateshad laws forbidding mixed-race marriages27.Although these laws were not always

tide’ entering the United States from Russiaand Eastern Europe. Sentimental Anglophilesbemoaned the diminishing influence of theirfounding settler stock21. Eugenicists — over-whelmingly educated people of northern andwestern European extraction — provided ascientific veneer for these anti-immigrationsentiments.According to their interpretation,immigration was a problem of ‘bad genes’,which were rapidly ‘polluting’ the nationalgene pool.

So Albert Johnson, chairman of theCommittee on Immigration and Naturali-sation, welcomed the involvement of theeugenics movement in his crusade to curbimmigration. ERO Superintendent HarryLaughlin became the anti-immigrationmovement’s most ardent scientific lobbyist.Between 1920 and 1924 he testified threetimes before the House Committee, becom-ing its ‘expert eugenics agent’. In his testi-monies, Laughlin used flawed data to showthat southern and eastern European coun-tries were purportedly ‘exporting’ geneticdefectives, who had disproportionately highrates of mental illness, ‘feeblemindedness’,crime and social dependency22–24. TheImmigration Restriction Act of 1924 dideverything that Johnson and Laughlin hadhoped for. It limited total annual immigra-tion to 165,000 — about 15–20% that ofpeak years — and it restricted immigrationfrom southern and eastern European coun-tries to only 9% of the total24. This change inthe complexion of American immigrationwas accomplished by a cunning use of sta-tistics. The Johnson Act limited immigrants

Box 1 | The pedigree of Carrie Buck

Carrie Buck, the subject ofthe test of eugenicsterilization in the UnitedStates Supreme Court case,Buck versus Bell, and hermother, Addie Emmit,were both inmates of theVirginia Colony for theEpileptic and theFeebleminded. Carrie andAddie were both judged tobe ‘feebleminded’ andpromiscuous. It isimpossible to judgewhether or not Carrie wasfeebleminded by thestandards of her time, butthe child Carrie bore out of wedlock was the result of her rape by a relative of her fosterparents. Although Carrie’s infant daughter, Vivian, was judged to be ‘‘not quite normal”, herfirst-grade report later showed her to be a solid ‘B’ student, who received an ‘A’ indeportment34,35. (Image courtesy of Truman State University, Missouri, USA.)

“Of all the United Stateslegislation enacted duringthe early twentieth century,the sterilization laws . . .most clearly bear the stampof the eugenics lobby.”




health, and also entails value judgementsabout what is normal versus what is abnor-mal. The social and legal acceptance of suchjudgements may create a pressure for genet-ic conformity that is difficult to predicttoday. What will it be like when we have aprecise catalogue of all the ‘good, bad andmiddling genes’ — and the wherewithal todetermine who has which? In the face ofsuch knowledge, will society continue toacquiesce to those who prefer to let naturetake its course? Will only the wealthy be ableto afford preimplantation genetic selection,further widening the gap between the richand the poor?

For better or worse, we will move intothe gene age. James D. Watson, one of thediscoverers of the structure of DNA, has saidthat the greatest future danger will not bethe misuse of genetics but, rather, its disuse.Over-regulation and blind fear may discour-age people from making the best use of genetic technology. In this view, knowl-edge that we are taking conscientiousactions to avoid the abuses of the past canallow us to move with greater confidenceinto our future.

Viewed in the light of the worst abuses ofeugenics, it may seem that only a strict, andamoral, interpretation of scientific data willprotect us from future disasters. However,the past also tells us that many of the firstcrop of human geneticists loaded their dataand models with their own aspirations forsociety. So it is imperative that we build acritical mass of scientists and citizens whounderstand that the interpretation of genet-ic data about human beings is rarely freefrom value judgement.

The real lesson of American eugenics isthat it was practised by well-intentionedpeople and bigots alike, and, apart from themost obvious excesses, there was often nosharp line between them. Certain forms ofbehaviour that pass for eugenics are stillwith us today. Every parent’s longing forhealthy, happy children, who can continuethe flow of their family heritage, is anexpression of the best aspirations of ‘positiveeugenics’. And the killing fields ofCambodia, Central Africa and the Balkansdiffer only in method and degree from theNazi regime of ‘negative eugenics’. So, ratherthan dismissing eugenics out-of-hand, it isfar better that each of us attempt to discoverwhere we — and the technologies we areusing — stand in its continuum. Only by reminding ourselves that we, indeed,dwell on the slope between positive andnegative eugenics can we guard against slip-ping too far.

led to a wholesale abandonment of populareugenics in the United States, and the EROwas closed on 31 December 1939. Less clear,however, is the extent to which the sciencebehind the American eugenics programmehad been discredited among geneticistsbefore the Nazis’ rise to power. In retro-spect, one can detect several lines of evi-dence that refuted key eugenic tenets, fromas early as 1908. However, many sophisti-cated geneticists — including some whoprovided refuting evidence — supportedsome form of eugenic programme at onepoint or another.

Mathematical models of populationgenetics provided evidence against the sim-plistic claim that degenerate families wereincreasing the societal load of dysgenicgenes. The equilibrium model of Godfrey N.Hardy and Wilhelm Weinberg36 showed that,although the absolute number of dysgenicfamily members might increase over time,their frequency did not increase relative tothe normal population.

At the same time, the Hardy–Weinbergequation created a quandary for the eugeniccontrol of mental illnesses, which werethought by most to be recessively inherited.Geneticists almost universally agreed thatthe feebleminded or mentally defectiveshould be prevented from reproducing.However, the Hardy–Weinberg equationshowed that sterilization or the social segre-gation of affected people would not appre-ciably reduce the percentage of mentaldefectives in society. Only a massive pro-gramme of sterilization or segregation ofthe many heterozygous carriers predictedby the equation would appreciably reducethe incidence of mental illness. Despite this,feeblemindedness was thought to be sorampant that many geneticists believedreproductive control could still prevent thebirth of tens of thousands of affected peopleper generation37.

Work by several scientists also counteredthe eugenicists’ simplistic assertions thatcomplex behavioural traits are governed bysingle genes. Herman Muller’s survey ofmutations in Drosophila and other organ-isms, from 1914–1923, showed variation inthe ‘gene to character’ relation that defiedsimple Mendelian analysis. He found thatmany genes are highly variable in theirexpression, and a single gene might affectseveral characters (traits) at one time.Conversely, mutations in many differentgenes can affect the same trait in similarways. Moreover, the expression of a gene canbe altered significantly by the environ-ment38,39. Although Muller remained com-

mitted to a personal brand of positiveeugenics that was based on individualworth, during the 1930s he denounced theAmerican eugenics movement and calledfor a halt to applied genetics40.

Twin studies — conducted in the 1930sby Horatio Newman, Frank Freeman andKarl Holzinger — also showed that identi-cal twins raised apart after birth had differ-ent IQs41. Lionel Penrose, in particular,railed against the simplistic Mendeliananalysis of mental illnesses. He found thatmost cases of mental illness at a state-runinstitution in Colchester, England, resultedfrom a combination of genetic, environ-mental and pathological causes42. Thegeneticist, Raymond Pearl, was forthright inhis 1928 critique of the eugenicsmovement43:

“In preaching, as they do, that ‘like produces

like’, and that therefore superior people

will necessarily have superior children,

and inferior people inferior children,

the orthodox eugenicists are going

contrary to the best established facts

of genetical science.”

A visiting committee, convened by theCarnegie Institution in 1935, concluded thatthe work collected at the ERO was withoutscientific merit and recommended that it“cease from engaging in all forms of propa-ganda and the urging or sponsoring of pro-grams for social reform or race betterment,such as sterilisation, birth control, inculca-tion of race or national consciousness,restriction of immigration…” and so on11.

Lesson for the futureAmerican eugenicists sought an almostexclusively genetic explanation of humandevelopment, and neglected the importantcontributions of the environment. Theymanaged to inculcate this belief into a gen-eration of educated Americans. Today, bio-logical progress could seem to be measuredin terms of genes sequenced, and there is adanger that genes will, once again, be mis-construed as the sole determinants ofhuman life.

At first sight, the Human GenomeProject’s objective to identify disease genesemphasizes the genetic contribution to

“Eugenics seemed to offer a rational solution to certainage-old social problems.”




Both Sexes, Considered (Corbett, London, circa1710).

13. Carlson, E. A. The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (ColdSpring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor,New York, 2001.)

14. Dugdale, R. The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism,Disease, and Heredity (Putnam, New York, 1877).

15. Davenport, C. B. & Estabrook, A. H. Eugenics RecordOffice Memoir #2: The Nam Family. A Study ofCacogenics (Eugenics Record Office, Cold SpringHarbor, New York, 1912)

16. Goddard, H. H. The Kallikak Family: A Study in theHeredity of Feeblemindedness (Macmillan, New York,1912).

17. Estabrook, A. H. in Eugenics, Genetics, and the FamilyVol I, 398–404 (Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 1923).

18. Weismann, A. in Essays Upon Hereditary and KindredBiological Problems 67–106 (Oxford Univ. Press,Oxford, 1891).

19. Chase, A. The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs ofthe New Scientific Racism (Knopf, New York, 1977).

20. Tift, W. S. Ellis Island (Contemporary Books, Chicago,1989).

21. Adams, G. The Age of Industrial Violence (ColumbiaUniv. Press, New York, 1967).

22. United States House of Representatives. Hearingsbefore the Committee on Immigration andNaturalization: Biological Aspects of Immigration, 66thCongress, Second Session, April 16–17, 1920(Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1921).

23. United States House of Representatives. Hearingsbefore the Committee on Immigration andNaturalization: Analysis of America’s Modern MeltingPot, 67th Congress, Third Session, November 21,1922 (Government Printing Office, Washington, DC,1923).

24. United States House of Representatives. Hearingsbefore the Committee on Immigration andNaturalization: Europe as an Emigrant-ExportingContinent and the United States as anImmigrant–Receiving Nation, 68th Congress, FirstSession, March 8, 1924 (Government Printing Office,Washington, DC, 1924).

25. United States Department of Justice. Legalimmigration, fiscal year 1998. US Immigration andNaturalization Service Annu. Report 2, 1–11 (1999).

26. Gobineau, J. A. The Inequality of Races (New York:Fertig, New York, 1853).

27. Davenport, C. B. Eugenics Record Office BulletinNumber 9: State Laws Limiting Marriage Selection inLight of Eugenics (Eugenics Record Office, ColdSpring Harbor, New York, 1913).

28. Grant, M. The Passing of the Great Race or the RacialBasis of European History (Scribners, New York,1921).

29. Reilly, P. R. The Virginia Racial Integrity Act revisited:the Plecker–Laughlin correspondence: 1928–1930.Am. J. Med. Genet. 16, 483–492 (1983).

30. Lombardo, P. A. Miscegenation, eugenics and racism:Historical footnotes to Loving v. Virginia. Univ. Calif.Davis Law Review 21, 421–452 (1988).

31. Sharp, H. C. The severing of the vasa deferentia andits relation to the neuropsychopathic constitution. NYMed. J. 75, 411–414 (1902).

32. Ridley, M. Eugenics and liberty. Prospect August/September, 44–47 (1998).

33. Lombardo, P. A. Three generations, no imbeciles: Newlight on Buck v. Bell. NY University Law Review 60,30–62 (1985).

34. Gould, S. J. in The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections on Natural History 306–318 (Morton, New York, 1987).

35. Reilly, P. R. The Surgical Solution (Johns Hopkins Univ.Press, Baltimore, 1991).

36. Hardy, G. N. Mendelian proportions in a mixedpopulation. Science 28, 49–50 (1908).

37. Paul, D. B. & Spencer, H. G. The hidden science ofeugenics. Nature 374, 302–304 (1995).

38. Muller, H. J. Genetic variability, twin hybrids, andconstant hybrids, in the case of balanced lethalfactors. Genetics 3, 422–499 (1918).

39. Altenburg, E. & Muller, H. J. The genetic basis oftruncate wing: An inconstant and modifiable characterin Drosophila. Genetics 5, 1–59 (1920).

40. Muller, H. J. in A Decade of Progress in Eugenics,138–144 (Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore,1934).

41. Newman, H. H., Freeman, F. N. & Holzinger, K. J.Twins: A Study of Heredity and Environment (Univ. ofChicago Press, Chicago, 1937).

42. Kevles, D. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and theUses of Human Heredity (Knopf, New York, 1985).

43. Pearl, R. The Present Status of Eugenics (SociologicalPress, Hanover, Minneapolis, Liverpool, 1928).

Further reading There are several excellent and highly readable books on theeugenics movement, including: Gould, S. J. The Mismeasureof Man (Norton, New York, 1981) | Kevles, D. In the Name ofEugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Knopf,New York, 1985) | Paul, D. Controlling Human Heredity: 1865to the Present (Humanities, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey,1995) | Selden, S. Inheriting Shame: The Story of Eugenics andRacism in America (Teachers College, New York, 1999).

AcknowledgementsThis article was inspired by original documents and photographsfrom the collection of the Image Archive on the AmericanEugenics Movement, of which the authors are the editor (D.M.)and editorial advisor (E.C.). The Image Archive is supported by agrant from the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) Program ofthe United States National Human Genome Research Institute.

David Micklos is at the *DNA Learning Centre,Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,Cold Spring Harbour, New York,

USA. Elof Carlson is at the ‡State University of New York,

Stony Brook, New York, USA.e-mails: [email protected];

[email protected]

1. Galton, F. Inquiries into Human Faculty and itsDevelopment (Dent, London, 1883).

2. Galton, F. Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Lawsand Consequences (MacMillan, London and NewYork, 1869).

3. Davenport, C. B. First study of inheritance of epilepsy.J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. 38, 641–670 (1911).

4. Davenport, C. B. Huntington’s chorea in relation toheredity and eugenics. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 1,283–285 (1915).

5. Presser, S. A. & Davenport, C. B. Mutlitpleneurofibromatosis (Von Recklinghausen’s disease) andits inheritance: With description of a case. Am. J. Med.Sci. 156, 506–541 (1918).

6. Davenport, C. B. Heredity of albinism. J. Heredity 7,221–223 (1916).

7. Selden, S. Inheriting Shame: The Story of Eugenicsand Racism in America (Teachers College, New York,1999).

8. Davenport, C. B. Eugenics: The Science of HumanImprovement by Better Breeding (Holt, New York,1912).

9. Davenport, C. B. Eugenics Record Office BulletinNumber 6: The Trait Book (Eugenics Record Office,Cold Spring Harbor, New York, 1912).

10. Davenport, C. B. & Laughlin, H. H. Eugenics RecordOffice Bulletin Number 13: How to Make a EugenicalFamily Study (Eugenics Record Office, Cold SpringHarbor, New York, 1915).

11. Allen, G. E. The Eugenics Record Office at Cold SpringHarbor, 1910–1940: An essay on institutional history.Osiris 2, 225–264 (1986).

12. Anonymous. Onania, Or the Heinous Sin ofSelf–Pollution and All Its Frightful Consequences in

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