flickering pictures

The folks at Damn Interesting have done it again — this time with a great piece by Alan Bellows on the origins of eugenics, the practice of selectively breeding humans for the purpose of improving the gene pool.

From the article:

In 1865, Darwin’s half-cousin Sir Francis Galton pried the lid from yet another worm-can with the publication of his article entitled “Hereditary Talent and Character.” In this essay, the gentleman-scientist suggested that one could apply the principle of artificial selection to humans just as one could in domestic animals, thereby exaggerating desirable human traits over several generations. This scientific philosophy would come to be known as eugenics, and over the subsequent years its seemingly sensible insights gained approval worldwide. In an effort to curtail the genetic pollution created by “inferior” genes, some governments even enacted laws authorizing the forcible sterilization of the “insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded or epileptic,” as well as individuals with criminal or promiscuous inclinations. Ultimately hundreds of thousands of people were forced or coerced into sterilization worldwide, over 65,000 of them in the country which pioneered the eugenic effort: The United States of America.

[…] The cornerstone of eugenics was that everyone has the right to be “well-born,” without any predisposition to avoidable genetic flaws. The 1911 edition of The Encyclopædia Britannica looked fondly upon the philosophy, defining it as “the organic betterment of the race through wise application of the laws of heredity.” Prominent people gravitated towards the idea and engaged in vigorous intellectual intercourse, including such characters as Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla, H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and US presidents Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge. Supporters popularized eugenics as an opportunity to create a better world by using natural processes to elevate the human condition, both mentally and physically.

[…] As a cautionary measure, many US states enacted laws as early as 1896 prohibiting marriage to anyone who was “epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded”. But in 1907, eugenics truly passed the threshold from hypothesis into practice when the state of Indiana erected legislation based upon the notion that socially undesirable traits are hereditary

I had no idea that eugenics had been implemented on such a large scale, and my surprise led me to check some other sources, to see if this Alan Bellows character is just a some pot-smoking crank. Turns out he’s not.

What’s more, at one point or another, eugenics movements took hold in Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.

Image via Wikipedia.

• plug this post
  
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati