>>[V.O.] At the turn of the 20th Century,
rapid industrialization and urbanization led
to a social upheaval defined by goals for
a civilization free of violence, disease,
and mental ailments. However, the means by
which this utopian society would be attempted
would include some of the most profound ethical
violations in the history of the United States.
>>[Carlson] President was behind it, liberals
were behind it. Even the Catholic church,
at one point was behind it
>>[V.O.] Intense growth of American industry,
agricultural mechanization, and widespread
immigration led to the first major migration
away from the farms and into the city, which
was now expanding faster than adequate housing
could be provided. The solution to the modern
problems of an industrialized society required
increased government involvement in he social
sphere, a philosophy known as progressivism.
The construct of scientific management offered
a methodical means of social engineering.
Geneticists of the age could prove, through
the use of human pedigrees and their knowledge
of plant and animal genetics that degeneracy
was an inheritable trait. It seemed only right,
that if a society free of all mental and physical
ailments; free of violence and crime, illiteracy
and foolishness; it seemed only right to end
the reproductive capabilities of people expressing
these traits.
Eugenics was the result of an America unwilling
to make social changes-- an upper class fearful
of its laboring counterparts. Eugenics placed
the blame of a social quandary on individual
races and classes, and thus freed from culpability
the industrial, scientific, and political
barons of the time.
[birds chirping/music]
Cold Spring Harbor, New York. 1910. Charles
B. Davenport along with Harry H. Laughlin,
both biologists and members of the America
Breeder's Association, found the Eugenics
Record Office, with financial help from the
Carnegie Institution. The ERO would be the
headquarters for eugenics research in the
United States for the next 34 years. Using
various research methods, including human
pedigrees, hereditary questionnaires, interviewing
groups of special interest (such as circus
performers), and collecting census data, the
ERO was able to justify the administration
of eugenic laws nationwide. Including immigration
and marriage restrictions, race segregation,
and forced sterilization of criminals and
other "undesirables".
The ERO, however, was not only able to justify
the eugenics atrocities, but integrated them
into popular culture to make eugenics and
related terms, such as race hygiene, household
words. Popular literature published in the
20â€™s often donned eugenics in their
subject matter, such as these manuals on raising
a healthy family.
Clergyman preached on the necessity of â€œgoodâ€
marriages. Perhaps even more disturbing were
the contests held at many state fairs, where
awards were given to the â€œfittestâ€
family. Those with the purest pedigrees, and
undoubtedly, the most attractive phenotypes
would receive awards, such as this medal with
an inscription reading, â€œYea, I have
a goodly heritageâ€ .
>>[Lombardo] "The eugenics movement spawned
lots of people who were considered, even at
their own time, â€˜out on the fringeâ€™
who even endorsed such things as euthanasia.
But that was not a mainline part of the movement.
It certainly became parts of the movement
internationally, but not so much here in America.â€
>>[V.O.] On March 9, 1907, the Indiana State
Senate, in a vote of 28 to 16, made history
by being the first jurisdiction in the world
to force the sterilization of citizens it
deemed unfit; unfit to exist, unfit to reproduce.
Connecticut was soon to follow. By the time
Laughlin at the ERO had published his suggestion
on how to implement legislation for forced
human sterilization, 12 states had already
put into place sterilization laws of their
own. By 1924, 3000 socially inadequate people
had been sterilized.
That same year, based on Laughlinâ€™s
model, Aubrey E. Strode drafted Virginiaâ€™s
â€œEugenical Sterilization Act,â€ in
an attempt to rid the state of defective persons.
It passed in Virginiaâ€™s general assembly
by a landslide.
Immediately, the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic
and Feebleminded selected 17-year-old Carrie
Buck to be the first human sterilized under
the act. Carrie had a feebleminded child,
the result of a raping by one of her relatives,
and was the daughter of a feebleminded mother,
Emma, already a resident on the Virginia Colony.
Carrie, purportedly carrying the genetic traits
of feeblemindedness and sexual promiscuity,
was a fine candidate, as the law stated those
to be sterilized must be â€œprobable potential
parents of social inadequate offspringâ€
 . Carrie's â€œfeeblemindednessâ€ , was
based on a mailed disposition by Laughlin,
who had never met Carrie, and her sexual promiscuity
was based on the testimony of her schoolteacher
that she sent â€œflirtatious notesâ€
to schoolboys. Carrie became the first person
in Virginia to be sterilized under the new
law on October 19, 1927. In the words of justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, official deliverer
of the opinion of the United States Supreme
Court in the case of Buck v. Bell:
â€œIt is better for all of 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.â€
Vivian, Carrie's purported feebleminded daughter,
received Bâ€™s on her first grade report
card. Buck v. Bell justified the sterilizations
of over 8,000 Virginians. Over the history
of the United States, 33 states have enacted
statutes under which 60,000 Americans underwent
compulsory sterilizations. To this day, Buck
v. Bell has never been overruled.
>>[Carlson] â€œNazi Germany embraced the
eugenics movement from the United States and
just upped it in its efficiency.â€
>>[V.O.] It should now be apparent that Germany's
racial theories did not take place in a vacuum,
nor can the fundamental philosophies and beliefs
that would eventually lead to the atrocities
of the Nazi state be attributed solely to
German authorities. In fact, German scientists
expressed a great affinity towards US eugenic
laws. A young Adolf Hitler wrote positively
of the USs immigration restrictions, more
specifically how the law, â€œRefuses immigration
on principal, by simply excluding certain
races from naturalization,â€ in his book
Mein Kampf. Shortly prior to mobilizing the
most comprehensive eugenics legislation in
modern history, Gerhard Wagner, head of the
National Socialists Physicianâ€™s League,
stated that Americaâ€™s eugenic policies
should be used as a model for Germany to follow.
Marie Kopp, of the American Committee on Maternal
Health proclaimed that the Nazi system of
seeking out those to be sterilized was administered
â€œin entire fairnessâ€ and was â€œformulated
after careful study of the California experiment,â€
which had been responsible of 2500 of the
3000 involuntary sterilizations in the US
prior to 1924. The ERO boasted on how the
German statue on race hygiene read almost
identical to Laughlinâ€™s â€œModel
Sterilization Lawâ€ . Laughlin had such
a significant impact on Nazi racial legislature
that he was awarded an honorary degree from
the University of Heidelburg. Laughlin thanked
the university for reaffirming the â€œcommon
understanding of German and American scientists
of the nature of eugenics.â€ This common
understanding would be translated into the
â€œLaw on Preventing Hereditarily Ill
Progeny,â€ which would be responsible for
over 375,000 sterilizations in the Nazi state,
a number so impressive, one American eugenics
advocate complained, â€œThe Germans are
beating us at our own game.â€
The sterilization program of the Nazi state,
modeled after Laughlinâ€™s law and other
US eugenic theories, would be a gross prelude
to the exterminations of the Holocaust. But
even before the gas chambers were opened for
the racist and anti-Semitic persecutions we
know all too well, they were opened, in October
1939, for the systematic murder of the mentally
ill citizens of Germany. Sadly, this practice
was not faced with nearly as much stigmatism
within the states, as euthanasia had long
been discussed as a solution for the feebleminded.
>>[Carlson] "Soâ€¦when people saw how
eugenics can easily be abused by the power
of the state, they said, â€˜Thatâ€™s
it. This is a monstrous idea that we should
keep a distance from.'"
>>[V.O.] It is now the dawn of the 21st Century,
and advancements in technology and medicine
have excelled beyond even the most ambitious
of projections. Science that eugenicists of
the 20th Century could only have dreamed appear
in our news every single day.
[news clips about modern stem cell research
and other genetics-based medicine]
>>[Lombardo]"Is it a danger? Itâ€™s always
a danger when there are technologies that
can be used and abused, and I think that the
history of the eugenics movement tells us
when a technology actually exists, people
will try to use it sometimes for reasons it
was never intended to be used."
>>[V.O.]With the mapping of the human genome,
prenatal testing, preimplantation genetic
diagnosis, therapeutic cloning, and stem cell
therapy, we find ourselves entering a promising
world of genetic medicine. It is with this
great power, however, that comes the need
for even greater responsibility, sensitivity,
and accountability.
>>Humanity truly does now posses a powerful
tool for good. However, we must heed the warnings
sounded by the coercive legislation and beliefs
of the eugenics movement before we may venture
into the frontier of modern genetic medicine.
Tragedy may very well give way to triumph,
but how that will be recorded in the history
books of tomorrow, will be determined by our
actions today.
