Indiana Eugenics: Past, Present, Future?

Dr. Eric Schansberg, in a guest editorial in the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, gives a history of eugenics in Indiana, and implications for today and the future.  When one reads the article, you are struck by how distasteful this was.  When he applies this to today’s science and political culture, it is just plain scary.

 We observed a dubious centennial this year. In 1907, Indiana became the first state in America to pass a eugenics law.

Eugenics can be defined as the study of the hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled, selective breeding. Because of what we now know about genetics, eugenics turns out to be a pseudo-science loaded with philosophical and ethical baggage.
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One of the nation’s most prominent eugenicists was David Starr Jordan, a past president of Indiana University. Given the intellectual coherence of eugenics with the ideas of that time, powerful proponents like Jordan and Sharp’s extensive lobbying, the Indiana Legislature passed its eugenics law on March 9, 1907. It promised to prevent the “procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.” The law was repealed in 1921 but reinstated in 1928 — after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Virginia’s similar law in 1927 (Buck v. Bell).
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Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the decision and penned this now-stunning quote: “It is better for all 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.”

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Eventually, 30 states adopted sterilization laws. In all, more than 60,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in the United States. Beyond the United States, forced sterilization was practiced in many developed countries during the 20th century. But the most staggering legacy of such legislation is that it served as a model for the law adopted by the Nazi government in 1933. How does eugenics play out today?
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A biological cause for homosexual orientation would allow for additional normalization of homosexuality because it would be seen as more “natural.” But ironically, such a biological link combined with modern technology and a eugenic reflex could lead to efforts to eliminate the trait or change a baby’s sexual orientation through treatment.

Blogmeister Note:  One could also throw in Schizophrenia, BiPolar Disorder, some forms of Depression and a host of other mental disorders shown to have a biological basis.

More broadly, the implications of a eugenics reflex include a broad array of issues within sexual and reproductive ethics (e.g., birth control), ethics within scientific research (e.g., cloning, embryonic stem-cell research) and, most broadly, in speaking to a “culture” of death or life (e.g., various forms of euthanasia). In each case, the same tension is at work: When is modern technology a useful way to improve life in an ethical manner? And when is it overly influenced by a eugenics reflex — with its desire to manipulate life in a god-like manner, through an overarching faith in the power of science.