Perfectly Awful
By Carl Kozlowski

Ask an average American to explain eugenics and they'll likely bring up Nazis -- if they know what the word means at all. Eugenics was the focal point of a movement to perfect and "purify" the human race by controlling which types of people could reproduce, and the Nazi government eventually took the ideas so far that they created the concentration camps.

But what most people don't realize is that eugenics went far beyond the machinations of Hitler. iT spanned the globe until it resulted in millions of forced sterilizations in more than 30 countries. Even in the United States, more than 60,000 involuntary sterilizations were committed in 30 states.

Most disturbing about this oft-hidden, shameful period of American history is that nearly all aspects of society supported it. Conservatives wanted to weed out "undesirables" like criminals, the mentally ill, and the disabled to save on governmental expenses. Progressives thought they could move people past their inherent limitations and induce a great leap for the human race. Even the religious leaders of targeted communities -- such as black pastors -- believed eugenics proponents who said the movement would improve their communities' lots in life.

Virtually the only major societal group to stand in the way of the movement was the Catholic Church, which fought tooth and nail against eugenicists because they stood in direct opposition to the church's policies that procreation could not be interfered with by artificial means.

But could eugenics programs surreptitiously appear in U.S. policy again? Advances in science and fear among the populace may subtly -- and not so subtly -- give rise to a new round of eugenics.

A History of Eugenics

According to former Caltech professor and current Yale professor Daniel J. Kevles, in his essay entitled "The International Eugenics Movement," the movement originated with a British scientist named Francis Galton, who was a cousin of Charles Darwin. In fact, it was a direct example of social Darwinism -- the idea of survival of the fittest in human society.

"It became so commonplace that even at the Kansas Free Fair in 1929 displays said that unfit human traits such as feeblemindedness, epilepsy, criminality, insanity, alcoholism, and pauperism run in families and are inherited the same way as color in guinea pigs," says Kevles in a phone interview. "Even social club women were drawn into the movement because of their involvement with issues of children, wayward girls, and the mentally retarded."

As eugenics was gaining favor in America -- with historic figures such as telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell sitting on eugenics organization boards and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger singing its praises -- the movement was showing its true potential for strangeness in nations such as Russia. According to Kevles, the Russian Eugenics Society proposed that the Communist government's first Five Year Plan include population improvement by the artificial insemination of willing women with the sperm of able men -- contending that one talented and valuable producer could have up to 1,000 children, and that the program would enable human selection to make gigantic leaps forward."

If that concept had in fact been carried out, the effects could have been staggering. Up to 1,000 people per sperm donor would be released into society, potentially meeting and creating future generations without realizing they had the same biological father. Thankfully, the Soviet government turned against eugenics by the early 1930s, declaring the movement as too "bourgeois" for trying to improve the lot of some in society over others.

Yet all over the planet, eugenics brought out the most racist and paranoid thoughts of numerous societies. According to Kevles, Swedish speakers in Finland wanted to stem "the proliferation of Finnish speakers." In England, eugenicists sought to stop the "prolific breeding" of Irish Catholics and Jews. The first International Eugenics Congress was held in London in 1912, and among the 750 prominent world figures in attendance were the Lord Chief Justice of Britain, Winston Churchill and, again, Alexander Graham Bell.

Better Living in America - Eugenics Here at Home

In America, the strongest roots of the eugenics movement were located in Pasadena, which played host to the headquarters of the Human Betterment Foundation (HBF). Thanks to 59 boxes of HBF records and the papers of HBF founder Ezra S. Gosney, stored in the basement of Caltech's archival division, the thoughts and plans of the foundation's leaders live on to remind American society of how even the best-sounding plans of science can go dangerously awry.

"I think the idea that eugenics went into decline because of the Nazis is mistaken," says Dr. Paul Lombardo, the director of the Law and Medicine Program at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia. "I can send you a headline from the Los Angeles Times in 1935 praising Hitler for their sterilization programs.

"If you equate eugenics with genocide, most people are against it and would say so [even] back in 1946. But if you equate it with sterilization, racial separation or immigration restrictions, you can get some votes today for it. In California it's common to campaign on immigration restrictions. Look at who's funding them and they're saying the same thing about stopping poor, deficient people again."

Of course, eugenics wouldn't have taken off if it didn't sound like a palatable way to improve society. The HBF, for instance, was founded in 1929 and principally funded by Gosney, a Pasadena philanthropist who sought "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family" and advocated the reproductive sterilization of people deemed socially and mentally unfit.

That broad category included everyone from the mentally retarded and disabled to habitual criminals, as well as entire classes of immigrants who were seen as bringing their inferior genes into the "pure" Caucasian American pool. The opinions of Gosney and his board members -- which included Los Angeles area elite ranging from doctors and lawyers to one of the heads of the Los Angeles Times -- found favor with the rising power of the Nazi party in Germany throughout the 1930s.

Prior to invading Poland, many outsiders saw the Nazis simply as a party that knew how to clean up its country and boost its national economy and pride. And it is the correspondence between the HBF and Nazi leaders -- including the starkly logo-ed Nazi letterhead -- that is perhaps most chilling to those who pore through the archives' boxes.

But the worst revelations are yet to come. Even though 19 boxes of the files have been available for public study since 1992, the private medical records identifying the victims of forced sterilization will remain sealed until 2005 primarily because 14 of the victims are still alive. Once those 40 boxes of files come open, the picture should be more dramatic and disturbing than ever, illustrating the human toll of those subjected to sterilization with no means to defend themselves.

"Caltech had acquired these documents as an accident of history because Robert Milliken (Caltech co-founder and physicist) was friends with Ezra Gosney," says Dr. Shelley Erwin, associate archivist for the Caltech Archives.

While Erwin emphasizes that maintaining the collection is in no way an endorsement of Gosney's eugenics policies, Caltech still maintains the Gosney Research Fund in Biology -- offering annual fellowships to students -- thanks to the fact that Gosney's daughter shuttered the HBF, liquidated its assets, and donated the funds for the fellowship.

Yet when Erwin was asked about the fund, she claimed no knowledge of it and referred questions to Caltech Biology Division Chairman Elliott Meyerowitz. Meyerowitz also denied knowledge of its existence, despite that a basic Google search turns up numerous links to the fund's continued use.