The Unfit: A History of a Bad IdeaCSHL Press, 2001 - 451 pages The Unfit, by Elof Carlson, explores the sources of a movement – negative eugenics – that was used to justify the Holocaust, which claimed millions of innocent lives in World War II. The title reflects the nearly three centuries of belief that some people are socially unfit by virtue of a defective biology, and echoes an earlier theory of degeneracy, dating to biblical antiquity, in which some people were deemed unfit because of some transgression against religious law. The author presents the first biological theory of degeneracy – onanism – and then follows the development of degeneracy theory throughout the nineteenth century and its application to a variety of social classes. The key intellectual theories and their proponents form the framework of this exploration, which includes the concepts of evolution and heredity and how they were applied to social problems. These ideas are followed into the twentieth century with the development of theories of positive and negative eugenics, the establishment of compulsory sterilization laws, racism and anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. This story of misapplied science and technology is one that still haunts humanity in the twenty-first century. The ghost of eugenics recurs in many guises during debates and controversies about intelligence testing, genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, gene therapy, new reproductive strategies, and uses of our genomic information. Carlson ends his discussion of the history of humanity in this arena with an exploration of the future of genetics that is based on new technologies and application of the Human Genome Project findings, as well as a discussion of the death of the old eugenics and of the problems that will not go away, including our ambivalence about our own biology. |
From inside the book
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... law the compulsory sterilization of unfit people . The connection I sought - the 2 INTRODUCTION.
... law the compulsory sterilization of unfit people . The connection I sought - the 2 INTRODUCTION.
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... sterilized by vasectomy a young man for therapeutic reasons , as a treatment to prevent masturbation . It seemed less ... sterilization law . The rise of the two eugenics movements , positive and negative , is covered , as is their sad ...
... sterilized by vasectomy a young man for therapeutic reasons , as a treatment to prevent masturbation . It seemed less ... sterilization law . The rise of the two eugenics movements , positive and negative , is covered , as is their sad ...
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... sterilization law in 1907. More than 30 states in the United States passed compulsory sterilization laws . Most students are astounded when they learn that the Supreme Court upheld such laws by an 8 to 1 vote in 1927 and that the court ...
... sterilization law in 1907. More than 30 states in the United States passed compulsory sterilization laws . Most students are astounded when they learn that the Supreme Court upheld such laws by an 8 to 1 vote in 1927 and that the court ...
Contents
1 | |
7 | |
9 | |
17 | |
23 | |
39 | |
Dangerous Classes and Social Degeneracy | 57 |
Poor Laws and the Descent to Degeneracy | 73 |
The Jukes and the Tribe of Ishmael | 161 |
A Minor Prophet of Democracy | 183 |
Isolating the Unfit through Compulsory Sterilization | 199 |
The Emergence of Two Wings of the Eugenics Movement | 231 |
Europes Undesirables Replace the Domestic Unfit | 247 |
Eugenics Becomes an International Movement | 265 |
Racism the Holocaust and Beyond | 279 |
Appendices | 395 |
The Perfectibility of Man Confronts Vice and Misery | 95 |
Evolutionary Ethics before Darwin | 109 |
Hereditary Units and the Pessimism of the Germ Plasm | 129 |
Eugenics Takes the Spotlight | 159 |
Useful Books on the History of Eugenics | 405 |
Index | 427 |
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Common terms and phrases
19th century anti-Semitism associated August Weismann behavior believed biological birth breeding Carrie Buck castration cells charity Charles Darwin child claimed Cold Spring Harbor compulsory sterilization Congress of Eugenics courtesy of CSHL crime criminal CSHL Archives Darwin Davenport David Starr Jordan defects degeneracy degenerate disease disorders Dugdale edition essay eugenics movement Eugenics Record Office evolution Francis Galton Galton gene geneticists German H.J. Muller Harry Harry Laughlin hereditary heredity Hitler human genetics Ibid idea immigration Indiana individual inheritance insane Jewish Jews Jordan Journal Jukes Lamarck Laughlin London males Malthus marriage masturbation McCulloch Mendel mental moral mutation nation Nazi negative eugenics Nordau normal Onan Onania organs parents paupers person physical physicians political Poor Laws population positive eugenics prison problem race hygiene racial reform Reprinted reproductive sexual Sharp social society species Spencer sperm sterilization law theory tion traits unfit United University vasectomies views Weismann York
Popular passages
Page 141 - There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Page 21 - If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them...
Page 21 - And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice ; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
Page 22 - Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt ; how he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou 25 wast faint and weary ; and he feared not God.
Page 154 - The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
Page 76 - Their's is yon house that holds the parish poor, Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door ; There, where the putrid vapours flagging, play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day; There children dwell who know no parents...
Page 121 - The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many "in shallows and in miseries," are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.
Page 101 - Taking the whole earth, instead of this island, emigration would of course be excluded; and, supposing the present population equal to a thousand millions, the human species would increase as the numbers, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256; and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the population would be to the means of subsistence as 256 to 9; in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable.
Page 100 - Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She has been comparatively sparing in the room, and the nourishment necessary to rear them.
Page 218 - ... to examine the mental and physical condition of such inmates as are recommended by the institutional physician and board of managers. If, In the judgment of this committee of experts and the board of managers, procreation is inadvisable, and there.