Eugenics and human rights

British Medical Journal, August 14, 1999 by Daniel J Kevles

In Britain between the wars, positive eugenic thinking led to proposals (unsuccessful ones) for family allowances that would be proportional to income. In the United States, it fostered "fitter family" competitions. These became a standard feature at a number of state fairs and were held in the "human stock" sections. At the 1924 Kansas Free Fair, winning families in the three categories--small, average, and large--were awarded a governor's fitter family trophy. "Grade A" individuals received a medal that portrayed two diaphanously garbed parents, their arms outstretched toward their (presumably) eugenically meritorious infant. It is hard to know exactly what made these families and individuals stand out as fit, but the fact that all entrants had to take an IQ test and the Wasserman test for syphilis says something about the organisers' views of necessary qualities.

Much more was urged for negative eugenics, notably the passage of eugenic sterilisation laws. By the late 1920s, sterilisation laws had been enacted in two dozen American states, largely in the middle Atlantic region, the Midwest, and California. By 1933, California had subjected more people to eugenic sterilisation than had all other states of the union combined. Similar measures were passed in Canada, in the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. Almost everywhere they were passed, however, the laws reached only as far as the inmates of state institutions for the mentally handicapped or mentally ill. People in private care or in the care of their families escaped them. Thus, the laws tended to discriminate against poorer people and minority groups. In California, for example, the sterilisation rates of blacks and foreign immigrants were twice as high as would be expected from their representation in the general population.

Society before individual rights

The sterilisation laws rode roughshod over private human rights, holding them subordinate to an allegedly greater public good. This reasoning figured explicitly in the US Supreme Court's eight to one decision, in 1927, in the case of Buck versus Bell, which upheld Virginia's eugenic sterilisation law. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for the majority, averred: "We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. 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. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.... Three generations of imbeciles are enough."[1]

In Alberta, the premier called sterilisation far more effective than segregation and, perhaps taking a leaf from Holmes's book, insisted that "the argument of freedom or right of the individual can no longer hold good where the welfare of the state and society is concerned."[2 3]