Eugenics and human rights

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

The revelations of the holocaust strengthened the moral objections to eugenics and sterilisation, and so did the increasing worldwide discussion of human rights, a foundation for which was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed in 1948. Since then, the movement for women's rights and reproductive freedom has further transformed moral sensibilities about eugenics, so that we recoil at the majority's ruling in Buck versus Bell. History at the least has taught us that concern for individual rights belongs at the heart of whatever stratagems we may devise for deploying our rapidly growing knowledge of human and medical genetics.

Summary points

Although eugenics programmes are usually associated with Nazi Germany, they could, and did, happen everywhere

They focused on manipulating heredity or breeding to produce better people and on eliminating those considered biologically inferior

In the 1920s and 1930s eugenic sterilisation laws were passed in 24 of the American states, in Canada, and in Sweden

Eugenics was criticised increasingly between the wars and was attacked widely when its role in the holocaust was revealed

Many people believed that individual human rights mattered far more than those sanctioned by science, law, and social needs

Competing interests: None declared.

[1] Buck v Bell [1927] 274 US 201-7.

[2] Christian T. The mentally ill and human rights in Alberta: a study of the Alberta Sexual Sterilisation Act. Edmonton: Faculty of Law, University of Alberta, nd: 27.

[3] McLaren A. Our own master race: eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990.

[4] Broberg G, Roll-Hansen N, eds. Eugenics and the welfare state: sterilization policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996.

(Accepted 1 July 1999)

Division of Humanities, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA

Daniel J Kevles professor

kevles@its. caltech.edu

BMJ 1999;319:435-8