War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race

Ethics & Medicine, Spring 2004 by DeBaets, Amy Michelle

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race Edwin Black New York: Four Wall Eight Windows, 2003 ISBN 1-56858-258-7, 550 PP., HARDCOVER, $27

In War Against the Weak, Edwin Black outlines the history of American eugenics from the beginning of the 20th century through World War II and beyond. This includes the stories of influential individuals, organizations, and foundations responsible for developing the ideology and policies necessary to create an America in which those who are deemed "unfit" are sterilized and those who are desirable are encouraged to procreate with one another. Black also explains the policy history that accompanied this pseudo-scientific quest and how it resulted in the sterilization of thousands of Americans, as well as its influence on international public policy. He gives a brief overview of post-WWII policies and events, but this serves mostly as a wrappingup of earlier stories.

The story begins with the initial confluence of late 19th century events and ideas, including social Darwinism, Mendelian genetics, theories of breeding, and racist ideologies that led to the development of eugenics, Francis Gallon's term using the Greek words for "good birth," meaning an attempt at the scientific development of a better race of human beings through carefully breeding the best with the best and discouraging reproduction among those deemed unfit. This led to two separate but complementary tracks of eugenics: positive eugenics, which encouraged mass procreation of the "best" people, and negative eugenics, which sought to eliminate reproduction among the unfit by means of sterilization, segregation, and similar coercive methods.

Eugenics began in Britain but quickly moved to the United States, where the ideology is picked up by a number of influential scientists and foundations, including the Rockefellers and the Carnegies. This well-heeled movement did not gain popularity among the masses, but it did influence public policy in many states, which proceeded to allow forced sterilization for the "feebleminded" and others whom eugenicists felt should not reproduce. Black traces the stories of people involved with the eugenics movement through the early 20th century, including leaders Charles Davenport and Harry H. Laughlin, as well as the influence of eugenical ideas on other movements of the time, such as Margaret Sanger's birth control movement and the campaign to fight hereditary blindness.

American concepts of eugenics, infused as they were with racism and prejudice against the poor and disabled, were taken up by other nations and influenced international public policy. This influence on international policy, including the German "race hygiene" movement and the horrors of the concentration camps, comes to dominate the book. It is critically important to understand how American ideas, funding, and research contributed to the Nazi atrocities. Black tells the stories of Nazis such as Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen and Josef Mengele and, in sad and awful detail, discusses the experiments conducted on innocent people, all in the name of eugenics. This becomes the central focus of the book, however, and the American story is derailed and never fully recovered.

The final section of the book briefly looks at what happened to eugenics after the events of World War II, including the stories of Americans who had been involved in the movement. Black describes the move as one from eugenics to genetics, from a racist and pseudo-scientific campaign to an actual science free from destructive ideologies. He does not fail to point out, though, that even as a genuine science, genetics is not free from the possibilities of its discriminatory past. War Against the Weak is a sobering account of what can happen and has happened even in a free country like the United States, and is an important historical witness as we move into a new genetic age. It will surprise many readers to know what has happened in just the past century, but Black's account is fair and well documented throughout. It is, at times, very difficult to read, particularly in the sections regarding the Nazi experiments, but it is a valuable book for anyone interested in the history of eugenics and genetic discrimination and is a much-needed resource for those seeking to prevent such discrimination in the future.

Amy Michalle DeBaets is a Master of Divinity student at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, and Editor of the Biotech Update for the Council on Biotechnology Policy for The Wilberforce Forum.