Reflections on assortative mating, social stratification, and genetics.

A recent report by G. Clark points to a sustained persistence of social status in England that extends vertically across several generations and horizontally across many levels of kinship. We seek to put his findings in historical perspective. We do so by relating them to two lines of thinking related to biological inheritance. One predated the rediscovery of Mendel's work and led to the field of quantitative genetics, which dealt on the whole with quasi-continuously varying traits. The other is based on the rediscovery itself and led to a reconciliation between quantitative genetics and discrete Mendelian elements of heredity. Both were enmeshed with the supposed need for, and societal consequences of, eugenics and assortative mating. Also on both issues, the significant ideas can be traced to R. A. Fisher, inspired in one case by F. Galton and in the other by J. A. Cobb, with strong support for Galton and Cobb coming from Karl Pearson. Clark's findings point to societal stratification, and assortative mating for wealth is a straightforward hypothesis to account for it. However, it should be noted that the findings support, but do not prove, the hypothesis.

Nursing and eugenics in the early 20th century United States.

BACKGROUND: Research has documented how ideas about race, class, ethnicity, ableism, and structural hierarchies determine health outcomes and disparities today. The historical role of nursing practice and education needs further exploration. PURPOSE: This study aims to better understand how some nurses thought about and interacted with eugenics in the early 20th century. METHODS: Historical analysis of primary and secondary sources. DISCUSSION: In the early 20th century, reformers of the day, including some nurses, demonstrated much ambiguity of thinking as they pushed for eugenic improvement of the "human race" while also enhancing environmental changes, such as good nutrition and clean, safe housing. CONCLUSION: Nursing's past relationship with eugenics sheds light on the history and construction of the system leading to health disparities among marginalized groups. Nurses must acknowledge the historical roots and context of their education and practice as we engage in critical conversations about social inequities.

Between scientific dissemination and late-stage eugenics: ruptures and continuations in the intellectual trajectory of Salvador de Toledo Piza Jr., 1898-1988. / Entre a divulgação científica e a eugenia tardia: rupturas e permanências na trajetória intelectual de Salvador de Toledo Piza Jr., 1898-1988.

This article analyzes the ruptures from and continuations of eugenicist ideology in the work of Salvador de Toledo Piza Jr., a geneticist and professor at the Escola Superior de Agricultura "Luiz de Queiroz." Documentary research involving articles, correspondence, and notes from this former director of the Boletim de Eugenia investigates the reshaping of eugenics in the post-1945 context, a time when Piza Jr. began to publicize evolutionism. While Piza Jr. stopped publicly defending eugenics in latter half of the twentieth century, he maintained his racialized notions into the 1950s, corresponded with eugenicist groups in the 1960s, and supported a hierarchical interpretation of human evolution until the late 1980s.

O artigo analisa as rupturas e permanências do ideário eugênico na obra de Salvador de Toledo Piza Jr., professor e geneticista da Escola Superior de Agricultura "Luiz de Queiroz". A partir da pesquisa documental sobre artigos, correspondências e anotações do ex-diretor do Boletim de Eugenia , investiga-se a reconfiguração da eugenia no contexto pós-1945, momento em que Piza Jr. passou a atuar como divulgador do evolucionismo. Conclui-se que Piza Jr. deixou de defender publicamente a eugenia na segunda metade do século XX, mas manteve a concepção racializada nos anos 1950, correspondeu-se com sociedades eugenistas nos anos 1960 e sustentou a interpretação hierarquizada de evolução humana até final dos anos 1980.

Science and pseudo science: racist eugenics in Italy.

In the present article we briefly discuss the historical premises of eugenics. Differences and some analogies between the Latin and the German way of eugenics in the 20th century are presented, until the tragic antisemitic turn. The fate of some children in the South Tyrol border region is also discussed, as well as the role of several anatomo-pathologists as willing executors of autopsies on the victims of the eugenic project of eliminating mentally and physically disabled people.

[The "Hilfsverein für Geisteskranke" in the Kingdom of Saxony, a Philantropic Organisation for the Mentally Ill]. / Der Hilfsverein für Geisteskranke im Königreich Sachsen.

This article provides an overwiew of the history of the "Hilfsverein für Geisteskranke" in the Kingdom of Saxony (later Free State of Saxony) from its foundation in 1898 until its probable dissolution during World War II. The "Hilfsverein" was a philantropic organization that aimed to provide support for the mentally ill and their relatives through financial aid and education. It relied on a network of representatives spanning all of Saxony´s regions. Its work continued during the Weimar Republic after World War I, though by then it had lost influence due to economic loss and other structures of public welfare being established. In the context of the rise in eugenic and social darwinist tendencies during the 1920s, the implications of "racial hygiene" and hereditability came to be discussed among its members. After the takeover of the National Socialist Party in 1933, the "Hilfsverein" was forcibly assimilated into the Nazi welfare system and used to propagate racial ideology.

The devolution of eugenic practices: Sexual and reproductive health and oppression of people with intellectual disability.

Early 20th century eugenicists propagated a system of ideas, values and dispositions that constituted adults with intellectual disability as the antithesis of the paradigmatic citizen, and a biological threat to society. The eugenic schema was encoded in sex-segregated institutionalization and, in many places, forced sterilization. These eugenic practices are no longer sanctioned. However, eugenic practices did not disappear. In this paper we argue that the eugenic schema is now encoded and purveyed through a multiplicity of social arrangements and practices that deny adults with intellectual disability the respect, opportunity and means necessary to participate on a par with others in social life. Such practices include, for example, covert or coerced contraception, and discriminatory child welfare interventions leading to high rates of custody deprivation. Drawing on relational theory, we problematize normative assumptions of embodiment and citizenship, which give rise to attributions of incapacity, and argue that adults with intellectual disability need what all other adults need to make and effect choices concerning their sexuality, relationships and parenthood, i.e., recognition, opportunity and support.

"We Who Champion the Unborn": Racial Poisons, Eugenics, and the Campaign for Prohibition.

Dr. Caleb Williams Saleeby was the author of Parenthood and Race Culture, one of the first monographs on eugenics and the book that popularized the term "racial poison." The goal of eradicating the racial poisons and the harm they caused - particularly infant morbidity and mortality - provided common ground for early 20th century reformers, and their concerns fed the growing support for legal prohibition of alcohol.

A Century of Behavioral Genetics at the University of Minnesota.

The University of Minnesota has played an important role in the resurgence and eventual mainstreaming of human behavioral genetics in psychology and psychiatry. We describe this history in the context of three major movements in behavioral genetics: (1) radical eugenics in the early 20th century, (2) resurgence of human behavioral genetics in the 1960s, largely using twin and adoption designs to obtain more precise estimates of genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in behavior; and (3) use of measured genotypes to understand behavior. University of Minnesota scientists made significant contributions especially in (2) and (3) in the domains of cognitive ability, drug abuse and mental health, and endophenotypes. These contributions are illustrated through a historical perspective of major figures and events in behavioral genetics.

The executioner's shadow: Coerced sterilization and the creation of "Latin" eugenics in Chile.

Scholars such as Nancy Leys Stepan, Alexandra Minna Stern, Marius Turda and Aaron Gillette have all argued that the rejection of coerced sterilization was a defining feature of "Latin" eugenic theory and practice. These studies highlight the influence of neo-Lamarckism in this development not only in Latin America but also in parts of Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. This article builds upon this historiographical framework to examine an often-neglected site of Latin American eugenic knowledge production: Chile. By focusing on Chilean eugenicists' understandings of environment and coerced sterilization, this article argues that there was no uniquely Latin objection to the practice initially. In fact, Chilean eugenicists echoed concerns of eugenicists from a variety of locations, both "mainstream" and Latin, who felt that sterilization was not the most effective way to ensure the eugenic improvement of national populations. Instead, the article contends that it was not until the implementation of the 1933 German racial purity laws, which included coerced sterilization legislation, that Chilean eugenicists began to define their objections to the practice as explicitly Latin. Using a variety of medical texts which appeared in popular periodicals as well as professional journals, this article reveals the complexity of eugenic thought and practice in Chile in the early twentieth century.

From Maternal Impressions to Eugenics: Pregnancy and Inheritance in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.

This essay examines the theory of maternal impressions, the belief that a woman's experiences or emotions during pregnancy could explain congenital disability or emotional/ behavior differences in her child and asks why this theory circulated as an explanation for disability seen at birth by both medical doctors and in literature for far longer than it did across the Atlantic. By presenting examples from nineteenth-century medical literature, popular fiction, maternal handbooks, and two canonical works of literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave, I argue that maternal impressions worked to maintain anxiety for women, and particular white women, to ensure they felt responsible if anything was "wrong" with their child. Ultimately, I show how maternal impressions was both an ableist and racialized understanding of inheritance that wouldn't be discarded until the emergence of eugenics in the early twentieth century.

Reproductive carrier screening: responding to the eugenics critique.

Reproductive genetic carrier screening (RCS), when offered to anyone regardless of their family history or ancestry, has been subject to the critique that it is a form of eugenics. Eugenics describes a range of practices that seek to use the science of heredity to improve the genetic composition of a population group. The term is associated with a range of unethical programmes that were taken up in various countries during the 20th century. Contemporary practice in medical genetics has, understandably, distanced itself from such programmes. However, as RCS becomes more widespread, gains public funding and uses expanded gene panels, there are concerns that such programmes could be perceived as eugenic either in intent or outcome. The typical response to the eugenics critique of RCS is to emphasise the voluntary nature of both participating in screening and making subsequent reproductive choices. While safeguarding individuals' freedom to choose in relation to screening is essential, we consider this response inadequate. By examining the specific ethical wrongs committed by eugenics in the past, we argue that to avoid the perception of RCS being a form of eugenics it is essential to attend to the broader normative context in which reproductive decisions occur. Furthermore, ethical RCS programmes must recognise and respond to their potential to shift societal norms that shape individual reproductive choices.

Race, eugenics, and the canceling of great scientists.

Special Issue: Race reconciled II: Interpreting and communicating biological variation and race in 2021 Francis Galton and Karl Pearson.

Race biology.

BACKGROUND: The founders of Hereditas envisioned that race biology would be a major subject that had social applications with utmost importance in the near future. Anthropometrics was in this context understood to be the pure and eugenics the applied science. Sweden had a long tradition in physical anthropometry. Herman Lundborg, member of the advisory board of Hereditas, united the anthropometric and eugenic approaches in a synthesis. He was the first head of the Institute for Race Biology in Sweden. The contents of Hereditas reflect the development of race biology in the Nordic countries. CONCLUSIONS: The initial enthusiasm for applied race biology did not last long. In the 1920's Hereditas carried papers on both physical anthropology and eugenics. Most paper dealt, however, with human genetics without eugenic content. Two papers, published in 1921 and 1939 show how the intellectual climate had changed from positive to negative. Finally only human genetics prevailed as the legitimate study of the human race or humankind. A belated defense of eugenics published in 1951 did not help; geneticists had abandoned anthropometrics for good around the year 1940 and eugenics about a decade later. In spite of that, eugenic legislation was amended astonishingly late, in the 1970's. The development was essentially similar in all Nordic countries.

[Problematization of gender relations at the first Brazilian Eugenics Conference: the status of women, determination of biological gender and reproductive control]. / Problematizações das relações de gênero no primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Eugenia: status da mulher, determinação de sexo biológico e controle reprodutivo.

This article problematizes gender relations during the first Brazilian Eugenics Conference, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1929. Seen as the largest public manifestation of the eugenics movement in Brazil, the Atas e Trabalhos do Congresso (Conference Minutes and Proceedings) were analyzed in terms of gender issues expressed through the spectrum of intrinsic conceptions of hereditarianism and reproduction. The problematizations make an effort to discuss, through the works of several participants in the conference, the role and status of women in Brazilian eugenics, reproductive control in Brazil and the relationship between studies involving determination of biological gender and improvement of the human race.

O artigo problematiza as relações de gênero no primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Eugenia, realizado no Rio de Janeiro, em 1929. Abalizadas como a maior manifestação pública do movimento eugênico no Brasil, as Atas e Trabalhos do Congresso foram foco de uma análise das questões de gênero expressas sob o espectro de intrínsecas concepções sobre hereditariedade e reprodução. As problematizações empreendidas se empenham em discutir, por meio do trabalho de diversos participantes do congresso, o papel e o status da mulher na eugenia brasileira, o controle reprodutivo no Brasil e a relação entre os estudos envolvendo a determinação de sexo biológico e a melhora da raça humana.

The American Neurological Association's Book "Eugenical Sterilization: A Reorientation of the Problem" Through the Lens of Contemporaneous Book Reviews.

BACKGROUND: In 1936, the American Neurological Association (ANA) published the book "Eugenical Sterilization: A Reorientation of the Problem" in response to what the first author of the book described as a positive reception to a paper presented at the ANA's 1935 annual meeting. The conclusions of the presentation were approved by the organization during the same meeting. As evidenced by the publication of several book reviews in a variety of medical journals, the book garnered some attention. METHODS: Reviews of the ANA's book were sought using PubMed, Google Scholar, and Embasa. Also, the book's title was used to search the World Wide Web. RESULTS: The search yielded four reviews, all published in 1937. The reviews make evident a positive opinion of the ANA's book's authors' recommendations including the option for "selective sterilization" of patients with conditions such as Huntington disease, Friedreich ataxia, and epilepsy. In addition, reviewers highlighted the book's authors' assessment that "the feebleminded [breed] docile, servile, useful people who do the dirty work of the race, [as] servants fulfilling a social function." CONCLUSIONS: Although the book's authors did not advocate for all-out eugenical sterilization, they did little to counter the popular opinion that patients with certain neurological diseases were a drain on society. In addition, they espoused a positive vision of the feebleminded's role as servants who can do undesirable work. This message was disseminated through book reviews.