EUGENICS: The “Science” of Race
James Watson
Won the Nobel Prize for helping discover the structure of
human DNA with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins.
The New York-based Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL)
https://nypost.com/2019/01/14/dna-pioneer-james-watson-
stripped-of-honors-over-reprehensible-racist-views/
Rosalind Franklin
https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/KR/p-nid/183
EUGENICS = WELL BORN
Term coined in 1883 by Sir Francis Galton (1882-1911) , cousin
of Darwin, Animal Breeder, Tinkerer. Knighted by the Crown in
1909 for his work in developing the Academic discipline of
Eugenics taught in colleges and universities in England and
several professional organization dedicated to the purpose and
work of the Eugenics movement.
Eugenics in Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development
1883
http://galton.org/books/human-faculty/text/galton-1883-human-
faculty-v4.pdf

Who shall inhabit the Earth?FitUnfitFinancially
comfortableMental disordersEpilepsySubstance abusePoverty
(working class)Criminal behaviorFeeblemindness Sexual
promiscuity Illegitimate birth illegitimate by birthNon
White as perceived by appearance
British EugenicsPositiveNegativeEncouragement and financial
support for:Deny financial charity for the poorMarriage between
Fit personsExclude poor children from health care and
educationMultiple births from Fit parents
American Eugenics
Developed in the United States in 1902 by Charles Davenport (
1866- 1944) whose privately funded Eugenic Records Office in
Cold Spring Harbor, New York created hundreds of thousands
of file cards on individuals considered unfit.
Cold Spring Harbor opened in 1910 and has never closed and
today continues to work as a privately funded lab focused on
“biological research and education.”
https://www.cshl.edu/
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/
American EugenicsPositiveNegativeIdentify Fit personsDeny
financial charity for the poor.
Encourage intermarriage between fit personsExclude poor
children from
Health care and educationEncourage multiple births from Fit
parentsIQ TestingInstitutionalizationImmigration lawsEnforced

Sterilization LawsJim Crow Laws
Why the Difference?
RACE
Understanding Race
“A word from the 16th century, from Middle French race,
earlier razza "race, breed, lineage, family" (16c.), possibly from
Italian razza, of unknown origin (cognate with Spanish and
Portuguese raza).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/race#etymonline_v_3255
This use of the word was used in the early days of the slave
trade to distinguish between enslaver and enslaved. One was
civilized and the other was savage.
"Race" thus evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments
that distorts our ideas about human differences and group
behavior.
American Anthropological Association, Statement on “Race”
https://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.asp
x?ItemNumber=2583
Understanding Race
The Great Chain of Being
Medieval concept of the order of the universe that “ordered” all
plants and animals (humans are animals and we are on the top of
the chain of animals)
Adam and Eve
Most Scientist prior to 1750 believed that all humans were born
of this white couple

Aristotle
“Natural” Inequality
“Just as Some are by nature free, so others by nature are slaves,
and for these latter the condition of slavery is just and
beneficial.” On Politics, Book One
What happened?
Great Britain abolishes Slave Trade 1807, slavery in 1833.
(America abolishes Slave Trade in 1808, slavery in 1865.)
The discussions leading up to the abolition of the slave trade in
Britain hung on the answer to the question: Who should and
should not be enslaved?
Slavery has always existed in all cultures.
Slavery was typically a time sensitive practice.
Slavery was typically a way to leverage power over one’s
enemies.
American Slavery was unique in that by law it was for life and
generational following the mother.
A Word about Slavery
Rethinking the Great Chain of Being
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was one of the leading figures in
natural philosophy and in the field of scientific methodology in
the period of transition from the Renaissance to the early
modern era.
He defines the scientific method in Novum Organum (1620)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/

Gregor Mendel () 1856-1863 Pea experiments not found until
1900
“Invisible Factors” basis for DNA
https://history.nih.gov/exhibits/nirenberg/hs1_mendel.htm
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1798)
Systema naturae: A general system of nature through the three
grand kingdoms of animals, vegetables, and minerals (1735)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/linnaeus.html
Thomas Malthus ,
Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html
13
Johann Blumenbach 1752-1840
Third edition of his MD thesis (1795) On the natural varieties
of mankind. Five generic varieties:
Caucasians
Mongolians
Ethiopians
Americans
Malays
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2151154/

Blumenbach believed
The most beautiful people live in the Southern slope of
Caucasus Mountains
People living further from away from this area degenerate into
darker and darker shade of pigment
White we may fairly assume to have been the primitive colour
of mankind. It is easy to change from white to brown but not
vice versa.”
All humans are one species – 1 Race of Humans
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2151154/
Caucasus Mountains
Home of the Most Beautiful Skulls
Contemporary Problem Solvers
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) “Father of Paleontology”
Narrowed Blumenbach’s categories down to 3: Caucasian
(white), Mongolian (yellow), and the Ethiopian (black).
Charles Darwin(1809-1882) wrote On the Origin of Species
(1859)
Theory of Evolution
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/charles-darwin-most-famous-
biologist.html
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) coined the infamous expression

“survival of the fittest” a phrase that described social
Darwinism.
C. 1850
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spencer/
Which Brings us Back to
Charles Davenport
In 1902, Charles B. Davenport, then a Professor of Zoology at
the University of Chicago, approached the Carnegie Institution
with a request for $45,000 to create a “Biological Experiment
Station for the study of evolution” on the Cold Spring Harbor
Campus. This funding was provided by Mrs. Harriman, wealthy
widow and the Kellogg family (the cereal company).
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/
A Word about the suffix “Oid”
The Suffix OID renders a noun into an adjective that describes a
“resemblance” or “likeness” to a group of some kind. It was
used predominantly by early scientists like the ones we just
discussed. These terms were formed following this practice but
it is difficult to locate a first usage for them
Caucasoid

Negroid
Mongloid
EXCEPT, MAYBE
Benjamin Rush, Physician, signer of the Declaration of
Independence, founder of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.
Possibly coined the term “Negroid” to describe a Leprosy-like
disease that afflicted those who Blumenbach described as
Ethiopian – Negroidism - black people(Ethiopians) were
actually white (Caucasian) people afflicted with a skin disease.
https://www.dickinson.edu/info/20043/about/3480/benjamin_rus
h
Back To American Eugenics
“Protecting the "American" germ plasm”
Davenport published The Trait Book (1912) It was a systematic
compilation of both genetic disorders and supposedly inherited
characteristics that were to be recorded by field workers sent
out by the ERO.
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay4text.html
Supporters of American Eugenics
Stanford University President David Starr Jordan
Alexander Graham Bell
Winston Churchill
John Maynard Keynes
Woodrow Wilson

The Rockefellers
The Carnegie Foundation
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757926/
Harry Laughlin
Davenport hired H.H. Laughlin as the superintendent of the
Eugenics Records Office. His specialization was Sterilization
Programs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757926/
Positive Eugenics
Encourage those deemed “Fit” to marry and have many children.
Negative Eugenics
Immigration laws
Sterilization laws
Institutionalization
IQ Testing
Jim Crow Laws
FitUnfitFinancially comfortableMental
disordersEpilepsySubstance abusePoverty (working
class)Criminal behaviorFeeblemindness Sexual promiscuity

Illegitimate birth illegitimate by birth Excessive
MasturbationSouthern Italian or Eastern EuropeanNon White as
perceived by appearance
Immigration Laws
By linking undesirable traits with specific racial and ethnic
groups, eugenicists scored a significant impact on social policy
with the passage of restrictive immigration laws in the 1920s.
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay4text.html
The 1924 National Origins Act, which restricted immigration to
quotas that were based on the 1890 census—a census taken
before the 20th century wave of eastern and southern European
immigration.
Sterilization laws
The American Eugenics Society had hoped, in time, to sterilize
one-tenth of the U.S. population, or millions of Americans.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757926/
In the 1910s and 1920s, men were as likely to be sterilized as
women were, but by the 1940s restrictions on reproductive
choice were aimed at women.
http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/SJEdits/Platt_Eugenics.html
“From 1907 to 1937, 32 US states passed eugenic sterilization
laws as part of a larger public health effort to combat
degeneracy. Sterilization rates, which remained fairly steady in
the 1910s and early 1920s as eugenics gained currency,
increased markedly after the 1927 Buck v. Bell US Supreme
Court decision (274 US 200), which upheld the constitutionality
of Virginia’s sterilization law.The last sterilization law was
only removed in 1981.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5308144/
30
Buck v. Bell
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. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197
U.S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/274/200
California Sterilization law 1909
California passed the third law in the nation in 1909 and
performed one third of all officially reported operations
nationwide from the 1910s to the 1960s.”
The Nazis, when proposing their own sterilization program,

specifically noted the “success of sterilization laws in
California.”
A 2013 Center for Investigative Reporting article revealed that,
between 2006 and 2010, close to 150 unauthorized sterilizations
were performed in California prisons.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757926/
In March 2003, The California Senate considered a resolution,
authored by Senator Dede Alpert (D-San Diego), that "expresses
profound regret over the state's past role in the eugenics
movement" and "urges every citizen of the state to become
familiar with the history of the eugenics movement, in the hope
that a more educated and tolerant populace will reject any
similar abhorrent pseudoscientific movement should it arise in
the future.”
http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/SJEdits/Platt_Eugenics.html
IQ testing
Clearly linked to the passage of compulsory sterilization laws –
beginning in 1907
Robert M. Yerkes, 1914 Alpha and Beta Army Tests
8,000 men were recommended for immediate discharge on
grounds of mental incompetence another 19,000 were assigned
to labor and noncombat battalions.
Lewis Terman 1916 Stanford Binet Intelligence Test
Carl Brigham 1925 Scholastic Achievement Test

Life segregation or Euthanasia
This remedy must, in the opinion of the committee, be the
principal agent used by society in cutting off its supply of
defectives. Defectives must be, and with continually finer
discrimination are being, segregated from the general mass of
society; and it will require but little modification from the
present custodial systems in effecting the eugenical end as well
as protecting the immediate present-day society
from the socially inadequate individual, and administering to
the latter’s most pressing needs.
BULLETIN No. 10A: Report of the Committee to Study and to
Report on the Best Practical Means of Cutting Off the Defective
Germ-Plasm in the American
Population. by HARRY H. LAUGHLIN, Secretary of the
Committee, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York,
February, 1914
https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=htt
ps://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1009&context=bu
ckvbell
A little more science
“Neither for IQ nor for any other trait can genes be said to
determine the organism…It is the genotype, not the phenotype,
that is inherited. The genotype is fixed; the phenotype develops
and changes constantly. The organism itself is at every stage the
consquence of a develpmental process that occurs in some
historical sequence of environments.”

Lewontin, R.C., Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin “IQ: The Rank
Ordering of the World.” Found in The Racial Economuy of
Science: Toward a Democratic Future. Edited by Sandra
Harding.
Final Thoughts
The fairly obvious lesson to be learned is that where science
appears to validate folk beliefs, it needs to be subjected to
considerably higher standards of scrutiny than ordinary science.
Marks J. Racism, Eugenics, and the Burdens of History. IX
International Congress of Human Genetics. 20 August 1996, Rio
de Janeiro, 1996.
Why does any of this matter?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyI77Yh1Gg
Question 1 (1 point)
Healthcare demand is inelastic as the health services are more
frequently associated with preventive care and cosmetic
services or products.
Question 1 options:
True
False
Question 2 (1 point)
Consumers of healthcare products and services have limited

options for adverse outcomes.
Question 2 options:
True
False
Question 3 (1 point)
Only psychological, demographic and lifestyle factors
contribute to the influence of the demand for a service or
product.
Question 3 options:
True
False
Question 4 (1 point)
The prediction of demand population-based model uses a
statistical method to predict future trending behavior based on
past trends.
Question 4 options:
True
False
Question 5 (1 point)
Healthcare consumers have limited access to knowledge on
price of health services and products.
Question 5 options:
True
False