It would be a mistake to think that eugenics has disappeared from the American mindset. It has simply morphed. The term, created by Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin, was “an inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations.” David Starr Jordan, founding president of Stanford University, and proponent of eugenics said “ indiscriminate charity has been a fruitful cause of the survival of the unfit. To kill the strong and feed the weak is to provide for a progeny of weakness. ” The English philosopher and creator of the Father Brown mysteries, GK Chesterton, however, critiqued the assumptions made by people who supported eugenics as he believed people are not so “stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs and also so clever that they can manage each other’s.”
With the atrocities associated with eugenics, especially from the Nazi’s, but also within America, it has been discredited as pseudo-science. Today, no serious scientist or medical professional would define themselves as an eugenicist.
During the 1940s, in America, it was heralded as an excepted methodology, even as it led to thousands of women being forcefully sterilized. At the height of its prominence, eugenics had its champions ranging from the Rockefeller Foundation, Margaret Sanger, Teddy Roosevelt, as well as Helen Keller who said, “Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and the world … the world is already flooded with unhappy, unhealthy, mentally unsound persons that should never have been born. ”
While Eduard Pernkopf’s Atlas, the controversial book which detailed the anatomy is still used by surgeons today it is a source of ethical debate. Pernkopf, was an avowed Nazi and advocate of eugenics, who along with his colleagues, used the bodies of executed political prisoners to create his so-called Atlas.
Despite its demise, we would be remiss if we didn’t admit that some aspects and supporters of eugenics exist today, albeit under different names. Recognizing its toxicity, Frederick Osborn, one of the founding members of the American Eugenics Society, in 1968 said that “eugenic goals are most likely to be attained under a name other than eugenics.” In other words, the name is taboo, while several of its practices remains. Examples of this include forced sterilization of California inmates until the early 2000s.
While the idea of eugenics was once a state responsibility, it has been handed over to the marketplace. In his article in the financial times, Quinn Slobodian, author of Hayek’s Bastards, raises the question of libertarian eugenics. In his article he writes, “By delegitimizing mainstream expertise, dismantling vaccine mandates and curbing the authority of public health agencies, it transfers responsibility for health and survival to private individuals…the predictable outcome is that those with resources and education will thrive while those without will fall further behind.”
Private organizations such as Elon Musk’s Neurolink Prime project, while providing promise to paraplegics, have raised ethical questions, given his belief in human enhancement.
If eugenics is the belief that you can improve the population through selective breeding, it can potentially be done through policy. It should be remembered that eugenics is the means to an end which is to improve the population. This led to the pseudo-scientific response of eugenics. This desire is what led to various legislative acts such as the immigration act of 1924, prohibition of interracial marriage and other marriage restrictions. Its most extreme form was during the holocaust.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, denies having eugenicist tendencies, yet his statements and writings over the years makes it difficult to dismiss that accusation.
During his confirmation hearing, Kennedy, sounding like a modern-day proponent of the Tuskegee experiment, made the following statement “we should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that’s given to whites, because their immune system is better than ours” This absurdity could obviously lead to the Black population being deprived of preventative vaccines. About children getting vaccines he said, “They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a Holocaust, what this is doing to our country,” Under the Kennedy reign, America is in danger of losing its measles elimination status if the measles outbreak continues into 2026.
In addition, his decision to appoint David Geier, who had been “disciplined for administering puberty-blocking drugs to autistic children without proper oversight” is a source of controversy.
While he is not alone in some of his disproven theories, the fact that he is in a position to make policy based on debunked science is a dangerous sign. Unfortunately, he is not the only one. During an interview on CNBC, Howard Lutnick, Secretary of the Treasury, said “we’re the only country that let other people just come in without vetting them and deciding whether they’re really going to help the economy of America, Why should we take people who are below average? it just doesn’t make any sense.”
Eugenics has been discredited but its goal remains.
