Eugenics was a word coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, who was a cousin of Darwin’s. The desire to “improve” the human stock is frequently related to pseudo-scientific theories put forward by those who wish to demonstrate the “superiority” of a particular group – race, nation, social class, or sex, in terms of blood or “good breeding”. Such reactionary nonsense is usually given a spurious “scientific” air to convey an impression of intellectual respectability to the most irrational and abhorrent prejudices. America, the “land of the free”, saw the triumph of the eugenics movement in the enactment of laws for the compulsory sterilisation of the “biologically inferior”. The state of Indiana passed the first sterilisation act in 1907. This practice could be carried out on those considered insane, imbecilic or moronic, as recommended by a board of experts. In the mid-1920s John Scopes taught evolution using a book entitled A Civic Biology, by George W. Hunter, which contained the infamous case of Jukes and Kallikaks***. Under the heading Parasitism and Its Cost to Society – the Remedy, it says:

Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, immorality and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They are true parasites.

If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetrating such a low and degenerate race.

By the 1930s, over 30 states in America had passed sterilisation laws, expanding those eligible for treatment to alcoholics and drug addicts, and even blindness and deafness in others. The campaign reached its height in 1927, when the Supreme Court, by 8-1 votes, upheld the Virginia sterilisation law in Buck v. Bell. This case involved an eighteen year old white girl called Carrie Buck, who was involuntarily incarcerated in the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, and was the first person to be sterilised under the act. She was chosen, according to Harry Laughlin, the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office (who wanted to eliminate “the most worthless one-tenth of our present population”), as she, her daughter and her mother were genetically mentally subnormal. This information was largely accrued from the Stanford-Binet test of IQ – which was later proved to be totally wrong. The judge in the case, O.W. Holmes, stated “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Carrie’s sister Doris was also covertly sterilised under the same law. Carrie’s child, Vivian, died in 1932 of an illness. Her teachers described her as “very bright”.

By January 1935, around 20,000 forced sterilisations for eugenic purposes were carried out in the US. Laughlin wanted the net to include “homeless, tramps and paupers” and was taken up most fervently in Nazi Germany, where the Erbgesundheitsrecht led to the sterilisation of some 375,000, including 4,000 for blindness and deafness. In the USA, in the end, 30,000 were sterilised against their will. While classical eugenics has been discredited, new versions such as psychosurgery have emerged. This proclaims the idea that surgery on the brain can alleviate social problems, notably violence. Two American psychosurgeons, Vernon Mark and Frank Ervin, went so far as to argue that city riots in the US are caused by mental problems (deranged amygdalas) and may be cured by brain surgery on certain ghetto leaders. Research into this area of biology is being financed by the US law enforcement agencies.

Seeking suitable candidates for brain surgery, a revealing letter from 1971 between the Director of Corrections, Human Relations Agency, Sacramento, and the Director of Hospitals and Clinics, University of California Medical Center, shows the mentality of sections of the “scientific” community. The Director asks for suitable prison candidates “who have shown aggressive, destructive behaviour, possibly as a result of severe neurological disease,” to conduct “surgical and diagnostic procedures…to locate centres in the brain which may have been previously damaged and which could serve as the focus for episodes of violent behaviour,” for surgical removal.

The reply suggests a candidate who:

“was transferred…for increasing militancy, leadership ability and outspoken hatred for white society…he was identified as one of several leaders in the work strike of April 1971…Also evident at approximately the same time was an avalanche of revolutionary reading material.”

These crank ideologies are the theoretical backdrop of political reaction. In 1980, Dr. K. Ray Nelson, the then director of the Lynchburg Hospital where Carrie Buck was sterilised, discovered that over 4,000 operations had been carried out, the last as late as 1972. The IQ tests used in the Buck case have long been discredited. These reactionary ideas of forced sterilisation are not simply confined to the “dark ages” of the past, but are alive today, sustained on pseudo-scientific theories, particularly in America. Even now, there are sterilisation laws on the statute books of 22 US states.

  1. The Jukes and the Kallikaks were names given to two imaginary families used as examples during the latter 19th century and early 20th century to argue that anti-social behaviour or low intelligence was genetically determined. This idea that traits considered socially inferior could be transmitted genetically was used to argue in favour of eugenics, or the pseudo-scientific breeding of human beings, the Jukes Family representing inherited criminal tendencies and the Kallikak Family inherited mental retardation.