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WAR AGAINST THE WEAK: EUGENICS AND AMERICA'S CAMPAIGN TO CREATE A MASTER RACE |
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CHAPTER 20: Eugenics Becomes Genetics
After Hitler, eugenics did not disappear. It renamed
itself. What had
thrived loudly as eugenics for decades quietly took postwar refuge under the labels human genetics and genetic counseling.
The transition was slow and subtle and spanned decades. Some
defected
from American eugenics as early as the twenties, prompted by a genuine revulsion over a movement that had deteriorated from biological utopianism into a campaign to destroy entire groups. For others who defected in the thirties and early forties, it was the shock of how Adolf Hitler applied eugenics. For America's eugenic holdouts, it was only the fear of guilt by scientific association with genocide that reshaped their memories and guided their new direction. It took a Holocaust, a continent in cinders and a once great nation bombed and battled into submission to force the issue.
Originally, human genetics and eugenics were one and the same. At
the
turn of the twentieth century, American breeders of plants and animals had turned their hybridizing skills and social prejudices on their fellow man, trying to manage humanity the same way they managed crops and herds. The American Breeders Association created its Eugenics Committee in 1903. In 1904, the Carnegie Institution founded its eugenic installation at Cold Spring Harbor. I The word genetics did not exist at the time. In England, meanwhile, research into Mendel's decades-old discovery of cellular "elements" had advanced and was sorely in need of a new dedicated field of study. By 1905, William Bateson, the man who several years earlier had promulgated the rediscovery of Mendel's theories, was now privately referring to the new science of heredity as "genetics," from the same Greek root Galton employed. Bateson publicly announced the new science during his inaugural address during the Royal Horticultural Society's Third International Conference on Hybridization in 1906. "The science itself is still nameless," declared Bateson. " ... I suggest for the consideration of this Congress the term Genetics, which sufficiently indicates that our labors are devoted to the elucidation of the phenomena of heredity and variation ... and [their] application to the practical problems of breeders, whether of animals or plants." When the con ference proceedings were published, the society renamed the event the Third International Conference on Genetics.2 Genetics was born. Shortly thereafter, students of genetics began referring to the transmittable cellular elements as "genes." By 1912, Cambridge University received a sizeable endowment for genetic studies and in 1914 established the world's first chair in genetics. Mainstream European and American geneticists were primarily devoted to the study of hereditary mechanisms, probing the structure and interactions of enzymes, proteins and other cellular components. Plant and animal geneticists zealously explored the protoplasm of fruit flies, maize, sheep and other species, hoping to understand and manage the lower life-forms. They understood that man was a more complex animal that had both conquered, and was conquered by, his environment. In Europe, human studies of cellular mechanisms were undertaken, but slowly. ot so in America, where breeders distorted Mendelian principles into eugenics and then subsumed nascent human genetics. The two words were synonymous in the United States.3 In 1914, the American Breeders Association changed its name to the American Genetic Association, and its publication from American Breeders Magazine to Journal of Heredity. The organization and its publication functioned as a scientific jumble, combining the best efforts of good agronomy and zoology with tainted, ill-advised and racist social engineering. The Carnegie Institution ran the Eugenics Record Office under its Department of Genetics, with Davenport as its director. Many of the nation's leading geneticists, such asW E. Castle and Raymond Pearl, were among the earliest dues-paying members of the Eugenics Research Association. Genetics and biology departments across America taught eugenics as part of their curriculums. In 1929, Eugenical News changed its subtitle once again, this time to "Current Record of Human Genetics and Race Hygiene."4 However, by the late twenties and early thirties many human geneticists who had joined the eugenic charge were defecting. L. C. Dunn exemplified this growing trend. In 1925, he had coauthored P1'inciplesof Genetics, asserting in typical eugenic rhetoric that "even under the most favorable surroundings there would still be a great many individuals who are always on the borderline of self-supporting existence and whose contribution to society is so small that the elimination of their stock would be beneficial."5 But in 1935, two years after the rise of Hitler, Dunn formally suggested that the Carnegie Institution shut down its Cold Spring Harbor eugenic enterprise. "With genetics," Dunn told Carnegie officials, "its relations [with eugenics] have always been close, although there have been distinct signs of cleavage in recent years, chiefly due to the feeling on the part of many geneticists that eugenical research was not always activated by purely disinterested scientific motives, but was influenced by social and political considerations." Dunn later became an outspoken critic of both Nazi eugenics and the American movement.6 In 1937, Laurence Snyder, the incoming president of the Eugenics Research Association and chairman of its Committee on Human Heredity, became convinced it was time for a break with the past. In a lengthy report to Laughlin and the Carnegie Institution, Snyder's committee concluded that the end for organized eugenics was near. "The recent attacks upon orthodox eugenics," the committee declared, "and indeed upon the whole present social set-up ... emphasize more than ever the need for accurate facts and information on basic human genetics. These attacks, it may be stated in passing, come not from irresponsible nor untrained minds, but from some who have the authority of long and honorable scientific achievements behind them."7 Referring to the worries over a Europe in political turmoil and preparing for war, the committee report continued, "In these days when the social outlook of whole nations is undergoing far-reaching changes, any fact contributing to our knowledge of basic human welfare becomes of especial importance. The science of human genetics, judged by its past achievements and by what we may reasonably expect in its future developments, is more certainly basic to any well-formulated plan of human welfare."8 Unfortunately, noted Snyder, in America the concept of "human genetics" had itself become as tarnished as eugenics. "The interest of American geneticists in human genetics," the committee reported, "appears to have been waning oflate, as evidenced by the almost complete absence of papers on human heredity at the various scientific meetings. This state of affairs in America, in contrast to the condition in some of the European countries, is to be deplored. It has come about, in the opinion of your committee, because of two main reasons. First, there has appeared from time-to-time a good deal of unscientific writing on the subject of eugenics. Since the terms 'eugenics' and 'human genetics' are in the minds of many persons synonymous, human genetics has suffered a loss of prestige as a result."9 In his June 1938 presidential address to the Eugenics Research Association, Snyder boldly laid the framework for a transition to genuine human genetics programs. In doing so, he first admitted that much of the vocabulary and theory of eugenics was little more than polysyllabic nonsense. "When the Mendelian laws were rediscovered," began Snyder, "and especially when the more modern complicated extensions of genetic theory became understood by research workers in the field of heredity, geneticists spoke a language largely unintelligible to the psychologist, the sociologist and the layman. At that time it was possible, by invoking a phraseology mysterious and somewhat awe-inspiring, to make generalizations regarding racial degeneration, the inheritance of personality, character, insanity and criminality, which could not be analyzed immediately by the sociologists and the psychologists because of their unfamiliarity with the 'rules of the game.'''10 Snyder knew he was speaking to a constituency of longtime ardent eugenicists, and proceeded cautiously. "This does not mean that the eugenicist must completely renounce a eugenic program," he stated. "It does mean, however, that the immediate and imperative need is for more facts about human inheritance, specifically, facts about socially significant traits and their possible genetic backgrounds."" Nonetheless, the voices of reform were generally drowned out by raceology and eugenics from the entrenched ranks and longtime leaders, such as Davenport, Laughlin and Popenoe. Organized eugenics remained committed to the Nazi program through much of the Reich years. Mter the war, geneticists would claim they had no affinity with their Nazi counterparts. But that was not the case. For example, in April 1942, amid worldwide charges of mass extermination, the American Genetic Association's Journal of Heredity published a long, flippant, almost cheery assessment of Nazi eugenics and genetics. American geneticist Tage U. H. Ellinger's article entitled "On the Breeding of Aryans and Other Genetic Problems of War-time Germany" recounted his exciting visit to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Institute officials granted him an insider's tour of the Reich's twins lab and other advanced genetic projects. 12Ellinger's stunning article was an Anlerican geneticist speaking about Nazi genetics to fellow geneticists. "I had an opportunity to meet some of my fellow geneticists," began Ellinger, "who seemed to be working undisturbed by the campaign and the 'mopping up' in Poland, and by the hectic preparations for the assaults on a great many peaceful countries such as Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium. The following unpretentious notes, written for laymen, may perhaps interest some of their many American friends.13 "Quite a few of them were busy treating or rather mistreating the sex cells of animals and plants in order to produce new varieties. I was introduced to all kinds of extraordinary creatures produced in that way, mice without toes or with corkscrew tails, flies that violated the very definition of a fly by having four wings instead of two, funny-looking moths, and strange plants. Radiation, especially with X-rays, is the principal means of producing such new kinds, or rather monsters, of animals and plants."14 Kaiser Wilhelm Institute officials made Ellinger privy to their surreptitious surveillance methods and government procedures. In his article, Ellinger jocundly reported, "Twins have, of course, for a long time been a favorite material for the study of the relative importance of heredity and environment, of nature and nurture. It does, however, take a dictatorship to oblige some ten thousand pairs of twins, as well as triplets and even quadruplets, to report to a scientific institute at regular intervals for all kinds of recordings and tests."15 As for Jews, Ellinger told his fellow geneticists, "In itself, the problem is a fairly simple one when it is first understood that the deliberate eradication of the Jewish element in Germany has nothing whatever to do with religious persecution. It is entirely a large-scale breeding project, with the purpose of eliminating from that nation the hereditary attributes of the Semitic race. Whether this be desirable or not is a question that has nothing to do with science. It is a matter of policy and prejudice only. It is a problem similar to that [which] Americans have solved to their own satisfaction with regard to their colored population. The story of the cruel ways in which life has been made unbearable for millions of unfortunate German Jews belongs exclusively in the shameful realm of human brutality. But when the problem arises as to how the breeding project may be carried out most effectively, after the politicians have decided upon its desirability, biological science can assist even the azis."16 Ellinger elaborated on Nazi eugenic examinations. "It is a problem," he wrote, "of exactly the same nature as if you were asked to record the exact hereditary differences between a bird dog and a hound. It has nothing whatever to do with your personal preference for one or the other. It is a matter of common knowledge that anybody can immediately recognize many Jews by simply looking at them. In other words, the Jew has a number of characteristic bodily features not often combined in a non-Jew or 'Aryan.' In addition, he may display certain mental characteristics you would soon notice by personal association .... 17 "An amazing amount of unbiased information has accumulated dealing, for instance, with such features as the position of the ears, the shape of the nostrils, etc. As a result, it is quite possible, by studying the bodily features of a person and his relatives, to state, with considerable likelihood of being right, whether this person has Jewish ancestors .... If it be decided by the Nazi politicians that persons with Jewish ancestors shall be prevented from mating with those who have not such ancestors, science can undoubtedly assist them in carrying out a reasonably correct labeling of every doubtful individual. The rest remains in the cruel hands of the S.S., the S.A., and the Gestapo."18 As for the fate of the Jews, Ellinger wrote, "What I saw in Germany often made me wonder whether the subtle idea behind the treatment of the Jews might be to discourage them from giving birth to children doomed to a life of horrors. If that were accomplished, the Jewish problem would solve itself in a generation, but it would have been a great deal more merciful to kill the unfortunates outright." Ellinger's article candidly admitted, "As things are run in Nazi Germany, it is obviously a matter almost of life and death whether you carry the label Aryan or Jew."19 Summing up, Ellinger attested that, "Genetics really seems to have an unlimited field of practical applications, but I am sure that the old priest Mendel would have had the shock of his life had he been told that seventyfive years after he planted his unpretentious peas in the monastery garden of Brunn, his new science would be called upon to 'grade up' the 'scrub' population of Greater Germany to new 'standards of Aryan perfection. '''20 A year later, in 1943, Eugenical News projected the future of eugenics. An article entitled "Eugenics After the War" cited Davenport's work at Carnegie's Department of Genetics. Davenport envisioned a new mankind of biological castes with master races in control and slave races serving them. He compared the coming world order to "colonies of bees and termites .... All the bees in a hive, including the queen, are full sisters and have been for uncounted generations. Each one is hatched with a set of instincts, which enables it, in machine-like fashion, to do the proper thing at the proper time for the existence of the colony. In human communities, also, the more uniform the instincts and ideals the less friction and the less need for government control with its vast system of law, law enforcement and punishment.21 "Contrariwise the more mixed the population from the standpoint of instincts and physical and mental capacity, the more badly does the machine work and the more need of constant repair and adjustment." Davenport added that additional worker strains might be imported to help serve America's coming biological order. "It is quite possible," wrote Davenport, "that some tens of thousands of 'Black fellows' [aborigines] from central Australia might be induced to come to this country." But he added that he hoped America would forgo any further opportunities for race-mixing.22 But by 1943, reformers were shouting down diehard Nazi supporters such as Davenport. In the same issue in which Davenport forecast a new biological order, other Eugenical News correspondents were condemning Hitler's eugenics, and negative eugenics in general. Following Davenport's remarks, another article entitled "Eugenics in 1952" prophesied various views of eugenics some nine years ahead. One writer urged new thinking on the subject, insisting, "The history of the Nazi movement in Germany proves ... [that] unless the new brain functions in an emotional climate of decent social mindedness, it is going to breed a race of madmen rather than of supermen."23 Another commentator insisted that any fascism in the United States a decade hence would fail because it "will be shown to belong to the discredited Nazi ideology." A third writer, obviously repulsed by the death and desolation in Nazi-occupied Europe, simply hoped for better times: "A new era is dawning .... Hatred, hostility, and homicide, so recently ended, gives way to love, understanding and growth."H The next 1943 issue of Eugenical News published a scathing denunciation of Adolf Hitler for decimating Europe's families. "Hitler, who has torn children from the heart of the family and sent them to the four corners of the earth, without any identification; Hitler, who has torn brothers from sisters, husbands from wives, sons from mothers ... and planted them among strangers; Hitler, who by his plans attacked the sacred tie of marriage; Hitler, who believed he could do this and so establish his new order, now sees that it is just this eternal tradition and sanctity of marriage and the family that cannot break, and that will ultimately bring his end."25 Eugenical News had changed. Its readers had changed. For some the change was reluctant. For many others it was genuine. Within the smoke of Nazi eugenics, many saw a frightful image. Perhaps they saw themselves. The transformation of eugenics into human genetics accelerated after the war. By 1944, the American Eugenics Society informed its membership that it now defined eugenics as "genetics plus control of physical and social environment." Meanwhile, Eugenical News was publicly debating whether eugenics would even exist after the war. The June 1945 edition, released just after the fall of Germany, admitted, "The question as to what the AES should do after the war is a difficult one. The times will not be very favorable."26 The September 1945 issue of Eugenical News decried the "Perversions of Eugenics," declaring, "Galton regarded eugenics as a means by which persons with valuable inborn qualities could make a larger contribution to posterity than persons less well endowed .... Galton's view has been perverted by German race superiority, by irresponsible and unimportant racial agitators in America, and by cranks with various plans for breeding a better race." The publication called for a revamped "eugenic policy which is sociallyacceptable."27 Months later, American Eugenics Society President Frederick Osborn prepared a crestfallen lead story for the September 1946 edition of Eugenical News. His confession-like epistle, "Eugenics and Modern Life: Retrospect and Prospect," admitted everything. "The ten years, 1930 to 1940 marked a major change in eugenic thinking," Osborn began. "Before 1930, eugenics had a racial and social class bias. This attitude on the part of eugenists was not based on any scientific foundation. It had developed naturally enough out of the class-conscious society of Galton's England, and out of the racial problems presented so vividly to the United States by the great immigration of the early part of the century. The ruling race and the ruling class seemed, to the members of the ruling race and class, to be evidently superior to the non-ruling races and classes .... "28 Without naming names, Osborn conceded, "A few of the older pioneers never accepted the change and eugenics lost some followers." He counseled, "Population, genetics, psychology, are the three sciences to which the eugenist must look for the factual material on which to build an acceptable philosophy of eugenics and to develop and defend practical eugenics proposals." But he cautioned, "We do not want to repeat in some new form the mistake of the earlier eugenists who declared for race and social class, and thereby set back the cause of eugenics for a generation."29
***
Beyond mere commentary and condemnations, the incremental effort to transform eugenics into human genetics forged an entire worldwide infrastructure. In 1938, for example, the Institute for Human Genetics opened in Copenhagen. It became a leader in genetic research under the leadership of the Danish biologist and geneticist Tage Kemp. Kemp, however, was actually a Rockefeller Foundation eugenicist. The Institute for Genetics was established by Rockefeller's social biology dollars. Moreover, the Rockefeller effort in Denmark would serve as a model for what it would do elsewhere in Europe. Kemp's relationship with Rockefeller's eugenics program began in 1932, when Rockefeller officials granted Kemp a fellowship to travel to Cold Spring Harbor and study alongside Davenport and Laughlin. In his report to Rockefeller's Paris office, Kemp related, "To begin with, I endeavored to gain a thorough knowledge of the working methods of the Eugenics Record Office .... In connection with my studies at the Eugenics Record Office, I pursued study of the heredity of sporadic goiter, carrying out examinations amongst the population of Long Island and, in certain cases, also amongst the patients of the U.S. Veteran Hospital, Northport, L.L, and Kings Park State Hospital, L.L" During his U.S. tour, Kemp also attended the Third International Congress of Eugenics in New York City, and presented a paper on "A Study of the Causes of Prostitution, Especially Concerning Hereditary Factors."3o Kemp became a rising star at Rockefeller and was utilized as an advance man and confidential source for the foundation as it sought to create a eugenic infrastructure throughout Europe. On June 29, 1934, Daniel O'Brien, who ran Rockefeller's Paris office, notified Kemp, "It is a pleasure to inform you that, at the last meeting of our Committee, a special fellowship was granted to you in order to permit you to spend three months on visits to various European institutes of genetics." O'Brien's letter continued, "I should like to have your comments on individuals who might be helped by means of a fellowship of approximately one year .... It would be particularly helpful to receive your personal impressions of the able men you corne into contact with .... It would of course be understood that any information you may give would be considered strictly confidential."31 Kemp's itinerary included Holland, England, France, Austria, Switzerland, Russia, Germany and several other nations. His extensive report to Rockefeller included a significant section on Germany, which included summaries on the leading race hygienists and their institutions. For example, in Munich he met with Rudin and reported: "On the whole, I am finding the work going on there rather important and serious, and it is supported by enormous means." Kemp then rated the leading scientists under Rudin, indicating which ones spoke English, and the nature of their projects. Bruno Schultz, for example, was "doing a great deal of statistical work concerning mental diseases of practical value for the sterilization law and the eugenical legislation in Germany."32 In Berlin, Kemp toured the Institute for Brain Research, which Rockefeller had built. Kemp was impressed, writing back to Rockefeller officials, "I learned all concerning the anatomical, physiological and clini cal work going on at this immense, remarkable and rather complicated institution." He also spent time at the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, "which I am finding one of the best centers in the world for the study of normal and morbid inheritance by human beings." Kemp was also impressed with Verschuer, whom he described as "a keen ational Socialist, completely honest, however, I feel, so one can rely upon his scientific results as being objective and real. He works especially with twin investigations and is doing this research very thoroughly and systematically."33 In Munich, Kemp also met with Theodor Mollison, Mengele's first advisor. He described Mollison as "a very fine and charming personality." Kemp reported, "He is especially working on the specificity of the proteins of various human races."34 Rockefeller continued granting Kemp funds for eugenic work, albeit always calling it "genetics." Indeed, just after his report about European genetics, discussions were launched to build the institute in Copenhagen, which Kemp would lead. Previously, Kemp's fledgling studies were confined to one or two small rooms at the University of Copenhagen. That would all change once the spacious new Institute of Human Genetics was erected.35 Although Kemp's new institute was packaged as genetics, its eugenic nature was never in doubt. For example, within Denmark, directors of two existing centers for the feebleminded, as well as other local eugenicists, hoped Rockefeller's new institute would bolster the "scientific foundation for eugenic sterilization." Indeed, at times the project was described in Rockefeller memorandums as the institute for "Human Genetics and Eugenics." Once plans became final, Rockefeller officials confirmed their plans had been developed "on the basis of his [Kemp's] experiences gathered in studies in 1932 and 1934 partly at Eugenics Record Office and Department of Genetics in Cold Spring Harbor, USA," as well as at leading eugenic centers in Uppsala, Austria and Munich.36 The University of Copenhagen and the local government planned to contribute land and financial support. But executives at the Rockefeller Foundation clearly understood, as their memos on the proposal reflected, "It will be impossible to have this plan realized at present without a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation." The foundation committed $90,000, and the new Institute for Human Genetics opened to much fanfare in 1938.After the war, the Bureau of Human Heredity, another Danish eugenic agency, transferred its operations to the institute and the personal direction ofKemp.37 Thus Rockefeller inaugurated another eugenic outpost in Europe. It was not Germany; it was Denmark. It was not eugenics; it was genetics.
***
While human genetics was becoming established in America, eugenics did not die out. It became quiet and careful. The American Eugenics Society inherited the residuum of the movement. The AES assumed primacy in organized eugenics in the late thirties. It established a relationship with the Carnegie Institution just as the ERO was being dismantled. In 1939, Carnegie awarded the AES its first grant of $5,000 for genetic research. Additional grants in 1941 allowed the AES to help establish the Department of Medical Genetics at what became Wake Forest Medical School, the first such medical genetic chair in the United States. The Eugenics Research Association's vice president, William Allan, was chosen to lead the new department. Allan had previously studied eugenic defects of people in the Appalachians, and now he would head the new $50,000 project funded by Carnegie. Writing in Eugenical News, Allan urged county-based "Family Record Offices" in orth Carolina to assist in identifying the unfit and screening marriages. Such record offices would integrate marriage records and birth and death registries with family information going back more than a century. The undertaking could be implemented easily, he stated, because, "We already have a small army of men, our County Health Officers." Allan himself was experienced in assembling family pedigrees.38 When Allan suddenly died two years later, fellow eugenicist C. Nash Herndon took over. Herndon advocated forced sterilization. Emulating the technique of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Herndon's Department of Medical Genetics provided what he called the "genetic work-ups and medical affidavits" for the county to sterilize dozens of it citizens. Blacks were mainly targeted. He described the campaign in a 1943 university report: "This project consists of a gradual, but systematic effort to eliminate certain genetically unfit strains from the local population. About thirty operations for sterilization have been performed."39 Writing in Eugenical News years after he joined the Wake Forest staff, Herndon also urged genetic counseling to encourage the fit to marry the fit. In addition, he called for educational efforts for the feebleminded to be reduced, declaring "It is of course an obvious waste of time to attempt to teach calculus to a moron." Under Herndon, Wake Forest Medical School became one of America's premier genetic research establishments. In late 2002, the Winston-Salem Journal published a five-part investigation of North Carolina's eugenics program and the university's involvement. The newspaper quoted the record of one woman who in 1945 pleaded with the eugenics board: "I don't want it. I don't approve of it, sir. I don't want a sterilize operation .... Let me go home, see if I get along all right. Have mercy on me and let me do that." A shocked Wake Forest Medical School announced an internal investigation to discover the extent of the school's connection to North Carolina's eugenics program. In February of 2003, some two months after the articles ran, a spokesman told this reporter that the university still did not understand the historical facts or context of eugenics, but was determined to be thorough in its investigation.40 The AES was making some progress launching human genetic programs like the one at Wake Forest, but when America went to war, the nation's priorities dramatically changed. By 1942, the AES had virtually disbanded. Its office closed, and its papers were shipped to the home of Eugenical News editor Maurice Bigelow. The publication continued during the war years, but circulation dwindled to just three hundred.4\ After the war, it took Frederick Osborn to salvage the organization. He became president of the AES in 1946. Osborn was a former president of the Eugenics Research Association and the nephew of eugenic raceologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, who was cofounder of the AES and president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics. The younger Osborn was determined to continue the eugenics movement, but under the name of "genetics." Constantly introspective about eugenics' calamitous past, Osborn wondered why "the other organizations set up in this country under eminent sponsorship have long since disappeared .... Was it because ... some of the early eugenicists placed a false and distasteful emphasis on race and social class? ... Was it because of the emotional reaction to Hitler's excesses and his misuse of the word 'eugenics'? Or did it go deeper."42 He concluded that the public was not ready to cope with eugenic ideals, especially in the absence of irrefutable science. In 1947 the remnant board of directors unanimously agreed, "The time was not right for aggressive eugenic propaganda." Instead, the AES continued quietly soliciting financial grants from such organizations as the Dodge Foundation, the Rockefeller-funded Population Council, and the Draper Fund. The purpose: proliferate genetics as a legitimate study of human heredity.43 During the fifties, Osborn took extraordinary pains to never utter a provocative eugenic word. In a typical 1959 speech on genetics at Hunter College, Osborn was explicit, "We are not speaking here of any manipulation of the genes to produce a superior race. This would require a knowledge of human genetics we do not at present possess, and changes in our social mores which would be presently unacceptable." He merely insisted, "Medical genetics has recently become an accepted field of study; the larger medical schools are developing departments of human genetics and setting up heredity counseling clinics."44 At the same time, Osborn and his colleagues were searching for a new socially palatable definition of eugenics that would promote the same ideals under a new mantle. One Osborn cohort, Frank Lorimer, wrote Osborn, "Personally, I would redefine 'eugenics' to include concern with all conditions affecting the life prospects of new human beings at birth." He added the caveat, "This is a matter of strategy rather than ideology."45 The AES knew that reestablishing eugenics was an uphill battle. Osborn's draft address for the 1959 board of directors meeting outlined an ambitious campaign of behind-the-scenes genetic counseling, birth control, and university-based medical genetic programs. At the same time, Osborn conceded that the movement's history was too scurrilous to gain public support. "Lacking a scientific base," wrote Osborn, "the eugenics movement was taken over successfully by various special interests. The upper social classes assumed that they were genetically superior and that eugenics justified their continuing position. People who thought they belonged to a superior race assumed that the purpose of eugenics was to further their interests .... The worst in all these movements found their climax under Hitler who combined them for political motives. It is no wonder that for a long time afterwards eugenics had few followers among thoughtful people." But, he concluded, "With the close of World War II, genetics had made great advances and a real science of human genetics was coming into being .... Eugenics is at last taking a practical and effective form."46 For Osborn, eugenics and genetics were still synonymous. Osborn's warnings notwithstanding, some AES members were eager to resume their former propaganda campaigns against the unfit. "The Society is torn," one member wrote Osborn. "Is it to be a 'scientific' society or is it to be a 'missionary' or 'educational' society?"47 In 1961, geneticist Sheldon Reed wrote to an AES official, "It seems to me that there is considerable schizophrenic confusion as to whether eugenics exists or not." He wondered if perhaps "the society should disband." Reed added defiantly that the AES should cast off any guilt about the Holocaust. "My final point," Reed declared, "is concerned with the allocation of guilt for the murder of the Jews. Was this crime really abetted by the eugenics ideal? One should remember that the Jews and other minorities have been murdered for thousands of years and I suspect that motives have been similar on all occasions, namely robbery with murder as the method of choice in disposing of the dispossessed individuals .... I do not wish to make Charles Davenport my scapegoat for this, as seems to be the fashion these days. As far as I can see, the motives behind the liquidation of the Jews were not eugenic, not genocide ... but just plain homicidal robbery."48 But Osborn felt, "We have to take into account that Europeans under Hitler suffered almost a traumatic experience." He had already cautioned, "We must not put out anything that would upset the best of the scientists." On another occasion, he warned, "This question of how to make selection an effective force is the crux of any eugenics program. It is completely irrelevant to get involved in red herrings regarding 'breeding of supermen.'" To dampen his colleagues' ardor, Osborn constantly reminded AES members, "The purpose of eugenics is not to breed some ... superior being, but to provide conditions ... for each succeeding generation to be genetically better qualified do deal with its environrnent."49 Such remarks were made even as the AES continued to promote the gradual development of a superior race, albeit under the guise of genetic counseling and human genetics and with the full participation of hard science. Eschewing high-profile agitation, Osborn insisted that only quiet work with scientists could accomplish the goal. In a candid 1965 letter, he wrote, "I started hopefully on this course thirty-five years ago and some day would be glad to tell you all of the steps we took-the work we did, the conferences we held, and the money we put into the then EugenicalNews-about $30,000 a year, to propagandize eugenics. It got us no where, probably because we did not have the backing of the scientific world."50 That same year, after numerous genetic counseling and human heredity programs had been established, Osborn was able to confidently write to Paul Popenoe, "The term medical genetics has taken the place of the term negative eugenics." Keeping a low profile had paid off. On April 12, 1965, Osborn wrote a colleague at Duke University somewhat triumphantly, "We have struggled for years to rid the word eugenics of all racial and social connotations and have finally been successful with most scientists, if not with the public."51 Indeed, by 1967, Osborn's society had become a behind-the-scenes advisor for other major foundations seeking to grant monies to genetic research. Even the National Institutes of Health sought their advice in parceling out major multiyear grants for what was called "demographicgenetics." By 1968, a pathologist at Dartmouth Medical School was asking the Carnegie Institution ifhe could access the ERO's trait records on New Englanders for his "medical genetics project."52 During the sixties, seventies and eighties, the racist old guard of eugenics and human genetics died out, bequeathing its science to a new and enlightened generation of men and women. Many entities changed their names. For example, the Human Betterment League of North Carolina changed its name to the Human Genetics League of North Carolina in 1984. In Britain there were name changes as well. The Annals of Eugenics became the Annals of Human Genetics and is now a distinguished and purely scientific publication. The University College of London's Galton Chair of Eugenics became the Chair of Genetics. The university's Galton Eugenics Laboratory became the Galton Laboratory of the Department of Genetics. The Eugenics Society changed its name to the Galton Institute.53 In 1954, Eugenical News changed its name to Eugenics Quarterly and was renamed again in 1969 to Social Biology. Later the AES renamed itself the Society for the Study of Social Biology. As of March 2003, both the organization and its publication are operating out of university professors' offices. Social Biology editors and the leaders of the society are aware of their society's history, but are as far from eugenic thought as anyone could be. The group is now researching genuine demographic and biological trends. Professor S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Social Biology's associate editor as of March 2003, denounced eugenics and his journal's legacy during an interview with this reporter. "You couldn't find anyone better to run this society," he insisted. "I carry a potentially lethal genetic disorder. Plus, I'm a Jew. I would be the exact target of any eugenics campaign. I hate what eugenics and the Nazis stood for."54 The American Genetic Association, formerly the American Breeders Association, also continues today. As of March 2003, it was headquartered out of a scientist's home office in Buckeystown, Maryland. In the 1950s, the American Genetic Association still listed its three main endeavors at the top of its letterhead: "Eugenics-Heredity-Breeding." As of 2003, most of the organization's early twentieth-century papers were in storage. As of early 2003, AGA leaders knew little of the association's past. But the group still publishes Journal of Heredity. Once a font of eugenic diatribe, it is now a completely different journal with a different and enlightened mission. Its editor as of March 2003, Stephen O'Brien, is a distinguished government geneticist who has been featured in documentaries for his efforts to help develop countermeasures to fight plague-like diseases. 55 Planned Parenthood went on to promote intelligent birth control and family planning for people everywhere, regardless of race or ethnic background. It condemns its eugenic legacy and copes with the dark side of its founder, Margaret Sanger. Planned Parenthood exists in a community of other population-control groups, such as the Population Council and the Population Reference Bureau, many of which sprang from eugenics. 56 Cold Spring Harbor stands today as the spiritual epicenter of human genetic progress. Following the war, it devoted itself to enlightened human genetics and became a destination for the best genetic scientists in the world. In the summer of 1948, a visionary young geneticist named James Watson studied there. He returned in 1953 to give the first public presentation on the DNA double helix, which he had codiscovered with Francis Crick. Watson became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1968, and president in 1994. In February of 2003, the lab hosted an international celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the double helix. 57 The world is now filled with dedicated genetic scientists devoted to helping improve all mankind. They fight against genetic diseases, help couples bear better children, investigate desperately-needed drugs, and work to unlock the secrets of heredity for the benefit of all people without regard to race or ethnicity. Every day, more eager scientists join their ranks, determined to make a contribution to mankind. Genetics has become a glitter word in the daily media. Most of the twenty-first century's genetic warriors are unschooled in the history of eugenics. Most are completely divorced from any wisp of eugenic thought. Few if any are aware that in their noble battle against the mysteries and challenges of human heredity, they have inherited the spoils of the war against the weak.
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