From Eugenics to Patents: Genetics, Law, and Human Rights

About a decade ago, President William Clinton said that the next half century will be the age of biology, and, that the engine of that age is genetics. Partly because of the Human Genome Project, scientists have been producing a torrent of information and claims about the role of genes in human disease, capacities, and behaviour. The new knowledge is bringing about a revolution in the diagnosis of diseases and disorders. It is also predicted to yield a powerful arsenal of therapies and cures—and possibly an ability to improve people genetically. According to some, it may also fulfil the longstanding dream of the eugenics movement, which flourished during the first-third or so of the last century. In a number of ways, the eugenics movement trampled on human rights as we understand them. It has no more powerful association than with the Nazis. In Germany during the Hitler years, the eugenics movement prompted the sterilisation of several hundred thousand people and helped lead to anti-Semitic programmes of euthanasia and ultimately, of course, to the death camps. But in fact after the turn of the century, eugenics movements, including demands for sterilisation of the unfit, blossomed in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Scandinavia, not to mention elsewhere in Continental Europe and parts of Latin America and Asia. Eugenics was thus not unique to the Nazis. It could—and did—happen everywhere.1 Modern eugenics was rooted in the social Darwinism of the late 19th century, with all its metaphors of fitness, competition, and rationalisations of inequality. Indeed, its pioneering advocate was Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and an accomplished scientist in his own right. He gave the word “eugenics” its currency and programmatic definition—promoting the ideal of improving the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of the “undesirables,” multiplying the “desirables” (Galton, 1883: pp. 24–25).2 Eugenics began to flourish after the rediscovery, in 1900, of Mendel's theory that the biological makeup of organisms is determined by certain “factors,” later identified with genes. The application of Mendelism to human beings reinforced the idea that we are determined almost entirely by what the German scientist August Weissmann had called our “germ plasm.” Eugenics is often dismissed as a crank movement energised by pseudoscience, but we need to bear in mind that science is in any day what scientists do and defend. Eugenics fell squarely in the mainstream of scientific and popular culture. Its doctrines were articulated by physicians, especially those who worked with people suffering from mental diseases and disorders, and a variety of social scientists, notably psychologists, as well as biologists, especially those who were pursuing the new discipline of genetics. Eugenic science was bolstered by the research that poured out of institutes for the study of eugenics or “race biology” that were established in a number of countries, including Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. Galton himself had led the way, establishing the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics, at University College London, in 1906, and in his will endowing the Galton Professorship of Eugenics, whose first occupant was the statistician and biometrician Karl Pearson (Kevles, 1995). In the United States, in 1909, a philanthropist funded the creation of a Eugenics Record Office at the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, on Long Island, in the United States (Allen, 1986).3 Eugenics had its own scientific journals, including the Journal of Heredity in the United States and the Annals of Eugenics, which was established in 1925 and edited at the Galton Laboratory.4 Eugenics was also widely popularised in books, lectures, and articles in magazines and newspapers to the educated public of the day. It became a commonplace, to quote a Mendelian-minded chart at a eugenics exhibit in Kansas, that “unfit human traits such as feeblemindedness, epilepsy, criminality, insanity, alcoholism, pauperism, and many others run in families and are inherited in exactly the same way as colour in guinea pigs” (Kevles, 1995: p. 62). Experts insisted that “feebleminded” people—to use the broad-brush term then commonly applied to persons believed to be mentally retarded—were responsible for a wide range of social problems and were proliferating at a rate that threatened social resources and stability. Such people were identified in part by the IQ tests that psychologists had developed for the American army during World War I. Feebleminded women were held to be driven by a heedless sexuality, the product of biologically grounded flaws in their moral character that led them to prostitution and illegitimacy. Such doctrines make eugenics sound to our ears like a socially conservative movement. Indeed, in part it did draw significant support from social conservatives concerned to prevent the proliferation of lower-income groups and save on the cost of caring for them. But much of eugenics belonged to the wave of progressive social reform that swept through Western Europe and North America during the early decades of the century. For progressives, eugenics was a branch of the drive for social improvement or perfection that many reformers of the day thought might be achieved through the deployment of science to good social ends such as clean cities, greater temperance, child welfare, and public health. In the American Deep South, for example, eugenics was introduced in the manner of the campaigns against hookworm, tuberculosis, and venereal disease—by reformist missionaries from the North, particularly activists from national organisations for mental health and care of the feebleminded. They found a responsive audience among Southerners worried about Caucasian “degenerates,” in the words of a white Louisiana physician, who threatened what they thought of as their own separate race with physical, mental, and moral “decay” (Larson, 1995: p. 2). “Race,” to use the common contemporary term, was a minor subtext in Scandinavian and British eugenics, but it played a major part in the American and Canadian versions of the creed. North American eugenicists were particularly disturbed by the immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe who had been flooding into their countries since the late 19th century. They took them to be not only racially different from but inferior to the Anglo-Saxon majority, partly because they were disproportionately represented among the criminals, prostitutes, slum dwellers, and feebleminded in many cities. Eugenic reasoning in the United States had it that if immigrant deficiencies were hereditary and Eastern European immigrants outreproduced natives of Anglo stock, then inevitably the quality of the American population would decline. The progressives and the conservatives found common ground not only in attributing phenomena such as crime, slums, prostitution, and alcoholism primarily to biology but also in believing that biology might be used to eliminate these discordances of modern urban, industrial society. Eugenicists on both sides of the Atlantic argued for a two-pronged programme that would increase the frequency of socially good genes in the population and decrease that of bad genes. One prong comprised “positive” eugenics, which meant manipulating human heredity and/or breeding to produce superior people. The other was “negative” eugenics, which meant improving the quality of the human race by eliminating or excluding biologically inferior people from the population. In Britain between the wars, positive eugenic thinking led to proposals for family allowances that would be proportional to income. Such proposals failed, largely on the grounds that they sought to turn into public policy the doctrine: Unto those who have it shall be given, a doctrine lacking persuasiveness in most sectors of society. In the United States, it fostered so-called “Fitter Family” competitions, a standard feature at a number of state fairs that were held in their “human stock” sections. At the 1924 Kansas Free Fair, winning families were awarded a Governor's Fitter Family Trophy. Families could compete in three categories: small, average, and large. Individuals could also compete, and those judged to be “Grade A” received a medal that portrayed two diaphanously garbed parents, their arms outstretched towards their (presumably) eugenically meritorious infant. It is hard to know what made these families and individuals stand out as fit, but some evidence is supplied by the fact that all entrants had to take an IQ test—and the Wasserman test for syphilis (Kevles, 1995). Much more was urged for negative eugenics, notably the passage of eugenic sterilisation laws. In the United States by the late 1920s, such laws had been enacted in two dozen American states, largely in the Middle Atlantic region, the Midwest, and in California, the champion. Similar measures were passed in Canada, in the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. These laws struck especially hard against lower-income and minority groups. California, which as of 1930 had sterilised more people than all the other states of the union combined, sterilised blacks and foreign immigrants at nearly twice the rate as their presence in the general population (McLaren, 1990; Reilly, 1991; Kevles, 1998; Kline, 2001). The sterilisation laws rode roughshod over private human rights, holding them subordinate to an allegedly greater public good. Such reasoning figured explicitly in the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling, in 1927, in the case of Buck v. Bell (1927). The case had come to the Court as a constitutional test of Virginia's eugenic sterilisation law. Bell was the superintendent of the Virginia Colony for the Feebleminded, where Carrie Buck was an inmate and was judged suitable for sterilisation. Carrie had originally come to the attention of the Virginia authorities because she had given birth to an illegitimate daughter, Vivian (Kevles, 1995).5 Carrie had been living with a foster family. Research in recent years has revealed that she was the victim of a rape by the son in the house. That fact was evidently to the they did know was that by their was socially and and that by of and the of an IQ she was a it was said by of the in the of the white The in support of sterilisation was made because had been determined to be had also for IQ and was to by a at the age of was as because the found that she had an about was thus to be hereditary in the Buck and Carrie would its The Supreme Court by to to the of Virginia's eugenic sterilisation law. The was by the progressives like himself thought about the rights of people like Carrie Buck in to the of the have more than that the public may the for their It would be if it could not those who the of the for these often not to be such by those in to prevent our with It is for all the if of to for crime, or to them for their prevent those who are from their The that is to the of are v. The next the of in Canada, passed a eugenic sterilisation law. a and the the by a from that of or of the no good where the of the state and is (Kevles, The for the frequency of bad genes in the population was partly At the in in the American Eugenics exhibit a in the manner of the population of a later revealed with that a hundred of for the care of persons with bad that a mentally was in the United States, and that only and a half did the United States the birth of who will have ability to do and be for (Kevles, 1995: pp. with the of the in In parts of and the Deep and Scandinavia, it not primarily on eugenic some mental health to it for that but on the of the cost of care and of In drive for human rights were held to be subordinate to some greater especially in In Scandinavia, sterilisation was by as part of the of the new state such among sterilisation programmes in several American states and as well as in well into the In a sterilisation had been in the Hitler to in It had been by the race as German eugenicists were like their had that socially such as and prostitution in social than in They had American and and of them into their In Hitler himself the state sterilisation laws in the United States and the national a Eugenic in It American in that it was with to all or who from allegedly hereditary such as and that with or were the into were to all persons the to of established to the German three years, German authorities had sterilised some almost the number so in the years in America during the years, eugenic doctrines were for their their and and their of human It was that many mental have to do with that those which do are often than of and that most human including the are by at as much as by biological if they are by genes at many people on both sides of the Atlantic had about sterilisation and were about people to the to eugenic sterilisation in Britain had their in the over the in they not because of powerful from human than a of the American states to sterilisation and so did the Eastern provinces of of the American states that did such laws to and British was The in from mental health and some of that sterilisation a of private In for example, to a sterilisation in the prompted to and of the people of do not they do not as they term it, (Larson, 1995: p. was also by partly because it was to partly because a of recent immigrants to the United States were and thus disproportionately in of the For many people World War human rights more than those by the and of social Eugenics also became because of its to especially after World War its in the death was These the moral to eugenics and and so did the of human rights, a for which was the of Human that the of the United and in In the Galton at the the of the Annals of Eugenics to the Annals of Human and in he University to his as the Galton Professorship of Human (Kevles, 1995). in the the movement for rights and has moral about the of eugenics over the of human including the human have new knowledge would be by the state for positive eugenics, for to new or like be out that the mention example, their of that the state will to foster or a variety of human or have that the will more a of negative programmes of in so as to the of genes in the if only to the of In a eugenic that the authorities by the of mentally people they first to sterilisation. such laws have been in other provinces and have been by the of the The in the of birth to But a eugenics in the especially in the United States, with its to is much more in than in eugenics from almost The of may not have been to the of of the early eugenics movement, but they did them in many in American states to sterilisation and where they were they were often to eugenics is that they powerful of the and of eugenics in the has to most and the public at against such know than their that what is for the are or persons are as are minority to a that they were not in the early century. They may not be to all to but they are with in the the and the to or at to eugenic proposals that might them. But a eugenics is not the only of eugenics we may The of the has established to to a of to use the term of the families what of they to p. their to would them in such they might also be by The of biologically improving the human scientists in the could them in the the of the may in and socially knowledge is not with eugenic of some Such knowledge in especially in the driven of contemporary Indeed, the of human in private in human improvement in some programme of They in the of what human and is producing in information and They on the and use of that information and the of a including the of the and its The torrent of new human information has to a of and It has been that and or may to the or might to to that allegedly both and might to people to victim to diseases that in or the such would people with what an American union has called a or what some term a on and pp. Human is in part a branch of and the of human rights it inevitably be in the of the of the health as a and are not to in the of the eugenic proposals between the for family allowances to the and arsenal of knowledge and will only social if a then those in and resources will only more In recent years, the of human a feature of the of has a new to human is with human many that much is with it because it and in One might that are what a a of human and are partly grounded in the theory of rights that people have a to the of their as well as But the of human genes is at the because the to both the of research and the of In contemporary the of of during the genes are research and such to a by a in in the case of v. are by the who may and for their use because research in its most is part of the of the and is not from of v. on in and Research and on and on and and National Research p. In a of revealed that a of them had a test they had developed because of and almost half had not to a test because of the In the have to that only they tests their The among other to in only a to to the for and to make for It also in the of sound in that to and Such are not as is from of and the two genes to women to is a in For by the of the it held through and over the of both and demands that all for the two genes be in its It will not the test to with the that a by a from an on in and Research and on and on and and National Research has its rights against a In for example, it of the University of that she was the because she had developed a test to for in the genes and, to was a to the the to or from an with in would be test of the so as the was In would have to research on in and Research and on and on and and National Research to the has been in Europe and in the United The European Office three in but to of the for Human at the University of in no European has since for scientists and to the on general it was to on a human especially for that the was in any case because a is a product of and because the was The led not only to of rights in the and the but also to to the In Europe in a the day. was that the had been because had an it first for the in in the the on holding that a is to make a In the of the to the of them to the University of in on the of the after the said that they would the of the to only the or of or two so that the the of These only about of the with and and the held that an of the is not to them In the meant that the University of had the to on the tests that of of women in Europe were The are In the United States, more than for a of both and and for a In the test for both genes come to as much as it that scientists and in Europe will to a at the in at the ruling, for will to what the University of might of but the in p. rights in the for are also on the has been in Europe to a that is partly by the Research in One of the the that the the the against other to any who to use p. In the United States, of its prompted by the American and the an with the in In a on the two organisations not only the but the of all human They were in their by several women with or at for it, scientists and and including the American College of and the for has been for the of the for v. the U.S. and The in the on in American and than on the of against the in The the to It held that the by a to a the information and its from a test for of the genes had the a The was of a were the of the in law. of the most the that the on and the against the of on of which is a longstanding doctrine of law. According to what made the two genes was that they had been from their state in the and were thus no They were to a and a as According to the was in The of in the was to that in the It a of information it was in the or from It thus a product of and was over the in which the case had been he struck the two The of these is of biology and the of biological in its from any other found in It is that in an quality of as it in the the information it the at to found in are as a of and are in the U.S. that is the of the for v. the U.S. and to the in the In he standard in the U.S. which that if a case be on grounds the not to did he on the in the of human genes as such are evidently because he thought it to only on the reasoning in the particularly the by all on human genes into has ruling, and the case may the U.S. Supreme it is it would be in the of human genetics. Buck v. the rights to a of the greater public good. It has been but a of and has the greater public good is with the of The that is no to the or most other of state with human The of into has some of the in eugenics, of the of human rights, and establishing and But the into the of and the health care has called new of rights in They are in the American which human rights against rights the knowledge of genes in human and the drive to the human

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.