Eugenics

EUGENICS (from Greek eu - well and genos - stock), according to the definition of its founder Galton, is «the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.» At the basis of eugenics lies the study of the laws of heredity and human genetics (see). A certain portion of eugenicists counterpose eugenics to the science of improving surrounding conditions (euphenics, see). But from a correct biological standpoint on the question, such a counterposition is unacceptable. In modern biology, two factors are distinguished that construct the living organism (phenotype): the complex system of forces that has formed as a result of long centuries of gradual development of the organism and is fixed in the form of hereditary potencies (genotype), and the system of the environment from which the organism receives material for its individual development and existence. According to W. Stern's comparison, «hereditary forces are merely a source of light of a certain character and power; through a series of obstacles—features of the external environment—deviating, concentrating, and scattering, refracting upon meeting them, the ray from this source passes before forming a real personality.» Eugenics—the science of the best manifestation of positive hereditary traits—will be successfully implemented in life only then, «when all individuals are in equally favorable conditions for the manifestation of these forces» (Wallace), when this manifestation is not hindered by hunger, need, poor housing, forced labor, or overwork. Under poor conditions [Note: the OCR text accidentally truncates into an unrelated article fragment about neuritis and obstetric paralysis here; translation continues faithfully as printed in the source].

V. Khoroshko.

...talents are born." The first and preliminary condition of any eugenics is the placement of the masses of the population in such conditions under which, as a result of unfavorable economic and social conditions, positive endowments would not perish, but on the contrary, all people would be presented with the opportunity to develop their abilities. Thus, concern for the improvement of external conditions not only does not contradict eugenics, but is a most important condition for implementing the principles of eugenics in life. Eugenics is a science that is not only biological, but also social; it not only studies human genetics, but also strives to improve its hereditary features. Closely connected with eugenics is the understanding of what is best, what is "valuable." It is clear that different social epochs, different class attitudes will yield a different understanding of "value." Within the framework of capitalist society, the features of the ruling capitalist class are considered valuable, and the task of eugenics in such a case consists in creating a race of masters and a race of slaves. It is clear that from the point of view of a socialist society, such a direction of eugenics is reactionary and that eugenics conducted under the dictatorship of the working class must pursue other goals. The task of eugenics in a socialist society will consist in providing the national economy with the most diverse human material, in accounting for the entire genotypic stock (gene pool) of the country, and in the best utilization of all the creative abilities of the population. In modern eugenics, there also exist two biological trends. Of these, one strives for the restoration of a "pure" ideal race (Stammrasse), for the cultivation of a human being who is "tall, large-skulled, with frontal dolichocephaly and fair pigmentation," i.e., a human being of the pure northwestern European race (blond, blue-eyed), who "is the only perfect representative of the human race and the highest product of human development" (Gobineau, Woltmann, Chamberlain, Madison Grant, Günther, and others). Another trend has as its goal the maintenance and development of all positive variations of the human race and the consolidation among historically formed mixed races of the traits of all the most gifted lineages in various respects. It is clear that of these biological trends, the first with its striving for the "superman" (and essentially idealizing the type of the imperialist-colonizer) is clearly reactionary and thoroughly bourgeois. Meanwhile, the eugenics of capitalist countries follows precisely this first path. Almost all prominent eugenicists of America, Germany, England (Lenz, Gruber, Schallmayer, Rüdin, Grant, Galton, and others) are to one degree or another supporters of the reactionary theory concerning the conditionality of the class division of society by natural selection. The classes superior in property status correspond to the higher biological types of humanity, which selected themselves into the ruling apex thanks to positive, hereditarily fixed qualities: intellect, giftedness, energy, etc. It is precisely this reactionary direction of the prominent representatives of eugenics that leads to a conflict between eugenics and social hygiene. Reactionary eugenicists put into the foreground the elimination of everything that hinders natural selection in human society, and speak out against socio-hygienic measures (protection of motherhood and infancy, the fight against tuberculosis and even acute infections) as counter-selection, and put forward instead of social hygiene elective hygiene, hygiene for the chosen, for genotypically reliable groups and consequently for the property-owning strata (higher and middle officialdom, the prosperous peasantry, etc.). In reality, the necessity of eugenics stems not from reactionary strivings for a "superman," but is based, among other things, on the fact that the economic conditions of the present epoch, demanding plannedness in the utilization of all material and intellectual resources, demand at the same time the rationalization of human reproduction and the rational utilization of all the abilities of the population. And here the October Revolution accomplished a great revolution, widening the human field for selection: it for the first time drew the widest proletarian and peasant masses into cultural creation and created the possibility of selection not only from the "upper ten thousand," but also from the "lower millions," the possibility of the actual utilization of the valuable genotypic stock of the entire population. Eugenics as a science arose in 1904, when Galton first more or less precisely formulated its main scientific propositions in a report to the London Sociological Society under the title: "Eugenics, Its Definition, Scope, and Aims." But like any vital idea, the thought of improving offspring, eugenics, existed from the earliest times: in Sparta, all children born weak were destroyed; Semiramis ordered the castration of all weak and sick men; among many savage tribes, a test of bravery and endurance was required before marriage; Plato dreamed of state control over procreation, later the monk-heretic Campanella and the utopian-socialist Thomas More (Morus) dreamed of the same. However, the scientific development of eugenics became possible only in connection with the scientific study of heredity. The statistical (biometric) school for the study of heredity, founded by Galton and developed by Pearson, thought to find its laws proceeding from the study of average values and variations of traits in a population, but genetics began to develop turbidly only with the application of Mendel's laws and Johannsen's doctrine of pure lines; together with genetics, the eugenic movement also grew stronger. The most important scientific task of modern eugenics is the study of human genetics. For this purpose, a number of research institutes have been founded at the present time: the Eugenics Laboratory in London, founded by Galton (Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics); a special branch (Eugenics Record Office) at the Department of Genetics of the Carnegie Institution (Cold Spring Harbor in the state of New York; director C. Davenport); the Swedish State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala (Statens Institut for Rasbiologi; director H. Lundborg); and finally, founded in 1927 in Berlin, the Research Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, headed by E. Fischer. In the RSFSR, under the Institute of Experimental Biology of the People's Commissariat of Health (director N. K. Koltsov), there is a eugenics department; under the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1921, there has been a Bureau of Genetics and Eugenics (Y. A. Filipchenko); in Kiev, A. A. Krontovsky organized a Bureau for the Study of Human Heredity. In addition, the study of human heredity and eugenics is conducted by a large number of biological and clinical laboratories both in America (Johnson, Pearl, Stockard, Castle, and others) and Europe (Lenz, Sommer, Rüdin, Hoffmann, Bauer, and others), as well as in the USSR (Bunak, Davidenkov, Averbakh, Yudin, and others). The heredity of man is studied, in view of the impossibility of experiment, by collecting genealogical family tables (see Genealogy). Recently, great significance for elucidating the genotypic structure of man and the breadth of modification of individual traits has been attached to the study of twins (see Twins). Here the works of Siemens, Verschuer, Lange, and in our country in the USSR — Bunak, Soboleva, Yudin — should be noted. In view of the very recent origin of eugenics, the practical implementation of eugenic measures in life cannot yet be broad, and the main task of practical eugenics at the present time is the mass propaganda of the scientific foundations of eugenics and the idea of the necessity of caring for the health of the future generation. For purposes of scientific propaganda, as well as for the scientific unification of eugenicists in almost all countries of the world — from America to China and India — eugenic societies have been established: the English Eugenics Education Society, the eugenics section at the American Genetic Association, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, the Russian Eugenics Society in Moscow (since 1920) with branches in Leningrad, Odessa, Kiev, Saratov. The main societies publish their journals. In 1912 in London and in 1921 in New York, international eugenic congresses were held and a permanent International Eugenics Committee was formed, which includes representatives of 15 countries, including from the USSR (N. K. Koltsov). Directly practical eugenic measures are subdivided into 1) restrictive, which strive for the possible reduction of the reproduction of negative endowments; 2) constructive, which by all means promote the reproduction of biologically valuable individuals; and 3) preventive, which have in view the creation of conditions under which positive properties would find the best conditions for their manifestation. At first, the greatest attention was paid to restrictive measures. A particularly large number of attempts in this direction were made in the United States of America. Here in a whole series of states laws were issued prohibiting under threat of fine and prison (from 1 month to 20 years) marriages with the mentally ill, epileptics, the feeble-minded, alcoholics, venereal patients. In America itself, for the purpose of depriving patients and criminal recidivists of the possibility of having offspring, "sterilization" was introduced, i.e., the operation of transecting the vas deferens in men and tubero- or salpingotomy in women.

This operation was first performed in 1899 in Chicago by Ochsner; the main champions of the importance of this operation for eugenics are Sharp in America, Rentoul in England, and in recent years many others (Böthers in Germany, Naville in Belgium, Petren in Sweden, M. Volotskoy in the USSR). In 1905, in the state of Pennsylvania, attempts were first made to introduce into law compulsory sterilization of habitual criminal offenders and chronic, incurable the mentally ill, but the palm for passing such a law belongs to the state of Indiana (1907). By January 1, 1926, the sterilization law had been passed in 23 of the 48 North American states. However, the number of actual sterilizations performed in America is relatively small: a total of 8,515 sterilizations were registered across all states by January 1, 1928. In addition to incorrect fundamental premises, a number of theoretical considerations argue against the significance of sterilization for eugenics. The Central Association for Mental Hygiene in England spoke out against sterilization laws on the following grounds: a) the significance of sterilization as a eugenic-prophylactic measure is extremely limited, since the main spreaders of diseases are recessive heterozygotes who remain outwardly healthy and therefore are not subjected to sterilization; b) performing the operation on the large scale required by the substance of the matter is impossible (according to Laughlin, in the United States of America, for example, it is necessary to sterilize at least 400,000 people annually until 1980); c) the widespread use of sterilization can lead to sexual promiscuity and the spread of venereal diseases. Of the European countries, sterilization was actually used only in Switzerland (70 cases), but even here mainly not for eugenic, but for therapeutic purposes in sexual psychopaths, and mainly proper castration rather than sterilization (out of 70 cases, 31 cases of castration); in 1923, sterilization was used by Böthers in Saxony (63 sterilizations). In 1928, the Swiss canton of Vaud adopted compulsory sterilization for the mentally ill as law. Pre-marital examination of those entering marriage is of much greater importance for eugenics than sterilization. The first attempts at legislative requirement of such examination were carried out in America in the state of Ohio in 1898, in the state of North Dakota in 1899, and in Washington in 1909, but these laws caused such resistance from the population that they were soon repealed. In general, it should be kept in mind that the emergence of the eugenics movement in the United States of America and the initial success of prohibitory measures (sterilization) had a reactionary political background in connection with the desire to create a pseudoscientific theory justifying the reduction of immigration in the name of preserving the purity of the American "race." Matters went differently with the introduction of pre-marital examination in Germany. Here, for the first time, in 1920, only compulsory broad propaganda of the importance of the health of marrying spouses for offspring and the usefulness of pre-marital examination was carried out legislatively, and a number of special advisory bureaus (Eheberatungsstelle) were opened. Then, in 1926, an order was issued on the establishment of state advisory bureaus in each medical district, and at the present time, the Prussian Landtag is discussing the issue of issuing a law on the mandatory exchange of medical certificates before marriage, yet without coercion to follow the conclusions given in the certificate. In German pre-marital consultations, at the first visit, a questionnaire about relatives is given (compilation of genealogy), a personal anamnesis is collected, blood is taken for the Wassermann reaction, an initial somatic examination is performed, and, if necessary, the patient is sent to specialist doctors. At the second visit, genealogy is discussed, and a detailed study is performed. The conclusion is given only at the third visit. The patient is recognized as: capable of marriage, limitedly capable, currently (temporarily) incapable, or long-term incapable. Those suffering from epilepsy, schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, chronic alcoholism, severe psychopathies, hereditary organic nervous diseases, deaf-mutism, etc., are recognized as long-term incapable.