Progressive (Eugenic) Science

Strangely, eugenics seems to be cropping up in the news lately.

The social evils that early Progressive eugenicists wished to eradicate are still with us. Poverty, crime, delinquency persists among a seemingly permanent underclass.

Apparently, Progessive eugenic ideas are also still with us. They just changed their name and their approach.

They continue to cloak their arguments in scientific costume. Recall the "abortion reduces crime" hypothesis popularized in the book Freakonomics. The logic behind the argument makes sense. Less underclass youth, less crime, or as an earlier gentleman once said about another violent minority group: "Nits make lice."

I also found some sort of link between the old Progressive eugenics movement and the new scientific fad of evolutionary biology. According to Wikipedia (not an entirely reliable source, but useful nonetheless): "Directly after Roe v. Wade was released (1972), the AES [American Eugenics Society] was reorganized and renamed "The Society for the Study of Social Biology."" The Society also seems to be called, "The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology" Different URLs but identical web content. Neither website has been updated in a few years. The Society for the Study of Social Biology is hosted on the USC Davis school of gerontology website (gero.usc.edu) which is also the home of the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health (CBPH) 

From the CBPH web site interspersed with images from AES and similar organizations' archives

Specific aims of the USC/UCLA Center: 

• To support pilot projects and on-going bio-demographic research that integrate epidemiological, medical, and biological information with the demographic perspective on population health.

• To develop models of population health outcomes that will clarify the effects of changes in risk factors and interventions on population health.

Research supported by this center should lead to a better understanding of: 

• The effects of social, behavioral, biological, and medical factors on population health outcomes.

• The causes of observed racial, socioeconomic, and gender differences in population health in later life.

• The interdependence of health outcomes including chronic diseases, functioning changes, disability and mortality.

The Eugenics Record Office was established at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Cold Spring Harbor continues the proud heritage of the ERO, doing research in genomics and Quantitative Biology, the modern high-tech methods of identifying and eradicating the defective from the gene pool.

GMU's History department traces the roots of the eugenics movement from the early Progressives through the adoption of American eugenic theories on a national scale by Adolph Hitler through its rehabilitation as 'genetics' after the war. In 1949, Josef Mengele's boss, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.

While sterilizations finally stopped in the US in the 1970's, Roe v. Wade opened up a new method. Abortion has killed 16 million African American children since 1973. "Minority women constitute only about 13% of the female population (age 15-44) in the United States, but they underwent approximately 36% of the abortions." -Black Genocide web site