U.S. mishandling of COVID echoes the 20th century eugenics movement
By Knute Berger,
Crosscut
| 12. 01. 2020
Over the past nine months, I have written about some of the parallels between the 1918-20 influenza pandemic and today’s coronavirus outbreak: opposition to masks, premature elimination of social distancing, increased skepticism about public health, school closures and presidents who made the epidemic a low priority but also caught, and survived, the bug itself.
In the latter case, President Woodrow Wilson, who fell ill in 1919 during treaty talks, was distracted by fighting the first all-out world war. President Donald Trump, on the other hand, became sick after ignoring the advice of his health officials while campaigning for reelection. Trump has long boasted about his health and his smarts. He was hospitalized, given advanced treatments for COVID-19 and, when released, adopted a strongman posture. He and many of his followers believe in their own supremacy — their ability to survive as the fittest of Americans by virtue of their beliefs and their race. White supremacy is, after all, a genetic argument.
Trump has more in common with the prior influenza era: He’s well-known for bragging about his genes. He...
Related Articles
By Scott Solomon, The MIT Press Reader | 02.12.2026
Chris Mason is a man in a hurry.
“Sometimes walking from the subway to the lab takes too long, so I’ll start running,” he told me over breakfast at a bistro near his home in Brooklyn on a crisp...
By Diaa Hadid and Shweta Desai, NPR | 01.29.2026
MUMBRA, India — The afternoon sun shines on the woman in a commuter-town café, highlighting her almond-shaped eyes and pale skin, a look often sought after by couples who need an egg to have a baby.
"I have good eggs,"...
By George Janes, BioNews | 01.12.2026
A heart attack patient has become the first person to be treated in a clinical trial of an experimental gene therapy, which aims to strengthen blood vessels after coronary bypass surgery.
Coronary artery bypass surgery is performed to treat...
By Staff, ScienceDaily | 01.05.2026
Scientists at UNSW Sydney have developed a new form of CRISPR technology that could make gene therapy safer while also resolving a decades-long debate about how genes are switched off. The research shows that small chemical markers attached to DNA
...
