Eugenics

By Center for Genetics and Society

Articles and Presentations
Books
Films
Videos

ARTICLES AND PRESENTATIONS:

Coerced Sterilization and Eugenics in California- Historical Summary and the Need for Action
The historical subcommittee of the Coalition to Address California's Eugenic History, 2012

Preventing the Emergence of Evil in the ‘New Eugenics’
Jinnie M. Garrett, Perspectives on Evil 10
2011

The Eugenics Legacy of the Nobelist Who Fathered IVF
Osagie K. Obasagie, Scientific American
October 4th, 2013

The Bleak New World of Prenatal Genetics
by Marcy Darnovsky and Alexandra Minna Stern, The Wall Street Journal
June 12th, 2013

The New Eugenics: The Case Against Genetically Modified Humans
Marcy Darnovsky, Different Takes
Spring 2000

Genetic Selection Arguments Pro and Con
Short summary of the arguments for and against pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

History of Eugenics and Forced Sterilization in California
Alexandra Minna Stern and Marcy Darnovsky, Coerced Sterilization and Eugenics in California: Historical Summary and the Need for Action

California Bans Coerced Sterilization of Female Inmates
by Corey G. Johnson, Center for Investigative Reporting
September 26th, 2014

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BOOKS:

Non-Fiction:

Milton Reynolds and the Facing History Project, Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement

Introduction: Eugenics and the Modern World
Philippa Levine and Alison Bashford, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics
Oxford University Press, New York, 2010, pp. 3-24.

Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America
Alexandra Minna Stern, 2005

Many people assume that eugenics all but disappeared with the fall of Nazism, but as this sweeping history demonstrates, the idea of better breeding had a wide and surprising reach in the United States throughout the twentieth century. With an original emphasis on the American West, Eugenic Nation brings to light many little-known facts—for example, that one-third of the involuntary sterilizations in this country occurred in California between 1909 and 1979—as it explores the influence of eugenics on phenomena as varied as race-based intelligence tests, school segregation, tropical medicine, the Border Patrol, and the environmental movement.

Backdoor to Eugenics [WHOLE BOOK ONLINE]
Troy Duster, Routledge, 2003

Considered a classic in the field, Troy Duster's Backdoor to Eugenics was a groundbreaking book that grappled with the social and political implications of the new genetic technologies. Completely updated and revised, this work will be welcomed back into print as we struggle to understand the pros and cons of prenatal detection of birth defects; gene therapies; growth hormones; and substitute genetic answers to problems linked with such groups as Jews, Scandinavians, Native American, Arabs and African Americans. Duster's book has never been more timely.

Eugenics, Sterilisation and Modern Marriage in the USA: The Strange Career of Paul Popenoe
Molly Ladd-Taylor, Gender and History 13 August 2, 2001
pp. 298-327.

This article uses the fifty-year career of Paul Popenoe as a lens through which to examine the North American eugenics movement. Popenoe, a leading advocate of compulsory sterilisation in the 1930s, became a celebrated marriage counsellor in the 1950s, famous for the Ladies' Home Journal feature ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’ The ease with which Popenoe metamorphosed from a champion of sterilisation to an expert on marriage was made possible by, and helps to reveal, deep ideological affinities and organisational connections between eugenics and marriage counselling in the United States.