John Bibby has some sympathy with Eugenics (as it appears do several 
members of Radstats e-mail list) but is not willing to identify himself 
as either a "desirable", "undesirable" or "passable" – Galton’s 
‘crackpot’ idea!

Unfortunately, this question cannot be ducked so easily if John does not 
want to classify himself, who then in a ‘Eugenics’ world, would he like 
to do this for him? – John Read? A ‘faceless’ civil servant? A man 
called Horst? They would of course use ‘rigorous scientific’ methods to 
classify John before deciding if he was ‘desirable’ and should be 
encouraged to breed or if he were ‘undesirable’ and needed to have his 
‘goolies whipped off’ – by force if ‘necessary’. This is not some 
abstract argument, literally hundreds of thousands of people were 
compulsorily sterilized in at least ten countries (USA, Canada, Sweden, 
Germany, etc.) during the 20^th century as a result of Eugenics laws and 
ideas.


In the 1880’s, Sir Francis Galton invented the term ‘eugenics’ — 
literally meaning "well-born" — to characterise his ‘Moral Philosophy‘ 
belief that the human species could be improved by encouraging society’s 
brightest and best to have more children and by reducing the number of 
children produced by people who were physically or mentally ‘deficient’. 
These views were not then seen as ‘crackpot’ but were very influential, 
particularly amongst statisticians – for example, Fisher, Spearman, 
Pearson and Yule were all advocates of Eugenic ideas.


Eugenic ideas gained such strong support that by 1907, the USA state of 
Indiana became the first state to pass a law permitting involuntary 
sterilizations on eugenic grounds. In 1914, Harry Laughlin of the 
Eugenics Record Office in the USA published a ‘Model Eugenical 
Sterilization Law’ that proposed the compulsory sterilization of the 
"socially inadequate" – people supported in institutions or "maintained 
wholly or in part by public expense. The law included the "feebleminded, 
insane, criminalistic, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf; 
deformed; and dependent" – including "orphans, ne'er-do-wells, tramps, 
the homeless and paupers." The Sate of Virginia’s ‘Eugenical 
Sterilization Act’ was based on this model law and was passed as part of 
a cost-saving strategy to relieve the tax burden in a state where public 
facilities for the "insane" and "feebleminded" had experienced rapid 
growth. Virginia’s law asserted that "heredity plays an important part 
in the transmission of insanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and 
crime…" It focused on "defective persons" whose reproduction represented 
"a menace to society."


A test case of Virginia’s sterilization law (Buck v. Bell) went all the 
way to the USA Supreme Court in 1926 and the law was upheld – the judge 
Oliver Wendell Holmes announced the verdict on behalf of the majority as 
follows – “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to 
execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their 
imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from 
continuing their kind” The Nazi’s in Germany in 1934 based their 
‘eugenics’ law on the Virginia statute and Laughlin was honoured with a 
degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1936. Over 350,000 
‘feebleminded’ Germans are estimated to have been compulsorily 
sterilised and in October 1939, German eugenics went further with the 
adoption of a euthanasia policy for disabled German children. These 
‘mercy killings’ at first focused on babies and young children. Midwives 
and doctors were required to register children up to age three who 
showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other 
symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.

A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made by three 
medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire, without any 
examination. Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or - mark in blue 
pencil under the term "treatment" on a special form. A red plus mark 
meant a decision to kill the child. A blue minus sign was a decision 
against killing. Three plus symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant 
being issued and the transfer of the child to a 'Children's Speciality 
Department' for death by injection or starvation.

The Nazi euthanasia program quickly expanded to include older disabled 
children and adults and a total of six killing centres were established 
including the psychiatric clinic at Hadamar. At Brandenburg, a former 
prison was converted into a killing centre where the first Nazi 
experimental gassings took place (beginning on 4^th January 1940). The 
gas chambers were disguised as shower rooms…

I do not need to detail what happened after that….



John Bibby wrote:

>I am more sympathetic to some aspects of eugenics than many people on this
>list - but that doesn't mean I have to classify myself according to any
>crackpot classification that Prof Gordon requires!
>
>JB
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>Behalf Of Professor David Gordon
>Sent: 07 June 2007 16:40
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: The Jukes
>
>Dear all
>
>'Sir Francis Galton proposed that the British population should be divided 
>into "desirables", "undesirables" and "passables". The first group would be 
>encouraged to have children, the second discouraged and the third left 
>alone.'
>
>I would like to know which of these three groups do the contributors who 
>have expressed puzzlement about what's wrong with eugenics believe they 
>belong to?
>
>Best wishes
>
>Dave
>
>--On 07 June 2007 16:28 +0100 Paul Spicker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>The deeply strange advocacy of eugenics on this list sent me off to look
>>again at some of the original sources.  Those with a taste for
>>outrageously bad methodology might enjoy looking at A Estabrook, 1916,
>>"The Jukes in 1915", which is out of copyright and available at
>>http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/lib/docs/759.htm  Estabrook explains:
>>
>>"In the present investigation, 2,820 people have been studied, inclusive
>>of all considered by Dugdale; 2,094 were of Juke blood and 726 of "X"
>>blood who married into the Juke family; of these 366 were paupers, while
>>171 were criminals; and 10 lives have been sacrificed by murder. In
>>school work 62 did well, 288 did fairly, while 458 were retarded two or
>>more years. It is known that 166 never attended school; the school data
>>for the rest of the family were unobtainable. There were 282 intemperate
>>and 277 harlots. The total cost to the State has been estimated at
>>$2,093,685."
>>
>>Criticising this study is like shooting fish in a barrel, but it may
>>help some of you to keep a student seminar going.
>>
>>The Journal of Heredity's 1916 review of the book can be found at
>>http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/7/10/469 .  They comment:
>>
>>"the natural question which arises in the reader's mind is: What can be
>>done to prevent the breeding of these defectives?  Two practical
>>solutions of this problem are apparent.  One is the permanent custodial
>>care of the feeble-minded men and all feeble-minded women of
>>childbearing age.  The other is the sterilization of those whose
>>germ-plasm contains the defects society wants to eliminate."
>>
>>This is not a straw man.  Both of these measures were used in Europe and
>>America until the 1970s.
>>
>>A couple of contributors have expressed puzzlement about what's wrong
>>with eugenics. I'm more puzzled that anyone can think there's something
>>right with it.
>>
>>Paul Spicker
>>Professor of Public Policy
>>Centre for Public Policy and Management
>>Aberdeen Business School
>>The Robert Gordon University
>>Garthdee Road
>>Aberdeen
>>AB10 7QE
>>
>>Tel:  + 44 1224 263120
>>Fax: + 44 1224 263434
>>
>>website: http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy
>>
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>>    
>>
>
>
>
>----------------------
>Dave Gordon
>Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research
>University of Bristol
>8 Priory Road
>Bristol BS8 1TZ, UK
>
>E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
>Tel: +44-(0)117-954 6761
>Fax: +44-(0)117-954 6756
>
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>  
>

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