Category Archives: Eugenics

This aim is the essence of eugenics: not to make people better but to make better people.

A Catholic research institute has described the gene editing of human embryos at a US university as the essence of eugenics, adding that the study raises serious ethical concerns.

Scientists at Oregon Health and Science University used a gene editing tool called Crispr-Cas9 to remove a genetic mutation that causes sudden heart failure, the first reported success in gene editing outside of China.

Dr David Albert Jones, director at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, England, said: The whole rationale for this experiment is to take a step towards genetic modification as an assisted reproductive technology.

Dr Jones released the statement after Nature, an international science journal, reported the researchers findings on 2 August, pointing to ethical concerns in the process and aims of gene editing research.

Women are being encouraged by financial inducements to part with their reproductive potential, Dr Jones said, highlighted the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome for participants in the project.

Dr Jones also addressed the overall ambitions for advocates of gene editing.

The embryo is conceived with the intention that it will be modified. Hence, whichever method is used the aim is the same: to produce a modified embryo.

This aim is the essence of eugenics: not to make people better but to make better people.

Dr Jones added: Historic examples, not only in Germany but in Sweden and in the United States show vividly how easily programmes for the eradication of defects in the human stock can undermine principles of equality, solidarity and respect for people with heritable conditions.

Eugenics involves not only scientific experimentation but social experimentation and we have seen the results of such experiments. They do not end well.

The United States does not allow government funding for research involving human embryos, but the work is not illegal if it is funded by private donors.

In February, a report on gene editing by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) called the procedure highly contentious.

The technology would therefore cross a line many have viewed as ethically inviolable, the NAS report stated.

Continued here:

Gene editing could lead to eugenics, ethicist warns - Catholic Herald Online

Eugenics is alive and well in Tennessee.

This spring, Judge Sam Benningfield approved a program in which prisoners at the White County Jail in Sparta were offered reproductive sterilization in exchange for reduced sentences. As of May 15, more than two dozen women had reportedly agreed to birth-control implants and 38 men to vasectomies.

Sterilizations to lessen criminal sentences are not a new phenomenon in Tennessee. Between 2010 and 2015, they were offered as part of plea deals in four criminal cases.

To put these sterilizations in perspective, we need to go back to the beginning.

In 1866, an Augustine monk named Gregor Mendel found that when he crossed pea plants, certain physical traits like plant size and leaf color dominated. Mendel proposed that pea plants were inheriting one factor from each parent. Today we call these factors genes.

A few years after Mendel published his findings, a British scientist named Francis Galtonwho was a half-cousin of Charles Darwinmade the leap from peas to people and from physical traits to something broader. If we could breed better animals, reasoned Galton, couldnt we breed better humans, too? Wouldnt traits like intelligence, loyalty, bravery, and honesty also be inherited? And wouldnt selecting for these traits make for a better world? One free from drunkenness, violence, and poverty. A world, he proposed, where the lower classes could be bred out of existence, no longer a burden to society. He called his plan eugenics, from the Greek for well born.

In the early 1900s, this ideology crossed the ocean and landed in a small cove near Huntington, New York. The two men who championed Galtons cause were Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin. As [society] claims the right to deprive the murderer of his life, said Davenport, so also it may annihilate the hideous serpent of hopelessly vicious protoplasm.

Davenport and Laughlins list of vicious protoplasm included the feeble-minded, the poor, alcoholics, criminals, epileptics, the insane, the constitutionally weak, those suffering from venereal diseases, the deformed, and those deaf, blind, or mute.

In October 1910, their Eugenics Records Office opened for business. Its mission was clear: Determine which Americans were of inferior stock and prevent them from marrying or having children. The first step was to confine them to unisex institutions for the insane or mentally disabled. The next was to sterilize those who were still roaming free.

The eugenicists had completely bastardized Mendels laws. While physical characteristics such as eye color can be mapped to specific genes, traits like criminality, alcoholism, or susceptibility to venereal diseases cant. Not everything can be accounted for by strict Mendelian genetics.

Nonetheless, the false notion that selective breeding could make for a better society allowed Americans to cloak some of their worst prejudices in the gilded robes of science.

The zealous efforts of Davenport and Laughlin shaped a nation.

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By 1928, about 400 colleges and universities in the U.S. offered courses in eugenics, and 70 percent of high-school biology textbooks embraced the pseudoscience. The eugenics movement also changed the law: Four states prohibited the marriage of alcoholics, 17 banned the marriage of epileptics, and 41 forbade the marriage of the feeble-minded and the insane. By the mid-1930s, America was the world leader in banned marriages. (Marriage-restriction laws werent declared unconstitutional until 1967.)

American citizens were now ready to take the next stepto legislate forced sterilization. When the dust settled, 65,370 poor, syphilitic, feeble-minded, insane, alcoholic, deformed, lawbreaking, or epileptic Americans in 32 states had been sterilized. California alone had more than 20,000. Few rose in protest. It was one of the darkest moments in American history.

Most of those sterilized didnt understand what was being done, and were surprised that they could no longer have children. Some were told they were having a different surgical procedure. (Because of its popularity in the South, sterilizations were often referred to as Mississippi appendectomies.) Others were told to sign a form that they couldnt read. In 1927, civil libertarians were delighted when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of a woman who was being sterilized against her will. At last, the most disenfranchised members of society would have their day in court. The person who was being sterilized was Carrie Buck. The doctor who was to perform the sterilization was John Bell.

The associate justice who wrote the opinion for the majority was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. A proud defender of the Constitution and individual liberties, Holmes had authored nearly a thousand valued opinions.

On May 2, 1927, justices ruled 8-1 in favor of Carrie Bucks sterilization. Holmes wrote, Carrie Buck is a feeble-minded white woman. She is the daughter of a feeble-minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crimes, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Then Holmes authored the words that placed Buck v. Bell in the pantheon of Americas most embarrassing Supreme Court decisions: Three generations of imbeciles are enough, he wrote, effectively solidifying laws that even the most ardent eugenicists thought were unenforceable. One critic later wrote that Holmess opinion represented the highest ratio of injustice per word ever signed on by eight Supreme Court justices.

On Oct. 19, 1927, her legal options exhausted, Carrie Buck was sterilized; she thought she was having an appendectomy.

In 1933, the year that he came to power, Adolf Hitler passed the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. The list of those to be sterilized was virtually identical to that first generated by the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor. Clinics were established and doctors were fined if they didnt comply with the law.

Within a year, 56,000 Germans had been sterilized; by 1935, 73,000; by 1939, 400,000, logarithmically dwarfing the number of sterilizations performed in the U.S. The procedure was so common that it had a nickname: Hitlerschnitte, Hitlers cut. Americans took note. Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginias Western State Hospital, lamented, Hitler is beating us at our own game!

Twenty years later, Buck v. Bell would be presented in support of SS officer Otto Hofmann during the Nuremberg military tribunal investigating Nazi war crimes.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never officially overturned its verdict.

Paul A. Offit is a professor of pediatrics and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. He is the author of Pandoras Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong (National Geographic Press).

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Our Sickest Pseudoscience Resurfacesin a Tennessee Jail - Daily Beast

Catholic World News

August 04, 2017

The director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in England has raised the alarm about recent experiments in genetic editing of human embryos, saying that the procedure involves the acceptance of eugenics.

David Albert Jones remarked that the experiment also involved the reproductive exploitation of women who contributed eggs for the research and the experimentation on and destruction of embryos in the process.

While the genetic editing experiments have been hailed as a means of preventing disease, Jones pointed out that the procedure aims not to make people better but to make better people. He explained that in the editing technique, a modified embryo is created; since the embryo did not exist before the modification, the procedure cannot be said to be therapy.

Jones warned: Instead of treating existing human beings in ways that respect their rights and do not pose excessive risks to them or to future generations, we are manufacturing new human beings for manipulation and quality control, and experimenting on them with the aim of forging greater eugenic control over human reproduction

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'Gene editing' poses threat of eugenics, ethicist warns - Catholic Culture

In todays politically divided society, its rare that an issue sparks bipartisan moral outrage. But thats exactly what happened recently over a Tennessee judge who offered to cut the prison sentences of inmates who received vasectomies or long-lasting contraceptive devices.

Back in May, General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield signed a standing order that allowed inmates at White County jail to have their sentences reduced by 30 days if they agreed to receive a vasectomy, or for women, a Nexplanon birth control implant that lasts up to four years. In in an interview with Tennessees WTVF-TV last week, the judge shared that the sterilization and contraceptive services were provided cost-free by the Tennessee Department of Health.

White County inmates were also offered two days off their jail sentences if they completed a State of Tennessee, Department of Health Neonatal Syndrome Education Program, which aims to educate people about the dangers of having children while under the influence of drugs.

I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves, Judge Benningfield told WTVF.

Judge Benningfield explained that his goal was to help break a vicious cycle of repeat offenders who often enter his courtroom on drug related charges, and when they are released, cant afford child support and have trouble finding jobs.

I understand it wont be entirely successful but if you reach two or three people, maybe thats two or three kids not being born under the influence of drugs. I see it as a win, win, he added.

Dozens of inmates signed on, but as news of the program spread, the words unethical, unconstitutional, and eugenics began circulating among the general public.

District Attorney Bryant Dunaway, who oversees prosecution of cases in White County, shared his concerns about the program with WTVF.

Its concerning to me, my office doesnt support this order, Dunaway said.

Its comprehensible that an 18-year-old gets this done, it cant get reversed and then that impacts the rest of their life, he added.

Last Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee released a statement regarding Judge Benningfields order:

Offering a so-called choice between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional. Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it. Judges play an important role in our community overseeing individuals childbearing capacity should not be part of that role.

Amid the widespread criticism, Benningfield rescinded the order yesterday in a one-page court filing, The Washington Post reported. He wrote that any inmates who elected for the procedures and took serious and considered steps toward their rehabilitation would still receive credit toward their sentences, but that the plan was otherwise terminated.

Further, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Health told the Post that state health officials opposed Benningfields policy from the start and denied the judges claims that the procedures were state-funded.

Benningfield, however, maintained that the department was involved. In his filing Thursday, he wrote that he was forced to rescind the order because the department had decided it will no longer offer free vasectomies to White County inmates and will not provide the free Nexplanon implant in exchange for shorter sentences.

I wasnt on a crusade, Benningfield told the Times Free Press on Thursday. I dont have a mission. I thought I could help a few folks, get them thinking and primarily help children.

The problem with Bennigfields statement is that it mirrors the rhetoric of eugenicists throughout history who advocated for the sterilization, institutionalization, or death of entire races and classes of human beings.

Many pro-life advocates have identified abortion as the eugenics movement of our day. But as this case highlights, the attempted undermining of human dignity comes in many forms.

Sadly, abortion is far from a bipartisan moral issue in this country. It is particularly noteworthy, therefore, that a vocal majority of people in the medical, legal, and media communities were able to unilaterally denounce Bennigfields policy as the gross violation of human rights that it was. Thank God for that.

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Is One Judge Trying to Implement Eugenics? | CBN News - CBN News

[O]ver a century after the beginning of the eugenics movement, scientist are carefully dipping back into the controversial research that looks at the influence genes have on certain behavioral characteristics.

While eugenicswas once used to justify entrenched inequality and systemic racism, some now argue that understanding the role of genetic predispositions can help achieve equal opportunities for all.

In the last decade, a new approach to genetic research has been on the rise, one that argues for understanding its role in social mobility as a way to achieve greater equality for all. A recent studytested the role genetics plays in parent-child association in education attainment.

Researchers foundthat the likelihood of a child going on to higher education is heavily influenced by their parents education. But while previously, this was largely attributed to environmental factorsthe new study indicates that genetics may also play a role. Until now, Genetics is largely ignored in this dialogue, said [lead author] Ziada Ayorech.

[However,] the researchers emphasize how their research could be used to promote social mobility. Ayorech suggests that even in a scenario where equal educational support has been provided for everyone, childrens outcomes will still vary.

[Read the full study here]

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:Mindful of eugenics dark history, researchers are reexamining the genetics of social mobility

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Eugenics redux? Exploring the genetics of 'success' and social mobility - Genetic Literacy Project

In todays politically divided society, its rare that an issue sparks bipartisan moral outrage. But thats exactly what happened recently over a Tennessee judge who offered to cut the prison sentences of inmates who received vasectomies or long-lasting contraceptive devices.

Back in May, General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield signed a standing order that allowed inmates at White County jail to have their sentences reduced by 30 days if they agreed to receive a vasectomy, or for women, a Nexplanon birth control implant that lasts up to four years. In in an interview with Tennessees WTVF-TV last week, the judge shared that the sterilization and contraceptive services were provided cost-free by the Tennessee Department of Health.

White County inmates were also offered two days off their jail sentences if they completed a State of Tennessee, Department of Health Neonatal Syndrome Education Program, which aims to educate people about the dangers of having children while under the influence of drugs.

I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves, Judge Benningfield told WTVF.

Judge Benningfield explained that his goal was to help break a vicious cycle of repeat offenders who often enter his courtroom on drug related charges, and when they are released, cant afford child support and have trouble finding jobs.

I understand it wont be entirely successful but if you reach two or three people, maybe thats two or three kids not being born under the influence of drugs. I see it as a win, win, he added.

Dozens of inmates signed on, but as news of the program spread, the words unethical, unconstitutional, and eugenics began circulating among the general public.

District Attorney Bryant Dunaway, who oversees prosecution of cases in White County, shared his concerns about the program with WTVF.

Its concerning to me, my office doesnt support this order, Dunaway said.

Its comprehensible that an 18-year-old gets this done, it cant get reversed and then that impacts the rest of their life, he added.

Last Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee released a statement regarding Judge Benningfields order:

Offering a so-called choice between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional. Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it. Judges play an important role in our community overseeing individuals childbearing capacity should not be part of that role.

Amid the widespread criticism, Benningfield rescinded the order yesterday in a one-page court filing, The Washington Post reported. He wrote that any inmates who elected for the procedures and took serious and considered steps toward their rehabilitation would still receive credit toward their sentences, but that the plan was otherwise terminated.

Further, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Health told the Post that state health officials opposed Benningfields policy from the start and denied the judges claims that the procedures were state-funded.

Benningfield, however, maintained that the department was involved. In his filing Thursday, he wrote that he was forced to rescind the order because the department had decided it will no longer offer free vasectomies to White County inmates and will not provide the free Nexplanon implant in exchange for shorter sentences.

I wasnt on a crusade, Benningfield told the Times Free Press on Thursday. I dont have a mission. I thought I could help a few folks, get them thinking and primarily help children.

The problem with Bennigfields statement is that it mirrors the rhetoric of eugenicists throughout history who advocated for the sterilization, institutionalization, or death of entire races and classes of human beings.

Many pro-life advocates have identified abortion as the eugenics movement of our day. But as this case highlights, the attempted undermining of human dignity comes in many forms.

Sadly, abortion is far from a bipartisan moral issue in this country. It is particularly noteworthy, therefore, that a vocal majority of people in the medical, legal, and media communities were able to unilaterally denounce Bennigfields policy as the gross violation of human rights that it was. Thank God for that.

Read more from the original source:

Is One Judge Trying to Implement Eugenics? - CBN News

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

A Tennessee county has greenlit a modern-day eugenics program under the guise of offering prisoners a better future. Judge Sam Benningfield of White County issued an order in May that reduces jail sentences for inmates who agree to undergo birth control procedures. For male inmates, a credit of just 30 days is offered in exchange for vasectomies, which are permanent. Women who sign up for the program receive a Nexplanon implant, which is effective for up to four years.ABC 15reports that 32 women and 38 men have enrolled in the program.

I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, not to be burdened with children, Judge Benningfield told local outletNewsChannel5. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves.

The program is described as voluntary, though it stretches the definition of that term, basically putting inmates in the position of bartering their fertility for sentencing reductions. Considering that prison sentences are often the collateral damage of life issues from poverty to addiction to crime, it seems callous to ask already vulnerable people to forego a basic human right to shave time off their sentences. The ACLU argues that pretending the program gives prisoners real options is deceptive and perhaps unconstitutional.

Offering a so-called choice between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional, Tennessee ACLU head Hedy Weinberg wrote in astatement. Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it.

Theres also the matter of the programs resemblance to the eugenics programs that populate American history. The Equal Justice Institutenotes thatsterilization programs in the United States date back to the 1920s, when many states authorized forced sterilization of thousands of undesirable citizens people with disabilities, prisoners and racial minorities on the theory that, as the Supreme Court put it in upholding Virginias forced sterilization law in 1927, three generations of imbeciles are enough.

In recent years, groups likeProject Preventionhave paid drug-addicted women as little as $300 to be sterilized. (One ad advises potential enrollees, Dont let a pregnancy ruin your drug habit.) NPR points to a previous Tennessee state effort that penalized pregnant women who used drugs under a fetal assault law. The legislation was abandoned after officials realized that women avoided prenatal care so they wouldnt face jail time.

Judge Benningfield told NewsChannel5 that he launched the program with input from the Tennessee Department of Health, though the agency has distanced itself from the effort in news coverage.

Neither the Tennessee Department of Health nor the White County Health Department was involved in developing any policy to offer sentence reductions to those convicted of crimes in exchange for their receiving family planning services, Shelly Walker, the agency spokesperson, told theWashington Post. We do not support any policy that could compel incarcerated individuals to seek any particular health services from us or from other providers.

Judge Benningfield seems surprised by the outrage his program has been met with.

It seemed to me almost a no-brainer, he told NewsChannel5. Offer these women a chance to think about what theyre doing and try to rehabilitate their life.

Read more from the original source:

Modern-day eugenics? Prisoners sterilized for shorter sentences - Salon

Filed 10:00 p.m.

07.26.2017

David M. Perry

A Tennessee judge is offering reduced jail time to men and women who appear before him in court. And all they have to do to earn that break is volunteer to be put on a contraceptive or sterilized.

In May, Judge Sam Benningfield signed an order to allow individuals held in the White County jail to receive 30 days off their time if they undergo a birth control procedure. County officials say that 32 women have received birth control implants so far and 38 men are waiting to have vasectomies performed.

Under no circumstances should the courts use their power to shape the reproductive decisions of individuals. But sadly, for over a century, attitudes about individuals convicted of crimes have made incarcerated men and women targets of such efforts.

Whether Benningfield knows it or not, his policy follows a long history of eugenic practices in this country. Eugenics is a pseudo-science which holds that the quality of humanity can be improved over generations through practices that encourage individuals with desirable traits to reproduce and discourage the unfit from doing so. There's a sense that eugenics is confined to a long-ago history, but coercive eugenic practices crop up constantly in the American criminal legal system.

In 1907, Indiana became the first state to pass a law allowing for the compulsory sterilization of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists. As a result, hundreds of men held in Indiana prisons were given vasectomies. Henry Sharp, the doctor who performed the procedures, argued before the National Prison Association in defense of the practice: We owe it not only to ourselves, but to the future of our race and nation, to see that the defective and diseased do not multiply.

Following Indiana, 31 states passed eugenics laws. In practice, most states targeted their efforts at the feebleminded and the poor, using state agencies and social workers to identify individuals to sterilize. The victims were most often women of color.

For example, in 1924, the North Carolina legislature gave the head of any penal or state institution the right to order sterilizations and the state often threatened the denial of social service benefits to coerce participants into procedures. Between 1936 and 1968, nearly a third of the women in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico were sterilized in a similar effort.

Eugenics laws remained on the books in many states until the 1970s. But while laws were repealed, eugenic practices continue especially in our nations prisons and jails.

Reporting by the Center for Investigative Reporting exposed that nearly 150 women underwent tubal ligations in California prisons between 2004 and 2013. According to CIR, medical staffers at two prisons that housed pregnant women targeted individuals for sterilization who they deemed likely to return to prison. The medical staff had many of the women sign consent forms, causing a debate about the limitations of consent for incarcerated people once the practice was exposed.

Consent is again at the center of the debate around the sterilizations at the White County jail. Benningfield has explained that his program is voluntary and well intentioned. I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children, he told local reporters. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves.

The head of the ACLUs Tennessee chapter has called the program unconstitutional, adding that it imposes an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it.

A great irony in all of this is that marginalized people do in fact need access to reproductive choices. Indeed, everyone should have affordable or free birth control and education about how and why to use it. No one, however, should be compelled to trade their reproductive freedom for corporal freedom.

The program in White County is but the most recent expression of the idea that the state should have the power to intervene in the reproductive choices of those they deem unfit. This eugenic mentality should be understood as a theme in American history, but not one that has been banished to the dustbin of the past. Weve carried it with us into the 21st century, into Tennessee, California, and possibly to a prison system near you.

David M. Perry is a freelance journalist and historian. His work focuses on violence and criminalization.

Originally Filed Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 10:00 p.m. ET

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Our Long, Troubling History of Sterilizing the Incarcerated - The Marshall Project

Church Militant

July 26, 2017Eugenics Today Church Militant Would be nice to see a crack in the dam so that subjects like Eugenics could be presented to our brainwashed HS and College students; maybe the 99.9% of the support they have drilled into them for Planned Parenthood could at least have a little light ...

Read the original post:

July 26, 2017Eugenics Today - Church Militant

Mention of the movement to improve human genetics known as eugenics today evokes myriad horrors, including its association with forced sterilization, American racism, and Nazism.

But over a century after the beginning of the eugenics movement, scientist are carefully dipping back into the controversial research that looks at the influence genes have on certain behavioral characteristicssuch as intelligence, the likelihood of going to university, and even the amount of time a teen spends on social media.

While eugenicsthe term derived from Greek words for good and birthwas once used to justify entrenched inequality and systemic racism, some now argue that understanding the role of genetic predispositions can help achieve equal opportunities for all.

Francis Galton is widely known as the father of the eugenics. A younger cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton was the first to apply a version of Darwins theory of survival of the fittest to humans. In Hereditary Genius, published in 1869, Galton argued that everything from criminality to love of poetry was thought to be in the hereditary nature of humans, says James Tabery, a philosophy of science professor at the University of Utah. And, the theory went, that if society wanted less criminality and more poetry-loving people, then criminals would have to breed less and the people who love poetry breed more.

Of course, Galtons ideas didnt remain confined to academia. In the UK, the government passed the Mental Deficiency Act in 1913, which emphasized one principle; the separation of people with learning disabilities from the rest of the community. Though the act had near unanimous support, one of the MPs who condemned the law, Josiah Wedgwood, said: the spirit at the back of the Bill is not the spirit of charity, not the spirit of the love of mankind. It is a spirit of the horrible Eugenic Society which is setting out to breed up the working class as though they were cattle.

The US went even further. An estimated 60,000 people were sterilized in the US between the 1930s and 1970s. The federal backed procedures largely targeting the disabled, mentally ill, people of color, and the poor, were finally repealed in the 1970s. Eugenics was also used to justify the miscegenation laws that prevented people from different races from marrying, and it fed into anti-immigration rhetoric.

American sterilization efforts apparently inspired Adolf Hitler, and eugenics ideas helped inform Nazi Germanys final solution, where millions of Jewish, disabled, Roma, and LGBT people were murdered.

Following this litany of horrors, the 1940s saw a recoiling from eugenics, and a scientific undermining of the movements basic principles. Leading academics instead highlighted sociocultural explanations for differences and inequality.

This didnt mean that efforts to improve the human race through genetic selection were completely sidelined. The field slowly morphed into a field of science now known as human behavioral geneticsa field of science where researchers explore how genetics influences human behavior.

US behavioral geneticist David Lykken is a notable example. In 1998, Lykken advocated for a so-called parenting license. He argued that couples interested in having children should need to get a license, but those who were unmarried, unemployed, or disabled would be denied. The licensure of parenthood is the only real solution to the problem of sociopathy and crime, Lykken noted in his infamous paper.

In the last decade, however, a new approach to genetic research has been on the rise, one that argues for understanding its role in social mobility as a way to achieve greater equality for all. A recent study published in the journal Psychological Science last week tested the role genetics plays in parent-child association in education attainment.

Researchers found, as in previous studies, that the likelihood of a child going on to higher education is heavily influenced by their parents education. But while previously, this was largely attributed to environmental factorsthe argument being that parents who have been to university can provide more support in the early secondary years and advice when their child is applying for universitythe new study indicates that genetics may also play a role. Until now, Genetics is largely ignored in this dialogue, said Ziada Ayorech, the lead author of a recent study.

Ayorech, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at Kings College London, and the other researchers looked at a sample of more than 6,000 families with identical and non-identical twins in the UK. They categorized the families into four groups:

The researchers used two methods to figure out to what extent social mobility is mediated by genetic differences. The first method is the traditional twin study design, in which researchers compare identical and non-identical twin pairs. If identical twin pairs were more similar in social mobility then non-identical twin pairs, then this was the first clue that genetics is important.

The second method used polygenic scores, a new scientific technique at the forefront of genetic analysis. Unlike the first method, which relies on comparisons between twin samples, polygenic scores is a predictive method based directly on DNA. Researchers looked at unrelated individuals, within the four groups, whose DNA they had information on. They looked at the extent to which genetic differencesthose differences in the letters of someones DNAcontribute to differences in social mobility.

With the first method, we found genetics played a substantial role. It explained 50% of differences in whether families were socially mobile or not, Ayorech explains. The second method mirrored the twin results, she adds.

The polygenic scoreswho had the most bits of DNA associated with higher levels of educationdiffered across these four groups. Those families that had the highest level of education had the highest polygenic scores. The lowest score was found in the families where the parents and children did not have higher education.

The researchers were keen to stress that though their results indicate that genetics played an important role in social mobility, genetics doesnt work in isolation from socioeconomic factors. Its always an interaction between the two, Ayorech says. Finding genetic influence on something that is traditionally seen as an environmental measure should highlight the fact that genes and environment are working together, Ayorech says. Even if something is highly genetically drivensuch as heightit doesnt mean genes are the only factor. Diet and their lifestyle also impact height.

The researchers also emphasize how their research could be used to promote social mobility. Ayorech suggests that even in a scenario where equal educational support has been provided for everyone, childrens outcomes will still vary. The students themselves will differ in the extent they take on these opportunities, in their aptitude, and in their appetite for education. Knowing the role genetics plays can lead to more tailored, personalized support to maximize the potential for each child, she argues.

She points towards preventative measures that are currently championed in medicine. People at risk of type two diabetes are put in prevention programs, where they get tailored, personalized support to reduce their risk. She says the same could be done in education. Children are already genetically screened for a whole host of conditions, and researchers could one day look at a genetics risk score that predicts learning disabilities. Rather then waiting until the child comes into school and then struggles, Ayorech says, early intervention can be put in place to provide more tailored support. We are a long way from applying this research effectively, Ayorech acknowledges. Researchers dont yet have the sophisticated tools to genetically screen a large enough sample size of children to do educational intervention.

Still, thats a fairly new idea, Tabery says. For the longest time, if anybody was introducing talk of genetics and intelligence with policy implications, they were doing it in the name of inequality, and these authors are trying to use it towards equality.

There lies the difference between genetics research in the 1930s and now, Tabery says: They are really going out of their way not to fall into the traps of the really reprehensible stuff.

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Mindful of eugenics' dark history, researchers are reexamining the ... - Quartz