WEBVTT 00:00:03.204 --> 00:00:09.752 At the turn of the 20th Century, rapid industrialization and urbanization led to a social upheaval, 00:00:09.752 --> 00:00:14.615 defined by goals for a civilization free of violence, disease, and mental ailments. 00:00:14.615 --> 00:00:19.853 However, the means by which this Utopian society would be attempted would include some of 00:00:19.853 --> 00:00:24.102 the most profound ethical violations in the history of the United States. 00:00:24.102 --> 00:00:28.811 00:00:28.811 --> 00:00:34.040 The President was behind it, liberals were behind it, conservatives were behind it. 00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:38.272 Even the Catholic Church at one point was behind it. 00:00:38.272 --> 00:00:43.839 Intense growth of American industry, agricultural mechanization, and widespread immigration 00:00:43.839 --> 00:00:49.082 led to the first major migration away from the farms and into the city which was now expanding 00:00:49.082 --> 00:00:52.291 faster than adequate housing could be provided. 00:00:52.291 --> 00:00:56.957 The solution to the modern problems of an industrialized society required increased 00:00:56.957 --> 00:01:02.229 government involvement in the social sphere, a philosophy known as progressivism. 00:01:02.229 --> 00:01:06.781 The construct of scientific management offered a methodical means of social engineering. 00:01:06.781 --> 00:01:08.499 00:01:08.499 --> 00:01:12.260 Geneticists of the age could prove, through the use of human pedigrees and their knowledge 00:01:12.260 --> 00:01:17.230 of plant and animal genetics, that degeneracy was an inheritable trait. 00:01:17.230 --> 00:01:21.641 It seemed only right that if a society free of all mental and physical ailments, 00:01:21.641 --> 00:01:28.282 free of violence and crime, illiteracy and foolishness, it seemed only right to end the reproductive 00:01:28.282 --> 00:01:31.347 capabilities of people expressing these traits. 00:01:31.347 --> 00:01:36.316 Eugenics was the result of an America unwilling to make social changes, an upper class 00:01:36.316 --> 00:01:38.778 fearful of its laboring counterparts. 00:01:38.778 --> 00:01:43.329 Eugenics placed the blame of a social quandary on individual races and classes 00:01:43.329 --> 00:01:48.669 and thus freed from culpability, the industrial, scientific, and political bearings of the time. 00:01:48.669 --> 00:01:54.028 00:01:54.028 --> 00:01:58.004 Cold Spring Harbor, New York, 1910. 00:01:58.004 --> 00:02:02.325 Charles B. Davenport along with Harry H. Laughlin, both biologists and members of The 00:02:02.325 --> 00:02:07.478 American Breeders Association, found the Eugenics Record Office, with financial help 00:02:07.478 --> 00:02:09.428 from the Carnegie Institution. 00:02:09.428 --> 00:02:13.283 The ERO would be the headquarters of eugenic research in the United States for 00:02:13.283 --> 00:02:15.651 the next 34 years. 00:02:15.651 --> 00:02:21.177 Using various research methods including human pedigrees, hereditary questionnaires, 00:02:21.177 --> 00:02:25.868 interviewing groups of special interest such as circus performers, and collecting census data, 00:02:25.868 --> 00:02:30.976 the ERO was able to justify the administration of eugenic laws nationwide 00:02:30.976 --> 00:02:36.423 including immigration and marriage restrictions, race segregation, and forced sterilization 00:02:36.423 --> 00:02:39.010 of criminals and other undesirables. 00:02:39.010 --> 00:02:44.264 The ERO, however, was not only able to justify the eugenics atrocities, but integrated them 00:02:44.264 --> 00:02:50.527 into popular culture to make eugenics and related terms, such as race hygiene, household words. 00:02:50.527 --> 00:02:55.357 Popular literature published in the 20's, often donned eugenics in their subject matter 00:02:55.357 --> 00:02:59.026 such as these manuals on raising a healthy family. 00:02:59.026 --> 00:03:02.741 Clergymen preached of the necessity for good marriages. 00:03:02.741 --> 00:03:07.153 Perhaps even more disturbing were the contests held at many state fairs, where awards 00:03:07.153 --> 00:03:12.526 were given to the fittest family. Those with the purest pedigrees and undoubtedly the most 00:03:12.526 --> 00:03:17.927 attractive phenotypes would receive awards such as this medal with an inscription reading, 00:03:17.927 --> 00:03:20.388 'Yea, I have a goodly heritage.' 00:03:20.388 --> 00:03:27.586 The eugenics movements spawned lots of people who were considered even in their own time, 00:03:27.586 --> 00:03:32.370 out on the fringe. Who even endorsed such things as euthanasia, but that was not a mainline 00:03:32.370 --> 00:03:37.525 part of the movement. It certainly became parts of the movement internationally, 00:03:37.525 --> 00:03:39.800 but not so much here in America. 00:03:39.800 --> 00:03:47.556 On March 9, 1907, the Indiana State Senate in a vote of 28 to 16, made history by being the first 00:03:47.556 --> 00:03:52.757 jurisdiction in the world to force the sterilization of citizens it deemed unfit. 00:03:52.757 --> 00:03:56.379 Unfit to exist, unfit to reproduce. 00:03:56.379 --> 00:03:58.422 Connecticut was soon to follow. 00:03:58.422 --> 00:04:03.010 By the time Laughlin of the ERO, had published his suggestion on how to implement legislation 00:04:03.010 --> 00:04:08.871 for forced human sterilization, 12 states had already put into place sterilization laws of their own. 00:04:08.871 --> 00:04:14.073 By 1924, 3000 socially inadequate people had been sterilized. 00:04:14.073 --> 00:04:19.259 That same year based on Laughlin's model, Aubrey E. Strode, drafted Virginia's Eugenical 00:04:19.259 --> 00:04:24.104 Sterilization Act in an attempt to rid the state of defective persons. 00:04:24.104 --> 00:04:27.680 It passed in Virginia's General Assembly by a landslide. 00:04:28.434 --> 00:04:33.624 Immediately, the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble-Minded, selected 17-year-old 00:04:33.624 --> 00:04:36.457 Carrie Buck to be the first human sterilized under the act. 00:04:36.457 --> 00:04:42.296 Carrie had a feeble-minded child, the result of a raping by one of her relatives, and was the 00:04:42.296 --> 00:04:46.820 daughter of a feeble-minded mother, Emma, already a resident on the Virginia colony. 00:04:46.820 --> 00:04:51.596 Carrie, purportedly carrying the genetic traits of feeble-mindedness and sexual promiscuity, 00:04:51.596 --> 00:04:57.318 was a fine candidate as the law stated those to be sterilized must be probable potential 00:04:57.318 --> 00:05:00.048 parents of socially inadequate offspring. 00:05:00.048 --> 00:05:05.472 Carrie's feeble-mindedness was based on a mailed disposition by Laughlin who had never met Carrie 00:05:05.472 --> 00:05:10.043 and her sexual promiscuity was based on the testimony of her school teacher, 00:05:10.043 --> 00:05:13.144 that she sent flirtatious notes to school boys. 00:05:13.144 --> 00:05:17.556 Carrie became the first person in Virginia to be sterilized under the new law 00:05:17.556 --> 00:05:20.296 on October 19, 1927. 00:05:20.296 --> 00:05:25.055 In the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, official deliverer of the opinion of the United States 00:05:25.055 --> 00:05:30.469 Supreme Court in the case of Buck v. Bell, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to 00:05:30.469 --> 00:05:36.203 execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent 00:05:36.203 --> 00:05:40.126 those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. 00:05:40.126 --> 00:05:43.144 Three generations of imbeciles are enough." 00:05:43.144 --> 00:05:48.485 Vivian, Carrie's feeble-minded daughter, received B's on her first grade report card. 00:05:48.485 --> 00:05:53.129 Buck v. Bell justified the sterilizations of over 8000 Virginians. 00:05:53.129 --> 00:05:58.292 Over the history of the United States, 33 states have enacted statutes under which 60,000 00:05:58.292 --> 00:06:01.349 Americans underwent compulsory sterilizations. 00:06:01.349 --> 00:06:04.785 To this day, Buck v. Bell has never been overruled. 00:06:04.785 --> 00:06:10.962 "Nazi Germany embraced the eugenics movement from the United States and just upped it in 00:06:10.962 --> 00:06:12.451 its efficiency." 00:06:12.451 --> 00:06:17.139 It should now be apparent that Germany's racial theories did not take place in a vacuum. 00:06:17.139 --> 00:06:21.381 Nor can the fundamental philosophies and beliefs that would eventually lead to the atrocities 00:06:21.381 --> 00:06:25.173 of the Nazi state be attributed solely to German authorities. 00:06:25.173 --> 00:06:29.656 In fact, German scientists expressed a great affinity towards the US eugenic laws. 00:06:30.564 --> 00:06:34.528 A young Adolph Hitler wrote positively of the US's immigration restrictions. 00:06:34.528 --> 00:06:40.000 More specifically, how the law refuses immigration on principle by simply excluding certain races 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:43.098 from naturalization, in his book, "Mein Kampf". 00:06:43.098 --> 00:06:47.510 Shortly prior to mobilizing the most comprehensive eugenics legislation in modern history, 00:06:47.510 --> 00:06:51.922 Gerhard Wagner, head of the National Socialist Physician League, stated that America's 00:06:51.922 --> 00:06:55.591 eugenic policies should be used as a model for Germany to follow. 00:06:55.591 --> 00:07:00.153 Marie Kopp, of the American Committee on Maternal Health, proclaimed that the Nazi system 00:07:00.153 --> 00:07:05.025 of seeking out those to be sterilized was administered in entire fairness and was 00:07:05.025 --> 00:07:09.796 formulated after careful study of the California Experiment which had been responsible 00:07:09.796 --> 00:07:15.686 for 2500 of the 3000 involuntary sterilizations in the US prior to 1924. 00:07:15.686 --> 00:07:20.107 The ERO boasted on how the German statute on race hygiene read almost identical to 00:07:20.107 --> 00:07:22.247 Laughlin's Model Sterilization Law. 00:07:22.247 --> 00:07:27.214 Laughlin had such a significant impact on Nazi racial legislature that he was awarded an honorary 00:07:27.214 --> 00:07:29.399 degree from the University of Heidelberg. 00:07:29.399 --> 00:07:34.461 Laughlin thanked the university for reaffirming the common understanding of German and American 00:07:34.461 --> 00:07:37.201 scientists of the nature of eugenics. 00:07:37.201 --> 00:07:42.563 This common understanding would be translated into the law on preventing hereditarily ill progeny 00:07:42.563 --> 00:07:47.935 which would be responsible for over 375,000 sterilizations in the Nazi state. 00:07:47.935 --> 00:07:51.876 A number so impressive, one American eugenics advocate complained: 00:07:51.876 --> 00:07:54.848 00:07:54.848 --> 00:07:59.079 The sterilization program of the Nazi state modeled after Laughlin's Law and other 00:07:59.079 --> 00:08:03.625 US eugenic theories, would be a gross prelude to the exterminations of the Holocaust. 00:08:03.625 --> 00:08:08.055 But even before the gas chambers were open for the racist and anti-Semitic persecutions 00:08:08.055 --> 00:08:13.627 we know all too well, they were opened in October 1939, for the systematic murder of the 00:08:13.627 --> 00:08:15.896 mentally ill citizens of Germany. 00:08:15.896 --> 00:08:20.601 Sadly, this practice was not faced with nearly as much stigmatism within the states 00:08:20.601 --> 00:08:26.507 as euthanasia had long been discussed by American eugenicists as a solution for the feeble-minded. 00:08:26.507 --> 00:08:27.051 00:08:27.051 --> 00:08:34.114 "So, when people saw how eugenics can be easily be abused by the power of the state, they said 00:08:34.114 --> 00:08:40.469 that's it, this is a monstrous idea that we should keep a distance from." 00:08:40.469 --> 00:08:44.585 It is now the dawn of the 21st Century and advancements in technology and medicine 00:08:44.585 --> 00:08:47.882 have excelled beyond even the most ambitious of projections. 00:08:47.882 --> 00:08:52.882 Science that eugenicists of the 20th Century could only have dreamed of appear in our news 00:08:52.882 --> 00:08:54.726 every single day. 00:08:54.726 --> 00:08:56.335 "of stem cell research..." 00:08:56.335 --> 00:08:58.517 "and picking the genes of our children..." 00:08:58.517 --> 00:09:01.211 "Cloning of embryos for the destruction..." 00:09:01.211 --> 00:09:03.951 "discovered stem cells in a new place..." 00:09:03.951 --> 00:09:05.994 "if the embryo has a genetic disease..." 00:09:05.994 --> 00:09:07.062 "genetic tests..." 00:09:07.062 --> 00:09:12.085 Is it a danger? It's always a danger when there are technologies that can be used and abused. 00:09:12.085 --> 00:09:18.325 And I think the history of the eugenics movement tells us when a technology actually exists, 00:09:18.325 --> 00:09:22.712 people will try to use it - sometimes for reasons it was never intended to be used. 00:09:22.712 --> 00:09:27.367 With the mapping of the human genome, prenatal testing, implantation genetic diagnosis, 00:09:27.367 --> 00:09:31.805 therapeutic cloning, and stem cell therapy we find ourselves entering a promising world 00:09:31.805 --> 00:09:36.243 of genetic medicine. It is with this great power, however, that comes the need for even 00:09:36.243 --> 00:09:39.942 greater responsibility, sensitivity, and accountability. 00:09:39.942 --> 00:09:44.864 Humanity truly does now possess a powerful tool for good. However, we must heed the warnings 00:09:44.864 --> 00:09:49.489 founded by the coercive legislation and beliefs of the eugenics movement before we may venture into 00:09:49.489 --> 00:09:54.709 the frontier of modern genetic medicine. Tragedy may very well give way to triumph but 00:09:54.709 --> 00:09:57.097 how that will be recorded in the history books of tomorrow, 00:09:57.097 --> 00:09:59.967 will be determined by our actions today.