American History of Eugenics

Here is a PBS tv documentary from last year:

Uncover the shocking history of the early 20th-century campaign to breed a “better” American race.

THE EUGENICS CRUSADE tells the story of the unlikely—and largely unknown—project to breed a better American race, tracing the rise of a movement that turned a scientific theory of heredity into a powerful instrument of social control. Populated by figures both celebrated and obscure, it is an often revelatory portrait of an America at once strange and eerily familiar.

This tells the story of the history of eugenics, inluding famous proponents like Margaret Sanger, and Harvard College teaching a course on heredity.

For the most part, it tells of scientists trying to better the human condition. In some cases, women with genetic diseases, or who were unlikely to be able to care for children, were sterilized.

The point of the documentary was that eugenics was once respectable, but actually evil.

The comments are all favorable, such as:

This is one of the scariest movies I have watched. To think I was born into the middle of the Eugenics hay day and had no idea it was going on. I am thankful that I had no idea and that my father and mother were not mixed up in it. Who knows how many brilliant people we destroyed with this. How many writers, poets, scientific, and other kinds of people we destroyed with this. I think the real shocker of the video was when the Nazis' asked "How can you say we are doing wrong when it is the law in the United States". That really got me.

I think the Nazis were prosecuted for war crimes that were similar to what the Allies did.

The purpose of the eugenics was to make more healthy and brilliant people, not fewer.

The movie did not mention this modern form of eugenics:

In many parts of Europe, including the United Kingdom, the termination rate after a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis is now more than 90 percent. In Iceland, where testing is widespread, “we have basically eradicated, almost, Down syndrome from our society,” one geneticist told CBS last year. In Denmark, where all pregnant women have been offered screening scans since 2004, the disorder is heading for “extinction.”

Not everyone agrees with this, but the Icelandics are not Nazis. They are just trying to have healthy babies.

Here is a Wash. Post article on a company doing embryo genetic screening, which could be viewed as eugenics. And some babies born with the dna of 3 parents. Some people object to these services, but I see nothing wrong with them.