‘Reckless Hands' looks at state's history with eugenics

[Copper]

Oklahomans may be surprised to learn the state shares a dark past with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Eugenics, the wonder science of the early 1900s, hailed by academics worldwide as a means to improve a race by sterilizing those who possessed serious heredity defects, was also embraced by Gov. Alfalfa Bill Murray. This book, "In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near-Triumph of American Eugenics” (W.W. Norton, $24.95) by Victoria F. Nourse, examines how a scientific theory about nature was transformed into the basis of social policy ordained by the power of the state of Oklahoma.

The case's backdrop began in 1927 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a forced sterilization of a feebleminded girl in the case of Buck v. Bell. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.” The law deferred to the state of Virginia's right to regulate health and safety.

Jack Skinner, 24, held in the McAlester prison for stealing 23 chickens and armed robbery, challenged the 1935 Oklahoma law that mandated sterilization for undesirable persons in prisons or state asylums. Subject to the law were three-time repeat criminals or the feebleminded. The law mandated his sterilization before he could return to society after his sentence was satisfied.

The book's title comes from a line in the 1942 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Skinner v. Oklahoma striking down this Oklahoma law, warning that "in reckless hands” an entire "race or types” might "wither and disappear.” Not coincidentally, this was the year Nazis were trying to eradicate the Jewish race on the theory of natural inferiority. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas can produce horrible consequences. Yet, as late as the 1960s, more than 100,000 people had been sterilized under U.S. federal health and welfare programs, the author writes.

Nourse, a law college professor at Emory University, provides a fascinating story of gritty and determined Oklahoma lawyers who took Skinner's case to the nation's highest court. This book should appeal to general readers of Oklahoma history and those interested in the modern science of genetics, which likewise promises a better future through the selection of desirable genetic traits. Will the history of human engineering repeat itself?

[Steel God]

Now you're just tempting me Shane. ;)

[Copper]

LOL... now Paul... would I do a thing like that?

[Justin MacDuro]

Maybe I'm wrong , but I think that many states from US had laws about sterilization , not only Oklahoma . I can't remember the name but there is a very good documentary from Histroy Channel about sterelization in the U.S. during the the first decades of the past century .

Eugenics was very popular in the early 1900s , not only in U.S. or Germany , it was a worlwide fever .

[Steel God]

Eugenics is still a world wide fashion (not just in the states), we just practice it in a manner that it's impossible to hear any of the complaints by the victims, but I really don't want to have the conversation here. Which is why I told Shane he's taunting me.

[Justin MacDuro]

Eugenics is still a world wide fashion (not just in the states), we just practice it in a manner that it's impossible to hear any of the complaints by the victims, but I really don't want to have the conversation here. Which is why I told Shane he's taunting me.

OMG now I understand the intention of your comentary

[Sgt Barker]

Wikipedia isn't the best source, but there's a pretty good summation for Eugenics there. From the top:

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.[2] Throughout history, eugenics has been regarded by its various advocates as a social responsibility, an altruistic stance of a society, meant to create healthier and more intelligent people, to save resources, and lessen human suffering.

Earlier proposed means of achieving these goals focused on selective breeding, while modern ones focus on prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering. Opponents argue that eugenics is immoral. Historically, a minority of eugenics advocates have used it as a justification for state-sponsored discrimination, forced sterilization of persons deemed genetically defective, and the killing of institutionalized populations. Eugenics was also used to rationalize certain aspects of the Holocaust. The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883,[3] drawing on the recent work of his cousin Charles Darwin. From its inception eugenics was supported by prominent people, including H.G. Wells, Emile Zola, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, William Keith Kellogg and Margaret Sanger.[4][5][6] G. K. Chesterton was an early critic of the philosophy of eugenics, expressing this opinion in his book, Eugenics and Other Evils. Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities. Funding was provided by prestigious sources such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the Harriman family.[7] Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York. Eugenics' scientific reputation started to tumble in the 1930s, a time when Ernst Rüdin began incorporating eugenic rhetoric into the racial policies of Nazi Germany.

Since the postwar period, both the public and the scientific communities have associated eugenics with Nazi abuses, such as enforced racial hygiene, human experimentation, and the extermination of undesired population groups. However, developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century have raised many new questions and concerns about what exactly constitutes the meaning of eugenics and what its ethical and moral status is in the modern era.

It was "the science of the day" in the 30s referenced in another thread, and the basis for my skepticism with a good society being based entirely on the "rational." I'm an old foggie who thinks that there are some things people just shouldn't do. Prime among them being the organized killing/breeding of people for certain traits.

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Quote:
Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.[2] Throughout history, eugenics has been regarded by its various advocates as a social responsibility, an altruistic stance of a society, meant to create healthier and more intelligent people, to save resources, and lessen human suffering.

Interesting definition; a product of the age of enlightenment? To me it doesn’t seem too different a rational from what is advocated in the Bible/Koran.

All the Best
Peter