Eugenics and vaccination

A Dark and Horrifying History

I assert that it is beyond the functions of law to dictate
a medical procedure, or enforce any scientific theory.

— Emeritus Professor F. W. Newman (1805–1897), October 26, 1874

[Portion of a Eugenics Chart. (1910)]

Eugenicists believed that society could be improved through controlling the population’s genetic composition through the elimination of the “dysgenic,” or the undesirable elements.

The development of medical and social services resulted in the preservation of hundreds of thousands of dysgenic individuals who in former centuries would have succumbed in the struggle of life. At the same time millions of physically best equipped young men are killed off periodically in wars. This amounts to a negative selection and must ultimately result in the deterioration of the race. Eugenics was a direct outcome of Darwinian theories.[1]

It was believed by some that eugenics-based forced sterilization was similar to compulsory vaccination in that it upheld a belief that societal “good” overrode any personal liberty or choice. In 1928 Dr. Suren H. Babington wrote in California and Western Medicine:

The sterilization of the mentally diseased makes it possible to curtail their ever-increasing number. Considering both scientific and humanitarian points of view, sterilization is one of the most valuable means for not only improving the human race and protecting its welfare, but also decreasing the number of unfortunates to be born to suffer intensely all their lives for faults not their own.[2]

If individuals who were considered “imbeciles” could reproduce, the government intervened using forced sterilization. The science of the time held that mental “defects” were undesirable and therefore the state had a duty to take any action to prevent propagation of those defective genes. Forced sterilization was justified because of the belief that the “human race” could actually be improved by way of deleting so-called defective genes. This was all wrapped with a cloak of supposed scientific legitimacy.

The concept of preventing “unfit” individuals from having children originated in psychiatry.

In 1886, August Forel, the Swiss psychiatrist, sterilized a woman who was suffering from a sexual neurosis. In 1892 he castrated individuals for purely eugenic reasons.[3]

In 1922 Dr. Harold Gosline stated in the American Journal of Psychiatry that he believed eugenics would be key in eliminating mental disease and positively impact poverty, delinquency, and crime.

I would reiterate that we may reasonably expect from routine laboratory work to be able to prevent mental disease and defect. Laboratories in state hospitals are the most tangible tools yet placed in the hands of mental hygiene for this purpose and in time they will render the same service that general hospital and research laboratories have rendered public health of which mental hygiene is but a branch. I believe that public health measures and eugenics measures will go far toward eradicating mental disease and defect, and their related branches of poverty, crime and delinquency...[4]

Dr. Suren H. Babington considered from a psychiatric point of view that “mental defectives” were “insane.” He saw them as a threat to “race betterment” because, left unchecked, they would continue to have mentally defective children.

We hope that the time will come when we shall sterilize also those mental defectives... From the point of view of the psychiatrist, they, too, are “insane,” and are a menace to race betterment, because they go on propagating their own kind in large numbers.[5]

In 1910 C. B. Davenport of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and director of Experimental Evolution published Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding. He stated:

Two imbecile parents, whether related or not, have only imbecile offspring... I am aware, no case on record where two imbecile parents have produced a normal child. So definite and certain is the result of the marriage of two imbeciles, and so disastrous is reproduction by an imbecile under any conditions that it is a disgrace of the first magnitude that thousands of children are annually born in this country of imbecile parents to replace and probably more than replace the deaths in the army of about 150,000 mental defectives which this country supports. The country owes it to itself as a matter of self-preservation that every imbecile of reproductive age should be held in such restraint that reproduction is out of the question. If it proves to be impracticable then sterilization is necessary—where the life of the state is threatened extreme measures may and must be taken.[6]

Eugenicists believed that eugenics was a lofty form of patriotism and a tool to improve the human race by genetically selecting out the “delinquents” and “defectives.” In 1922 Dr. Harry H. Laughlin, eugenics associate in the Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago and eugenics director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, wrote Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. He stated:

Eugenics stands against the forces which work for racial deterioration, and for improvement and vigor, intelligence and moral fiber of the human race. It represents the highest form of patriotism and humanitarianism, while at the same time it offers immediate advantages to ourselves and to our children. By eugenic measures, for instance, our burden of taxes can be reduced by decreasing the number of degenerates, delinquents and defectives supported in public institutions; such measures will also increase safeguards against crimes committed against our persons or our property.[7]

In a landmark 1926 case, Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court of the United States, in an 8 to 1 decision, legitimized Virginia’s sterilization laws. This ruling supported the argument that the interest of the states in a “pure” gene pool outweighed the interest of an individual. In his opinion on sterilization laws, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. invoked compulsory vaccination to justify the verdict.

It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.[8]

Eugenicists used compulsory vaccination as the precedent for their argument on sterilization to “protect” the public. They believed vaccination protected individuals and the public from disease and eugenical sterilization protected society from “racial degeneracy.”

Compulsory Vaccination is analogous to compulsory eugenical sterilization to the extent that both are non-punitive and that both involve the seizure of the individual and subjecting him or her to surgical treatment... Vaccination protects the individual from a serious and loathsome disease in the more immediate future; eugenical sterilization protects society from racial degeneracy in the more remote future.[9]

Tens of thousands of people believed by the US government to be unfit were sterilized, mostly in the state of California.

The California Sterilization Law was adopted in 1909. The total number of operations performed to May, 1927, was somewhat in excess of five thousand, which is four times the number performed in all the rest of the world, as far as we know, for eugenical reasons in state governmental institution.[10]

Before 1933 a number of countries had the legal power to prevent manifestly unfit individuals from procreating offspring, but sterilization was applied on a very small scale. In the United States by January 1, 1937, only 25,403 persons had been sterilized, most of them in California.[11]

Eugenicists promoted and pushed for laws to sterilize anyone they viewed as genetic defectives in society. State governments established medical boards to decide who was to be sterilized. That board determined if a person was likely to have children who could inherit idiocy, insanity, or feeblemindedness or be predisposed to criminality.[12]

New Jersey passed a law in April 1911 that, like other laws, called for creating a medical board to determine who should be sterilized.

...hereby created the “Board of Examiners of Feeble-minded (including idiots, imbeciles and morons), Epileptics and other Defectives,” whose duty it shall be to examine into the mental and physical condition of the feeble-minded, epileptic, certain criminals and other defective inmates...[13]

Harry Hamilton Laughlin was a major advocate of sterilization for eugenics reasons. He was secretary of a committee appointed by the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders’ Association. His assignment was “to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the American Population.” In 1932, he and other leading eugenicists attended the Third International Congress of Eugenics, which was held in New York City. The exhibits were intended to show that eugenics was a “pure and applied science.” Major Leonard Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin, also presented his views at the meeting. The New York Times reported on the event.

Eugenists from all over the world will attend the Third International Congress of Eugenics today and tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural History. At general and sectional meetings they will discuss advances in the study for the physical and mental improvement of the human race... It [the exhibit] will seek to emphasize the fact that eugenics is concerned primarily with racial and family-stock, quality in the turn-over of population from generation to generation. “As a pure science,” the announcement says, “eugenics tries to understand the forces which govern this turn-over, while as an applied science it strives to use these forces in the improvement of family-stocks and races.”[14]

Absolute governmental power was taken to an even greater extreme with the rise of Nazi power in the early 1900s. It is estimated that, in the first years of the Nazi regime, approximately a quarter million people were forced to be sterilized to improve the “human race.” Sterilization was performed because of hereditary feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea, and hereditary deafness and blindness, as well as genetically transmitted bodily malformations. Who would be sterilized was determined by so-called Hereditary Health Courts.

The Germans bestowed an honorary doctorate to Harry Laughlin in 1936 for his eugenics sterilization work. Although the Germans implemented sterilization on a larger scale, the idea of sterilization of unfit individuals had its roots in Scandinavian countries and the United States, whose ruling bodies used forced vaccination as a precedent.

Unbeknownst to many today, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, believed that personal reproductive choice was vital for “racial betterment.”

Before Eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment can succeed, they must first clear the way for Birth Control... While I personally believe in the sterilization of the feebleminded, the insane and the syphilitic, I have not been able to discover that these measures are more than superficial deterrents when applied to the constantly growing stream of the unfit... Only upon a free, self-determining motherhood can rest any unshakable structure of racial betterment.[15]

Eugenics was applied to immigrants. From 1892 to 1954, more than 12 million people entered the United States through the gateway of Ellis Island in New York Harbor. At first, the emphasis was on detecting infectious diseases such as typhoid and smallpox in immigrants, but over time the identification of what were considered mental defects grew in significance.

...mental abnormality assumed growing importance, as eugenics came into fashion. In such selection processes, ethnic prejudices inevitably operated. Mediterranean types and eastern European Jews were widely regarded as inferior stock: “Steerage passengers from a Naples boat show a distressing frequency of low foreheads, open mouths, weak chins, poor features, skew faces, small or knobby crania, and backless heads,” commented the distinguished sociologist, E. A. Ross, in 1914.[16]

Due to hardening racial prejudices, in 1924 the United States passed the Johnson Reed Act to introduce immigration quotas. Supporters of eugenics and the racial hygiene theory were strong supporters of the Act. Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States, declared:

America must be kept American. Biologic laws show... that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.[17]

In 1922 Harry Olson, Chief Justice of the Municipal Court of Chicago, discussed his legal opinion on the constitutionality of eugenics sterilization. He was fully supportive of the model eugenics legislation that was proposed all over the United States. He believed that as long as hearings were held and the “due process of law” was being followed, the courts would uphold these laws as constitutional. His conviction in the “science” of eugenics was steadfast.

If the science of eugenics has so far advanced, as seems to be the fact, that it can be determined that certain individuals are afflicted with physical, nervous, and mental disorders that are hereditary and will reappear in the next or later generation, and threaten the safety of society... then there can be no question but that legislation contemplated by the model act will be an effective protection to future generations... Not only must nations defend their future against racial degeneration from within, but they must limit immigration of defective stocks from all other lands... “The Rising Tide of Color,” by Lothrop Stoddard, warns us of danger to the white race, but this book of yours [Harry Laughlin] warns humanity of the menace to all races—to the entire human race—of racial degeneracy.[18]

Even though the Nazi approach was considered extreme, the premise of using government power to protect greater society from “imbeciles” and other genetic defects continued to be defended. Historian and author Henry E. Sigerist wrote in 1943:

I think it would be a great mistake to identify eugenic sterilization solely with the Nazi ideology and to dismiss the problem simply because we dislike the present German regime and its methods. The pioneering steps were, after all, taken by the United States and Switzerland, and the Scandinavian laws are just as stringent as the German. The problem is serious and acute, and we shall have to be forced to pay attention to it sooner or later.[19]

State governments implemented laws that endowed enormous power to a small group of medical “experts” who determined if a person was, in their opinion, genetically “fit.”

The German Nazi regime took the idea of sterilization of the “dysgenic”[20] to an appalling conclusion. The horrific impact of the visual and mass media coverage of the Nazi Holocaust camps at the end of World War II finally dislodged eugenics as an accepted practice.

In the United States, eugenics eventually lost scientific acceptance and public support. New scientific discoveries led to the rejection of eugenic research results. Moreover, events in Nazi Germany during the 1930s, and the close cooperation between American and German eugenicists, seriously damaged the standing of the American eugenics movement, and the revelation of Nazi crimes in the 1940s discredited eugenic theories.[21]

Severe state control faded from governments, but only after many had been terrorized for decades. After the atrocities of World War II came to light, eugenics and oppressive actions taken by the government for the “public good” lost popular support, and its history quickly vanished from the collective public memory. Compulsory vaccination unceremoniously ended in England in 1948, shortly after the end of World War II.

The year 1948 will ever be memorable in the history of vaccination in this country as seeing the end of compulsory vaccination of infants, a measure which has been the subject of such acute and bitter controversy for so many years. Having regard to the great importance attached to universal vaccination of infants as our “first line of defense,” and to the firm belief that only by compulsion could this be secured, it is rather surprising that the proposal to abolish compulsion did not arouse more opposition. In the event the opposition was almost negligible.[22]

The success of the Leicester Method in defeating smallpox has to this day, been ignored by the medical community and governments. They prefer to persist not only in their belief in vaccination but in the need to force people to be vaccinated regardless of the valid arguments over personal safety or liberty.

Perhaps the most important reason to learn history is so that the worst things are never repeated. The ability to choose what is injected into our bodies is now being removed by states and workplaces. Loss of religious exemptions once seemed impossible, but the stridency of the pro-vaccine and their civic religion is effectively working to remove all but the most specific medical vaccine exemptions. What will come after that?

Parts of this article are from our new books available at https://dissolvingillusions.com

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[1] Henry E. Sigerist, Civilization and Disease, Cornell University Press, New York, 1943, p. 104.

[2] Suren H. Babington, MD, “Human Sexual Sterilization: A Contribution to the Study of the Problem,” California and Western Medicine, vol. 29, no. 6, 1928, p. 369.

[3] Henry E. Sigerist, Civilization and Disease, 1943, Cornell University Press, New York, pp. 104–105.

[4] Harold I. Gosline, MD, “The Laboratory Service in State Hospitals for Mental Diseases,” The American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 1, 1921–1922, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, p. 419.

[5] Suren H. Babington, MD, “Human Sexual Sterilization: A Contribution to the Study of the Problem,” California and Western Medicine, vol. 29, no. 6, 1928, p. 369.

[6] C. B. Davenport, Eugenics, The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding, 1910, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Director, Department of Experimental Evolution, Cold Spring Harbor, New York; Secretary, Committee on Eugenics, American Breeders Association; Henry Holt and Company, New York, pp. 14–16.

[7] Harry Hamilton Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, 1922, Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, p. v.

[8] Henry E. Sigerist, Civilization and Disease, 1943, Cornell University Press, New York, p. 105.

[9] Harry Hamilton Laughlin, DSc, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, December 1922, Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, p. 339.

[10] Ibid., p. 369.

[11] Henry E. Sigerist, Civilization and Disease, 1943, Cornell University Press, New York, p. 106.

[12] Laughlin, pp. 19–20.

[13] Harry Hamilton Laughlin, DSc, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, December 1922, Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, p. 24.

[14] “Eugenics Congress Opens Here Today, Scientists of Many Nations to Attend Sessions at the American Museum, Obsorn to Give Address, He Will Discuss ‘Birth Selection Versus Birth Control,’ Son of Darwin to Send Message,” New York Times, August 21, 1932.

[15] Margaret Sanger, “Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” The Birth Control Review, February 1919, pp. 11–12.

[16] Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, 1997, Harper Collins, New York, p. 424.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Harry Hamilton Laughlin, DSc, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, December 1922, Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, p. 322.

[19] Henry E. Sigerist, Civilization and Disease, 1943, Cornell University Press, New York, pp. 106–107.

[20] Ibid., p.104.

[21] Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, 1995, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, p. 9.

[22] C. Killick Millard, MD, DSc, “The End of Compulsory Vaccination,” British Medical Journal, December 18, 1948, p. 1073.