Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

aise for our own purposes. Such is the regimen in
raising kings, and in this way they have gone on for
centuries … Louis the XVI was a fool … The King
of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same … the
King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons.
The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an
idiot by nature. And so was the King of Denmark
… The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick,
was a mere hog in body as well as in mind.
Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were
really crazy, and George of England, you know, was
in a strait waistcoat … These animals had become
without mind and powerless; and so will every
hereditary monarch be after a few generations …
And so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom
the Lord deliver us …
Positive Eugenics
When evolutionary theory came along, theories of good breeding
were formalized into eugenics by Charles Darwin’s cousin
Sir Francis Galton (see Galton, Francis). Galton pioneered
the use of twin studies in the estimates of heritability (see
population genetics). Galton also developed techniques by
which measurements of organisms (such as body proportions)
could be analyzed. Galton accepted Darwin’s theory that natural
selection caused an improvement in the heritable qualities
of a population. He became alarmed as he saw what he
considered to be heritable degeneration in the British population:
first, that people with what he considered superior qualities
produced few children, and second, that people with what
he considered inferior qualities (mainly people of other ethnic
groups) produced many children. He proposed what has
come to be called positive eugenics: that governments should
encourage reproduction in families they believed to be genetically
superior. Galton believed that upper-class, educated British
should be encouraged by government incentives to have
more children. Galton’s motivation was actually to help people.
He thought that positive eugenics could accomplish the
same ends as natural selection against inferior types, “more
rapidly and with less distress.” Galton called eugenics “participatory
evolution.” Eugenics was also championed by Charles
Darwin’s son Leonard. Galton influenced other prominent
British intellectuals, notably geneticist Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher
(see Fisher, R. A.), one of the architects of modern evolutionary
science. Geneticist H. J. Muller, who discovered how
genetic load can result from mutations, also espoused positive
eugenics. In his tract Out of the Night, Muller advocated mass
artificial insemination of women with sperm of men superior
in intellect and character.
Charles Davenport was the director of the Cold Springs
Harbor Laboratory on Long Island in the early 20th century.
He and his research associates gathered genetic information,
mostly pedigrees, about characteristics, ranging from epilepsy
to criminality, that he believed had a genetic basis. Many of
his researchers were women, whom Davenport considered
to have superior observational and social skills necessary for
collecting eugenic data. Consistent with his belief in eugen-
eugenics
ics, he would not employ these women for more than three
years, since he wanted these genetically superior women to
go home and have kids. Davenport would analyze pedigrees
of traits and determine whether they were dominant or recessive.
He correctly identified albinism as a recessive trait, and
Huntington’s disease as a dominant trait, each caused by a
single mutation. But many other “traits” had either a complex
genetic basis or were clearly caused by upbringing and
environment. For example, Davenport claimed in all seriousness
that there was a gene for the ability to build boats.
Eugenics was embraced with particular enthusiasm by
people who would today be classified as the political left,
such as the Fabian socialists. George Bernard Shaw, the critic
of free market imperialism, said that “nothing but a eugenic
religion can save our civilisation.” Politicians who championed
20th-century progressivism, from President Teddy Roosevelt
to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, admired eugenics.
Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, said in
1919, “More children from the fit, less from the unfit—this
is the chief issue of birth control.” As eugenics became a big
and important science in the United States, local chapters of
the Eugenics Society sponsored Fitter Families contests at
state fairs across the nation.
Negative Eugenics
Positive eugenics encouraged the reproduction of supposedly
superior people; negative eugenics discouraged or even
prevented the reproduction of supposedly inferior people, by
forced sterilization or detention if necessary.
Some eugenicists studied human and other primate
skulls and claimed to show that the skulls of people of the
dark races had a more apelike shape than the skulls of Europeans.
This is sometimes the case and sometimes not, so
the eugenicists had to look until they found a measurement
that confirmed the racial superiority of Europeans. They
found one: facial angle, which is the degree to which the face
slopes forward. They claimed that apes had a greater facial
angle than humans, and therefore humans with a greater
facial angle were more apelike. There were major problems
with this approach. First, the facial angle of nonhuman apes
results from a sloping of the entire face, while the facial angle
of humans results from the jaw. Second, eugenicists carefully
selected data to prove their point. They conveniently
bypassed the fact that the Inuit have the smallest facial angles.
By carefully selecting the data, eugenicists could demonstrate
that Europeans had bigger brains than members of other
races. Today scientists know their claims to be both trivial
and wrong.
The claims were trivial and wrong, but not harmless.
Phrenology (the study of skulls) arose as a branch of eugenics.
Practitioners such as eugenicist Cesare Lombroso went
so far as to claim that one could tell “criminal types” by the
details of skull structure. People with supposedly more apelike
skulls (which were later called “throwbacks”) were more
likely to be criminals. Therefore, reasoned Lombroso, if a
criminal could be identified by skull shape when still a child,
he could be institutionalized before he had a chance to do any
harm. Hundreds of people in Europe were unjustly detained