Eugenics Record Office. BULLETIN No. 10A - DNA Patent Database ...

THE SCOPE OF THE COMMITTEE’S WORK.
This letter is quite typical of those received from persons suffer-
ing not only from the so-called functional disorders, but also, as in this
case, of persons suffering from the results of infectious diseases where-
in the exciting cause is not hereditary and the factor of heredity in
the predisposing causes cannot in the present state of knowledge be
accurately measured. Such mental attitudes are eugenically whole-
some. With the growth and diffusion of knowledge concerning human
heredity a national eugenic conscience will develop. Eugenics should
not—and could not often, if it would—prevent lovers from marrying;
but early eugenical training will in a measure regulate “falling in love.”
If an individual whose personality, or whose family, is weak or
defective in reference to a particular trait, marries, he should for his
own and his descendants’ sake, seek a mate who is strong and whose
family is strong, wherein he and his family are weak. If, however, it
is the good of the race that is at stake, such a person possessing a very
serious or handicapping hereditary defect may well not marry at all;
and the person of high talent in one direction would seek—other things
being equal—a consort from a family characterized by distinction in
the same direction. Specialization in human, no less than in plant and
animal, strains would result in greatly increased efficiency.
Society must at all costs encourage an increased fecundity of the
socially fit classes and must cut off the inheritance of individuals suffer-
ing from hereditary defects, which seriously handicap their fitting into
the social fabric. It, therefore, behooves the American people to edu-
cate along eugenical lines, not only the more sterling classes, to the end
that they may make fortunate matings, but also those individuals with
educable minds, who suffer from serious hereditary defects, to the end
that they will voluntarily decline to increase their kind. These letters
just quoted indicate that hereditary traits influence mate selection
among persons knowing the manner of the inheritance of specific traits.
With intelligent people, then, eugenical marriage appears to be largely
a matter of education. In individual cases, wherein this remedy fails,
segregation or sterilization should be resorted to as a supporting
measure. It may be fitting again to call attention to the eugenic value
of the policy of resorting to segregation or sterilization in all cacogenic
cases wherein it is apparent that preventive agencies have failed or
will fail. If sterilization is opposed, let its opponents bestir themselves
and make efficacious other remedies.
(5) Systems of matings purporting to remove defective traits.
Although it is known that defective traits of the recessive type will
53