Eugenics is the study of inherited qualities to improve humanity. It was born in the 19th century to improve the human condition, but big business and government soon took advantage of it. They used it to justify their own actions and theories. It became a way to explain the existence of inequality in society. It promoted the belief that humanity could be improved by selective breeding. Charles Darwin was a crucial figure in the development of eugenics, and his cousin Francis Galton was one of the first to apply it to humans. “We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognizance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea”. (Francis Galton). The ideas promoted by Galton and eugenics societies led to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. The truth is that Britain and America were the original breeding grounds for the eugenic ideas promoted by Hitler, and it started with Francis Galton in 19th-century Britain. Galton was hugely influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin’s “origin of species” and was the first person to apply Darwin’s ideas to humans. He was convinced that traits like intelligence and ability were entirely determined by genetics and asked whether it would be possible to give the more suitable races of blood a better chance of prevailing over the less suitable. In 1883 Galton gave his new idea a name eugenics The ideas of eugenics were spread through the British ruling establishment and eventually to the United States. The ideas of eugenics were used to justify the existence of inequality in society and to explain away social problems like crime, poverty, and mental illness.
This photo depicts a child with a cleft lip, captured in London, England in 1912. Regrettably, there were individuals who held the belief that individuals with this condition should be prohibited from having children of their own. “In 1904 the Balfour Government appointed a Royal Commission to inquire into the “feeble-minded.” When the commission reported in 1908 it recommended that certain categories of the mentally inadequate should be compulsorily detained in institutions.” (International Churchill Society) The decision to detain the mentally ill was deferred by Herbert Gladstone.
The publication “The Eugenics Review” first appeared in 1909 and was published continuously until 1968. The quarterly publication was distributed to promote the ideas of the Eugenics Society in England. The publication was reformulated as the “Journal of Biosocial Science” which is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the intersection of biology and sociology. It is the continuation of The Eugenics Review, published by the Galton Institute from 1909 to 1968.
The Eugenics Review was published with the aim of highlighting the ideals of the Eugenics Education Society, but it largely failed to reach beyond the members of the Society, affiliated associations, and scientists with an interest in the area. Therefore, the Society needed other methods to explain eugenics and eugenic policies to a wider audience. They did this by sending speakers to other societies, holding stalls at exhibitions such as the Ideal Home Exhibition, and producing posters.
In October 1911, the EES met with Dr. Alfred Ploetz of the ‘German Society for Race Hygiene’, and it was agreed to form an ‘International Race Hygiene Society’ to assist preparations for the ‘proposed International Congress of 1912’. The 1912 International Eugenics Congress took place at the University of London (now Imperial College), in South Kensington, to encourage the international dissemination of eugenicist thinking. The image below is taken from the programme for the First International Eugenics Congress 1912. The list is a name of high-profile dignitaries including scientists, politicians, and religious leaders who supported the congress and were named as Vice-Presidents.
The British vice presidents of the congress included Liberal politicians Lord Avebury, Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary Reginald McKenna, the chemist Sir William Ramsay, and the presidents of the Royal Society, the Royal College of Surgeons, and other leading medical and legal institutions. The welcome addresses were given by the Lord Mayor of London and the former Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour. The American Ambassador, the Duchess of Marlborough, and founding Eugenics Education Society member Lady Emily Lutyens hosted congress parties at their London residences.
Dr Alfred Ploetz also attended the conference. During the interwar period 1918 – 1939, he was made an honorary doctor of the University of Munich (1930) and became a supporter of the Nazi Party, which was elected to power in 1933. Ploetz wrote in April of that year that he believed that Hitler would bring racial hygiene from its previous marginality into the mainstream. In 1933, Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick established an "expert advisory committee for population and racial policy", which included Ploetz, Fritz Lenz, Ernst Rüdin and Hans F.K. Günther. The expert advisory committee had the task of advising the Nazis on the implementation and enforcement of legislation regarding racial and eugenic issues. In 1936, Hitler appointed Ploetz to a professorship. In 1937, at the age of 77, he joined the Nazi Party.
Image: Dr Alfred Ploetz Along with many other eugenicists in Europe and America, Ploetz believed in the superiority of the Nordic race. His writings were a major influence on Nazi ideology. His opinion of the Jewish question changed during his life, but his view and the doctrine of the Nazi Party were in accord by the time it came to power in 1933.
In his early writings, Ploetz credited Jews as the highest cultural race after Europeans. He identified no substantial difference in "racial character" between Aryans and Jews and argued that the mental abilities of Jews and their role in the development of human culture made them indispensable to the "process of the racial mix", which would enhance humanity:
The high aptitude of the Jews and their outstanding role in the progress of mankind considering men like Jesus, Spinoza, Marx must be kindly acknowledged without hesitation... “All this Antisemitism is a flop which will vanish slowly in the light of scientific knowledge and a humane democracy” (Ploetz). However, he revised his view. Later he stressed that the distinctiveness of Jews indicated that their mental characteristics would adversely affect Aryans by introducing individualism and a lack of love for the military and the nation.
A Champion of eugenics was Winston Churchill. Like many eugenicists, Churchill believed that the ‘feebleminded’ were being born at a much higher rate than other groups, particularly those he considered to be “superior stock” (Jones, 1995). He expressed that this trend put the British race in danger and that measures would need to be taken to reverse it. Churchill believed that eugenics could solve race deterioration and reduce crime and poverty (Jones, 1995; King, 1999). He maintained that if fewer ‘feebleminded’ individuals were born, less crime would take place.
Churchill warned prime minister Herbert Henry Asquith about the very terrible danger to the race posed by the multiplication of the unfit and as home secretary Churchill went on to propose a series of eugenic policies including forced sterilization and the prevention of marriage between those judged mentally unfit, he also planned labour colonies where the criminally feeble-minded could be detained long before anyone knew Hitler’s name and the concentration camps.
By the turn of the 20th century, Britain’s ruling establishment was looking for ways to make Britain a stronger healthier, and more productive nation. Galton’s ideas were attracting interest and eugenics was seen by some as a panacea for some social problems. If, the population was simply made better then so many problems will be solved from crime to poverty to mental illness.
What may surprise some is that the liberal reformer William Beveridge architect of the welfare state and the economist John Maynard Keynes a key thinker in 20th-century liberal economics were both prominent supporters.
However, Churchill the hero of wartime Britain was using the sort of language that would later be used by the Nazis to describe those who failed to live up to the standards of the master race. It was in the early 1900s that Eugenic Policy in the United States took root.
In 1907 the American state of Indiana passed the first compulsory sterilization law in the world and in 1914 John Harvey Kellogg (Cornflakes) an American businessman, inventor, and physician founded The Race Betterment Foundation. It was a eugenics and racial hygiene organization created due to Kellogg’s concerns about what he perceived as "race degeneracy". The foundation supported conferences (including three National Conferences on Race Betterment), publications (Good Health), and the formation of a eugenics registry in cooperation with the ERO (Eugenics Record Office). The Eugenics Record Office was founded in 1911 by Charles Davenport. Davenport believed eugenic policies could alleviate the economic burden caused by certain undesirable members of society, especially the disabled and the mentally ill. Davenport enjoyed the financial backing of huge corporate foundations including the Carnegie Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation. Conferences were held and documents printed as well as adverts. The material that was promoted was published in research journals and newspapers. With the Race Betterment Foundation Davenport and Kellogg also sponsored the Fitter Families Campaign from 1928 to the late 1930s and funded the Battle Creek College. The foundation controlled the Battle Creek Food Company, which in turn served as the major source for Kellogg's eugenics programs and conferences. By 1924, 15 different states had passed similar sterilization laws similar to Indiana. These laws were passed in the hope that those deemed unfit to reproduce and the mentally ill wouldn't be able to pass on their inferior genes to the next generation.
In 1937 a Fortune magazine poll found that two-thirds of Americans supported eugenic sterilization of mental defectives and 63% supported sterilization of criminals. Between 1907 and 1963 over 65 000 people were sterilized against their will and a disproportionate number of those targeted were Black, Latino, and Native American women. This arguably demonstrated just how quickly the idea of eradicating negative traits was unmasked as a racist agenda.
Eugenics led policymakers to act even more atrocious than sterilization. A 1911 Carnegie report explored 18 different potential methods for removing defective genetic attributes and proposed the use of euthanasia. In his textbook “Applied Eugenics” Paul Bowman Popenoe a member of the American eugenic society argued that sterilization was an opportunity to cleanse the gene pool and that executions maintained the standard of the race. These ideas were actually put into practice in some states one mental institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its patients milk that had been infected with tuberculosis in order that the genetically weak among them would be killed off.
The eugenics ideology of British and American academics, business people, and officials was praised in “Mein Kampf”.
Hitler praised America as the one state that has made progress toward a primarily racial conception of citizenship, by “excluding certain races from naturalization.”
Hitler claimed that he had studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning the prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock. Hitler and Churchill agreed America was doing a great job of eradicating the unfit through eugenic legislation one American eugenicist Hitler admired was the lawyer, Madison Grant. In 1916 Madison Grant published “The Passing of The Great Race” in which he lamented the pollution of the Nordic race by other inferior races. Grant did not hide the racist basis of his thinking, to him the solution was clear the American population needed to be purified through immigration restriction, selective breeding, and sterilization. Grant argued that a rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who were weak or unfit would solve the inferiority question in 100 years. “The Great Race” was the first non-German book to be reprinted by the Nazis when they took power. Hitler wrote to Grant saying the book is my bible.
Image: Henry Ford receiving The Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Nazi officials, 1938. Hitler also deeply admired Henry Ford. Ford owned a newspaper called the Dearborn Independent which from 1920 onwards regularly published articles on the so-called Jewish question the articles employed all the classic antisemitic conspiratorial tropes that Jews secretly ran the world controlled the media and started wars for their own profit these articles proved highly popular among the American public. At a ceremony in Dearborn, Michigan, Henry Ford was presented with the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle on his 75th birthday. Henry Ford was the first American recipient of this order, an honour created in 1937 by Adolf Hitler. This was the highest honour Nazi Germany could give to any foreigner and represented Adolf Hitler’s personal admiration and indebtedness to Henry Ford. The presentation was made by Karl Kapp, the German consul in Cleveland, and Fritz Heller, the German consular representative in Detroit. The rise of the Nazi party in the 1930s resulted in an increase in forced sterilizations of undesirables and the success of the sterilization programme did not go unnoticed. When Hitler became chancellor of Germany one of the earliest laws, he passed was the law for the prevention of hereditary diseased offspring. The law enabled the compulsory sterilization of citizens with genetic disorders. This legislation was directly based on the model eugenical sterilization law devised by the American eugenicist Harry l Laughlin. Nazi Germany was imitating the American states which had already passed similar laws. Harry Loughlin was given an honorary degree by Heidelberg University for his work in the science of racial cleansing.
Ten years after Virginia passed its 1924 sterilization act, Joseph Dejarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, complained in the Richmond Times-Dispatch: "The Germans are beating us at our own game."
As Germany's sterilizations accelerated beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenic leader and immigration activist CM Goethe was ebullient in congratulating ES Gosney of the San Diego-based Human Betterment Foundation for his impact on Hitler's work. Upon his return in 1934 from a eugenic fact-finding mission in Germany, Goethe wrote Gosney a letter of praise. The foundation was so proud of Goethe's letter that they reprinted it in their 1935 annual report.
"You will be interested to know," Goethe's letter proclaimed, "that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the intellectuals behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought, particularly by the work of the Human Betterment Foundation.
"I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."
One year after Goethe’s letter of praise in 1935 the Nazi regime introduced the Nuremberg Laws which were antisemitic and racist. The laws were enacted for the Protection of German Aryan blood and German Honour. The laws forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans. The laws were expanded to include Romani and Black people. The supplementary decree defined Romanis as "enemies of the race-based state", the same category as Jews.
The Nuremberg legislation was directly based on the Jim Crow segregation laws which institutionalized economic social and educational disadvantages for African Americans. Once it was introduced it wasn't long before the Involuntary Euthanasia Programme 'Aktion T4' became nazi policy. The involuntary euthanasia programme began in 1939 and up to 300, 000 disabled people were killed in psychiatric hospitals across Germany. In the occupied territories patients were transferred from their hospitals to special treatment centres. The operation was run by teams of ss men wearing white coats to give a sense of medical professionalism. Patients were exterminated using converted vehicles and shower blocks and gassed to death using carbon monoxide. Bodies were cremated on mass and false death certificates were written up and sent to relatives. This euthanasia model was then adapted and expanded as part of the final solution to the Jewish question. At the end of 1941 the first extermination camps were constructed in occupied territories these were places designed specifically for the purpose of genocide. In 1945, allied soldiers uncovered the horrific reality of Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, and Belsen.
At the end of the war, an estimated 11 million people including Jews, Slavs, disabled people, and homosexuals had been murdered because of Nazi genocidal policy, a policy that was directly inspired by British and American eugenic ideology. While the Allies naturally abhorred the detestable crimes the influence and history of eugenics in Britain and America and its influence were ignored and erased.
Following World War II many eugenic societies changed their names and former eugenicists entered other fields of scientific research the history books used in schools never mention it but eugenic policies continued to be carried out in America. As recently as 2011 a report revealed that 148 female prisoners in two California state prisons were sterilized without adequate informed consent between 2006 and 2011. In the post-war years, Britain and America helped to prosecute Nazi leaders during the Nuremberg trials, but as the chief American prosecutor wrote to President Harry Truman:
“the Allies themselves have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for”.
British and American eugenics is a story that has been purposefully not told perhaps because to admit our influence in Hitler’s genocide is simply too painful and it's easier just to pretend it never happened. Public Health Today across the world we are witnessing the centralisation of global power and surveillance. This is being enabled by Public health practices which have been strongly influenced by eugenic thinking and we need to re-examine the role that eugenics has played in shaping modern public health. Why for instance are The Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and The Carnegie Foundation heavily invested in supporting the World Health Organisation? The Gates family has had a history of supporting eugenics as do Rockefeller and Carnegie. Why are we ignoring the history of these families and foundations in the eugenics movement?
Some academics and scientists argue that eugenic philosophy has been played out by the recent Covid pandemic which apparently witnessed the poor role out of personal protective equipment. Yet they ignore the mandating of new mRNA vaccines produced by pharmaceutical companies who wanted to hide the research data for up to 75 years!
What if the introduction of such a vaccine was indeed an attempt to control population growth, impose travel restrictions, and introduce surveillance programmes to monitor all aspects of our lives?
Many will say that this is a conspiracy theory, but it is a theory based on historical evidence and current proposals. The World Health Organisation under the guise of public health is seeking to implement an international Pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response treaty. If, independent countries do not opt out all will be obligated to comply with the demands of the W.H.O. which could include health passports, travel restrictions, and mandatory vaccination. The W.H.O. is no longer the independent organisation it once was. It is now financed by the pharmaceutical and technology companies, and it is they that will benefit from any imposed international treaty.
It is not a conspiracy to ask questions of those in authority The Nuremberg Medical Trials were an attempt to stop nonconsensual experimentation and authoritarian imposition of medical treatments. Yet the public of the 21st Century appears to be as gullible as the public of the early 20th century when it comes to the ideology of eugenics and its influence on Public Health.
Take Bamlanivimab for instance which was a monoclonal antibody developed by AbCellera Biologics and Eli Lilly as a treatment for COVID-19. The medication was granted an emergency use authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration in November 2020 which was later revoked. Eli Lilly was given special permission to test its COVID-19 experimental antibody, Banlamnivab, on various nursing home residents. Although nursing home residents are not usually eligible for human subject experiments, Eli Lilly, working with NIIAD, sent fleets of RVs with researchers and drugs to treat residents when there was an outbreak in a home. To make sure they obtained long-term results, the experiment used 6 times the amount normally prescribed for an individual COVID-19 patient. The nursing home clinical trial was instituted after a hospital clinical trial failed to show any improvement in hospitalised patients, as well as for potential safety reasons. The safety concerns did not stop Eli Lilly from testing the drug in nursing homes, however, the apparent greater needs of public health were placed above the individual needs of nursing home patients, who were used as testing grounds for an unknown treatment.
The Eli Lilly trials are a prime example of why we should all be concerned when governments, public bodies, and international organizations are not held to account by the people. Propaganda and Public Health Propaganda aims to influence others to accept without challenging any assertions to act as a government or official wants them to do. The idea of using propaganda is that it will lead the public to accept a proposition even though there may not be logical grounds for accepting it. Propaganda usually tries to side-step critical reactions from the target audience, therefore suggestion, and suppression of criticism become one of his most important tools. Governments, using the media and academic institutions will do their utmost to suppress research, reports, opinions, and concerns of academics and scientists with valid concerns. Compare the images below what message are they promoting? The poster on the left promotes the family in Nazi Germany and strength through unity. The poster on the right was a response to the Covid Pandemic and again it promotes unity and strength through striking imagery. But were these messages underpinned by science or the desire of a government to influence and manipulate the actions of individuals and communities?
Those who challenged the authoritarian views and policies of Nazi Germany and recent international responses to Covid were dehumanized. Scientists and medical doctors suddenly became quacks and academics, conspiracy theorists while members of the public were called fascists and idiots. NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller has for many years taught a course on propaganda without incident. But when he began asking students to investigate modern-day propaganda they experienced, including about COVID, the university turned on him and launched an investigation into his teaching practices, eventually canceling the class for good. He is currently embroiled in a bizarre court case regarding defamation A ruling was made that he had not been defamed as the defendants had only expressed an opinion. Mark Crispin Miller is currently appealing the decision
Propaganda also makes effective use of symbols. A symbol is a concrete representation of air idea, action, or thing—a sign that stands for something and Public Health advocates used the following to promote their message:
The mask became a symbol of caring and unity. It was the symbol that was meant to convey a common theme while providing a visible demonstration of collective concern for one another. The Nazis made their symbols so unmistakable and conspicuous that if any German omitted to display or use them, they would be quickly detected, humiliated, challenged, isolated, and punished. What has changed in almost 100 years?
References
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