| Title | : | Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1324035609 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781324035602 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 |
| Publication | : | First published February 3, 2022 |
Eugenics has “a short history, but a long past,” Rutherford writes. The first half of
Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics Reviews
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article about the book....
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
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In terms of the main players, it's always been about wealthy White elites controlling everyone else, including their biology.
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“Today the commercial ancestry market is worth billions and relies on the weak supposition that the composition of your DNA will reveal the identities of your forbears in time and space. It’s often driven by romantic and sentimental urges to belong to a tribe of Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, or other noble warriors. But it’s really just wafty bullshit. What modern genetics has shown unequivocally is that the real story of humankind is continuous mixing. There is no pure race or tribe.”
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"If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I’d go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’.
-D.H. Lawrence, 1908
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The nightmare realized....
https://www.theglobalist.com/seven-bi...
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The dark side of Churchill...
"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."
"I hate people with slit eyes and pigtails. I don't like the look of them or the smell of them"
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My home state is culpable.
The first president of Stanford, David Starr Jordan, founded a eugenics society and eugenic practices were still happening not so long ago....
https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/articl...
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The unwelcome revival of "race science"
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018...
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Toward the end, the author talks about the promise and perils of gene editing.
The Brave New World is on the horizon. -
Full disclosure: I am friends with the author so I am a little biased. But hey, my review. I am a scientist and my fields of research are in genetics (genomics) and anthropology. This book is about the history of eugenics and of course this involves Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and Ronald Fisher. Essentially, modern human genetics was basically invented by these three, and they came up with the statistical methods that are so fundamental in the life sciences. These statistical concepts and tests that we (life scientists) all use - standard deviation, regression, correlation, t-tests, ANOVA, etc were all invented to justify eugenics agendas of how humans=farm animals.
Francis Galton wrote in the 1870s: "I argue that, as a new race can be obtained in animals and plants, and can be raised to so great a degree of purity that it will maintain itself, with moderate care in preventing the more faulty members of the flock from breeding, so a race of gifted men might be obtained, under exactly similar conditions."
What a wanker.
Anyway Adam is a gifted, lively writer and the science is A+ and communicated clearly. This is a very succinct book about the early history of eugenics, its hideous legacy, and whether or not it would actually "work" (short answer: no). -
read this months ago and forgot to add…
You hear the word eugenics and immediately think about the Nazis, but I didn’t realise how much the eugenic movement was spearheaded by British and American individuals/societies and adopted into Nuremberg laws/final solution etc.
Also interesting how mainstream eugenic thought was in the UK, and to hear about left wing proponents too (not surprised by Churchill but Beveridge!?).
Rutherfords writing is always brilliant. He targets the science while focussing on the ethics in a perfect manifesto on the intrinsic value of all people. His explanation of complex traits makes it easy to step through why eugenics makes no sense by targeting common misconceptions about genetics (e.g why we couldn’t just ‘select’ for greater intelligence even if we wanted to). -
Eugenics was all the rage in the first half of the 20th century, until it wasn’t any more. This book purports to tell us what it is, what it isn't and how it came to be such a dominant force in shaping the policies of that time.
The author does a wonderful job in recounting the history of this movement, beginning with its ancient predecessors in Greece, and takes us all the way up to present day attempts at controlling the evolution of the human race. Another thing Rutherford does well is making a distinction between ethical uses of the science of genetics and its unethical uses, past, present and future possibilities.
The book is aimed at the broadest audience possible. It's short and it deals with a huge amount of material very efficiently. Rutherford is very good at keeping his facts tidy and well organised and keeps his essay diligently on topic. Thankfully, the main doctrine of eugenics and its misuse are easy to debunk since, in hindsight, all of the eugenics policies implemented in different countries like the USA or Nazi Germany, which were conceived as aids for the betterment of mankind, have had zero or negative effects on their target population. This is the best part of the book.
The most interesting part of the book is the second, which deals with the application of current scientific research in genetics (the de facto child of the eugenics movement) to screening the DNA of embryos for genetic disorders like Down, to the genetic screening and engineering of embryos for specific genes, especially aimed at increasing intelligence. In short, the first approach brings statistically lower gains to IQ than tweaking some environmental variables, while the second one is currently illegal and extremely dangerous with the currently available technology.
I would have liked to read more about hypothetical scenarios and their plausibility. However, the author does not extend any philosophical argument beyond its mere acknowledgement in his text, although he vaguely draws near to a kind of conservative humanism in the sense that human life is valuable, even if it's genetic makeup is flawed, but that parents are free to decide if they want to keep a pregnancy when they find out that the baby will be born with an incurable, debilitating, genetically determined syndrome like Down.
So this is a book that plays it safe from most every point of view. The subtitle is a bit clickbaity, in the sense that it promises a lot more than it delivers. Eugenics got a lot of stuff wrong at first, like any science, and the worst part is that people were using it to drive social policies that, as Rutherford demonstrates, helped absolutely nothing and no one. The name fell out of favour after the war, and by 1970-1980 all eugenics departments became genetics departments. And they continue to try to understand the relationship between genes and the environment in the makeup of a human. His high-level conclusion determines that it’s complex, it depends on a case by case basis and genetics is in very few cases the sole determinant of a specific condition.
The “troubling present“ part is more an indeterminate foggy and conficing present, where research is being made to improve the human genome and this would allow rich people to raise their kids as a new breed of genetically enhanced humans. The author talks about CRISPR, the most advanced and most precise technology available for gene editing and shows that, in its current state of development, it is not yet as precise as it needs to be, although he allows for the caveat that it may reach that precision in the future. (currently gene modifications may still scramble a few letters in their mutations and any change which is not exact would create a completely unknown, unstudied, dangerous and potentially lethal variant)
This is a great book for the general public, full of facts and figures, but told in a very appealing style. It does many things right, linking important historical characters with their views and their times, but also discussing their legacy, keeps the whole history concise and interesting and also throws in a few introductory scientific notions for genetics. I don’t remember hearing about other books on the subject in the audiobook, so I guess people interested in diving deeper in the subject have to do a bit of research on their own. -
If you haven't read Rutherford, then I strongly urge you to do so.
This is one of his shorter works looking at the history and implications of eugenics. Packed full of detail, lightly witty where appropriate, and deadly serious when required. This is a fascinating read. -
Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics is a well-written and thought-provoking book that delves into the disturbing history of eugenics and its continued influence on contemporary society.
Adam Rutherford does an excellent job of tracing the origins of eugenics from its early roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to its horrific implementation in Nazi Germany and the United States. He clearly explains the ideas behind eugenics and the ways in which it was used to justify discrimination and violence against certain groups of people.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the book is the way in which eugenics was used to justify forced sterilization and other forms of medical experimentation on marginalized groups, such as people with disabilities and Indigenous communities. These practices were not only unethical but also deeply harmful and have had long-lasting consequences for the individuals and communities affected.
Despite the well-documented history of eugenics and its devastating impact, Rutherford also explores the ways in which these ideas have continued to influence contemporary society. He discusses the ongoing debate over genetic engineering and the potential risks and benefits of this technology, as well as the ethical considerations that must be considered.
Overall, Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics is a thought-provoking and important read that sheds light on the disturbing history and ongoing influence of eugenics. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of science, ethics, and social justice.
I listened to the BBC Radio version of the book:
Bad Blood: The Story of Eugenics. -
This book is amazing and has taught me a lot. I knew of some of the history of Eugenics in Great Britain and America but this book opened my eyes. Eugenics is awful, it’s awful because it is an idea of the rich, powerful and narcissistic.
It’s also made me self-reflect on my attitude towards equality and diversity. Thinking about how variety brings so much value to life. How we need to tackle the social injustices that make people appear “unhelpful”. Especially when talking about disability and how to empower others.
I recently watched a documentary about how Auschwitz came to exist and how close society is to teetering over that point again if we view people as groups and “others”.
Inclusion and valuing more than just physical and mental health is so important. Empathy and compassion cannot be bred. Healthy relationships are not in the genetics of an individual.
Also the fact that we still don’t fully understand genetics is fascinating. The thought that not a single gene causes only one trait but is a complex and intricate network which impacts on a person is amazing.
Human bodies are amazing, I already know this but human bodies ARE AMAZING! The biggest take away from this book for me is how compassion, empathy and being able to create a society where everyone can access education, healthcare, social care and a loving support network is the best way to make humans into a better version of themselves. -
Maybe my last book of 2022 in which case it's kind of a depressing note to go out on, but it's actually a very readable, thoughtful book. Rutherford (who I know mostly from the Radio 4 podcast he shares with Hannah Fry, The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry) clearly knows the subject inside-out and back-to-front. As well as being a specialist in human genetics generally, he's a geneticist at UCL, which was the British centre for eugenics and its promulgation; the modern faculty of biology is a direct descendant of the eugenics research labs. The book isn't history or biology but a mix of both and it held my attention throughout.
Also, the footnotes! mostly scholarly, occasionally hilarious. -
This chap communicates The Science well. And he misspelled the word spelling in a sentence about spelling mistakes, which is very good scientist humour.
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"This famous guy revolutionised genetics and in doing so saved countless lives"
:)
"So he could advocate sterilising the mentally ill and disabled"
:(
On loop for 250 pages. Very good book though. -
3.5 rounded up!
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As a geneticist I am very interested in the history of eugenics and worrying about the potential of it happening in the future. Adam Rutherford address both of these topics very well in his most recent book.
The first part of the book focuses on the history of eugenics. I had not realized the extent to which eugenics was present in the America before WWII and how many of the 'greats' in genetics subscribed to eugenics. Throughout this discourse, I appreciated that Rutherford emphasizes that we can't throw out the work of everyone who had these views: "The past is a dirty place, its protagonists are merely people - evil, genius, and everything in between. We cannot and should not abandon no trash the scientific works of Galton, Fisher, Pearson, Jordan, Watson and the many others on whose scientific shoulders we stand."
The second part of the book hypothesizes as to what it could look like in the future and what to watch out for. He really highlights that "one thing we do know about human genetics with absolute confidence is how little we know." Thus, it will be difficult to create 'designer babies' and the like because genetics and the human body is very complicated (which I can attest to).
Overall, this a great read for those interested in the history of science and who want to learn more about eugenics and its impact. -
A fascinating summary of the past and present promotion and use of eugenics (and some science), primarily in the US, UK, and Australia. Rutherford does a great job of explaining complex scientific ideas as well as exploring tricky ethical issues in a nuanced way. I learned a lot from this book, and it certainly expanded my view on what eugenics is and the multitude of ways it's been used, and is still being used today. He also does a good job of navigating the debates around historical figures in science and public life who adopted ideas from eugenics, and does well to point out our inconsistent approach in the way we react to these legacies.
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Intelligent and passionate, glad the author read it himself. Very accessible and very interesting, even though I knew some of the stuff about Galton. I feel like I now have a good understanding of the topic.
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Solid book.Two parts: the history of eugenics until the fall of nazi German and the present state of genetics and eugenic thinking since. Short read offering good overview in each part but not overly detailed.
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Adam Rutherford is a British geneticist and popular scientist, and Control is his brief history and analysis of the field of eugenics. This book was not necessarily what I was expecting - perhaps the part of me that enjoys reading disturbing books, especially disturbing nonfiction, was hoping for something darker (as the subtitle of the book seems to suggest). Instead, Rutherford gives a very straightforward accounting of the main figures (scientists, policymakers, and advocates) in eugenics, followed by his complication of the seemingly simple logic behind the theory.
Rutherford is undoubtedly good at distilling complex ideas, especially about his field of study, into digests for the layperson. I found myself skimming through the initial chapters about the history of eugenics, as surprisingly, I realized that I knew a lot of the material already (perhaps due to the fact that many of my philosophy and policy classes in college used eugenics as a case study). His list of figures in eugenics also got a bit tiresome - it felt like a rote retelling rather than trying to weave a story out of history. But Rutherford's update on what we know about genetics and the human genome since many of the prominent eugenicists lived, as well as why our current knowledge makes eugenics much more complex, was by far the most interesting part of the book.
My main takeaways were:
1. Pretty much every human trait is heritable.
2. Heritability concerns both genetics and environment. (It was never nature VERSUS nurture - it has always been both. For example, certain mental illnesses like schizophrenia have been shown to occur more frequently in people who experience hardship, and that hardship is often consistent from one generation to the next.)
3. Diseases, conditions, and other "undesirable" traits can not necessarily be edited out using CRISPR or even stopped by sterilization. (E.g., A policy that sterilizes adults who display symptoms of Huntington's disease is already too late to remove the "defective" gene from the germline and the population.)
4. Tough questions remain, such as the fact that many Scandinavian countries have decreased the population of individuals born with Downs Syndrome drastically because fetuses can be scanned for these traits in utero, and many women choose to have abortions if found. Individuals with Downs Syndrome can live full and happy lives and many advocates say that these abortions are unethical. Others say that caring for a person with Downs Syndrome requires significant time and financial resources that some families may not be equipped to provide. There are no easy answers to this question.
Rutherford does a good job of educating the reader on why eugenics is not as black-and-white as it may seem, what the current science supports, and what questions remain. This is a thought-provoking read for those looking to deepen their understanding of genetic science or have some fodder for ethical and philosophical discussions. Thank you to WW Norton and Company for the ARC via Netgalley. -
I was asked to review
Adam Rutherford's book Control for the Catholic weekly, The Tablet (
https://www.thetablet.co.uk/books/10/...). Here is what I wrote:
Adam Rutherford is a geneticist at UCL and a popular science writer and broadcaster. Like his earlier book How to Argue with a Racist, Control is motivated by a passionate commitment to resist the appropriation of ‘pseudo-science’ for dark political ends. It is, he writes, ‘a book about two forces that shape us: control and freedom.’ He turns an unblinking gaze on own profession, including the murky history of UCL’s entanglement with the ideology of eugenics and its honouring of Victorian polymath and pioneering eugenicist Francis Galton. Galton’s name has been erased from the University’s identity as an acknowledgement of how grotesque his beliefs were. Like others such as Karl Pearson and Ronald Fisher, who both occupied the Chair until recently named after him, Galton’s undeniable contribution to modern science accorded him an heroic status which cannot be defended in view of his abhorrent politics.
The book is a cautionary warning about how ‘all science is political’, and the boundary between the ideology of eugenics and the science of genetics can become dangerously blurred. Written in two parts – historical and contemporary – it shows that many revered historical figures in business and politics as well as science were ardent advocates of racist eugenics, including Winston Churchill, Cecil Rhodes, Henry Ford of Ford Motors, and John Harvey Kellogg whose cereal industry was founded in his ‘obsessive desire to control libido with bland foods, and thus protect and preserve the precious bodily fluids of upstanding Americans.’ Rutherford dismisses the ‘vapid’ excuse that these were people of their time, for he cites many who resisted the sinister seductions of eugenics. These included evolutionary scientist Alfred Russel Wallace, UCL scientist J.B.S. Haldane who was sceptical rather than vigorously opposed to eugenics, and G.K. Chesterton whose abhorrence of eugenics Rutherford attributes to his ‘deeply felt Catholicism’. Chesterton’s contemporary, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, Revd W.R. Inge, was a prominent advocate for the eugenics movement.
Rutherford argues that the ideology and practice of eugenics were driven underground but not eradicated by the horrors of Nazism. He points to the fact that involuntary sterilizations and enforced birth control are still practised in many parts of the world to limit the number of people regarded as undesirable, superfluous or inferior. The two most recent reports relate to the involuntary sterilisation of up to twenty women in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention centres in 2020, and the continuing enforced sterilisation of thousands of Uyghur women in China. On a more positive side, modern genetics exposes as ‘fantasy’ the quest for any form of racial purity: ‘[T]he real story of humankind is one of continuous mixing, constant migration and shared ancestry. … [E]very Nazi had Jewish ancestors, just as every White supremacist today has North African, southern African and Middle Eastern ancestors’.
Rutherford insists that the complexities and limitations of genetics challenge popular misconceptions about designer babies and other such manipulations of what Bill Clinton called ‘the language in which God created life’ – described by Rutherford as a clumsy religious allusion though I rather like it. Key to the argument is the insistence that there is no opposition and little identifiable difference between nature and nurture in the formation of human identity and ability. We are who we are because of the ways in which social, economic and environmental influences shape our tangled biological characteristics in ways that are impossible to separate.
Rutherford’s tone is polemical and often indignant, but he is no Richard Dawkins. He is clear about the failings and vulnerabilities of science to ideological appropriation. Nevertheless, I have the impression that he thinks that science alone should direct our quest for understanding and knowledge. He claims that ethical discussions are for the laboratory and not for ‘the intellectual posturings of academics who aren’t really involved, but enjoy a scrap on social media.’ He understandably has no time for ‘navel-gazing semantic pseudo-philosophy,’ but nowhere is there a suggestion that he respects the contribution that disciplines such as philosophy, psychology and even – dare I say it? – theology, might make to this vitally important area of knowledge and ethics.
Despite these reservations, this is an important book. It shows how a seemingly marginal idea can poison a culture with devastating consequences. Dominic Cummings’ flirtation with modern-day eugenicists rightly gets attention. Rutherford cites the case of Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, who was jailed for violating Chinese law and international agreements when he genetically altered embryonic twins in a doomed attempt to give them resistance to HIV (nobody knows how the twins are today). This should alert us to the fact that the improbability of success doesn’t prevent scientists from dangerous experiments. It might be true, as Rutherford claims, that ‘Eugenics is a busted flush, a pseudoscience that cannot deliver on its promise,’ but this book is a reminder of why we must remain vigilant.
Like the ideology of eugenics, the science of genetics is sometimes justified by the belief that suffering is always to be avoided and happiness is always to be pursued. Yet as Rutherford points out, the most effective way to reduce suffering is through the alleviation of poverty and access to education. A thought that was forming in my own mind as I read was satisfyingly addressed towards the end of the book: ‘none of the worst crimes of humanity … was perpetrated by people with Downs syndrome. … If we truly wanted to reduce the sum total of human suffering then we should eradicate the powerful, for wars are fought by people but started by leaders.’ -
Adam Rutherford again succeeds with this accessible introduction to the history of Eugenics as developed by 19th century scientists spearheaded by the likes of Francis Galton, providing both the global and historical context of population control (infanticide has been a feature of civilisations for thousands of years for example), as well as then providing a pop-sci primer of the actual science of genetics today.
The history covers not only the long-standing presence of the idea of manipulating a population, to 'breed' it better well before the 19th century, but also reveals just how widespread and mainstream the notion was. Emerging around the time Darwin was revealing the story of evolution by natural selection, the principle of being able to select traits to improve a nation were intuitively accepted not only by scientists but politicians too, though there was no neat dividing line between left and right, religious or not. This new idea gave a pseudo-scientific rationale to 'strengthening the stock'. If it worked for animals, then it could work for humans.
This was also a climate and context where those with undesirable qualities, particularly in terms of mental health were already being ghettoised, and locked up in asylums for being different. Sterilisation programmes were an extension of this idea, and they even took off in the US, where by the 1930s 30 states had legislated in favour of it. In the UK, advocates were pushing for it, not least a younger Winston Churchill. Events overtook plans to legislate, but the climate was still broadly supportive. It would take the horrors of the Nazi extermination policies for people to re-think their support for this principle (though even then, withdrawing from Eugenics as a concept, would still take many years for some individuals and institutions).
Part two, then gets into the nuts and bolts of the actual science, and critiques the complete lack of rigour involved in those earlier efforts. Rutherford writes so eloquently and engagingly on the subject, you can fly through the book in a couple of days. It is targeting people like me, and not those of a more scientifically literate base. Acronyms and names of genes are kept to a minimum, as his focus in dealing with the broader historical and moral issues surrounding this topic, he wants you to understand it wasn't an isolated phenomenon, that it, in varying guises has been part of most societies that have ever existed, and that misunderstandings of genetic developments and nonsense headlines "Scientists have found the gene for Schizophrenia!" etc having created anxieties and concerns over some dystopian future of designer babies. This is therefore an excellent corrective to those apprehensions, whilst an educational and informative study of the topic in it's broader context. -
This is a good book on a difficult topic ("difficult" depending on your definition of eugenics - that of the author is nuanced) that sometimes felt brought down by superficiality; I think the book would have been much improved had it been twice as long and twice as in depth as it was. Specifically, I wish it would have discussed the sexism that existed in eugenics policies in more detail than it did.
"And perhaps Fitzgerald got from Stoddard to Goddard by splicing in a G from Madison Grant, who wrote the introduction to The Rising Tide of Color." This is a fantastic sentence lol
"All these people and so many others of cultural and historical significance were great supporters of an idea we have learned to despise. A common response to this truth is that they were women and men 'of their time'. This is vapid. All people are of their time, and it is impossible to be alive at any other time. It is perfectly possible and indeed desirable to criticize the past, and to criticize the views of people in the past through the lens of our values and those of their contemporaries. That is the definition of history. Hitler was a man of his time, and was legitimately (albeit among political chaos) appointed to the position of German chancellor in 1933. Too often, the argument that the past was a foreign country where people did things differently, and that they were simply acting appropriately for that area, is deployed to end or avoid discussion and debates, or to reinforce a cultural history that serves only to make the powerful feel comfortable. If you wish to understand the past and its legacies, then it is not good enough to simply exonerate people's acts because times were different. It's a specious attempt to gloss over difficult subjects. Crucially of course, the views and cultural norms of past times were not universally held, just as they are not today."
"Commenting on the backlash that this proposal [to specifically include polyandry in marriage laws, which already permitted polygyny] engendered, an academic who specializes in polygamy named Collis Machoko told the BBC: 'African societies are not ready for true equality. We don't know what to do with women we cannot control.'" -
The use of science towards immoral goals has been a contentious but regular fixture for humanity; when it comes to ethics, few pursuits are as damning as eugenics. Through a blend of history, science and sociology, Adam Rutherford’s Control analyses eugenics in a detailed and highly succinct manner, the UCL professor examining multiple topics and blending them together.
Split into two parts, the book looks through the history of the study and why it still matters today. In many ways, more often for ill, eugenics has steered our species in sinister directions from colonialism to the Nazis in World War Two. Through the use of historical figures . The tone is consistently unfiltered and honest, aiming to home in on key events and how they shaped the western world. For example Francis Galton and his book “Hereditary Genius”; the way Galton ranked and classed differing races by superiority would be considered both ignorant and racist by modern standards, but at the time of its publishing in the 1800s, it obtained broader recognition from the masses.
This mainstreaming of eugenics creates a bigger picture, a timeline of how deceitful ideas became a guiding focus of governments and tyrants. Control doesn’t shy away from darker events such as forced sterilisation, making it a difficult read at times. The recent science behind the human genome is particularly important as we now have access to technologies that can alter or “correct” defects in DNA. What does this mean for eugenics in the modern day? Despite the horrors of the 1940s, we’re still a long way from abandoning this genocidal idea and Rutherford encourages us to question what form it could take in the 21st Century.
Recommended?
YES: Through a compact and well realised argument, Control charts the rise and fall of eugenics in human history, highlighting its damage and its potential for evil. Rutherford discusses the issue confidently, tying his perspective closely to modern science. Could the infamous, unethical concept rear its ugly head again? These implications are the final morsel of an already intriguing book -
Say the word “eugenics,” and most people’s minds immediately drift towards World War II and the atrocities that the Nazi’s brought to bear on those they had deemed “undesirable.” And you might think that the idea of eugenics has been tucked away in our distance past and forgotten.
Not so fast. In fact, I just read an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association published October 07, 2022 that specifically discussed the “stigma and exclusion of individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) within medicine, social services, public health, and society have a long history that persists to this day. The practices of eugenics and institutionalization were state-sanctioned and used within the US throughout much of the 20th century to remove persons with IDD from the population through forced sterilization and placement in institutions. These movements received widespread support at the time, including from leading medical and public health authorities.” [JAMA October 7, 2022. doi:
10.1001/jama.2022.18500]
As you can see, the notion of eugenics is still alive and well.
And this brings me to the book, Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics. I was familiar with eugenics as espoused in the United States, as I was researching it for a story I was outlining, but I wasn’t as familiar as I thought with the origins of the “theory.”
Without getting too far down the rabbit hole, eugenics can be traced back to Sir Francis Galton and his fascination with his cousin Charles Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, specifically, the discussion of animal breeding. Galton used his vast intellect to research various aspects of human dynamics and attempt to codify them mathematically.
Those who followed in his eugenics and mathematical footsteps improved on his statistical techniques and those methods are still in use today, such as standard deviation, regression, correlation, etc.
I found this book fascinating and an easy read. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the subject of eugenics, especially the eugenics movement in the United Kingdom. Others who are interested in population statistics may find themselves engrossed with the uncomfortable origins of eugenics.
This is a book worth reading because the notion of eugenics won’t simply fade away.
5/5 stars
[Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the advanced ebook copy in exchange for my honest and objective opinion which I have given here.] -
I am pleased I read this book. I am not a scientist and I learnt a lot. The rather grudging score is due to two things.
There is something about the style that doesn't engage me, especially after just having read magnificent Entangle Life. I suppose it is clear enough but also a little rushed and at best journalistic.
The second caveat is about his initial section on history. There is a lot about the great early founders of genetics that is important but less interesting to me. The sections on the wide spread influence of eugenics in society and politics in the first half of the last century feel sketchy. Though he is certainly pretty direct about Churchill.
The second section of Control seemed much stronger to me where Rutherford with great clarity dismisses hacks such as Toby Young and errant scientists and talks compellingly about homosexuality, schizophrenia and Downs Syndrome.
So please dismiss my picky remarks about style and read this important book. -
A brilliant and disturbing book which surveys the past and present of arguments and actions to 'improve the human stock' by selective breeding, culling and genetic manipulation. Not only does it detail the scientific and genetic reasons why these efforts are naive and doomed to failure, but also takes a firm stand on why they are morally abhorrent.
Tracing the eugenics movement, he draws a direct line from Huxley and Galton to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. This argument is not fanciful. The first Nazi sterilisation laws in 1933 were based on laws already enacted in 33 US States.
Digest that.
Fancy selective breeding for intelligence? Then decide which and how you will manipulate the 709 human genes associated with it. Far easier to give everyone a good education, maybe.
A vital, humane read.
