Science: Eugenics for Democracy

Many a sociologist and historian used to agree with Paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn that Anglo-Saxons were God’s special gift to earth. Osborn was a leading eugenist in the days when many believed that the “unfit” should be weeded out rather than cared for under public health measures which coddled weaklings, allowed them to reproduce, ultimately lead to an inferior stock. While these ideas have occasionally furnished fodder for opponents of public housing, relief, the New Deal, the only places where they are still flourishing today are Nazi Germany and Italy. Long before Henry Osborn died in 1935, a new generation was hard at work knocking them down.

Among the leaders of the new, environmental eugenics is Frederick Osborn of Manhattan, 51-year-old nephew of the late Henry Fairfield. A onetime banker and railroad executive (president of Detroit, Toledo and Ironton R. R.), Frederick Osborn by 1928 decided to devote his energies to something he liked. Having discussed many times the problems of heredity with his uncle, he took it up seriously, is now a director of the American Eugenics Society. Last week, in his Preface to Eugenics (Harper; $2.75), Mr. Osborn presented the scientific evidence to demolish the last remnants of his uncle’s fancy.

Heredity & Environment. There is no evidence that any racial group or social class has more native intelligence than any other. There are more variations in heredity among individuals of a group than among any social or racial groups. Children tend to be like their parents in hereditary capacity; if their endowments are weak, not even a college education can make them bright. “In the limited environments of isolated and marginal people,” said Mr. Osborn, “good hereditary capacities do not have a chance to develop as they would in a better environment. An environment equalized at a higher level would show up a superior heredity in great numbers of persons now at a low level of development.”

Genetic Inheritance. In the U. S. an estimated three to five million people suffer from serious incapacities (feeblemindedness, mental disease, blindness, deafness, etc.) for which their heredity is in part responsible. Persons carrying these traits may come from the most privileged or most underprivileged groups in society. Mr. Osborn points out that, contrary to popular belief, the rate of reproduction among the mentally afflicted is quite low. However, he believes that doctors should sterilize the feebleminded. He claims that absolute prevention of births in this group would lead to a reduction of at least 10% in a generation. Twenty-nine States now have sterilization laws. (The necessary operation does not preclude sexual relations.) But he is against compulsory sterilization for any other persons. Doctors should be educated to urge voluntary sterilization of persons known to be carriers of serious hereditary defects. Voluntary population control, he believes, is as much an earmark of sound eugenics as it is of Democracy. Genetic tools in the hands of dictatorial power, applied to the breeding of specific kinds of men and women, are dangerous and “not eugenic.”

U. S. Trends. Because the U. S. still has a disproportionate number of young people, the country will still have an excess of births over deaths for a number of years. At present births are somewhat above replacement level. But since the trend in the birth rate has been downward for the past hundred years, in a generation births will be from 20 to 35% under re placement level. The elements of a popu lation program are contained in the Gov ernment’s interest in public education, housing, recreation facilities, health & welfare organizations — all of which lessen the economic burden of having children. But these programs are all uncoordinated. Because “in an industrial society large families lead inevitably to lower levels of living for all but a few favored parents,” Frederick Osborn believes the only sound population policy stresses “freedom of parenthood” — freedom not to have chil dren unless they are wanted, and freedom (with the aid of services rendered to mothers and children by the State) for responsible parents to have children with out their being an economic burden.

Last week, Frederick Osborn started a new job: $1-a-year population consultant for the Division of Statistical Standards. In Washington, his work will consist of determining the effect of such govern mental innovations as Rural Resettlement, TVA. First problem: Do improved en vironments stimulate birth rates?