Has eugenics faded
away with time, or has the pseudo science morphed and cloaked itself
under new auspices? Were some of the original founders of population
control efforts themselves eugenicists? How and when did eugenicists
shift from Galton era ideals to Malthusian population control? The history of eugenics is
incredibly detailed and expansive, but there are certain issues that
are not given as much attention as others. This article attempts to
answer these questions and provide a wider perspective on these
important issues.
From quality control to
quantity control
While there are examples of eugenics still in practice in its pre WWII form,
eugenicists were forced to scale back rhetoric and reframe their
ideas in the post WWII world. Hitler's actions embarrassed
eugenicists in America enough for them to at least publicly change
their ideas.
China currently has Galton-era eugenics laws on the books which
only allow pre-approved couples to marry and have children. The
Law of the People's Republic of China
on Maternal and Infant Health Care states that if the
approved couples children are deemed to be inferior they are to be
terminated. [1]
The United States was the first to
enact eugenic sterilization laws in the state of Indiana in 1907. By
the mid 1930's, 34 states had passed mandatory sterilization laws.
Many of the laws remained active as late as 1974. Eugenics
officially ended, yet remained.
Dr. David C. Reardon has
documented the shift to population control among eugenicists in
chapter five of his work in progress, The Eugenics Connection:
Shapers of Humanity. He writes regarding the earlier eugenic
practices in the United States,
"During the early 1930's,
eugenics reached the height of its popularity in pre-World war
II America. It was during this period, when their political
power was greatest, that eugenicists and Neo-Malthusians became
increasingly radical in their demands to eliminate the 'unfit,'
whom they called a "race of chronic paupers, a race parasitic
upon the community." The eugenic weapons to be used in this
'war
between races' were increasingly coercive and destructive. In
1932, at the Third International congress of Eugenics held in
New York City, proposals were made to prevent the 'further
dilution of the American gene pool' by those who possessed
'inferior genes' through segregation, sterilization, birth
control, abortion and even infanticide." [2]
Reardon then documents the discrediting
of eugenics and the toning down of rhetoric coming from its
supporters. One of the factors
cited by Reardon which dampened enthusiasm was the targeting of
upper classes for sterilization due to their financial dethroning as
a result of the great depression. Reardon writes,
"Suddenly, many of those in
the upper and middle-classes, who had previously judged
hereditary 'unfitness' on the basis of economic poverty, now
found themselves impoverished. These 'new poor' feared that the
selection of the 'unfit' might be confused. Finding themselves
labeled 'the aristocracy of the unfit' by eugenicists, they
feared that they might be the ones to suffer from
compulsory sterilization, not just the "truly unfit."
[3]
Frederick Henry Osborn (1889—1981)
James Lovelock, a prominent
environmental activist, recently made headlines with his comments on
what he calls imminent environmental calamity. Interestingly, Lovelock stated that the world faces
an environmental crisis largely brought on by over-population in which he would like to see "the best of
our species" survive.
[4]
This brings us to the post WWII
era of eugenics. Eugenicists who still held on to the discredited
principles of eugenics now attached these ideas to environmentalism and
population control in an attempt to carry on eugenics in a more
veiled form. Malthusian population control was now emphasized.
The Rockefellers and the
Osborns
An important point to be made when
covering these issues is that the very same families who had
previously funded and popularized eugenics in America prior to World War II
shifted their resources into funding and promoting population
reduction and control in the post WWII era.
Several prominent families are
responsible for funding and promoting eugenics in America, namely
the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman, and Osborn families. Two families, the
Rockefellers and the Osborns, are particularly significant. John D.
Rockefeller Sr. contributed a large amount of money to build the
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the early 1900's, which housed the
Eugenics Records Office from 1910-1944.
Rockefeller influence also spread overseas to Germany, where the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry, and the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute for Eugenics, Anthropology and Human Heredity resided.
Much of the money used to run these facilities came from Rockefeller.
[5] These institutes became centers for Nazi eugenics programs
during the reign of Adolf Hitler.
The influence of the Rockefeller
family continued in 1945 when John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the
land upon which the United Nations stands in New York City. The U.N.
plays an important roll in population control, a subject which will
be covered shortly. Watch the video below to see former New York
Mayor Rudolf Giuliani introduce a short documentary regarding
Rockefeller's influence in the founding of the U.N.
In 1952, John D.
Rockefeller the 3rd, the oldest son of Rockefeller Jr., founded the Population Council. The
organizations stated goal is to seek "...better understanding of
problems relating to population."
[6] The first president of the
Council was Frederick Henry Osborn, who was appointed by John D.
Rockefeller himself. Osborn was a prominent eugenicist who helped
found the American Eugenics Society, now called The Society for the
Study of Social Biology. Osborn headed the AES from
1946-1952, when he began to place greater emphasis on population
control, signaling the shift of post WWII eugenicists. [7]
Osborn wrote in his 1968 book The Future of Human Heredity that "Eugenic goals are most likely to be
attained under another name than eugenics."
Frederick Henry Osborn's nephew,
Henry Fairfield Osborn, carried on the banner of population control.
His 1948 book Our Plundered Planet covers many of the
issues that environmentalists are concerned with today. Osborn states
in the book that over-population
will destroy the planet and that drastic measures must be taken to
curtail population growth. He takes a moment to reflect on the
savage nature of his outlined proposal, but states that it will have
to be done. He writes,
"Of course, as we all know,
these are momentous days and many things can happen to check
population growth, even including the devastating use of atomic
bombs in a new war. It is difficult to adjust one's mind to the
possibility that the present negotiations between nations could
fail to prevent such a savage denial of the right to human
existence, and that the problem of the pressure of increasing
populations - perhaps the greatest problem facing humanity today
- cannot be solved in a way that is consistent with humanity."
[8]
Steven C. Rockefeller, a fourth
generation member of the family, has remained dedicated to the
family's history of philanthropy and promotion of population
control. He played a central role in the writing of the United
Nations Earth Charter, and chaired the Earth Charter International
Drafting Committee from 1997 to 2000. He is currently a member of
the Earth Charter Commission.
[9] Echoing past writings of
Osborn and others, he stated in an interview at Tilburg University
in the Netherlands that,
"Third, the Earth Charter
recognizes that the dramatic rise in human population is putting
great pressure on the resilience of ecological systems and has
overburdened social and economic systems." [10]
The Earth Charter itself says, "An
unprecedented rise in human population has overburdened ecological
and social systems. The foundations of global security are
threatened. These trends are perilous but not inevitable."
Others
involved in the post WWII shift
Before we look at recent examples
of population reduction being funded and carried out, there are
other prominent individuals who played an important role in this
shift from eugenics to population control.
Frank Notestein was one of the
most prominent individuals who made the study of population an
institutional practice. His bio summarizes his
numerous memberships, which include the American Eugenics Society.
"He was a member of the
American Eugenics Society, the American Philosophical Society,
the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Statistical
Institute, the International Union for the Scientific Study of
Population, the Population Association of America, and the
Century Association." [11]
Notestein also served as president
of John D. Rockefeller's Population Council after Frederick Osborn
stepped down. He was also the first director of the United Nations
Population Division from 1946-1948.
In a 1969 paper written by Notestein titled The Problem of Population Control,
he outlines a strategy to depopulate target populations. Notestein
admits that economic modernization would "...bring the birthrate
down automatically." However, he goes on to state that more drastic
measures must be taken because in his opinion this method would not
be fast enough. He writes,
"Given existing
preferences in family size, governments must go beyond voluntary
family planning. To achieve zero rate of
population growth governments will have to do more than cajole;
they will have to coerce."
"...to impose more drastic changes on a large scale
implies many risks, not least to the regime that undertakes
them. The price for this type of population control may well be
the institution of a totalitarian regime." [12]
Another individual, Guy Irving
Burch, who wrote for Margaret Sanger's Birth
Control Review publication, also played a key role. Burch's 1947 book Human Breeding and
Survival combines the ideas of both eugenics and population
control. He writes,
"It appears what the United
Nations needs to do is to recommend to all nations that adoption
of laws which will... actually lead to the sterilization of all
persons who are inadequate, either biologically or socially, and
encourage the voluntary sterilization of normal persons who have
had their share of children."
Burch described plans for
attaining "peace goals" and national security objectives through
population control. Similar arguments and proposals are made in Henry Kissinger's later 1974 National
Security Study Memorandum 200, which was influenced by the 1944
Royal Commission on Population. Burch states that, "...
if we are willing to keep the focus on undesirable parentage... then
sterilization can play a rather large part in the attainment of the
peace goals..."
Richard C. Reardon writes again in
his Eugenics Connection work in progress regarding Burch,
pointing out the shift from Galton era eugenics to Malthusian
population control,
"The ideas of Galton were
becoming unpopular, so the ideas of Malthus needed to be
stressed. If the public could be made to believe in the need for
quantity control, they would again accept its logical extension
- quality control. So in 1940, while serving as director of his
Population Reference Bureau and the editor of its Population
Bulletin, Burch helped found another "population" front for
eugenicists - the Population Association of America." [13]
Population reduction operations
today
In 1989 research was conducted by
the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi India on the use
of 'carriers' such as Tetanus Toxoid and Diphtheria to bypass the
immune system and deliver the female hormone called human chorionic
gonadotrophin (hCG). The research paper was carried in
the Oxford University Press in 1990 and was titled "Bypass
by an alternate 'carrier' of acquired unresponsiveness to hCG upon
repeated immunization with tetanus-conjugated vaccine." [1]
While hCG is required to maintain
pregnancy, the injection of hCG bound to
Tetanus Toxoid triggers an auto-immune response, thus causing
sterilization.
The NII research cited above used four women as test subjects - who had been surgically
sterilized prior to the experiment - and found that multiple doses of the Tetanus Toxoid hCG
carrier vaccine was required in order to achieve the desired results. The research also found that if an
alternate carrier such as Diphtheria was used as a booster in
combination with Tetanus the sterilization vaccine would be more
effective.
The Rockefeller Foundation and the
Population Council are listed in the document as giving grants for the research.
Henry Kissinger's 1974
National Security Memorandum 200 document cites
"Injectable contraceptives for women" as a possible method of
population reduction and control. Depopulation, as stated in the
document, should be pursued because it would be in the "...economic
interests of the United States."
"Wherever a lessening of
population pressures... can increase
the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes
relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests of
the United States."
On November 4, 1996 the
publication Vaccine Weekly carried an article titled "Study
Suggests Women Were Injected with Contaminated Tetanus Vaccine." The
article details an investigation that was carried out by the
Philippine Medical Association into the discovery of hCG in tetanus
vaccines. While the article brands the vaccine as being
"contaminated", the Rockefeller funded research cited above
indicates that this is not a case of contamination. As reported,
"Have women in the
Philippines, and possibly elsewhere, surreptitiously been used
as guinea pigs in an international anti-fertility campaign?
A medical study in the
Philippines suggested that may well be the case. A study
conducted by the Philippine Medical Association on behalf of the
Philippine Department of Health revealed that almost 20 percent
of the tetanus vaccine sampled positive for the hormone human
chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), according to Human Life
International.
Vaccines containing the
hormone immunize women not only against tetanus but also against
pregnancy by inducing the body's immune system to attack the
hormone needed to bring an unborn child to term." [2]
Thailand is ripe with stories of miscarriages and sterilization.
According to the local population of the Akha, pregnant women are forced to receive
a tetanus vaccine in order
to get ID cards for their children. The vaccine often results with
violent miscarriages. In the video below, Matthew McDaniel, a human
rights activist who has been working with the Akha people of
Thailand,
speaks with two Akha women
about the forced Tetanus vaccine and the resulting miscarriages.
The current world-wide focus on
global warming takes us to another angle of present day population
control operations. China has boasted that their family planning
policies have cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 1.3 billion
tons, thus cutting their impact on supposed man-made global
warming. [3]
China's often brutal population
control policies have been supported by the Rockefeller enterprise.
The Washington Post reported on October 12, 2000 that the
Rockefeller Foundation had donated two million dollars to upgrade a
Chinese drug factory that produces the abortion drug RU-486. The
Washington Post reports,
"RU-486 has been a key
ingredient in China's population control strategy for years. Of
the estimated 10 million abortions performed annually in China,
about half are carried out with RU-486, said Gao Ersheng,
director of the Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood
Research." [4]
Ted Turner recently made headlines
when he stated that "voluntary" one child policies should be adopted
worldwide to slow population growth. "...we`ve got to stabilize population. On a voluntary basis,
everybody in the world has got to pledge to themselves that one or
two children is it," stated Turner. [5]
In
Australia proposals have been made to tax parents who have more than one
child. As CNS news reported,
"Having babies is bad for the
planet, and parents of more than two children should be charged
a birth levy and annual tax to offset the "greenhouse gases"
their child will be responsible for over his or her lifetime.
At the same time, those who use and prescribe contraceptives and
sterilization procedures should earn tax relief for such
greenhouse friendly services" that help to keep the population
size down." [6]
In a 1994 presentation before the
Business Council for the United Nations, David Rockefeller, son of John
D. Rockefeller Jr., took time to talk about
over-population as a threat to the environment. Rockefeller also said
that "...unrestrained economic growth poses further threats to our
environment."
Watch Rockefeller's presentation:
What you have read here is a
collection of a few of the major points in an expansive history.
Population control today - and the corresponding environmental
movements - grew out of the post WWII shift from eugenics to
Malthusian programs. The line connecting eugenicists to population
control is unmistakable. Population reduction is being used by the
elite as a weapon of war against competition, as an assurance of
continued domination.
Citation:
From quality control to
quantity control
[1] Law of the People's Republic
of China on Maternal and Infant Health Care. http://www.women.org.cn/english/english/laws/09.htm
[2] Reardon, David C. The
Eugenics Connection: Shapers of Humanity. Available in PDF
here
[3] Ibid.
[4] "We're all doomed! 40 years
from global catastrophe - and there's NOTHING we can do about it,
says climate change expert" Daily Mail. By Sarah Sands.
March 22, 2008. Available
here.
[5] "The horrifying roots of Nazi
Eugenics" History News Network. By Edwin Black. Nov. 24,
2003. Available
here
