ID# 2319:
"Sterilization for Ten Million Americans," by J.H. Kempton, Journal of Heredity (vol. 25), review of L. Whitney's Case for Sterilization
Date:
1934
Pages: (1|2|3|4)
Source:
Cold Spring Harbor, ,

&quote;Sterilization for Ten Million Americans,&quote; by J.H. Kempton, <i>Journal of Heredity</i> (vol. 25), review of L. Whitney's <i>Case for Sterilization</i>

A Case for Sterilization 417 all the original colonists were able men and that our present population of feeble-minded is wholly due to the selective abilities of Continental officials. If the author is to be believed our immigrants from rather early times were carefully handpicked from the least desirable elements of the European populations. Whether or not the first settlers were genetically superior to the later comers neither Mr. Whitney nor any one else knows. Probably the truth is that our migrating forbears were those who couldn't adjust themselves at home and preferred matching their wits with a primitive race to competing with their betters. As a whole they hardly could be considered as representing the cream of the European germ-plasm. Of particular interest to readers of the JOURNAL OF HEREDITY is the author's discussion of three articles that appeared in Vols. 8 and 18, one by E.M. East, another by R.A. Fisher and the third a brief letter from Leonard Darwin calling attention to Fisher's calculations. It seems that Mr. Whitney takes issue with these authors chiefly because, for purposes of simplicity of calculation and to err on the right side, they adopt the assumption that feeble-mindednes is determined by a single pair of genes and that normal parents may produce feeble-minded offspring. "All were based not on facts but on an assumption, all argued about a very large if." It si difficult to understand the author's objections to all of these articles. From Mr. Whitney's standpoint it would be hard to discuver a serious contribution more in favor of his position than that of Fisher yet he will have none of it. He prefers to visit the schools for feeble-minded and ask the authorities how many of the pupils have normal parents. When he discovers they are "very few indeed" he concludes: No, I can not place any faith, on the basis of all the evidence I have been able to collect, in the theory that feeble-mindedness is a simple Mendelian problem, a trait produced by a single pair of recessive genes--in other words, not inherited from a line of feeble-mindedness. There is no case known in which a pair of feeble-minded parents themselves the offspring of feeble-minded, have produced a normal child; nor is there, to my knowledge, any record of any pair of feeble-minded persons who have come from normal parents and who have married and produced normal offspring since when such persons are born of normal parents the latter see to it that their offspring do not marry. This paragraph is about as perfect an example of an author's savagely biting himself as is likely to be found anywhere, and contains nothing whatever in conflict with the hypothesis that feeble-mindedness is a simple Mendelian recessive. Neither does it have much value as evidence that feeble-mindedness is conditioned by a number of factors. There are the customary chapters on the Jukes, the Kallikaks, and a few others and several little tales in the style of the Russian primer. Two chapters are devoted to commonly expressed objections and these are disposed of to Mr. Whitney's satisfaction. Since the author's position "...is not that of the scientist of earlier days who was supposed to collect facts and was not expected to publish views he had derived from them except in learned scientific monographs that could hardly reach the people" we need not devote ourselves to the scientific aspects of this book. Interest may be focused directly on the probable effect of this propaganda. Now sterilization has an unpleasant sound of finality to the man in the street, being associated in his mind with the loss of his prize possession. Since for ages past the only surgical method of sterilization has been to convert males to nueters it is going to take skillful effort to persuade the male population to take an active interest in the question. No man worthy of remaining unsterilized is likely to leave to his Government and

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