The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research and the Organized International Eugenics Movement. Expertise, authority, transnational networks and international organization in Norwegian genetics and eugenics (1919–1934)

The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research played a key role in the rise of genetics as a research field in Norway. The immediate background of its establishment in 1919 was the need for an organization that could clarify scientific issues regarding eugenics and coordinate Norwegian representation in the organized international eugenics movement. The Association never assumed this role. Instead, Norway was represented in the international eugenics movement by the so-called Norwegian Consultative Eugenics Commission, whose leader, Jon Alfred Mjøen, was dismissed as a pseudo-scientist by Norwegian geneticists. The paper explores the Association’s role in defining and delimiting scientific expert knowledge in the field of genetics and eugenics in Norway. It demonstrates how struggles about academic authority on the national arena were intertwined with struggles about representation and impact in the international eugenics movement and how transnational scientific networks where mobilized to legitimize and delegitimize notions about Nordic race supremacy, racial mixing and the politics of eugenic sterilizations.

R.A. Fisher, eugenics, and the campaign for family allowances in interwar Britain

Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890–1962) is today remembered as a giant of twentieth-century statistics, genetics and evolutionary theory. Alongside his influential scientific contributions, he was also, throughout the interwar years, a prominent figure within Britain's eugenics movement. This essay provides a close examination of his eugenical ideas and activities, focusing particularly upon his energetic advocacy of family allowances, which he hoped would boost eugenic births within the more ‘desirable’ middle and upper classes. Fisher's proposals, which were grounded in his distinctive explanation for the decay of civilizations throughout human history, enjoyed support from some influential figures in Britain's Eugenics Society and beyond. The ultimate failure of his campaign, though, highlights tensions both between the eugenics and family allowances movements, and within the eugenics movement itself. I show how these social and political movements represented a crucial but heretofore overlooked context for the reception of Fisher's evolutionary masterwork of 1930, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, with its notorious closing chapters on the causes and cures of national and racial decline.

From Gene-Edited Baby to Cyborg Soldier: On the Limits to New Biotechnology by the Eugenics Movement

"Biotechnology for Health and Human Performance (BHPC) of the U.S. DOD recently released a research report titled “Cyborg Soldier 2050: Human/Machine Fusion and the Impact for the Future of the DOD”. In this report, Emanuel et al. predicted that ocular and auditory enhancements, muscular control through bodysuit, and neural enhancement of human brain will be feasible before 2050. And not so long ago, the world’s first Gene-edited twins LuLu and NaNa were made by a Chinese Scientist, who was sentenced and fined by the Chinese Government in December 2019, claims that these babies are now immune to the HIV virus. While the biotechnological breakthroughs show the potentials that humans can have different lives than we have now, it’s also worrisome for those unforeseen disadvantages of bio-inventions will cost human too much and too soon, before we have the abilities to stop it. Along with the developments of biotechnology, it’s not surprised that new bio-inventions will emerge and go beyond our imagination. But, the “artificial selection” character of these bio-inventions also reminds us of the Eugenics Movement which happened only a century ago. In this article, I’ll discuss these two bio-inventions by reviewing the Eugenics Movement. First, I’ll brief the cases of Gene-edited Baby and the CRISPR technology as well. Second, I’ll introduce the Cyborg Soldier and BHPC’s report. Third, I’ll talk about the Eugenic Movement and its consequences. Fourth, I’ll analyze these two bio-inventions from the historical perspectives of the Eugenic Movement. Finally, I will summarize and conclude this article. "

Time and time again: the reincarnations of coerced sterilisation

The recently reported cases of coerced sterilisation of women at a privately operated immigration detention facility in the USA are egregious in their disregard for human dignity and professional ethics, but sadly not surprising. These abuses represent a continuation of efforts to control the reproductive capacity of women, fueled by racist and xenophobic motives. Physicians helped create and legitimise the pseudoscientific framework for the eugenics movement, which would implement forceful sterilisation as its tool of choice to eliminate undesirable traits that were thought to be biologically inherited and predominant among racial and ethnic minorities. Although state-endorsed forcible sterilisation programs have ended, incarcerated women have remained particularly vulnerable to sterilisation abuse. The intersectional vulnerabilities of racism, xenophobia and carcerality must be addressed to prevent such abuses from recurring.

The Rhetorical Biopower of Eugenics: Understanding the Influence of British Eugenics on the Nazi Program

The relationship between the British and Nazi eugenics movements has been underexamined, largely because of the more obvious ties between the American and Nazi programs and the lack of a state-sponsored program in Britain. This article revisits this gap to reinsert the British eugenics movement into the historiography of the Nazi program by way of their shared rhetoric. To do this, I employ Foucault’s concepts of biopower and power/knowledge, arguing that biopower exists in rhetorical constructions of power and identity, which the eugenics movements employed at national and individual levels to garner support and participation, particularly from women. The article is not an exhaustive account of the rhetorical overlaps between the two movements, but rather serves as a model of how one might understand eugenics as a rhetoric of biopower.

Nurse, Mother, Midwife

This chapter explores Native women’s childbearing experiences during the 1930s through the life story of a single woman: Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail. Yellowtail, born on the Crow Reservation, became one of the first Native American registered nurses and worked briefly at the government hospital on her reservation. Through her experiences as an employee and a patient, Yellowtail became aware of inadequate obstetrics practices at the hospital. Specifically, she alleged that she and other Crow women underwent involuntary sterilization procedures within hospital walls. The chapter places Yellowtail’s experiences within the context of the contemporary eugenics movement. It also documents Yellowtail’s multifaceted response to these injustices, which included a decades-long midwifery practice.

Life Worth More Than Life

The “normal (i.e., rational) man” ideal that fueled the eugenics movement has found its way into current (both religious and “non-speciesist”) ethics. The situation examined in this chapter is one in which a sovereign knower determines moral worth based on a “double-body” standard.