Scandinavian eugenics: Nordic historians provide new approaches
by
Zylberman P.
CERMES, Inserm U.502, Campus CNRS, 7,
rue Guy-Môquet,
94801 Villejuif, France.
zylberma@vjf.cnrs.fr
Med Sci (Paris). 2004 Oct;20(10):916-25

ABSTRACT

Late disclosure of the large scale of sterilization practices in the Nordic countries created an outburst of scandal: did these policies rely on coercion? To what extent? Who in the end was responsible? Sterilization practices targeted underpriviledged people first. The mentally retarded and women were their first victims. Operations were very frequently determined by other people's manipulative or coercive influences. Should the blame be put on the Social-Democrats in power throughout the period (except in Finland and Estonia)? Apart from Denmark, perhaps, local physicians and local services, more than governments, seemed to have strongly supported sterilization practices. Teetotalers and feminists shared responsibilities. How can one explain that eugenics finally declined? Based on a sound application of the Hardy-Weinberg law, the science of the eugenicists was correct. Was it politics? But uncovering of the Nazi crimes had only a very small impact on eugenics. Some authors underline the fact that the Nordic scientific institutions were particularly suited to liberal values. Others point to the devastating effect on eugenics once hereditarist psychiatry fell from favour in the middle of the sixties.

Japan
Finland
Hungary
Switzerland
Eugenics talk
Reprogenetics
Liberal Eugenics
Private eugenics
Personal genomics
Japanese eugenics
Hungarian eugenics
Psychiatric genetics
Ashkenazi intelligence
The literature of eugenics
Selecting potential children
Artificial insemination and eugenics
Francis Galton and contemporary eugenics
Gene therapy and performance enhancement
The commercialisation of pre-natal enhancement
Biologising social problems under the banner of eugenics

Refs
and further reading

HOME
Resources
Wireheading
BLTC Research
nootropic.com
Superhappiness?
Utopian Surgery?
The Good Drug Guide
The Abolitionist Project
The Hedonistic Imperative
The Reproductive Revolution
MDMA: Utopian Pharmacology
Critique of Huxley's Brave New World