A cautionary history of eugenics

Abstract

A century ago this week, 300 scientists, policy-makers, and campaigners gathered at the American Museum of Natural History in New York to discuss their work about heredity and eugenics—the political ideology designed to sculpt societies through biological methods of population control (the meeting was highlighted in Science a week later) . The aims of eugenics were to nurture the propagation of people deemed “desirable” and to reduce the number of “undesirable” or “defective” people, primarily through enforced sterilization. Although recognized as toxic now, back then, eugenics enjoyed popular and bipartisan support and would grow to be one of the defining ideas of the 20th century.