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January 29, 2006

20th Century America

Currently listening to the audiobook version of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank, which got me interested in the 1927 United States Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell.

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)[1], was the United States Supreme Court ruling that upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded "for the protection and health of the state." It was largely seen as an endorsement of negative eugenics—the pseudoscience to improve the human race by eliminating "defectives" from the gene pool.

Writing for the majority, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said:

"We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind."

Charming.