Eugenia na América I

•In 1933, Paul Popenoe boasted that eugenic sterilization laws obtained in jurisdictions comprising 150 million people (Kevles, 1995, p. 115).

• Eugenic ideas were influential in nearly all non-Catholic western countries and in many others besides.

–Canada (McLaren, 1990), France (Schneider, 1990), Japan (Suzuki, 1975), Russia (Adams, 1990), Scandinavian countries (Broberg and Roll-Hansen, 1996), Romania (Bucur, 2002), Latin America (Stepan, 1991) and China (Dikotter, 1992)

•American eugenic science, before the 1930s, was, especially among elites, popular and respectable, signaled high-mindedness, and possessed real scientific authority.

•It was also supported by leading figures in the newly emerging science of genetics; defections begin only in the late 1920s

–Thomas Hunt Morgan (Nobel in Medicine 1933); Raymond Pearl

•In 1928, 376 US college courses were dedicated to the subject of eugenics

•Searchlights on Health, the Science of Eugenics, sold one million copies in the first two years of its publication

•The American Eugenics Society, co-founded by Irving Fisher to educate Americans on the virtues of eugenics, set up instructional pavilions and staged “fitter family” competitions at state agricultural fairs.