The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked:
Jeremiah 17:9
"We must never forget:
Eugenics is a well-known low point in the modern history of science. In the United States, from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s, credence was given to this pseudoscience focused on the
notional ‘improvement’ of human populations by halting the reproduction of supposedly lesser genes. Less well known is the story of how US law rendered eugenics intellectually respectable across the world, supporting programmes from Canada to Sweden. Ultimately, this egregious failing led to the enforced sterilization of at least 60,000 US citizens, and was used by the Nazi regime to justify its own programme of sterilization and, later, extermination.
Americans tend to blame Hitler alone; how many realize the guilt of American scientists in what happened? Eugenics was alive and well in the United States long before Hitler took it to extremes. Nourse says that America bears guilt for making it “intellectually respectable” around the world." CEH
