A warning about 'false science'

VICTORIA NOURSE (Visual Image Photography)

Law professor Victoria Nourse has long been fascinated by a relatively obscure case, Skinner v. Oklahoma, in which inmates from Oklahoma's McAlester prison challenged that state's 1935 sterilization laws. Twenty-seven other states had sterilization statutes aimed at those who were imprisoned, insane, deaf, blind, or otherwise deemed unsound, and thousands of Americans were involuntarily sterilized before the Supreme Court ruled the Oklahoma law unconstitutional in 1942. "In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near-Triumph of American Eugenics" (Norton, $24.95) is Nourse's riveting account of American eugenics at its height and of prison resistance that ended up in the Supreme Court.

Nourse, originally from Marblehead, spoke from her home in Wisconsin.

Q: Why did this case interest you?

A: It arrives in 1942, much earlier than it's thought the Supreme Court was aggressively invoking human rights. That's what started me on this search. When I looked up the original draft of the opinion and saw the reference to Hitler, I wanted to find out why the court put limits on Buck v. Bell, the 1927 case that confirmed a state's right to sterilize.

Q: The US was initially ahead of Nazi Germany in sterilization of its citizens?

A: That's correct. Sterilization statutes were propounded in the early part of the 20th century here and, although many state courts initially struck them down, there was a new wave of laws after Buck v. Bell. People may think that upon the announcement of Hitler's plan America stopped sterilizing. But we were the leader until 1934-35.

Q: How did Nazi eugenics influence American eugenics?

A: The Nazi plan at first invigorated American enthusiasts. One eugenics group in California, for example, took it as evidence that America needed to go further in that area. But most Americans didn't know that American sterilization laws existed. The statutes had been advanced by interest groups, mainly doctors, asylum heads. As the Nazi regime became more repressive, however, some experts in the US questioned the scientific basis for eugenics. There was an important 1936 report by the American Neurological Association that undercut its scientific legitimacy. The Nazis responded by telling the US, "You do this too, you were the eugenic leader and, by the way, you have lynching, racial segregation." That accusation became anathema by the 1940s.

Q: How did the Depression force the issue of sterilization?

A: There was no money. One way that asylum directors could reduce their populations was by sterilizing "safe" people and releasing them. By 1933-34 Oklahoma decided to enforce its sterilization laws. The governor also declared that criminals would avoid his state if they knew they could actually be sterilized as opposed to other states where the law existed but was never applied.

Q: How widespread did this become?

A: The numbers are very sketchy; the most reliable statistics we have are from asylums, because they sent records to the state legislatures. California had the most aggressive program and sterilized the highest number of people, mostly women. Gender was an important factor; transgressing gender roles meant that sterilization laws applied to male homosexuals as well.

Q: Is race central here?

A: I think it is. Any historian of science will agree that eugenics is about race. Lawyers, however, rarely think this case is racial, probably because most of those sterilized were white. If you were extremely poor you didn't even get into the asylum. In the South, for example, most African-Americans didn't. But remember, the idea of race at the time included southern Europeans and other immigrants who were considered subjects for sterilization because of "bad blood," "criminal tendencies." One study found that the majority of people coming off the boat, 60 percent of Jews, for example, were "morons." Of course, the tests required a knowledge of American culture that immigrants did not have.

Q: Did the 1942 Supreme Court decision end enforced sterilization in the US?

A: No. It continued for a very long time. I refer to a case in the 1980s where an African-American woman, a college graduate, sued because she was sterilized in this way. Basically they used consent to justify this in the asylums, the welfare offices. But the consent was often extorted, obtained by threats of restraints in asylums, of punishment, of expulsion from the welfare system

Q: What if the Supreme Court had upheld the Oklahoma law?

A: There would have been more violence in the prisons, for one thing. The prisoners in McAlester used violence, to keep the case alive. Sterilization in asylums would probably have increased as a way to save money. I shudder to think.

Q: What are you warning against?

A: The true problem is false genetics, false prediction. I'm thrilled by advances in genetic research, but I get nervous when I read about the "God gene" or the "gay gene" because I can't judge that as a scientific claim. I'm also warning against unanticipated consequences. Most geneticists were pro-eugenics, they believed in the power of their discoveries. Meanwhile eugenicists looked for the feebleminded and found them. There are risks of arrogance in science, but the real dangers lie in the popularization of false science, in convincing laypersons of the inevitability of traits that are contingent. Genetics is a science of probability, not fate.

Anna Mundow, a freelance journalist living in Central Massachusetts, is a correspondent for the Irish Times. She can be reached via e-mail at ama1668@hotmail.com.