The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea [Hardcover]

Elof A. Carlson (Author), Elof Carlson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0879695870 | ISBN-13: 978-0879695873 | Publication Date: June 15, 2001 | Edition: 1st

The Unfit, by Elof Carlson, explores the sources of a movement - negative eugenics - that was used to justify the Holocaust, which claimed millions of innocent lives in World War II. The title reflects the nearly three centuries of belief that some people are socially unfit by virtue of a defective biology, and echoes an earlier theory of degeneracy, dating to biblical antiquity, in which some people were deemed unfit because of some transgression against religious law. The author presents the first biological theory of degeneracy - onanism - and then follows the development of degeneracy theory throughout the nineteenth century and its application to a variety of social classes. The key intellectual theories and their proponents form the framework of this exploration, which includes the concepts of evolution and heredity and how they were applied to social problems. These ideas are followed into the twentieth century with the development of theories of positive and negative eugenics, the establishment of compulsory sterilization laws, racism and anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. This story of misapplied science and technology is one that still haunts humanity in the twenty-first century. The ghost of eugenics recurs in many guises during debates and controversies about intelligence testing, genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, gene therapy, new reproductive strategies, and uses of our genomic information. Carlson ends his discussion of the history of humanity in this arena with an exploration of the future of genetics that is based on new technologies and application of the Human Genome Project findings, as well as a discussion of the death of the old eugenics and of the problems that will not go away, including our ambivalence about our own biology.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

I am going to say it clearly and succinctly: this brand-new book is one of the most important scholarly works of the year. Seeking to understand why some people were poor, homeless, criminally inclined, mentally ill, and in other ways socially inadequate, 19th-century theorists turned to the science of eugenics, the concept of genetically unfit people. This stunning book is an exploration of the profound contemporary resonance of this concept and how it directly contributed to such persecutions as the Holocaust.

Certain individuals were judged "degenerate" as early as biblical times, and the condition was viewed as a punishment for religious transgression. Noted author Elof Axel Carlson traces the idea that degeneracy was biologically determined and shows how the social application of the label changed throughout the last century as the new academic discipline of sociology emerged. Carlson describes the failures and abuses of the social movements in the United States and Europe with their sorry history of racism, anti-Semitism, and violations of basic human rights.

Carlson writes beautifully, but I want to warn readers that this is not a book to be looked at lightly. It probably couldn't have the power it does if it did not include the wealth of illustrations and extensive notes, but it is indeed a serious study of this disturbing science. As Carlson writes in his Introduction, "Readers of this book may feel uncomfortable, as I certainly did, when they realize that there is a lot of mythology associated with the origins of the eugenics movement. It is embarrassing to see many strange bedfellows in the development of the idea of unfit people, and it should give us pause if we believe that the Holocaust could have been predicted from its earliest roots." I shivered when I read that statement. --Charles Decker

From The New England Journal of Medicine

The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea is a valuable contribution to historical scholarship relating to the eugenics movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Carlson recounts some of the familiar episodes described in several other books on eugenics published in the past two decades, but he also provides a broader perspective on the topic. Carlson traces the idea of unfit races from biblical times to European and American laws dealing with poverty, crime, famine, disease, mental illness, and illegitimacy. By showing that the idea of the unfit has social, political, and religious origins and uses outside of the biomedical context, Carlson helps us to understand the broader context of the eugenics movements, as well as the challenges for social policies that attempt to respond to the needs of people who may be deemed unfit. Indeed, one of the more disturbing inferences that many readers will draw from the book is that the conceptual underpinnings of the eugenics movements did not come solely from the philosophies of the wealthy and powerful classes; rather, they were also derived from the attitudes, beliefs, and religious traditions of ordinary people.

Carlson shares some relevant biographical information with the reader in the introduction to his book. He had a Lutheran father and a Swedish-American mother, both of whom abandoned their religious backgrounds. He lived in slums during his childhood, had a brother with a congenital heart defect, and had half-siblings who were raised in an orphanage after his mother's first marriage failed. His mother had paranoid schizophrenia and had been institutionalized before she met his father. According to Carlson, his whole family would have been classified as unfit according to many of the standards used in the 19th and 20th centuries. If his mother had lived in a different state, such as Indiana, she would have been sterilized. If his family had lived in Germany or Poland, they might have all perished in the Nazi concentration camps. Given this background, one can see why Carlson has a special concern for the unfit.

Carlson begins his account of the unfit in ancient Israel, going back more than 3000 years. The Israelites regarded the Amalekites, a population that lived in Ashdod in southwest Palestine, as unfit. The town of Ashdod was one of five occupied by the Philistines. According to Carlson, ``the Amalekites were perceived as degenerate people with evil habits, who should not only be shunned but exterminated.'' The Israelites also believed the Amalekites had been created evil and that they had corrupted the Jewish people by marrying and breeding with Jews. Carlson invites the reader to draw an ironic parallel between Israelites' attitudes toward the Amalekites in the 12th century b.c.e. and Nazi attitudes toward the Jews in the 20th century.

From ancient Israel, Carlson leaps ahead in time to the development of the theory of degeneracy in 18th-century Europe. Many Europeans, especially the English, French, and Swiss, regarded masturbation, or onania (after the sin of Onan, discussed in Genesis, chapter 38), as a form of moral degeneracy, or ``self-pollution,'' that could lead to diseases such as stunted growth, abnormal development of sexual organs, and tuberculosis (known at the time as consumption). Although it was initially viewed as a sin, masturbation was soon classified as a disease. The theory of degeneracy soon expanded from its focus on masturbation to encompass vagrancy, crime, poverty, insanity, and mental retardation. In 1857 the physician Benedict Morel published a book that postulated several different causes of degeneracy, including alcohol, narcotics, tobacco, and tainted bread. Morel also suggested that syphilis and tuberculosis could lead to degeneracy.

Others believed that degeneracy was the result of hereditary factors. Cesare Lombroso hypothesized the existence of a separate race of human beings, Homo delinquens, who were born to be criminals. Elisha Harris, a physician who conducted a study of prisoners in New York, traced the lineage of many of them back to a woman he named ``Margaret, mother of criminals.'' Herbert Spencer, who was influenced by Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, opposed public charities for the poor, sick, and disabled and argued that the government should not interfere with the natural laws of survival, which tend to weed out unfit members of the human population. Spencer proposed this idea, which later became known as social Darwinism, almost a decade before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species.

Carlson also discusses many of the well-known chapters in the history of eugenics, including the founding of the movement as a ``scientific'' field; the establishment of the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York; the passage of compulsory sterilization laws in the United States; the Supreme Court's infamous decision in Buck v. Bell, which affirmed the constitutionality of sterilization laws; the origins of the Ku Klux Klan; Nazi Germany's campaign to purify the fatherland by killing 6 million Jews; and the eventual dissolution of the eugenics movement.

The unique contribution of this book is that it makes the reader aware of the complexities of the eugenics movement. Carlson shows that long before Francis Galton coined the term ``eugenics,'' scientists, physicians, philosophers, social reformers, and theologians had discussed the idea of an unfit class of people and had proposed solutions to deal with people they regarded as unfit. He also points out that many of those associated with the movement were ``people of good will, many with outstanding credentials as social reformers.'' Carlson further reminds readers that even if societies do not enact eugenics laws, couples planning to have children will still face difficult moral decisions created by the availability of genetic counseling, prenatal genetic testing, and elective abortion.

Although many may regard the eugenics movement as little more than an unfortunate chapter in human history, Carlson's book reminds us that the idea of an unfit group of people is not likely to fade into history, since it is a common strategy for explaining and responding to humanity's moral, physiological, and psychological imperfections. As we learn more about the genetic basis of disease and gain more control over human health and reproduction, we must also learn to deal with human imperfections without stigmatizing classes or races of people as unfit.
David B. Resnik, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2002 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 451 pages
• Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 1st edition (June 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879695870
• ISBN-13: 978-0879695873
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #156,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Author Seems to Perpetuate Bad Idea, July 13, 2010

By 

Katelyn A. Sills - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Hardcover)

While Carlson has obviously spent time researching the history of eugenics and genetics in general, I have to agree with Matthew Bayer's review. There are some major issues.

First, his chapter on the Bible suffers from a lack of research, and subsequently a dependence on one person's (according to the footnotes, Rabbi Howard Diamond's) interpretations. For instance, Carlson assumes that the "rebellious disobedient son" described in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 is an example of the "unfit" (implying genetic defect) rather than an example of violations of the law. (In other words, he twists a moral rule into a eugenic one.) Perhaps it's that I'm not familiar with non-Christian interpretations of the Bible, but in most of his biblical references, he seems to jump to conclusions.

Second, you'll notice that he repeatedly points out the difference in negative and positive eugenics. (Negative eugenics tries to eliminate the unfit through practices such as forced sterilization, whereas positive eugenics encouraged the births of "good" genetic stock.) While Carlson focuses on the misdeeds of the American negative eugenics organizations, the British positive eugenicists are used as a foil and then forgotten. It could be that Carlson simply chose to focus on Americans, but when he reveals his own thoughts on the subject in the last chapters, his viewpoints seem remarkably close to the "positive" eugenicists. (He believes in eliminating the imperfect through voluntary, selective abortions, although he explains that this wouldn't necessarily rid society of those diseases.) Lastly, the book is dedicated to H.J. Muller, a notable positive eugenicist. This made me doubt that Carlson was being truly impartial when it came to the policies of positive eugenics.

Third, Carlson refers to himself as a science historian, who includes the social and cultural movements in his analysis of scientific events. However, oftentimes I felt that this led to simplistic conclusions. For instance, that the Americans were overwhelmingly "negative" eugenicists because their belief in the prevalence of opportunity made them wonder what was wrong with those who failed to succeed.

All in all, this is a great book for an overview of the history of genetic science, but not so great when the author tried to comment on other topics or draw social conclusions.

32 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Two major problems, April 5, 2005

By 

Matthew Bayer (WI, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Hardcover)

This book was well written and appeared well-researched and thorough for the most part. There was a wealth of information, and I particularly liked the biological perspective on eugenics. I often hear eugenics addressed in moral and social terms, while the bad science behind it goes unmentioned. I have two major issues with the book, however.

First, Carlson includes a couple blatant Biblical inaccuracies that, to a certain extent, cast doubt over the accuracy of the whole book. In his section on the Jews, Carlson writes, "Abraham's two and two concubines produced 12 sons, 11 of them forming scattered tribes and the 12th, Joseph, founding the state of Israel." In fact, Abraham had one wife and one son, Isaac, who himself had one son, Jacob (known as Israel), who had those 12 sons, all of whom became part of the nation of Israel, which was not founded by Joseph. He also quotes a saying of Jesus, that a bad tree does not produce good fruit, as referring to heredity, when any Christian could tell you he's talking about a believer's faith and works (fruits). This is Sunday-school level stuff.

Also, the book seemed somewhat disjointed. The chapters were self-contained packets of information, with lots of names and compressed biographies, and I didn't get a good sense of how these people and ideas interacted with each other. The first few chapters, on Biblical ideas and (...), never really come up again. He also jumped around in time quite a bit, so it was hard to pinpoint any development or narrative in the ideas and culture surrounding them. I have more information now, but the book did not put it in enough context.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, December 1, 2005

By 

bethesdajane (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Hardcover)

This stunningly brilliant book explores the birth and consequences of eugenics in the world, and its connections to the Holocaust. "The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea" is thoroughly researched, yet the writing is so beautiful it reads like a novel - a fascinating and disturbing one, which should be read by millions.