The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea

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Synopsis: 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.

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

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: new