> November 13, 2003 > Arts > The Word

WAR AGAINST THE WEAK:
EUGENICS AND
AMERICA'S CAMPAIGN TO
CREATE A MASTER RACE
By Edwin Black
Four Walls Eight Windows (September 2003)

A slightly different but equally interesting book about mistaken medical science is War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, by Edwin Black, whose previous book credits include the bestselling IBM and the Holocaust.

To research War Against the Weak, Black used some 50 researchers using archives in four countries to put together proof that the early American eugenics movement was the precursor to Adolph Hitler's later savagery. (In the early 1930s, a young Hitler wrote to an American eugenicist, calling the eugenicist's book his "Bible.") A group of scientists in 1904 made the most significant "research" and study of eugenics, which was funded by philanthropies such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institution.

Their goal to create a superior human being and to weed out the undesirables included grisly methods such as forced sterilization, breeding programs and passive euthanasia. The targets were poor whites, European immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, Native Americans, epileptics, alcoholics, criminals and the mentally ill. In short, anyone who wasn't the blond- haired, blue-eyed Nordic ideal the movement glorified.

The book has a distinctly non-academic feel and is a compelling read. Black's evidence and how he pieces it together portray another instance where misguided, crank science led to untold human misery.

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