Overcoming the history of Eugenics in demography call for contributions from historians, ethicists, and human rights scholars.

Abstract

As Rebecca Sears’s recent article correctly addressed, demography was heavily involved in the early twentieth century eugenics movement (Sear 2021). This is particularly true for our journal, which was first established as Eugenical News in 1916 and reformatted as a scientific journal of the American Eugenics Society – Eugenics Quarterly – in 1954. The journal was further renamed as Social Biology in 1969 and published population research with particular attention to the trends of human evolution and the biological, medical, and social forces that determine these trends (Society for the Study of Social Biology 1973). In 2008, it was renamed to its current title and continued to publish as an independent journal after the disbandment of the Society for Biodemography and Social Biology in 2019. Our journal has inherited the name of two disciplines as a result of interactions between demography and biology throughout the last half of the twentieth century. The first encounter between the two disciplines resulted in the rise of the field of “social biology,” which is considered the study of human and other species’ social behavior based on a paradigm of evolution. The second encounter, and more familiar for many, was the rise of biodemography starting in the 1980s. Such collaborative efforts shed light on the role of genetics and other biological traits in longevity and healthy aging beyond the reproductive age population, which had not been the interest to social biologists. As the history of genetic and biological determinism shows, politics and science are interdependent. Eugenics was closely tied to sterilizations programs in the United States and Asia, and horrifying Holocaust executions in Nazi Germany. In the 1970s, social biology ignited the most tumultuous academic controversy when its biological determinism was used to explain some part of the social inequality of human beings (Wilson 2000). It was criticized by people who believe that such findings provide scientific support for racism and discrimination against people with disabilities. Concern about genetic and biological determinism has not diminished until now. Some argue that favoring the birth of the most able children based on genetic testing is a form of eugenics, even though the language, methods, or policy implications might differ from the early twentieth-century ones. In 2015, the UN panel warned against “designer babies” and the “genetic editing” of babies because it jeopardizes the equal dignity of all human beings (UN 2015). To avoid negative political and social influences of scientific research in our discipline, we need to be aware of how our past academic research has been used in the political and public discussion beyond the aim of academic research, and identify the potential social effects of our scientific findings. By examining the specific ethical and scientifically wrongs committed by researchers, intellectuals, activists, and policymakers of the past, we encourage our field to become more secure against repeating those mistakes in the future. To this end, I would like to attract contributions from historians, ethicists, and human rights scholars to analyze the political and social impacts of past research in Eugenical News BIODEMOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL BIOLOGY 2023, VOL. 68, NO. 1, 1–2 https://doi.org/10.1080/19485565.2023.2203570