Historian, National Human Genome Research Institute History of Genomics Program, National Institutes of Health
The Bare Replacement: Geneticists’ Support of Eugenics after the Second World War
Abstract: Drawing from published and unpublished writings of the geneticists Curt Stern, Theodosius Dobzhansky and Robert Cook, among others, Dr. Donohue will show how, contrary to a widespread (and often uncritical) consensus, scientists’ support for eugenics and scientific racism did not diminish in the United States after WWII. Eugenics and its practices merely took a wider variety of forms and rhetoric in scientists’ published writings, and especially, their private correspondence. As importantly, genetics and genomics, for all of their revolutionary potentials, still are breeding grounds for ableism and other dehumanizing ideologies, particularly in their discussion of intellectual disability and chromosomal conditions, as well as in the context of prenatal and infant screening and diagnosis. Such dehumanization in the context of contemporary biomedicine is made more visible with the elucidation of historical and present-day eugenics movements’ use of the same or similar rhetoric.
Host: OEB DIB Committee
LOCATION:Biological Laboratories 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20221208T203000Z DTEND:20221208T203000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR