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Society for Biodemography and Social Biology [American Eugenics Society [The Society for the Study of Social Biology]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/1/20
The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology
Formation 1922
Location: United States
President: Hans-Peter Kohler
Formerly called: The Society for the Study of Social Biology;[1] The American Eugenics Society[2]
The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology, formerly known as the Society for the Study of Social Biology and before then as the American Eugenics Society,[1] is dedicated to "furthering the discussion, advancement, and dissemination of knowledge about biological and sociocultural forces which affect the structure and composition of human populations."[3]
History
The Society formed after the success of the Second International Congress on Eugenics (New York, 1921). The founders included Madison Grant, Harry H. Laughlin, Irving Fisher, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and Henry Crampton. The organization started by promoting racial betterment, eugenic health, and genetic education through public lectures, exhibits at county fairs, etc.
Under the direction of Frederick Osborn the society started to place greater focus on issues of population control, genetics, and, later, medical genetics. In 1930, the Society included mostly prominent and wealthy individuals, and membership included many non-scientists. The demographics of the Society gradually changed, and by 1960, members of the Society were almost exclusively scientist and medical professionals. Consequentially, the society focused more on genetics and less on class-based eugenics.[2]
After the Roe v. Wade decision was released in 1973, the Society was reorganized and renamed The Society for the Study of Social Biology.[2] Osborn said, "The name was changed because it became evident that changes of a eugenic nature would be made for reasons other than eugenics, and that tying a eugenic label on them would more often hinder than help their adoption. Birth control and abortion are turning out to be great eugenic advances of our time."[4][5]
The name was most recently changed to Society for Biodemography and Social Biology.[1]
Journal
The Society's official journal is Biodemography and Social Biology, which was originally established in 1954 as Eugenics Quarterly. It was renamed to Social Biology in 1969 and to its current title in 2008.[6]
List of presidents
• Irving Fisher 1922–26 (Political Economy, Yale University)
• Roswell H. Johnson 1926–27 (Cold Spring Harbor, Univ. of Pittsburgh)
• Harry H. Laughlin 1927–29 (Eugenics Record Office)
• C. C. Little 1929 (Pres., University of Michigan)
• Henry Pratt Fairchild 1929–31 (Sociology, New York University)
• Henry Farnham Perkins 1931–34 (Zoology, University of Vermont)
• Ellsworth Huntington 1934–38 (Geography, Yale University)
• Samuel Jackson Holmes 1938–40 (Zoology, University of California)
• Maurice Bigelow 1940–45 (Columbia University)
• Frederick Osborn 1946–52 (Osborn-Dodge-Harriman RR connection)
• Harry L. Shapiro 1956–63 (American Museum of Natural History)
• Clyde V. Kiser 1964–68 (differential fertility, Milbank Memorial Fund)
• Dudley Kirk 1969–72 (Demographer, Stanford University)
• Bruce K. Eckland 1972–75 (Sociology, University of North Carolina)
• L. Erlenmeyer-Kimling 1976–78 (Genetic Psychiatry)
• Gardner Lindzey 1979–81 (Center for Advanced Study, Behavioral Sciences)
• John L. Fuller 1982–83 (Behavioral genetics)
• Michael Teitelbaum 1985–1990 (US Congress staff; US population policy)
• Robert Retherford 1991–1994 (East-West Institute, Hawaii; funded by AID)
• Joseph Lee Rodgers 1994, 1995 (family influences)
• Current: Hans-Peter Kohler
See also
• United States portal
• American Society of Human Genetics
• British Eugenics Society
• Eugenics in the United States
• Human Betterment Foundation
References
1. Eugenics, Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, (2014, pp 619-626) ISBN 978-1-4614-5583-7
2. American Eugenics Society, Controlling Heredity.
3. The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology, Homepage (Last retrieved Nov 26, 2014)http://www.biodemog.org Archived 2013-04-14 at Archive.today
4. Messall, Rebecca (Fall 2004). "The Long Road of Eugenics: From Rockefeller to Roe v. Wade". The Human Life Review. 30 (4): 33–74, 67. PMID 15856597.
5. American Eugenics Society, Inc. (1931). Organized eugenics: January 1931. pp. 3, 65.
6. "Biodemography and Social Biology Publication History".
External links
• The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology
• Biodemography and Social Biology The academic journal.
************************************
American Eugenics Society (1926-1972)
by Rachel Gur-Arie
Arizona State University. School of Life Sciences. Center for Biology and Society. Embryo Project Encyclopedia.
Published: 2014-11-22
The American Eugenics Society (AES) was established in the US by Madison Grant, Harry H. Laughlin, Henry Crampton, Irving Fisher, and Henry F. Osborn in 1926 to promote eugenics education programs for the US public. The AES described eugenics as the study of improving the genetic composition of humans through controlled reproduction of different races and classes of people. The AES aided smaller eugenic efforts such as the Galton Society in New York, New York, and the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan, and it influenced eugenic policy set by the US Supreme Court in cases including Buck v. Bell (1927) and Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942). The AES was renamed the Society for the Study of Social Biology in 1972.
Before the formation of the AES, several other eugenic organizations helped lead to the AES. The increasing international interest in eugenics from 1904 to 1926 spurred the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1904 to create the Station for Experimental Evolution at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Geneticists Albert F. Blakeslee and Charles Davenport had helped establish the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1890. Davenport, the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, had connections to the Eugenics Records Office (ERO), and later recruited Laughlin to serve as the ERO's director.
In 1906, John H. Kellogg, a medical doctor, founded the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. The Race Betterment Foundation sponsored three conferences between 1914 and 1928, culminating in the 1928 formation of a Eugenics Registry for family biological records. The American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York, financed the Galton Society. The Galton Society took its name after its founder Francis Galton, a UK eugenicist and cousin of Charles Darwin. The Galton Society focused on racial anthropology and was involved with the Eugenics Education Society in London, England, which played a major role in the 1908 foundation of the English Eugenics Society.
In 1912, Leonard Darwin, son of naturalist Charles Darwin, held the First International Congress of Eugenics in London. More than three hundred people from England, Europe, and the US attended his conference. The growing support for eugenics in the next decade prompted the Eugenics Record Office of Cold Spring Harbor and the American Museum of Natural History to sponsor the 1921 Second International Congress of Eugenics in New York, New York. Scientist Alexander G. Bell served as honorary president. During the Second International Congress of Eugenics, Irving Fisher from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, proposed the American Eugenics Society. Fisher stressed a need for a widespread eugenics education in the US. With that proposal, Osborn, president of the International Congress, appointed an Interim Committee that worked on the AES until its formal incorporation on 30 January 1926. Fisher served as the society's first president. Davenport, director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, was the first vice president. Among the Society's presidents, Laughlin, who served as president from 1927 to 1929, promoted eugenical sterilization in the early twentieth century US.
Multiple committees formed within the AES to target different aspects of eugenic education. Examples of such committees include the Committee on Crime Prevention, whose work pushed the Chicago Municipal Court in Chicago, Illinois, to publish Laughlin's Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. The credibility of the AES increased due to the involvement of Clark Wister, curator of the anthropology section in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York, and Sewell Wright, a US geneticist.
From the 1920s to the 1930s, some of the AES's work was presented at state and local fairs. Contests called Fitter Family contests involved popular competitions between families and couples to determine who would produce the most viable offspring based on physical appearance, behavior, intelligence, and health. Exhibits had flashing red lights to emphasize statistics of birth rates of able-bodied people compared to what organizers called degenerates. Statisticians claimed that while every sixteen seconds a child was born in the US, they also said that not all children were of the same caliber. According to the exhibits, a capable child was born every seven and a half minutes, whereas a feebleminded child every 48 seconds, and a future criminal every 50 seconds. To display potential economic benefits of adopting eugenics, the exhibits included the statistic that every fifteen seconds, one hundred dollars of taxpayer money went towards supporting mentally ill patients.
The goals and actions of the AES changed over the years, depending on different presidencies of the organization. Henry F. Perkins, who was president from 1931 to 1933, worked with the Birth Control League, the predecessor of Planned Parenthood and a US sexual and reproductive healthcare center. Margaret Sanger, called Noal Slee at the time of membership, a member of the AES in 1956, established the American Birth Control League in 1921. The American Birth Control League became part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. In the 1960s, president Harry Shapiro claimed that increasing the use of birth control gave the potential to improve the quality of the US population.
During Perkins's presidency in 1932, the AES held the Third International Congress of Eugenics sponsored by the ERO and the American Museum of Natural History. Unlike the high attendance of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, seventy-three people attended the conference. After that conference, Perkins published A Decade in the Progress of Eugenics, and it partly noted that eugenics theory had no empirical support to promote discrimination based on race and social class. The document also emphasized the study of hereditary variations focusing on defects such as mental disability. Ellsworth Huntington from Yale University, who served as president of AES from 1934 to 1938, focused on hereditary defects and switched the AES's focus from positive eugenics to negative eugenics. Positive eugenics maintains that superior families should produce more children. In contrast, negative eugenics claims that degenerates should not have children. In his book Tomorrow's Children: The Goal of Eugenics, Huntington described the AES's new focus on negative eugenics.
In October of 1928, the AES launched its monthly journal Eugenics. At the time, Eugenics was the only journal in the world to promote research-based eugenics. In 1930, the Galton Publishing Company took over the journal, but when the company closed in 1931, the journal was stopped. Eight years later in 1939, the monthly publication of Eugenical News was transferred from the Eugenics Research Association to the AES. From 1916 to 1953, Eugenical News was the primary source of eugenic-related events and news in the United States. In 1954, the AES launched Eugenics Quarterly, a journal focusing on hereditary defects in scientific research.
Peak membership of the AES was in 1930 with 1,260 members. Although New York, California, and Massachusetts were the states with the highest memberships, every state in the US had at least one member. The 1930 cohort of the AES consisted predominantly of wealthy men and women, and few scientific professionals from fields relating to eugenics. However, in reaction to the eugenic atrocities of World War II, support for eugenics and AES membership began to drop. By 1960, the AES has less than 400 members, most of whom were male scientists and medical professionals. After that time, the AES's focus shifted to genetic analysis and to the investigation of the factors driving human evolution.
The five Princeton conferences of 1964 to 1969 in Princeton, New Jersey, demonstrated a shared interest in human evolution between geneticists and population specialists. From 1960 to 1970, the AES gathered together researchers from different disciplines and provided people with a place to discuss human evolution. Scientists involved with the group noted that factors in social and physical environments influence heredity and human development. Researchers increasingly studied living conditions and lifestyle habits of people. In many large medical schools, there were facilities for medical genetic research, whereas newly established heredity counseling clinics served as the basis for modern genetic counseling centers. To define a new research focus, in 1969 the official publication of the AES switched its name from Eugenics Quarterly to Social Biology. In 1972, the AES was renamed the Society for the Study of Social Biology. The society stated that the name change did not align with a change in interest or policy, but better reflected the newfound common emphasis on the study of biological, social, and medical trends that shape human evolution.
As of 2014, the Society of Social Biology is also called the Society for Biodemography and Social Biology. The Society's journal, Biodemography and Social Biology, addresses the biological, social, and cultural influences on human population makeup from interdisciplinary fields including psychology, anthropology, genetics, and criminal justice. The Society of Social Biology has distanced itself from the AES.
Sources
• Buck v. Bell. 274 U.S. 200 (1927). http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case? ... +274+U.S.+ 200+(1927).&hl=en&as_sdt=806&case=1700304772805702914&scilh=0 (Accessed January 9, 2014).
• Darwin, Leonard. What Is Eugenics? New York: Third International Congress of Eugenics, 1929. http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.16382 (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• Davenport, Charles Benedict. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. New York: Henry Holt, 1911. http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.94524 (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• "Eugenics in the Schools." The Atlanta Constitution, November 27, 1927.
• Fisher, Irving. The Rate of Interest: Its Nature, Determination and Relation to Economic Phenomena. Macmillan, 1907. https://archive.org/details/rateinterestits00fishgoog (Accessed August 2, 2014).
• Galton, Francis. Hereditary Genius. Macmillan and Company, 1869. https://archive.org/details/hereditarygeniu04galtgoog (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• Grant, Madison. "Racial transformation of America." The North American Review 1924. http://www.unz.org/Pub/NorthAmericanRev-1924mar-00343 (Accessed June 27, 2014).
• Huntington, Ellsworth. Tomorrow's Children: The Goal of Eugenics. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1935.
• Laughlin, Harry H. Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. Chicago: Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, 1922. https://archive.org/details/eugenicalsterili00laug (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• Mehler, Barry. "A History of the American Eugenics Society, 1921–1940." PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988. http://www.ferris.edu/isar/dissertation.htm (Accessed June 27, 2014).
• Messall, Rebecca R. "Margaret Sanger and the Eugenics Movement." The Denver Post, June 3, 2010, Guest Commentary Section. http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_15212441 (Accessed June 27, 2014).
• Osborn, Henry F. "Ontogenic and phylogenic variation." Science 4 (1896): 786–9.
• Osborn, Frederick. "History of the American Eugenics Society." Biodemography and Social Biology 21 (1974): 115–26.
• Perkins, H. F. "A Decade of Progress in Eugenics." Third International Congress in Eugenics, New York. Williams & Wilkins Company: Baltimore, Md., 1934. https://archive.org/details/decadeofprogress00inte (Accessed August 2, 2014).
• Roe v. Wade. 410 U.S. 113 (1973). http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case? ... 5835207673 (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• Sanger, Margaret. Woman and the New Race. New York: Eugenics Publishing Co., 1920. https://archive.org/details/womannewrace00sang (Accessed August 2, 2014).
• Shapiro, Harry Lionel. Man, Culture, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
• Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson. 316 U.S. 535 (1942). http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case? ... 1644873759 (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology. http://www.biodemog.org/ (Accessed October 26, 2013).
• Treasures of the APS. "Promoting Eugenics in America." American Philosophical Society. http://www.amphilsoc.org/exhibits/treasures/aes.htm (Accessed October 26, 2013).
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/1/20
The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology
Formation 1922
Location: United States
President: Hans-Peter Kohler
Formerly called: The Society for the Study of Social Biology;[1] The American Eugenics Society[2]
The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology, formerly known as the Society for the Study of Social Biology and before then as the American Eugenics Society,[1] is dedicated to "furthering the discussion, advancement, and dissemination of knowledge about biological and sociocultural forces which affect the structure and composition of human populations."[3]
History
The Society formed after the success of the Second International Congress on Eugenics (New York, 1921). The founders included Madison Grant, Harry H. Laughlin, Irving Fisher, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and Henry Crampton. The organization started by promoting racial betterment, eugenic health, and genetic education through public lectures, exhibits at county fairs, etc.
Under the direction of Frederick Osborn the society started to place greater focus on issues of population control, genetics, and, later, medical genetics. In 1930, the Society included mostly prominent and wealthy individuals, and membership included many non-scientists. The demographics of the Society gradually changed, and by 1960, members of the Society were almost exclusively scientist and medical professionals. Consequentially, the society focused more on genetics and less on class-based eugenics.[2]
After the Roe v. Wade decision was released in 1973, the Society was reorganized and renamed The Society for the Study of Social Biology.[2] Osborn said, "The name was changed because it became evident that changes of a eugenic nature would be made for reasons other than eugenics, and that tying a eugenic label on them would more often hinder than help their adoption. Birth control and abortion are turning out to be great eugenic advances of our time."[4][5]
The name was most recently changed to Society for Biodemography and Social Biology.[1]
Journal
The Society's official journal is Biodemography and Social Biology, which was originally established in 1954 as Eugenics Quarterly. It was renamed to Social Biology in 1969 and to its current title in 2008.[6]
List of presidents
• Irving Fisher 1922–26 (Political Economy, Yale University)
• Roswell H. Johnson 1926–27 (Cold Spring Harbor, Univ. of Pittsburgh)
• Harry H. Laughlin 1927–29 (Eugenics Record Office)
• C. C. Little 1929 (Pres., University of Michigan)
• Henry Pratt Fairchild 1929–31 (Sociology, New York University)
• Henry Farnham Perkins 1931–34 (Zoology, University of Vermont)
• Ellsworth Huntington 1934–38 (Geography, Yale University)
• Samuel Jackson Holmes 1938–40 (Zoology, University of California)
• Maurice Bigelow 1940–45 (Columbia University)
• Frederick Osborn 1946–52 (Osborn-Dodge-Harriman RR connection)
• Harry L. Shapiro 1956–63 (American Museum of Natural History)
• Clyde V. Kiser 1964–68 (differential fertility, Milbank Memorial Fund)
• Dudley Kirk 1969–72 (Demographer, Stanford University)
• Bruce K. Eckland 1972–75 (Sociology, University of North Carolina)
• L. Erlenmeyer-Kimling 1976–78 (Genetic Psychiatry)
• Gardner Lindzey 1979–81 (Center for Advanced Study, Behavioral Sciences)
• John L. Fuller 1982–83 (Behavioral genetics)
• Michael Teitelbaum 1985–1990 (US Congress staff; US population policy)
• Robert Retherford 1991–1994 (East-West Institute, Hawaii; funded by AID)
• Joseph Lee Rodgers 1994, 1995 (family influences)
• Current: Hans-Peter Kohler
See also
• United States portal
• American Society of Human Genetics
• British Eugenics Society
• Eugenics in the United States
• Human Betterment Foundation
References
1. Eugenics, Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, (2014, pp 619-626) ISBN 978-1-4614-5583-7
2. American Eugenics Society, Controlling Heredity.
3. The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology, Homepage (Last retrieved Nov 26, 2014)http://www.biodemog.org Archived 2013-04-14 at Archive.today
4. Messall, Rebecca (Fall 2004). "The Long Road of Eugenics: From Rockefeller to Roe v. Wade". The Human Life Review. 30 (4): 33–74, 67. PMID 15856597.
5. American Eugenics Society, Inc. (1931). Organized eugenics: January 1931. pp. 3, 65.
6. "Biodemography and Social Biology Publication History".
External links
• The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology
• Biodemography and Social Biology The academic journal.
************************************
American Eugenics Society (1926-1972)
by Rachel Gur-Arie
Arizona State University. School of Life Sciences. Center for Biology and Society. Embryo Project Encyclopedia.
Published: 2014-11-22
The American Eugenics Society (AES) was established in the US by Madison Grant, Harry H. Laughlin, Henry Crampton, Irving Fisher, and Henry F. Osborn in 1926 to promote eugenics education programs for the US public. The AES described eugenics as the study of improving the genetic composition of humans through controlled reproduction of different races and classes of people. The AES aided smaller eugenic efforts such as the Galton Society in New York, New York, and the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan, and it influenced eugenic policy set by the US Supreme Court in cases including Buck v. Bell (1927) and Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942). The AES was renamed the Society for the Study of Social Biology in 1972.
Before the formation of the AES, several other eugenic organizations helped lead to the AES. The increasing international interest in eugenics from 1904 to 1926 spurred the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1904 to create the Station for Experimental Evolution at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Geneticists Albert F. Blakeslee and Charles Davenport had helped establish the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1890. Davenport, the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, had connections to the Eugenics Records Office (ERO), and later recruited Laughlin to serve as the ERO's director.
In 1906, John H. Kellogg, a medical doctor, founded the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. The Race Betterment Foundation sponsored three conferences between 1914 and 1928, culminating in the 1928 formation of a Eugenics Registry for family biological records. The American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York, financed the Galton Society. The Galton Society took its name after its founder Francis Galton, a UK eugenicist and cousin of Charles Darwin. The Galton Society focused on racial anthropology and was involved with the Eugenics Education Society in London, England, which played a major role in the 1908 foundation of the English Eugenics Society.
In 1912, Leonard Darwin, son of naturalist Charles Darwin, held the First International Congress of Eugenics in London. More than three hundred people from England, Europe, and the US attended his conference. The growing support for eugenics in the next decade prompted the Eugenics Record Office of Cold Spring Harbor and the American Museum of Natural History to sponsor the 1921 Second International Congress of Eugenics in New York, New York. Scientist Alexander G. Bell served as honorary president. During the Second International Congress of Eugenics, Irving Fisher from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, proposed the American Eugenics Society. Fisher stressed a need for a widespread eugenics education in the US. With that proposal, Osborn, president of the International Congress, appointed an Interim Committee that worked on the AES until its formal incorporation on 30 January 1926. Fisher served as the society's first president. Davenport, director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, was the first vice president. Among the Society's presidents, Laughlin, who served as president from 1927 to 1929, promoted eugenical sterilization in the early twentieth century US.
Multiple committees formed within the AES to target different aspects of eugenic education. Examples of such committees include the Committee on Crime Prevention, whose work pushed the Chicago Municipal Court in Chicago, Illinois, to publish Laughlin's Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. The credibility of the AES increased due to the involvement of Clark Wister, curator of the anthropology section in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York, and Sewell Wright, a US geneticist.
From the 1920s to the 1930s, some of the AES's work was presented at state and local fairs. Contests called Fitter Family contests involved popular competitions between families and couples to determine who would produce the most viable offspring based on physical appearance, behavior, intelligence, and health. Exhibits had flashing red lights to emphasize statistics of birth rates of able-bodied people compared to what organizers called degenerates. Statisticians claimed that while every sixteen seconds a child was born in the US, they also said that not all children were of the same caliber. According to the exhibits, a capable child was born every seven and a half minutes, whereas a feebleminded child every 48 seconds, and a future criminal every 50 seconds. To display potential economic benefits of adopting eugenics, the exhibits included the statistic that every fifteen seconds, one hundred dollars of taxpayer money went towards supporting mentally ill patients.
The goals and actions of the AES changed over the years, depending on different presidencies of the organization. Henry F. Perkins, who was president from 1931 to 1933, worked with the Birth Control League, the predecessor of Planned Parenthood and a US sexual and reproductive healthcare center. Margaret Sanger, called Noal Slee at the time of membership, a member of the AES in 1956, established the American Birth Control League in 1921. The American Birth Control League became part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. In the 1960s, president Harry Shapiro claimed that increasing the use of birth control gave the potential to improve the quality of the US population.
During Perkins's presidency in 1932, the AES held the Third International Congress of Eugenics sponsored by the ERO and the American Museum of Natural History. Unlike the high attendance of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, seventy-three people attended the conference. After that conference, Perkins published A Decade in the Progress of Eugenics, and it partly noted that eugenics theory had no empirical support to promote discrimination based on race and social class. The document also emphasized the study of hereditary variations focusing on defects such as mental disability. Ellsworth Huntington from Yale University, who served as president of AES from 1934 to 1938, focused on hereditary defects and switched the AES's focus from positive eugenics to negative eugenics. Positive eugenics maintains that superior families should produce more children. In contrast, negative eugenics claims that degenerates should not have children. In his book Tomorrow's Children: The Goal of Eugenics, Huntington described the AES's new focus on negative eugenics.
In October of 1928, the AES launched its monthly journal Eugenics. At the time, Eugenics was the only journal in the world to promote research-based eugenics. In 1930, the Galton Publishing Company took over the journal, but when the company closed in 1931, the journal was stopped. Eight years later in 1939, the monthly publication of Eugenical News was transferred from the Eugenics Research Association to the AES. From 1916 to 1953, Eugenical News was the primary source of eugenic-related events and news in the United States. In 1954, the AES launched Eugenics Quarterly, a journal focusing on hereditary defects in scientific research.
Peak membership of the AES was in 1930 with 1,260 members. Although New York, California, and Massachusetts were the states with the highest memberships, every state in the US had at least one member. The 1930 cohort of the AES consisted predominantly of wealthy men and women, and few scientific professionals from fields relating to eugenics. However, in reaction to the eugenic atrocities of World War II, support for eugenics and AES membership began to drop. By 1960, the AES has less than 400 members, most of whom were male scientists and medical professionals. After that time, the AES's focus shifted to genetic analysis and to the investigation of the factors driving human evolution.
The five Princeton conferences of 1964 to 1969 in Princeton, New Jersey, demonstrated a shared interest in human evolution between geneticists and population specialists. From 1960 to 1970, the AES gathered together researchers from different disciplines and provided people with a place to discuss human evolution. Scientists involved with the group noted that factors in social and physical environments influence heredity and human development. Researchers increasingly studied living conditions and lifestyle habits of people. In many large medical schools, there were facilities for medical genetic research, whereas newly established heredity counseling clinics served as the basis for modern genetic counseling centers. To define a new research focus, in 1969 the official publication of the AES switched its name from Eugenics Quarterly to Social Biology. In 1972, the AES was renamed the Society for the Study of Social Biology. The society stated that the name change did not align with a change in interest or policy, but better reflected the newfound common emphasis on the study of biological, social, and medical trends that shape human evolution.
As of 2014, the Society of Social Biology is also called the Society for Biodemography and Social Biology. The Society's journal, Biodemography and Social Biology, addresses the biological, social, and cultural influences on human population makeup from interdisciplinary fields including psychology, anthropology, genetics, and criminal justice. The Society of Social Biology has distanced itself from the AES.
Sources
• Buck v. Bell. 274 U.S. 200 (1927). http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case? ... +274+U.S.+ 200+(1927).&hl=en&as_sdt=806&case=1700304772805702914&scilh=0 (Accessed January 9, 2014).
• Darwin, Leonard. What Is Eugenics? New York: Third International Congress of Eugenics, 1929. http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.16382 (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• Davenport, Charles Benedict. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. New York: Henry Holt, 1911. http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.94524 (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• "Eugenics in the Schools." The Atlanta Constitution, November 27, 1927.
• Fisher, Irving. The Rate of Interest: Its Nature, Determination and Relation to Economic Phenomena. Macmillan, 1907. https://archive.org/details/rateinterestits00fishgoog (Accessed August 2, 2014).
• Galton, Francis. Hereditary Genius. Macmillan and Company, 1869. https://archive.org/details/hereditarygeniu04galtgoog (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• Grant, Madison. "Racial transformation of America." The North American Review 1924. http://www.unz.org/Pub/NorthAmericanRev-1924mar-00343 (Accessed June 27, 2014).
• Huntington, Ellsworth. Tomorrow's Children: The Goal of Eugenics. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1935.
• Laughlin, Harry H. Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. Chicago: Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, 1922. https://archive.org/details/eugenicalsterili00laug (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• Mehler, Barry. "A History of the American Eugenics Society, 1921–1940." PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988. http://www.ferris.edu/isar/dissertation.htm (Accessed June 27, 2014).
• Messall, Rebecca R. "Margaret Sanger and the Eugenics Movement." The Denver Post, June 3, 2010, Guest Commentary Section. http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_15212441 (Accessed June 27, 2014).
• Osborn, Henry F. "Ontogenic and phylogenic variation." Science 4 (1896): 786–9.
• Osborn, Frederick. "History of the American Eugenics Society." Biodemography and Social Biology 21 (1974): 115–26.
• Perkins, H. F. "A Decade of Progress in Eugenics." Third International Congress in Eugenics, New York. Williams & Wilkins Company: Baltimore, Md., 1934. https://archive.org/details/decadeofprogress00inte (Accessed August 2, 2014).
• Roe v. Wade. 410 U.S. 113 (1973). http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case? ... 5835207673 (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• Sanger, Margaret. Woman and the New Race. New York: Eugenics Publishing Co., 1920. https://archive.org/details/womannewrace00sang (Accessed August 2, 2014).
• Shapiro, Harry Lionel. Man, Culture, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
• Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson. 316 U.S. 535 (1942). http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case? ... 1644873759 (Accessed November 20, 2014).
• The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology. http://www.biodemog.org/ (Accessed October 26, 2013).
• Treasures of the APS. "Promoting Eugenics in America." American Philosophical Society. http://www.amphilsoc.org/exhibits/treasures/aes.htm (Accessed October 26, 2013).