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EUGENICS is the science which has for its aim the improvement of the 

 human race. The cabbage has been developed from the scraggly chff 

 cabbage of Europe, the carrot has been selected and reselected from a 

 worthless plant known as Queen Ann's Lace, high-powered hens have 

 appeared by the efforts of man from a tough jungle fowl of low t^<g pro- 

 duction and the improvements in dairy and beef cattle are familiar to all. 

 Man is, of course, making great efforts to improve himself mentally and 

 culturally but the great and important problem dealing with the control of 

 certain mental illnesses, and other hereditary defects has not been attacked 

 with nearly the same vigor. 



There are probably over five million feebleminded individuals in the 

 United States and, in addition, several million having other inherited defects 

 such as Huntington's chorea, insanity, and epilepsy. Of course, not all feeble- 

 mindedness and epilepsy are inherited. Over tw^enty states have laws per- 

 mitting the sterilization of people with these defects thus preventing them 

 from passing the defects along to the offspring. Cahfornia is probably the 

 only state which makes any attempt to enforce these laws adequately. 

 Sterilization is not a panacea and will not eradicate these defects from 

 the population but it will reduce the number greatly and also the cost of 

 caring for the children of these people. 



Segregation of all the feebleminded is just about prohibitive from the cost 

 standpoint. California segregates defectives as much as possible and the 

 idea is to sterilize them before release. In this way they may marry and 

 become a part of normal society but cannot procreate any defective chil- 

 dren. 



An interesting possibility is that through our present knowledge of tis- 

 sue culture the sperm-producing tissue of great men can be kept alive for 

 an indefinite time and a family may then decide to have a child in the 

 family sired by a superior person, by artificial insemination of course. This 

 plan would be only a novelty unless such superior germ plasm was used in 

 superior females to produce a group of superior children, in a favorable 

 environment. 



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