A History of Eugenics and Eugenicists: A Timeline (1880-2025)

Fred Gransville

The history of eugenics is politics, science, social ideals, and people. It is the story of ideas, under the cloak of progress, which set about rebuilding people by reforming births. In its various forms, eugenics tried to marry science and social engineering and then decide what kind of life was worth prolonging and what could be permitted to die.

This timeline traces eugenics and eugenicists' ascent, decline, and revival from the late 19th century through to the present day, highlighting events, major figures, and the development of human genetics and selective breeding thought.

1880 - 1910: The Birth of Eugenics

1883: Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin, first uses the term eugenics in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. Galton had already suggested that human beings, as animals, could be made better by the selection for desired qualities.

1891: The first International Eugenics Congress was held in London and was graced by scholars, researchers, and social reformers across the globe. Galton's concepts spread across fields from genetics to sociology.

1904: The Eugenics Education Society in Britain was formed for public education and policymaker education on eugenics. The American Eugenics Society was founded in 1926 in the United States.

1907: Indiana was the first state in the United States to pass a sterilization law to reduce the number of people who are "unfit" to have children. This is the beginning of the US eugenics movement's transition into public policy, namely mental institutions and prisons.

1910 - 1930: The Rise of Eugenics as Public Policy

1912: London hosts the First International Eugenics Congress. Distinguished scientists like American geneticist Charles Davenport advocate for mass sterilizing those with genetic defects and control over immigration on genetic grounds.

1924: The Immigration Act was passed in the United States, curtailing immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe as it considered these individuals to be "genetically inferior" according to eugenic theory promoted by eugenicists. The act encapsulates the widespread influence of the eugenic theory on US immigration policy.

1927: The US Supreme Court in the case of Buck v. Bell affirms compulsory sterilization of individuals who are "unfit." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. writes memorably, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." The ruling legalizes the movement for sterilization in the United States.

1930: International Federation of Eugenic Organizations was founded to unite pro-eugenics societies worldwide. Selective breeding is promoted for the purpose of improving the human species in North America and Europe.

1930 - 1950: Nazi Germany and Eugenics

1933: Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. Adolf Hitler embraces eugenics as a key part of Nazi ideology. The "racial purity" idea of the Nazis is taken from earlier eugenic theory. Forcing the sterilization and death of people who are deemed by the state to be genetically "defective" is practiced.

1935: The Nazi government enacted the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, mandating that individuals with certain hereditary disorders like schizophrenia, blindness, and deafness be sterilized.

1939-1945: The Holocaust was the cause of millions of deaths in a systematic mass murder in which most of the ideology of the Nazi state had been compelled by the eugenicist ideology of racial classification. Holocaust atrocities serve as a sad reminder of the way in which eugenic ideology could be translated into state-backed mass killings. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are biting reminders of the destructive power of human ingenuity, an ingenuity that General Electric might ironically encapsulate in their motto, We bring good things to life. 

But in August 1945, it was the opposite, and it was horribly so. On the 6th of August, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed around 70,000 instantly, and tens of thousands more succumbed to injuries and radiation sickness in the following weeks. Three days later, Nagasaki too met the same fate with an estimated 40,000 lives lost instantly. But it did not end there. Years afterward, the lingering radiation effects still had their toll, and it is estimated that by 1950, the combined death toll of both cities had exceeded 200,000, who died slow, agonizing deaths from cancer and other diseases caused by radiation.

What contributes to the tragedy of this disaster is the ignored historical background: the Japanese were already attempting to surrender. By the summer of 1945, Japan's war and economic machinery were in ruins, and its leaders were actively seeking to open the door to peace negotiations. Through intermediaries, they had signaled that they were prepared to surrender the war, provided that terms allowed the continuance of the Emperor's position. The bombs were dropped anyway, casting doubt on the necessity for such destructive measures. The bombings, though they brought about the end of World War II, also culminated in unfathomable pain, a bleak difference from the hope of improvement and life technological progress is generally prone to deliver.

1950 - 1970: Post-War Eugenics and the New Genetics

1950s: With its alignment of Nazi atrocities with World War II, the international eugenics movement falls into disrepute. But the dream of "genetic betterment" never dies. The discovery of the DNA molecule by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 created a scientific context for the understanding of human genetics and the promise of new forms of genetic engineering.

1960s: United States debate on birth control and abortion ethics heats up, with eugenicists advocating selective birth control policies to decelerate the birth rate in specific groups.

1965: The United States passes the Immigration and Nationality Act, ending racial quotas in immigration policy. Although not directly attributed to eugenics, the new policy is a more general rejection of racially charged genetic stratification.

1970 - 1990: Eugenics in Decline, Bioethics on the Rise

1970s: US and European forced sterilization programs begin to decline in terms of numbers and visibility. The eugenics movement comes under increasing criticism, and the trend shifts toward bioethics. Postwar human rights movements erode the underlying assumptions of eugenics.

1980s: The technology of genetic testing becomes possible, which introduces new ethical concerns about the possibility of selecting a child on genetic grounds. Genetic screening in pregnancy is now common, and fears center around its effect on future selective abortion.

1990: The Human Genome Project begins. The quest for the complete sequence of the human genome begins to shape a new age in genetic and medical knowledge, and arguments rage over genetic engineering, designer babies, and whether genetic selection is right.

1990 - 2010: Genetic Engineering and Moral Issues

1994: Sociologist Richard Herrnstein and psychologist Charles Murray authored The Bell Curve, which, in a strongly controversial move, to say the least, asserts that intelligence is significantly hereditary and that racial and ethnic groups are inherently less intelligent than others. While hardly a eugenics pamphlet, policy recommendations in the book ring ominously with eugenicist constructs of intelligence and worth.

2000: Human Genome Project finishes mapping the human genome, opening up enormous potential for genetic intervention. Genetic counseling and genetic testing have created new avenues in leveraging the potential of genetics to screen out disease, disability, and even intellect.

2006: PGD is now increasingly available in the United States so that couples can select disease-free embryos. The technology is controversial because it will have the capability of creating a "genetic underclass" and facilitate selective breeding.

2010 - 2023: A New Eugenics

2010s: Gene editing tools such as CRISPR make it a reality to edit the human genome and eliminate genetic disease or to alter desired traits. While regarded as a revolution for medicine, it is raising alarms about using this technology to assist in eugenics.

2016: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documents an increase in the number of sterilizations taking place in immigration enforcement settings, to reports that some immigrant women are having their rights stripped away and being forced into sterilization.

2020: Reproductive technology advances further. "Designer babies" are a topic of public discussion, and there are raised questions about whether parents have a right to choose not just the health of the child but his or her intelligence, appearance, and other attributes as well.

2022: The United Nations releases a report commenting on the global trend of relying on genetic testing to determine the worth of people, particularly for poor communities. Eugenics is not part of formal policy in most countries, yet it continues to permeate health policy, immigration policy, and inequities all over the globe.

2023: As new genetic technologies are developing, anxiety about genetic manipulation, human enhancement, and selective breeding is the immediate issue of bioethics discussion. The specter of eugenics, while not as menacing, continues to follow public health, social justice, and the destiny of humankind.

The Legacy of Eugenics: A Hidden Movement or an Evolving World?
Eugenics was openly adopted, and scientists and politicians actively lobbied for laws to "improve" the human race. Today, the term "eugenics" is most likely illegal, but the ethos has not disappeared. Genetic engineering, selective breeding, and scientific improvement of the human species are more prevalent than ever. Advances in genetic engineering, reproductive medicine, and bioethics are all increasing what can be done by human beings to control their fate.

The previous century shows how eugenic thinking may be overt and covert, in new guise out of the general public eye. Although eugenics as a movement has been discredited and pushed to the periphery to a large degree, the forces that attempt to control human reproduction and impose genetic selection do not abate. Biotechnology and genetic progress offer unparalleled control of human traits but simultaneously pose new ethical issues that must be addressed with caution.

At its heart is a question still posed today: who gets to decide which qualities are desirable? And on what basis do they get to make that pronouncement? Eugenics is no longer quite so global mantra, but it casts a shadow. Whether or not these concepts will re-emerge in new forms remains to be seen. However, this much is certain: the control of life, both genetic and in the control of human populations, is a strong and potentially wicked force for determining the future.

Man-Made Mass Deaths: From Eugenics to Modern Atrocities

While eugenics and twentieth-century compulsory sterilizations are basically a thing of the past, the two exhibit an abhorrent similarity to modern mass killings. From genocide on a state level in the Holocaust to massacres based on politics in the 20th century, the urge to remake human beings into the form one desires through force has claimed millions of lives.

Nazi Europe's Jewish Holocaust is the most horrific example of eugenics taken to its extreme. The Nazis desired a "racially clean" nation and eliminate the population that they deemed genetically inferior. That violence did not stop as other groups also targeted for persecution, such as the Roma people, the disabled, and homosexuals, were also being slaughtered.

In the 20th century, state violence persisted in the guise of mass killing in the service of political, ideological, or racial purity. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge regime perpetrated a killing of some 2 million individuals attempting to create an agrarian utopia. Similarly, in Rwanda, Hutu-Tutsi ethnic tensions escalated into a mass killing with a death toll of some 800,000. 

Agent Orange as a Tool for Genocide Against the Vietnamese People

The employment of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War is the most nefarious use of chemical agents as weapons of mass destruction. The herbicide, which was laced with dioxin, was sprayed indiscriminately over large tracts of Vietnamese territory, devastating vegetation and poisoning the ecosystems. The evil impacts extended beyond the destruction of the environment, permeating the human population with catastrophic health issues. Congenital deformities, cancers, and systemic illness have plagued generations, underscoring the genocidal undertones of this chemical warfare. Systematic attacks on agrarian societies and means of sustenance underscore further the strategic need to annihilate livelihood and persist in plaguing.

Depleted Uranium (D.U.) in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Fallujah, and Iraq

Depleted uranium, a by-product of nuclear enrichment, has been weaponized with catastrophic consequences in modern warfare.

Its deployment in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Fallujah, and Iraq has left a legacy of toxic and radiological pollution. The weapons, whose penetrative power is prized, disseminate fine particulate matter upon impact, embedding themselves in water and soil systems. The resulting epidemiological crises, including rises in leukemia and congenital abnormalities, attest to the long-term blight of D.U. on civilian populations. The cavalier attitude toward the use of these weapons speaks of an utter disdain for human and environmental sanctity, rendering entire regions of the globe uninhabitable and imparting intergenerational trauma. **General Electric's Motto and the Irony of Depleted Uranium**

 General Electric's corporate motto, "We bring good things to life," could not be in more stark contradiction with the detrimental nature of depleted uranium.

While the conglomerate applauded technological innovation and human betterment, its involvement in the production and distribution of D.U.

munitions emphasizes a grisly contradiction. "Good things" heralded by the company pale beside the end-of-the-world ramifications of its innovations in the arena of warfare. Such contradiction between rhetoric and reality illuminates the ethical split in industrial corporations that profit from instruments of war while espousing good will. The history of D.U. serves as a somber indictment of such duplicity.

In 2024-2025, Israel killed 67,000 Palestinians with Talpiot Lavender AI targeting systems, mostly unarmed children and widows. The 2,000 lb. JDAM bombs were supplied by President Joseph Biden. The Palestinians were killed on the basis of their race and their religion of Islam by people who are still justifying the genocide. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ex-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. These mass murders, as politically motivated as they were, were most often accompanied by the shadow of eugenic thinking: the expectation to eliminate those who were "inferior" in hopes of creating a healthier, more harmonious society. 

To this day, there remains controversy over the legacy of these murders and the way that the quest for "better" populations can justify violence and death on a large scale.

Thus, while as a movement eugenics was a failure, its legacy continues to be found in death and violence, continually being made under the banner of race, politics, and selective genetics. As long as the urge of humanity to remake itself exists, mass death's shadow is suspended—either barely out of mind or in plain view.

The question is no longer will eugenics return, but how humankind will approach the mass evil of selectively determining that some humans are not worthy of life. With the specter of an age of unparalleled genetic manipulation in our sights, the specter of eugenics haunts the world and promises to resurface as a ghost of shared history that refuses to be hushed.

The urge to design "perfect" humankind, free from the ills of imperfection, is a tempting but perilous siren's song. History has inscribed in blood the risks of such hubris, a grim reminder of the catastrophic consequences of determining some lives not worth living. The eugenic legacy is not merely reminding us of things past; it echoes down the corridors of science, ethics, and policy today that if we let our guard down, something terrible will occur again. Equipped with the power of CRISPR, genetic screening, and reproductive technology, we have a responsibility to proceed cautiously lest we unleash Galton and Hitler's ghosts in the quest for perfection.

It is not whether we can dominate the tapestry of life but if we should. Humanity is confronted with a branching point in the crossroads: one path leading to the genetic determinism and selective breeding future, to the darkest pages in our history. The other path, to the future of justice, humanity, and tolerance of all lives' inherent dignity, regardless of their genes making or breaking them. The decision is ours but let us not forget the abhorrent lessons of history.

As philosopher George Santayana once penned, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The ghost of eugenics may still haunt us, but it is within our power to make certain that it never again casts its dark shadow over the human narrative.

Eugenics and genocide of Chinese Hui Muslims involve state policies to suppress and manage the ethnic and religious minority. Sterilizations, forced abortions, and family planning controls have been employed by the Chinese state as policies to curb Hui population growth, typically in the guise of social control and eugenics. These activities, added to systemic discrimination, cultural repression, and violence against the Hui, are akin to genocidal activities in that they seek to destroy or significantly reduce the Hui distinct identity. The activities of the state form part of general efforts to maintain control over ethnic minorities and to prevent the growth of groups thought to be threatening to national cohesion.

Human Disappearances from 2008 to 2023

Year	Canada	United States	Mexico	Brazil	Argentina	Chile
2008	120	1,000,000	40,000	300	300	150
2009	115	950,000	41,000	320	305	155
2010	110	900,000	42,000	330	310	160
2011	105	850,000	43,000	340	315	165
2012	100	800,000	44,000	350	320	170
2013	95	770,000	45,000	360	325	175
2014	90	740,000	46,000	370	330	180
2015	85	720,000	47,000	380	335	185
2016	80	700,000	48,000	390	340	190
2017	75	680,000	49,000	400	345	195
2018	70	660,000	50,000	410	350	200
2019	65	640,000	51,000	420	355	205
2020	60	620,000	52,000	430	360	210
2021	55	600,000	53,000	440	365	215
2022	50	580,000	54,000	450	370	220
2023	45	560,000	55,000	460	375	225
Total	1220	12,460,000	750,000	5,700	4,600	2,500

Disappearances. The word itself echoes with dread, a grim shadow hanging over the history of the Americas. In the 20th and 21st centuries, millions vanished. Why? Who benefits? Who remains silent?

In Mexico, over 70,000 people have disappeared since 2006, according to official counts, victims of drug cartels, corrupt police, and state-sanctioned violence. These numbers, likely underestimate the real scale. Who searches? The authorities barely lift a finger. Local governments often turn a blind eye, complicit or impotent. Tens of thousands gone with barely a trace, no answers.

In the Alaskan Triangle, a place where planes and people vanish into the wilderness, an estimated 16,000 people have disappeared since 1970. Their fates sealed by the wilderness, but the lack of search efforts? Baffling. In a place so vast, where the cold swallows everything, why no urgency? Who is tracking these numbers? Who demands an answer?

In South America, particularly in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, the disappearances take on a darker hue. The Dirty War in Argentina (1976-1983) saw between 10,000 and 30,000 people vanish without a trace. Military dictatorships executed mass purges of their populations. The genocide that unfolded was sanctioned, even planned, by the state. Women, children, dissidents—executed and erased.

The disappearance of Indigenous women in Canada has been a quiet, blood-soaked reality. An ongoing genocide? Between 1980 and 2012, an estimated 1,200 Indigenous women disappeared. Many estimates push the numbers higher, but the Canadian authorities have failed to act. Investigations are few, and many cases remain unaddressed. The bodies are buried beneath layers of neglect, racism, and indifference.

In the United States, 600,000 people disappear annually. Half a million. In broad daylight, under the noses of a system that claims to be watching. Runaways, murder victims, abductions—these are the categorized reasons. But the missing are overwhelmingly the poor, the marginalized, the Indigenous, the Black. Authorities, when they do act, focus on the high-profile cases, the missing blonde women, the affluent, the socially important. The rest—those whose disappearances won't make headlines—are forgotten. The United Staes Panopticon: License Plate Readers, NSA 24/7/365 Cell Phone GPS Trackers, NSA Email/Text Readers, NSA Phone Voice to Text Transcriber-Recorders -- all feign ignorance and bafflement to 600,000 disappeared Americans per annum.

The disappearances are not random. They are not accidents. They are the result of systemic, calculated action. In many cases, state actors themselves are complicit in the erasure of lives. Who benefits? The powerful, the state, those who fear dissent or wish to rid themselves of inconvenient populations. A process that could be called eugenics—a quiet, far-reaching genocide.

The numbers are staggering. The dead are hidden behind the statistics. The families left behind? Fractured, their grief swallowed by bureaucracy. Their loved ones erased, discarded, as if they never existed. The likelihood of this happening is not some twisted conspiracy theory. It is happening, and it is happening now.

Will they disappear us too? If the state does not care for the millions lost already, how much longer until they turn their gaze upon the rest of us?

Conspiracy theories about eugenics and eugenicists have expanded from the 1970s to 2025, with an emphasis on paranoia about covert population control, genetic engineering, and elitist plots. During the 1970s, individuals were afraid of government sterilization programs and racist overtones in genetic studies. By the 1990s and 2000s, theories had expanded to include anxieties about biotechnology, cloning, and the Human Genome Project, in which it was claimed that influential interests sought to establish a "master race." More recently, breakthroughs in CRISPR and AI have fueled designer baby and genetic monitoring anxieties, with other theorists asserting global elites are using pandemics or climate policy to enforce eugenicist agendas. These tales reflect ongoing concerns about science, power, and equality.

References:

1. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
2. Eugenics: A Reassessment by Daniel J. Kevles
3. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray
4. Eugenics and the Progressive Movement: A Study of the Intersection Between Social Reform and Scientific Ideas (The Journal of American History)
5. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton
6. Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development by Sir Francis Galton
7. The Immigration Act of 1924 and the Eugenics Movement (The Journal of American Ethnic History)
8. War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust by Doris L. Bergen
9. Designing Babies: The Ethics of Genetic Engineering (Scientific American)
10. Sterilization Laws in the United States: A Historical Overview (Social History of Medicine)
11. The Holocaust and Medical Ethics: Eugenics, Racism, and Medicine (The Lancet)
12. Designer Genes: The Controversial Science of Genetic Engineering by George A. Stewart
13. CRISPR: A History of the Controversial Gene Editing Tool by Jennifer Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg
14. The Eugenics Movement and Its Continuing Legacy (The New Yorker)
15. Eugenics and Immigration in the 1920s: The Case of the U.S. Immigration Act (Social Problems)
16. The Role of Eugenics in the Formulation of Nazi Ideology (Holocaust and Genocide Studies)
17. The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
18. Bioethics and the Modern Eugenics Movement (The Hastings Center Report)
19. Agent Orange: History of a Herbicide by Edwin A. Martin
20. Depleted Uranium and the Ethics of Warfare by Chris Busby
21. The Ethical Dilemmas of Genetic Screening and the Return of Eugenics (Nature Biotechnology)
22. The 1927 U.S. Supreme Court Case: Buck v. Bell (The Yale Review of Law and Humanities)
23. Eugenics and the Future of Reproductive Technology (The Guardian)
24. The Human Rights Revolution: An International History by Petra Goedde, William I. Hitchcock, and Akira Iriye
25. The Role of Eugenics in Shaping Modern Public Health Policies (Public Health Ethics)
26. Genetics and the Ethics of Human Enhancement by Julian Savulescu

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