Allyson M W Dyar reviewed Control by Adam Rutherford
Review of 'Control' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Say the word “eugenics,” and most people’s minds immediately drift towards World War II and the atrocities that the Nazi’s brought to bear on those they had deemed “undesirable.” And you might think that the idea of eugenics has been tucked away in our distance past and forgotten.
Not so fast. In fact, I just read an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association published October 07, 2022 that specifically discussed the “stigma and exclusion of individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) within medicine, social services, public health, and society have a long history that persists to this day. The practices of eugenics and institutionalization were state-sanctioned and used within the US throughout much of the 20th century to remove persons with IDD from the population through forced sterilization and placement in institutions. These movements received widespread support at the time, including from leading medical and public …
Say the word “eugenics,” and most people’s minds immediately drift towards World War II and the atrocities that the Nazi’s brought to bear on those they had deemed “undesirable.” And you might think that the idea of eugenics has been tucked away in our distance past and forgotten.
Not so fast. In fact, I just read an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association published October 07, 2022 that specifically discussed the “stigma and exclusion of individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) within medicine, social services, public health, and society have a long history that persists to this day. The practices of eugenics and institutionalization were state-sanctioned and used within the US throughout much of the 20th century to remove persons with IDD from the population through forced sterilization and placement in institutions. These movements received widespread support at the time, including from leading medical and public health authorities.” [JAMA October 7, 2022. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.18500]
As you can see, the notion of eugenics is still alive and well.
And this brings me to the book, Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics. I was familiar with eugenics as espoused in the United States, as I was researching it for a story I was outlining, but I wasn’t as familiar as I thought with the origins of the “theory.”
Without getting too far down the rabbit hole, eugenics can be traced back to Sir Francis Galton and his fascination with his cousin Charles Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, specifically, the discussion of animal breeding. Galton used his vast intellect to research various aspects of human dynamics and attempt to codify them mathematically.
Those who followed in his eugenics and mathematical footsteps improved on his statistical techniques and those methods are still in use today, such as standard deviation, regression, correlation, etc.
I found this book fascinating and an easy read. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the subject of eugenics, especially the eugenics movement in the United Kingdom. Others who are interested in population statistics may find themselves engrossed with the uncomfortable origins of eugenics.
This is a book worth reading because the notion of eugenics won’t simply fade away.
5/5 stars
[Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the advanced ebook copy in exchange for my honest and objective opinion which I have given here.]