Bad Blood - The Story Of Eugenics

Episodes

TitleFirst
Broadcast
RepeatedComments
Birth Controlled2022120520230613 (R4)
20230614 (R4)
Who should be prevented from having children? And who gets to decide? Across 20th century America, there was a battle to control birth - a battle which rages on to this day.

In 1907, the state of Indiana passed the first sterilisation law in the world. Government-run institutions were granted the power to sterilise those deemed degenerate - often against their will.

In the same period, women are becoming more educated, empowered and sexually liberated. In the Roaring Twenties, the flappers start dancing the Charleston and women win the right to vote.

But contraception is still illegal and utterly taboo. The pioneering campaigner Margaret Sanger, begins her decades long activism to secure women access to birth control - the only way, she argues, women can be truly free.

In the final part of the episode, sterilisation survivor and campaigner Elaine Riddick shares her painful but remarkable story.

Contributors: Professor Alexandra Minna Stern from the UCLA Institue of Society and Genetics, Professor Wendy Kline from Purdue Univerity, Elaine and Tony Riddick from the Rebecca Project for Justice

Featuring the voice of Joanna Monro

Music and Sound Design by Jon Nicholls

Presented by Adam Rutherford

Produced by IIan Goodman

Clips: Coverage of Dobbs v Jackson Supreme Court decision from June 24, 2022 including BBC News / CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford / BBC News Sarah Smith / audio of protesters from Channel 4 News. / Mike Wallace interviews Margaret Sanger, September 1957, from the archive at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

The battle to control birth in 20th-century USA.

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.

Newgenics2022122720230704 (R4)
20230705 (R4)
Are we entering a ‘newgenic' age - where cutting-edge technologies and the power of personal choice could achieve the kind of genetic perfection that 20th century eugenicists were after?

In 2018, a Chinese scientist illegally attempted to precision edit the genome of two embryos. It didn't work as intended. Twin sisters - Lulu and Nana - were later born, but their identity, and the status of their health, is shrouded in secrecy. They were the first designer babies.

Other technological developments are also coming together in ways that could change reproduction: IVF can produce multiple viable embryos, and polygenic screening could be used to select between them.

Increased understanding and control of our genetics is seen as a threat by some - an inevitable force for division. But instead of allowing genetics to separate and rank people, perhaps there's a way it can be used - actively - to promote equality. Professor Paige Harden shares her suggestion of an anti-eugenic politics which makes use of genetic information

Contributors: Dr Helen O'Neill, lecturer in Reproductive and Molecular Genetics at University College London, Dr Jamie Metzl, author of Hacking Darwin, Professor Kathryn Paige Harden from the University of Texas and author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality.

Music and Sound design: Jon Nicholls

Presenter: Adam Rutherford

Producer: Ilan Goodman

Clips: 28th Nov 2018 - BBC Newsday report, BBC Breakfast News / BBC Breakfast news report Chinese letter of condemnation / BBC Newsnight from 1988 on 10th anniversary of Louise Brown's birth

Could powerful genetic technologies usher in a new eugenic era?

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.

Rassenhygiene2022121220230620 (R4)
20230621 (R4)
In the name of eugenics, the Nazi state sterilised hundreds of thousands against their will, murdered disabled children and embarked on a programme of genocide.

Why?

We like to believe that Nazi atrocities were a unique aberration, a grotesque historical outlier. But it turns out that leading American eugenicists and lawmakers like Madison Grant and Harry Laughlin inspired many of the Nazi programmes, from the mass sterilisation of those deemed ‘unfit' to the Nuremberg laws preventing the marriage of Jews and non-Jews. Indeed, before WW2, many eugenicists across the world regarded the Nazi regime with envious admiration.

The Nazis went further, faster than anyone before them. But ultimately, the story of Nazi eugenics is one of international connection and continuity.

Contributors: Professor Stefan Kühl from the University of Bielefield, Professor Amy Carney from Penn State Behrend, Dr Jonathan Spiro from Castleton University, Professor Sheila Weiss from Clarkson University and Dr Barbara Warnock from the Wiener Holocaust Library

Music and Sound Design by Jon Nicholls

Presented by Adam Rutherford

Produced by IIan Goodman

The Nazis build a eugenic state.

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.

The Curse Of Mendel2022121920230627 (R4)
20230628 (R4)
A key goal of eugenics in the 20th century was to eliminate genetic defects from a population. Many countries pursued this with state-led programmes of involuntary sterilisation, even murder. We unpick some of the science behind this dark history, and consider the choices and challenges opened up by the science today.

In the mid-19th century, an Augustinian friar called Gregor Mendel made a breakthrough. By breeding pea plants and observing how certain traits were passed on, Mendel realised there must be units - little packets - of information determining characteristics. He had effectively discovered the gene.

His insights inspired eugenicists from the 1900s onwards. If traits were passed on by specific genes, then their policies should stop people with ‘bad' genes from having children.

Mendel's ideas are still used in classrooms today - to teach about traits like eye colour. But the eugenicists thought Mendel's simple explanations applied to everything - from so-called ‘feeblemindedness' to criminality and even pauperism.

Today, we recognise certain genetic conditions as being passed on in a Mendelian way. Achondroplasia - which results in short stature - is one example, caused by a single genetic variant. We hear from Professor Tom Shakespeare about the condition, about his own decision to have children despite knowing the condition was heritable - and the reaction of the medical establishment.

We also explore how genetics is taught in schools today - and the danger of relying on Mendel's appealingly simple but misleading account.

Contributors: Dr Brian Donovan, senior research scientist at BSCS; Professor Tom Shakespeare, disability researcher at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; and Dr Christine Patch, principal staff scientist in Genomic Counselling in the Society and Ethics Research group, part of Wellcome Connecting Science.

Music: Jon Nicholls

Presenter: Adam Rutherford

Producer: Ilan Goodman

Mendel's insights are taken up by the eugenicists.

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.

You Will Not Replace Us20221128"You will not replace us" was the battle cry of white supremacists at a rally in Charlottesville in 2017. They were expressing an old fear - the idea that immigrants and people of colour will out-breed and replace the dominant white 'race'. Exactly the same idea suffused American culture in the first decades of the 1900s, as millions of immigrants arrived at Ellis island from southern and eastern Europe.

The 'old-stock' Americans - the white elite who ruled industry and government - latched on to replacement theory and the eugenic idea of 'race suicide'. It's all there in The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald's novel set in 1922 - which takes us into the world of the super-rich - their parties and their politics.

Amidst this febrile period of cultural and economic transformation, the Eugenics Record Office is established. Led by Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin, it becomes a headquarters for the scientific and political advancement of eugenics.

By 1924, the eugenically informed anti-immigrant movement has triumphed - America shut its doors with the Johnson-Reed Act, and the flow of immigrants is almost completely stoppped.

Contributors: Dr Thomas Leonard, Professor Sarah Churchwell, Professor Joe Cain

Featuring the voices of David Hounslow, Joanna Monro and Hughie O'Donnell

Music and Sound Design by Jon Nicholls
Presented by Adam Rutherford
Produced by IIan Goodman

Clips: BBC News, coverage of Charlottesville protests, 2017 / CNN, coverage of buffalo shooter, 2022 / MSNBC, coverage of buffalo shooter, 2022 / Edison, Orange, N.J, 1916, Don't bite the hand that's feeding you, Jimmie Morgan, Walter Van Brunt, Thomas Hoier / BBC Radio 4 Great Gatsby: Author, F Scott Fitzgerald Director: Gaynor Macfarlane, Dramatised by Robert Forrest.

In Jazz Age USA, the wealthy political elite embrace eugenic ideas with gusto.

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.

You Will Not Replace Us2022112820230606 (R4)"You will not replace us" was the battle cry of white supremacists at a rally in Charlottesville in 2017. They were expressing an old fear - the idea that immigrants and people of colour will out-breed and replace the dominant white 'race'. Exactly the same idea suffused American culture in the first decades of the 1900s, as millions of immigrants arrived at Ellis island from southern and eastern Europe.

The 'old-stock' Americans - the white elite who ruled industry and government - latched on to replacement theory and the eugenic idea of 'race suicide'. It's all there in The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald's novel set in 1922 - which takes us into the world of the super-rich - their parties and their politics.

Amidst this febrile period of cultural and economic transformation, the Eugenics Record Office is established. Led by Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin, it becomes a headquarters for the scientific and political advancement of eugenics.

By 1924, the eugenically informed anti-immigrant movement has triumphed - America shut its doors with the Johnson-Reed Act, and the flow of immigrants is almost completely stoppped.

Contributors: Dr Thomas Leonard, Professor Sarah Churchwell, Professor Joe Cain

Featuring the voices of David Hounslow, Joanna Monro and Hughie O'Donnell

Music and Sound Design by Jon Nicholls
Presented by Adam Rutherford
Produced by IIan Goodman

Clips: BBC News, coverage of Charlottesville protests, 2017 / CNN, coverage of buffalo shooter, 2022 / MSNBC, coverage of buffalo shooter, 2022 / Edison, Orange, N.J, 1916, Don't bite the hand that's feeding you, Jimmie Morgan, Walter Van Brunt, Thomas Hoier / BBC Radio 4 Great Gatsby: Author, F Scott Fitzgerald Director: Gaynor Macfarlane, Dramatised by Robert Forrest.

In Jazz Age USA, the wealthy political elite embrace eugenic ideas with gusto.

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.

You Will Not Replace Us2022112820230607 (R4)"You will not replace us" was the battle cry of white supremacists at a rally in Charlottesville in 2017. They were expressing an old fear - the idea that immigrants and people of colour will out-breed and replace the dominant white 'race'. Exactly the same idea suffused American culture in the first decades of the 1900s, as millions of immigrants arrived at Ellis island from southern and eastern Europe.

The 'old-stock' Americans - the white elite who ruled industry and government - latched on to replacement theory and the eugenic idea of 'race suicide'. It's all there in The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald's novel set in 1922 - which takes us into the world of the super-rich - their parties and their politics.

Amidst this febrile period of cultural and economic transformation, the Eugenics Record Office is established. Led by Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin, it becomes a headquarters for the scientific and political advancement of eugenics.

By 1924, the eugenically informed anti-immigrant movement has triumphed - America shut its doors with the Johnson-Reed Act, and the flow of immigrants is almost completely stoppped.

Contributors: Dr Thomas Leonard, Professor Sarah Churchwell, Professor Joe Cain

Featuring the voices of David Hounslow, Joanna Monro and Hughie O'Donnell

Music and Sound Design by Jon Nicholls
Presented by Adam Rutherford
Produced by IIan Goodman

Clips: BBC News, coverage of Charlottesville protests, 2017 / CNN, coverage of buffalo shooter, 2022 / MSNBC, coverage of buffalo shooter, 2022 / Edison, Orange, N.J, 1916, Don't bite the hand that's feeding you, Jimmie Morgan, Walter Van Brunt, Thomas Hoier / BBC Radio 4 Great Gatsby: Author, F Scott Fitzgerald Director: Gaynor Macfarlane, Dramatised by Robert Forrest.

In Jazz Age USA, the wealthy political elite embrace eugenic ideas with gusto.

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.

You've Got Good Genes20221121In this 6-part series, we follow the story of eugenics from its origins in the middle-class salons of Victorian Britain, through the Fitter Family competitions and sterilisation laws of Gilded Age USA, to the full genocidal horrors of Nazi Germany.

Episode 1: You've Got Good Genes

Eugenics is born in Victorian Britain, christened by the eccentric gentleman-scientist Sir Francis Galton. It's a movement to breed better humans, fusing new biological ideas with the politics of empire, and the inflexible snobbery of the middle-classes.

The movement swiftly gains momentum - taken up by scientists, social reformers, and even novelists as a moral and political quest to address urgent social problems. By encouraging the right people to have babies, eugenicists believed we could breed ourselves to a brighter future; a future free from disease, disability, crime, even poverty. What, its proponents wondered, could be more noble?

The story culminates in the First International Eugenics Congress of 1912, where a delegation of eminent public figures from around the world gather in South Kensington to advocate and develop the science - and ideology - of better breeding. Among them Winston Churchill, Arthur Balfour, the Dean of St Pauls, Charles Darwin's son, American professors and the ambassadors from Norway, Greece, and France: a global crusade in motion.

But amidst the sweeping utopian rhetoric, the darker implications of eugenic ideas emerge: what of those deemed 'unfit'? What should happen to them?

Contributors: Professor Joe Cain, Daniel Maier, Professor Philippa Levine, Professor Angelique Richardson

Featuring the voices of David Hounslow, Joanna Monro and Hughie O'Donnell

Music and Sound Design by Jon Nicholls
Presented by Adam Rutherford
Produced by IIan Goodman

Clips: Trump addresses a rally in Bemidji, Minnesota in 2020, C-Span / Trump on his German blood, Kings of Kallstadt 2014, directed by Simone Wendel, produced by Michael Bogar, Mario Conte, Inka Dewitz, Thomas Hofmann / Julian Huxley - Heredity in Man, Eugenics Society, 1937

Eugenics is born in Victorian Britain and swiftly builds an international following.

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.

You've Got Good Genes2022112120230530 (R4)In this 6-part series, we follow the story of eugenics from its origins in the middle-class salons of Victorian Britain, through the Fitter Family competitions and sterilisation laws of Gilded Age USA, to the full genocidal horrors of Nazi Germany.

Episode 1: You've Got Good Genes

Eugenics is born in Victorian Britain, christened by the eccentric gentleman-scientist Sir Francis Galton. It's a movement to breed better humans, fusing new biological ideas with the politics of empire, and the inflexible snobbery of the middle-classes.

The movement swiftly gains momentum - taken up by scientists, social reformers, and even novelists as a moral and political quest to address urgent social problems. By encouraging the right people to have babies, eugenicists believed we could breed ourselves to a brighter future; a future free from disease, disability, crime, even poverty. What, its proponents wondered, could be more noble?

The story culminates in the First International Eugenics Congress of 1912, where a delegation of eminent public figures from around the world gather in South Kensington to advocate and develop the science - and ideology - of better breeding. Among them Winston Churchill, Arthur Balfour, the Dean of St Pauls, Charles Darwin's son, American professors and the ambassadors from Norway, Greece, and France: a global crusade in motion.

But amidst the sweeping utopian rhetoric, the darker implications of eugenic ideas emerge: what of those deemed 'unfit'? What should happen to them?

Contributors: Professor Joe Cain, Daniel Maier, Professor Philippa Levine, Professor Angelique Richardson

Featuring the voices of David Hounslow, Joanna Monro and Hughie O'Donnell

Music and Sound Design by Jon Nicholls
Presented by Adam Rutherford
Produced by IIan Goodman

Clips: Trump addresses a rally in Bemidji, Minnesota in 2020, C-Span / Trump on his German blood, Kings of Kallstadt 2014, directed by Simone Wendel, produced by Michael Bogar, Mario Conte, Inka Dewitz, Thomas Hofmann / Julian Huxley - Heredity in Man, Eugenics Society, 1937

Eugenics is born in Victorian Britain and swiftly builds an international following.

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.

You've Got Good Genes2022112120230531 (R4)In this 6-part series, we follow the story of eugenics from its origins in the middle-class salons of Victorian Britain, through the Fitter Family competitions and sterilisation laws of Gilded Age USA, to the full genocidal horrors of Nazi Germany.

Episode 1: You've Got Good Genes

Eugenics is born in Victorian Britain, christened by the eccentric gentleman-scientist Sir Francis Galton. It's a movement to breed better humans, fusing new biological ideas with the politics of empire, and the inflexible snobbery of the middle-classes.

The movement swiftly gains momentum - taken up by scientists, social reformers, and even novelists as a moral and political quest to address urgent social problems. By encouraging the right people to have babies, eugenicists believed we could breed ourselves to a brighter future; a future free from disease, disability, crime, even poverty. What, its proponents wondered, could be more noble?

The story culminates in the First International Eugenics Congress of 1912, where a delegation of eminent public figures from around the world gather in South Kensington to advocate and develop the science - and ideology - of better breeding. Among them Winston Churchill, Arthur Balfour, the Dean of St Pauls, Charles Darwin's son, American professors and the ambassadors from Norway, Greece, and France: a global crusade in motion.

But amidst the sweeping utopian rhetoric, the darker implications of eugenic ideas emerge: what of those deemed 'unfit'? What should happen to them?

Contributors: Professor Joe Cain, Daniel Maier, Professor Philippa Levine, Professor Angelique Richardson

Featuring the voices of David Hounslow, Joanna Monro and Hughie O'Donnell

Music and Sound Design by Jon Nicholls
Presented by Adam Rutherford
Produced by IIan Goodman

Clips: Trump addresses a rally in Bemidji, Minnesota in 2020, C-Span / Trump on his German blood, Kings of Kallstadt 2014, directed by Simone Wendel, produced by Michael Bogar, Mario Conte, Inka Dewitz, Thomas Hofmann / Julian Huxley - Heredity in Man, Eugenics Society, 1937

Eugenics is born in Victorian Britain and swiftly builds an international following.

The movement to breed better people: its dark history and troubling present.