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4 Contemporary backlash
Though eugenics has been almost universally reviled since the ultimate fulfillment of its slippery slope in the Holocaust, there are suspicions of whether eugenic sentiments or notions persist under other names in modern culture. Soon after World War II, many eugenicists in the United States, for example, realized that eugenics was rapidly losing popularity and created the term crypto-eugenics to describe what they thought must then be done: taking eugenics "underground." Many prominent eugenicists became highly-respected anthropologists, biologists, and geneticists in the post-war world, such as Robert Yerkes in the USA and Otmar von Verschuer in Germany. Californian eugenicist Paul Popenoe became the founder of modern marriage counseling, a career change which initially grew out of his eugenic interests (promoting "healthy marriages" between "fit" couples) but later became an honest interest independent of what initially drew him to the topic. Occasionally various opinions on race, immigration policy, poverty, crime, or mental health are labeled as being "crypto-eugenics" though it is not a very heavily used term (often labeling as "eugenics" works well enough for the purposes of the accuser).
High school and college textbooks from the 1920s through the 1940s frequently contained chapters touting the scientific progress to be made by applying eugenic principles to the population. Many early scientific journals devoted to the study of heredity in general were run by eugenicists and featured eugenics articles alongside studies of heredity in non-human organisms. After World War II, when eugenics fell out of popularity, most references to eugenics were removed from both the textbooks and future editions of the journals (whose names also often changed as well -- for example, "Eugenics Quarterly" became "Social Biology" in 1969, a journal which still exists today though looks little like its predecessor). Notable members of the American Eugenics Society ( 1922- 1994) in the second half of the 20th Century included Joseph Fletcher, originator of Situational ethics, and Garrett Hardin , population control advocate and author of The Tragedy of the Commons.
The history of eugenics, and the concept of eugenics, have become more heavily discussed in the last ten years as knowledge about genetics has significantly advanced. Endeavors such as the Human Genome Project have again made the possibility of effective modification of the human species seem real, at least in the minds of many commentators (see, for example, Gattaca), just as Darwin's initial theory of evolution did in the 1880s, and the rediscovery of Mendel's laws did in the earliest years of the 20th century. The difference this time around is, however, that "eugenics" is used as a derogatory term -- not a favorable one.
One of the best known recent cases of attempting to implement a form of eugenics in practice was a "genius sperm bank" (1980-1999) created by Robert Klark Graham, from which nearly 230 children were conceived. The best known donor was Nobel Prize winner William Shockley.
At the present time, only a few governments in the world have anything which resemble eugenic programs. In 1994, China passed the "Maternal and Infant Health Care Law" which included mandatory pre-marital screenings for "genetic diseases of a serious nature" and "relevant mental disease." Those who are diagnosed with such diseases are required either to not marry or to agree to "long term contraceptive measures" or to submit to sterilization. A similar screening policy exists on both sides of the island of Cyprus to reduce the incidence of thalassemia, which since the program's implementation in the 1970s (which also includes pre-natal screening and abortion) has reduced the number of children born with the hereditary blood disease from 1 out of every 158 births to almost zero.
