Diane B. Paul

“It's Ok, We're Not Cousins by Blood”: The Cousin Marriage Controversy in Historical Perspective

Marriage between first cousins is highly stigmatized in the West and, indeed, is illegal in 31 US states. But is the hostility to such marriage scientifically well-grounded?

The Political History of PKU: Reflections on 50 Years of Newborn Screening

* Abbreviations: NBS — : newborn screening PKU — : phenylketonuria Just over 50 years ago, Dr Robert Guthrie developed a simple screening test for phenylketonuria (PKU) that became the prototype for universal newborn screening programs. Historians Jeffrey Brosco and Diane Paul explore why PKU screening marked a historical turning point in public health. It is a story that has left a far more complex legacy than most pediatricians recognize.—Jeffrey P. BakerSection Editor, Historical Perspectives Phenylketonuria, or PKU as it is more familiarly known, is a rare disorder, affecting only ∼1 in 15 000 people. In the United States, for example, ∼275 infants will be born with the disease each year.1 Thus in a lifetime of practice most pediatricians will not encounter a single case. Yet probably every pediatrician in the industrialized world has learned about PKU during medical school, many parents vividly remember the heel-stick test for their newborn, and scientists interested in genetics and metabolism say that they hope to “find another PKU.” Why has such a rare condition garnered so much attention? PKU is famous in part because it is widely seen as a victory for scientific medicine. If the condition is detected in the newborn period and a specialized diet is instituted, the profound cognitive impairment usually caused by PKU is averted. For the diet to be effective, however, the otherwise normal-appearing infant with PKU must be identified, among thousands of other nonaffected infants, in the first weeks of life. In the early 1960s, parents of children with intellectual disability began to advocate for state laws to test all newborns in the United States, and the first state laws for universal newborn screening (NBS) were implemented 50 years ago. By 1965, 32 American states had enacted screening laws, all but 5 making the test compulsory. By the mid-1970s, NBS for PKU had become routine in … Address correspondence to Jeffrey P. Brosco, MD, PhD, Department of Pediatrics, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, PO Box 016820, Miami, FL 33101. E-mail: jbrosco{at}miami.edu

Morton, Gould, and Bias: A Comment on “The Mismeasure of Science”

A closer look at Stephen Jay Gould’s criticisms of Samuel Morton vindicates Gould’s accusations of racial bias in Morton’s cranial measurements.

Discarding Dichotomies, Creating Community: Sam Schweber and Darwin Studies

It is remarkable how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society with its division of labor, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘invention,’ and the Malthusian ‘struggle for existence.’ It is Hobbes’s bellum omnium contra omnes.Karl Marx

The Market as Censor.

In 1920, John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner reported the results of an experiment with an eleven-month old infant, “Albert B” (Watson and Rayner, 1920). Their study of this single subject was methodologically flawed and produced ambiguous results. Nevertheless, it became the psychology textbook classic case of conditioned emotional responses. With the exception of Pavlovs dogs, probably no story has been cited more often than that of “Little Albert.” I was led to the Little Albert story as the result of an earlier study of genetics textbooks. Some years ago, I began work on a history of the “nature-nurture” controversy. One aspect of this project involved an analysis of textbook treatments of the genetics of intelligence. I had expected to find a rough continuity of views from the 1920s until the late 1970s, when the effects of the Cyril Burt scandal should have been fully felt in genetics texts. (The claim of a high heritability for I.Q. was supported primarily by Burts [fabricated] studies of separated identical twins. Leon Kamin identified serious problems with Burts results in 1974, although actual fraud was not proved until 1979 [see Kamin, 1974; Hearnshaw, 1979].)

Truby King, Infant Welfare and the Boundaries of Eugenics

Sir Frederic Truby King (1858–1938) looms large in the history of New Zealand. Founder of the ‘Plunket Society’ devoted to infant and maternal welfare, prolific author of books and manuals, medical superintendent of the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, and Director of Child Welfare, King was the first private citizen to be given a state funeral. Today, he figures prominently in the literature on eugenics in New Zealand, where he is often portrayed as a passionate eugenist and advocate of selective breeding. In this chapter, Diane Paul aims to make intelligible both King’s own views and their contemporary interpretation in the popular and scholarly literature, and also to use the King story to reflect on the porous, constantly shifting, and contested boundaries of eugenics.

Introduction: Eugenics as a Transnational Subject: The British Dominions

In this Introduction, the editors explain why an exploration of eugenics in four Dominions of the British Empire—New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa—should contribute importantly to the comparative and international literature on eugenics. They note that these self-governing colonies reshaped ideas absorbed from the metropole in accord with local conditions and ideals. Compared to Britain (and other classic cases), their orientation was generally less hereditarian and more populist and agrarian. It also reflected the view that these young and enterprising societies could potentially show Britain the way—if they were protected from internal and external threat. As white-settler societies, questions related to racial mixing and purity were inescapable, and the editors suggest that a notable contribution of this volume is its attention to indigenous populations, both as targets and (on occasion) agents of eugenic ideology.

The Two Faces of Robert FitzRoy, Captain of HMS Beagle and Governor of New Zealand

Robert FitzRoy, Captain of HMS Beagle and second governor of New Zealand, has two contradictory reputations among modern academics. Evolutionary biologists and Darwin scholars generally view FitzRoy as a supporter of slavery, famously quarrelling with the abolitionist Darwin over that topic during a Brazilian stopover early in the voyage of HMS Beagle. He is also regarded as a political and religious reactionary, taking a biblically creationist position at the infamous 1860 Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. New Zealand historians, however, view his record as governor much more positively. They emphasize that FitzRoy was wildly unpopular with the British settlers because of his enlightened insistence that the native Māori should be treated fairly. We outline the history of these seemingly inconsistent views and examine the evidence for each. We conclude by suggesting that a more nuanced account of FitzRoys career would surely be more thought-provoking as well as respectful of the facts.

Eugenics, History of

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by D. Paul, volume 7, pp. 4896–4901,