The first U.S. federal law tinged with eugenics, from 1907, required sterilizing institutionalized mentally retarded men and criminals, pending advice of a physician. In 1910 Charles Davenport established the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., to amass family and institutional data, including feeblemindedness, which he thought to be an autosomal recessive trait. And so the seeds of Nazi Germany may have been sown in U.S. laws and programs, some geneticists maintain. But looking back armed with today's genetic knowledge may not be fair. But coercion can arise from social pressure, which may fuel such practices as sex selection, done in China and India.
Social pressure is also behind genetic testing.
Eugenic ideas are already in play in genetic testing, such as when couples request testing for the XYY chromosome anomaly or for spina bifida. These are choices based on views about quality of life, and are very much eugenic. And although genetic testing may not be eugenic in intent, it may ultimately be so in effect, by altering the gene pool. Since 1974 the alpha-fetoprotein maternal serum test has been widely used to identify women at high risk of carrying a fetus with an NTD, which further testing must confirm. In 1991, a meta-analysis from the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom concluded that folic acid supplementation during pregnancy can cut NTD recurrence risk by 70 percent.