Born to crime : the genetic causes of criminal behavior / Lawrence Taylor.

  • Taylor, Lawrence, 1942-
Date:
1984
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Born to crime : the genetic causes of criminal behavior / Lawrence Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    158 Born to Crime to perform this task. Yet another balancing of the relative inter¬ ests of society and the individual must be conducted: Amni¬ ocentesis involves a very definite risk to the embryo, and in the process of attempting to detect a defective embryo a perfectly normal one may be damaged or even killed. Undoubtedly, however, science will eventually discover new, safer methods for determining whether a fetus is carrying a dangerous genetic trait. Also, undoubtedly, requiring the abortion of such a fetus will be an available option to the legislators of tomorrow. Will we go all of the way back to the origins of life itself and order sterilization of any person genetically capable of transmit¬ ting aberrant genes to offspring? Once again, the concept of sterilization is not as new and shocking as might be originally supposed. There is already considerable precedent for ordering sterilization for genetic purposes. In 1907 Indiana became the first state to enact a sterilization law. Within five years, fourteen other states followed suit, many of them following the so-called Model Eugenics Act, which listed as subjects for sterilization any individual institutionalized for syphilis, leprosy or tuberculosis, as well as deaf, blind and deformed persons, chronic alcoholics and persons who were dependent on the State. This was jus¬ tified in a very influential book of the time as a practical, mer¬ ciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem [which] can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, begin¬ ning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane. Despite the drastic nature of sterilization, these statutes were not challenged in the courts for many years. In fact, it was not until 1925 that a mandatory sterilization law was reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States. Under attack was such a law in Virginia that had been applied to a mentally deficient woman who, the state court had decided, was the probable po¬ tential parent of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted. Speaking for the majority of the Court, the great Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.