Former Home Of Eugenics Research Now Warns Of Modern Eugenics Ideas
LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK -- On May 2, 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Virginia law giving the state permission to sterilize thousands of its citizens considered "unfit". The ruling in Buck vs. Bell made legitimate the concept of eugenics -- the idea that society could be improved by controlling the numbers of people with certain disabilities. Over the next five decades an estimated 65,000 Americans in 30 states were sterilized without their permission. It is also believed that Adolph Hitler used the Virginia law as a model for his own efforts to get rid of "imperfect" members of his "Aryan race" during the Nazi era.