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The Eugenics Survey of Vermont: An Overview

1925-1928: The Search for "Bad Heredity" in Vermont: "Pedigrees of Prejudice"

For the first three years, the Eugenics Survey's research consisted of gathering evidence from social case records, town officials, and various "informants" of "bad heredity" in over sixty Vermont families to support campaigns for negative eugenics measures: sexual sterilization, expansion of colonies for the feebleminded, and mandatory use of mental testing in social work with dependent families, in public schools, and in the criminal justice system. In 1927 Professor Perkins briefed the state legislature using the findings of these studies in a campaign to enact a sterilization law.

The Survey's "Pedigrees of Degenerate Families" appear to most people today as little more than "pedigrees of prejudice" with no basis in scientific fact. Even in 1928, Prof. Perkins suspended such pedigree study in 1928, admitting that their studies were "not sufficiently scientific" and had been criticized for "putting too much emphasis on bad heredity." But for those families who were targeted by the Survey as a social menace, a burden on the taxpayers, and bearers of "bad genes," the damage had been done. The effects of these studies -- social rejection, intensified surveillance and intervention by social agencies, and placement of family members in state institutions and/or sterilization -- were painfully real and enduring.

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