# What Became of Those 19th Century "Genetic Improvement"Societies?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-those-19th-century-genetic-improvement-societies/673057>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 4, 2013, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-those-19th-century-genetic-improvement-societies/673057 "2013-11-04T14:05:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2013, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-those-19th-century-genetic-improvement-societies/673057/1 "2013-11-04T14:05:37Z")

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In the 19th century, geneticists like Francis Galton advocated having "superior"individuals breed with each other-the idea was that such unions would result in smarter children. Robert Heinlein alluded to these organizations in his novel "Methuseluh’s Children. More recently, the late Nobel prize winning scientist (Robert Shockley) had a “genius sperm bank”-which would accomplish the same end.  
What became of these efforts? did they result in lots of child geniuses?  
Or was the whole idea worthless?

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**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2013, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-those-19th-century-genetic-improvement-societies/673057/2 "2013-11-04T14:38:52Z")

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There are varying stripes to the eugenics movements, from those who advocated sterilizing all “substandard” people to the almost-unobjectionable edge of the “positive eugenics” movement that advocated matching up superior parents.

The Gilbreth family was, in part, a positive-eugenics family. Eleven children born between 1905 and 1922, from thirteen pregnancies, and surviving into successful adulthoods, says something for the general theory. (Although Frank Sr. died of sudden heart failure fairly young, it was from illness-related damage and not congenital reasons. His family was very long-lived.)

I have tried to find a connection between Heinlein and Lillian Moller Gilbreth but if there was one correspondence etc. did not survive. There are many likely points of meeting and common interest.

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**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2013, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-those-19th-century-genetic-improvement-societies/673057/3 "2013-11-04T14:43:58Z")

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Someday, the world will be ready to meet their new overlords … I mean, those societies all died off when the eugenics fad faded. Yes, that is what I meant.