An Account of a Discussion Held by the Public Health Congress Council in Conjunction with the Joint Committee on Sterilisation
Professor Julian Huxley was the leading speaker at the sterilisation session of the Public Health Congress on November 23rd, 1934, at the Agricultural Hall, Islington. Introduced by the Chairman, Mr. Walter Hedley, who had emphasised the spontaneous unanimity of the Departmental Report on Sterilisa- tion, Professor Huxley pointed out that this unanimity was a testimony to the overwhelming weight of factual evidence in favour of the voluntary sterilisation measure proposed. He emphasised the fact that sterilisation, unlike castration, left the sexual impulse intact, and that the operation, as has been proved by American records, was not dangerous. He added that pro- hibition of marriage?an alternative proposal to sterilisation?would not cover illegitimacy and was therefore ineffectual.
Explaining that mental defectives, though not the only people affected by these proposals, were at the centre of the problem, Professor Huxley emphasised the fact that voluntary sterilisation would be complementary and not alternative to segregation. He quoted Dr Penrose’s figures?the result of an exhaustive enquiry into the family history of over 500 defectives?which showed that probably not more than 20 per cent, of defect is due to environ- ment alone: the remaining 80 per cent, is the result mainly of morbid inherit- ance, environmental causes being secondary. The only remedy, therefore, is to prevent either by segregation or sterilisation the reproduction of those who show the defect or may be presumed to carry it.
Professor Huxley said that mental defectives, vide the evidence given by the N.S.P.C.C. to the Brock Committee, made bad parents. ” It is therefore in the interests of the children themselves and of social justice, that wherever possible mental defectives should not have children, whether their defect is hereditary or not.”
Far from being a class movement, Professor Huxley explained that the legalising of voluntary sterilisation would give to the poor opportunities now available only to the rich, and that under a compulsory measure only could sterilisation be used as a political tool. Finally, he argued that a Royal Com- mission on the subject could not elicit any further facts and would only delay action, action for which, he said, ” it seems to me as a biologist and as a citizen there is an overwhelming case.”
Dr C. P. Blacker, stressing the voluntary principle of the proposed measures, emphasised the disadvantages of compulsory sterilisation, which he argued could never exist in England. In Germany such a measure was leading to false diagnoses on the part of doctors and suppression of facts and refusal to enter institutions on the part of patients, the inevitable result being seriously to impede the treatment of mental defect and disorder. Again, under a com- pulsory law no allowance was made for ethical objections, a state of affairs which would not be tolerated in England. That the drawbacks to the com- pulsory principle had been realised in America was proved by the fact that though 26 states had compulsory sterilisation laws, 80-90 per cent, of the operations performed on institutional patients were voluntary.
Dr Blacker emphasised that the legalisation of voluntary sterilisation, on the other hand, would be definitely advantageous to the poor, since at present no hospital would risk performing eugenic sterilisation: this had been strik- ingly illustrated by the recent refusal of the Eugenics Society’s offer to endow any London hospital with a bed for patients desiring this operation.
Dr Blacker concluded with an appeal for support of the recommendations of the Brock Committee of experts who, after hearing a mass of evidence, unanimously advised voluntary sterilisation.
Wing-Commander James, M.P., speaking on the prospects of legislation, said that the Minister of Health would take no steps to legalise voluntary sterilisation until the country demanded it. Public opinion, however, was rapidly altering as the facts were daily more widely disseminated. The press was now anxious to publish these facts, and doctors were showing themselves more and more in favour of some measure of voluntary sterilisation. More- over, eugenic sterilisation was already being obtained by those who could afford it.
Opposition, Wing-Commander James pointed out, would be presented, apart from moral objections, on the three main grounds that the introduction of such a measure would be (i) class legislation (ii) solely in the interests of economy (iii) the thin end of the wedge. ” I do not believe,” he said, ” that there are many people in this audience, certainly none who have read the Brock Report, who would say that there was any foundation for any one of these three lines of attack.”
Mr. George Gibson, speaking on behalf of the Trades Union Council, pointed out that although he had recently successfully urged the Council to favour a Royal Commission on Sterilisation, this was not, in his opinion, a method of unreasonably delaying action. He argued that there were men, equally as distinguished as previous speakers, who held very different opinions. Until a Royal Commission had reported, he himself could not sanction such legislation for the following reasons. The social, as important as the medical and genetic, aspects of the problem had not been adequately considered: legis- lation should not discriminate between rich and poor: the public was not yet convinced that present methods could not be made effective and that sterilisa- tion would achieve its objective.
Mr. Gibson argued that no-one was competent to state positively who Would transmit defect, and that even under a voluntary sterilisation law doctors’ opinions would in practice inevitably deprive poor (not rich) patients of freedom of choice. Again, such a measure would mean a slackening in ascertainment and in treatment of other factors in the causation of mental unfit- ness. Mr. Gibson doubted whether there was any evidence of increase in the proportion of mental defectives to total births, and urged further enquiry into the inter-action of environmental factors with genetic factors.” He asked whether segregation could not be made to achieve the same purpose as sterilisa- tion, whether the present system of certification could not be reformed, and whether cures could not be found for certain forms of transmissible disease. Sterilisation, Mr. Gibson said finally, was a confession of defeat, ” contradict- ing the scientific faith which is based on principles of evolution.”
Mr. Cemlyn-Jones pointed out that it was at the instigation of the County Councils Association (on whose behalf he was speaking) in conjunction with the Association of Municipal Corporations and the Mental Hospitals Associa- tion, that the Brock Committee had originally been formed. It was then the financial aspect which primarily interested the local authorities, since every year they have to provide more institutions for defectives. Although it was now proved that voluntary sterilisation would only slowly relieve local authorities of this burden, they still supported the measure because defectives make bad parents, breed unhappy children who require expensive training, and turn their homes into slums. ” As citizens,” Mr. Cemlyn-Jones said, ” we want to obviate the tragedy of these sub-normal households, and as guardians of the public purse we believe that sterilisation would tend to lessen the necessity to provide special schools.” To the argument that sterilised defectives would be a danger to the community, he replied that the Mental Deficiency Act would provide supervision and would deal suitably with any such dangerous cases.
For these reasons, Mr. Cemlyn-Jones said that the County Councils Association supported the Brock recommendations and the Bill that was being drawn up in accordance with them.
Mr. Councillor Loxley, on behalf of the Association of Municipal Corporations, also supported this Bill, which the Association believed repre- sented ” sound measures of social reform, both in the interests of the persons whose misfortune it is to suffer from one or more of these forms of defective- ness, and in the interests of the community.”
Mr. Loxley said that those who had studied the Report could not fail to be disturbed by some of the facts brought to light by the investigations, and urged special study of the memorandum submitted by the N.S.P.C.C. ” Some of the illustrations given,” he said, ” are such that no community should tolerate them.” Although the proposed measures would mean little immediate relief to institutions, the Association of Municipal Corporations believed that there would eventually be a decrease in the demand for accommodation.
Sir Francis Fremantlc, M.P., while agreeing that sterilisation should be the right of every individual, doubted whether the Government would accept the proposal that guardians of certain mental defectives should make decisions for them in this matter, and if it were not accepted, he felt that the worst cases would not be reached.
Professor Huxley, summing up, answered this objection first. He said that segregation of the defectives under consideration was already determined by guardians and that logically there could be no objection to other decisions being made for them. The worst cases would not need sterilising as they would already be segregated. In reply to Mr. Gibson, Professor Huxley, summing up, agreed that every possible safeguard against compulsion or class legislation must and would be taken. Those who had spoken in favour of sterilisation were not expressing individual opinions, as Mr. Gibson had suggested, but supporting recommendations which they believed to be based on facts. Existing methods could not be made effective enough, because to obtain institutional accommodation for even 33 per cent, (as the Wood Com- mittee had recommended) of the certifiable defectives in this country would be immensely costly, and there would still be 200,000 at large. At present only 20 per cent, were segregated. Professor Huxley said that most of Mr. Gibson’s objections applied to a compulsory and not to a voluntary measure. ” What we want is that men and women … should have the right to ask for their case to be reviewed by a body of experts …. Far from being a wicked measure, it appears to me to be an elementary principle of individual liberty and social justice.” Mr. Gibson had suggested that sterilisation was a con- fession of scientific defeat. ” The process of evolution to which he appealed is one which has led from the lowest forms of life to human beings. That marvellous progress can only be continued by man deliberately and consciously taking control of his own destiny …. Far from being a confession of defeat, therefore, it seems to be the first glimmer of the dawn of the deliberate control of his destiny by man to further the great stream of evolutionary progress.”
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