Read She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity Online
Authors: Carl Zimmer
“no peculiarity . . .”
: Quoted in Goddard 1912, p.2.
“. . . the connection between nature and their being”
: The Vineland Training School 1899, p. 28.
“. . . cause these songs of savagery to become the songs of civilization”
: Ibid.
“off for camp”
: Smith and Wehmeyer 2012b.
“We are doing God's work”
: The Vineland Training School 1898.
“. . . study of the deficient and delinquent classes . . .”
: Ibid.
“disreputable lives”
: The Vineland Training School 1899, p. 12.
“She is an almost perfect worker”
: Quoted in Goddard 1908.
“How many cents have I?”
: See Goddard 1908, 1910, 1911.
“Nobody knew me or cared a whit . . .”
: Quoted in Zenderland 1998, p. 342.
“Quaker jail”
: Ibid., p. 20.
“In all my adult life”
: Ibid., p. 23.
“a law of child nature . . .”
: Ibid., p. 52.
“I never dreaded anything more”
: Goddard 1931, p. 56.
“a great family . . .”
: Quoted in Goddard 1910b, p. 275.
“. . . a great human laboratory”
: Ibid., p. 275.
“Degeneracy is increasing . . .”
: The Vineland Training School 1906, p. 28.
“. . . some way of exercising these brains . . .”
: The Vineland Training School 1907, p. 39.
“After two years my work was so poor . . .”
: Quoted in Zenderland 1998, p. 91.
a new exam called the Simon-Binet test
: Goldstein, Princiotta, and Naglieri 2015.
“otherwise called good sense . . .”
: Ibid., p. 158.
“. . . a mathematical proof . . .”
: The Vineland Training School 1911, p. 311.
“It cannot be cured”
: The Vineland Training School 1909, p. 41.
“after-admission blank”
: See Goddard 1910a.
“collect data on heredity”
: Quoted in Zenderland 1998, p. 154.
a geneticist by the name of Charles Davenport
: Porter 2018.
Davenport had leaped to fame only a few years before
: Witkowski 2015.
“. . . from the field of speculative sciences . . .”
: Davenport 1899, p. 39.
“. . . wide fields of unexpected facts . . .”
: de Vries 1904, p. 41.
Inspecting his canaries, he concluded
: Davenport 1908.
“I can hardly express my enthusiasm . . .”
: Quoted in Porter 2018.
“As to the nature of the âgenes'”
: Quoted in Falk 2014.
“a pleasing manner and address . . .”
: Goddard 1914, p. 24.
“seem to conform perfectly to the Mendelian law”
: The Vineland Training School 1909, p. 42.
“. . . famous the world over and for all time”
: Ibid., p. 43.
“. . . the color of your hair . . .”
: Goddard 1916, p. 269.
“She would lead a life that would be vicious . . .”
: Goddard 1912, p. 12.
“Her philosophy of life is the philosophy of the animal”
: Ibid.
“The biologist could hardly plan . . .”
: Ibid., p. 69.
“. . . the most valuable that have ever been contributed . . .”
: The Vineland Training School 1910, p. 35.
“. . . our best people must replenish the Earth”
: Goddard 1916, p. 270.
“a brief word . . .”
: Galton 1883, p. 24.
“a gentle painless death”
: McKim 1899, p. 188.
“the salvation of the race through heredity”
: Davenport 1911, p. 260.
“The Elimination of Feeble-Mindedness”
: Goddard 1911a.
“but all these causes combined . . .”
: Ibid., p. 510.
“boy crazy”
: Hill and Goddard, 1911.
sterilization
: Reilly 1991, 2015.
“. . . a carefully worded sterilization law . . .”
: Goddard 1911a, p. 270.
“. . . bad stock”
: Goddard 1912, p. 12.
“No amount of education or good environment . . .”
: Ibid., p. 53.
“I doubt if there is in all literature . . .”
: See “How One Sin Perpetuates Itself” 1916, p. 6.
“imbeciles, feeble-minded and persons with physical or mental defects . . .”
: Quoted in Zenderland 1998, p. 266.
“We were in fact most inadequately prepared for the task”
: Goddard 1917, p. 271.
“The same arguments which induce us to segregate . . .”
: Ibid., p. 264.
“They can hardly stand by themselves as valid”
: Ibid., p. 274.
“. . . we are getting now the poorest of each race”
: Ibid., p. 266.
“Morons beget morons”
: Ibid., p. 270.
“If the latter, as seems likely . . .”
: Ibid., p. 280.
“. . . testing of the 1,700,000 men . . .”
: Goddard 1931, p. 59.
“moron majority”
: White 1922.
“And then will come perfect government”
: Goddard 1920, p. 99.
“My home”
: Quoted in Smith 1985.
“dignified courtesy”
: Quoted in Smith and Wehmeyer 2012a, p. 205.
“You could put more pep in it”
: Quoted in Doll 2012, p. 32.
“kindly dismissed by a lenient justice-of-the-peace”
: Quoted in Smith 1985, p. 31.
“. . . she would return pregnant”
: Quoted in Allen 1983, p. 79.
“It isn't as if I'd done anything really wrong”
: Quoted in Smith 1985, p. 33.
“fatal error”
: Quoted in Smith and Wehmeyer 2012a, p. 127.
“Such children should never be born”
: Gosney and Popenoe 1929, p. viii.
Carrie Buck
: Cohen 2016.
“a social and racial crime of the first magnitude”
: Quoted in Moses and Stone 2010.
“. . . lest we admit more degenerate âblood'”
: Laughlin 1920.
a government-run program to breed the best parents
: Weiss 2010.
“The head of the German ethno-empire . . .”
: Quoted in Poliakov 1974, p. 298.
“Questions which were only cautiously touched upon . . .”
: Quoted in Kühl 2002, p. 41.
“. . . can not perpetuate his suffering
 . . .” Stephen Spielberg Film and Video Archive.
“There is only one answer: heredity”
: Quoted in Kühl 2002, p. 42.
“racial hygiene” laws
: Reilly 2015.
a suitcase, books, bottles, and other objects
: Proctor 1988.
a program to kill children judged to be idiots
: Lifton 2000.
“Can you name the four seasons?”
: Quoted in Burleigh 2001, p. 370.
Walter Lippmann
: Lippmann 1922.
Abraham Myerson
: Myerson 1925.
“used his germplasm in orthodox fashion . . .”
: Ibid., p. 78.
“. . . any definite information about my great-great-grandfather . . .”
: Ibid., p. 79.
Drosophila melanogaster
: See Endersby 2009; Schwartz 2008.
many genes could influence a single trait
: Morgan 1915.
“It is of the utmost importance . . .”
: See “Mendelism Up to Date” 1916, p. 20.
“It is extravagant to pretend . . .”
: Morgan 1925, p. 201
“In reality, our ideas are very vague”
: Ibid., p. 208.
extra legs if they were born in the winter
: Ibid., p. 41.
“. . . demoralizing social conditions that might swamp a family . . .”
: Ibid., p. 201.
“The student of human heredity . . .”
: Ibid., p. 205.
“futile system”
: Quoted in Allen 2011, p. 317.
“a worthless endeavor from top to bottom”
: Quoted in Yudell 2014, p. 195.
“her chances of going insane were no better than my own”
: Dunlap 1940, p. 225.
Amram Scheinfeld
: Scheinfeld 1944.
“As for myself”
: Quoted in Zenderland 1998, p. 326.
“Half of the world must take care of the other half”
: Goddard 1931, p. 59.
“. . . all I could stand for one day!”
: Quoted in Zenderland 1998, p. 323.
“Much in the way of polish is lacking . . .”
: Goddard 1942.
“The author's conclusion . . .”
: Quoted in Associated Press 1957.
“. . . a feeble-minded tavern girl”
: Quoted in Garrett 1955.
“the vote of the feeble-minded person . . .”
: Tucker 1994.
curious investigators
: Smith and Wehmeyer 2012a; Straney 1994.
A pair of genealogists, David Macdonald and Nancy McAdams
: Macdonald and McAdams 2001.
Public records show he was a landowner
: Smith and Wehmeyer 2012a.
“Emma was tall and reticent”
: Quoted in Allen 1983, p. 52.
I'm a gypsy
: Doll 2012.
“I guess after all I'm where I belong”
: Quoted in Smith and Wehmeyer 2012a.
“for a dear, wonderful friend . . .”
: Quoted in Smith 1985, p. 30.
“She was devoted to the people . . .”
: Quoted in Allen 1983, p. 52.
“The nicest thing about it”
: Quoted in Zenderland 1998, p. 339.
Pearl Buck
: See Buck 1950; Conn 1996; Finger and Christ 2004; Harris 1969; Paul and Brosco 2013; Spurling 2011.
“Doesn't she look very wise . . .”
: Buck 1950, p. 32.
“He has never seen or understood anything”
: Quoted in Conn 1996, p. 182.
“I realized I must leave her in some place”
: Quoted in Spurling 2011, p. 181.
“I had found out enough to know . . .”
: Buck 1950, p. 59.
“I saw children playing around the yards behind the cottages . . .”
: Ibid., p. 45.
“Only the thought of a future with the child grown old . . .”
: Quoted in Spurling 2011, p. 182.
“a creature hopelessly mongrel”
: Quoted in Conn 1996, p. 230.
“It is not a shame at all but something private . . .”
: Quoted in Finger and Christ 2010, p. 45.
“I would gladly have written nothing . . .”
: Quoted in Conn 1996, p. 132.
“I feel toward her as tenderly as ever . . .”
: Quoted in Harris 1969, p. 279.
“I have been a long time making up my mind . . .”
: Buck 1950, p. 106.
“It was my child who taught me to understand so clearly . . .”
: Ibid., p. 52.
“Though the mind has gone away . . .”
: Ibid., p. 43.
Borgny Egeland
: On the discovery of PKU, see Centerwall and Centerwall 2000; Harper 2008; Kaufman 2004; Messner 2012; Paul and Brosco 2013.
Lionel Penrose
: See Comfort 2012; Harper 1992; Harris 1974; Kevles 1995; Laxova 1998; Valles 2012; Wellcome Library.
“pretentious and absurd”
: Penrose 1949, p. 22.
lurid tales like
The Kallikak Family
: Penrose 1933.
“That mental deficiency . . .”
: Quoted in Penrose 1933, p. 146.
“The first consideration in the prevention of mental deficiency . . .”
: Ibid., p. 164.
a single sample turned green
: Penrose 1935.
“preferable to the original . . .”
: Quoted in Penrose 1946, p. 949.
“an abominable abbreviation.”
: Quoted in Paul and Brosco 2013, p. 15.
“I was informed that this patient . . .”
: Ibid.
“Phenylketonuria: A Problem in Eugenics”
: See Penrose 1946.
Rosalind Franklin
: Maddox 2002.
Later generations of scientists
: Robson et al. 1982; Woo et al. 1983.
“Her mother was not at all impressed . . .”
: Quoted in Bickel 1996, p. S2.
filming a silent movie
: New England Consortium of Metabolic Programs 2010.
25 percent of people with PKU lived to the age of thirty
: Paul and Brosco 2013.
“Attagirl,” the president said
: Hunter 1961.
memorialized by an official White House photograph
: White House Photographs 1961.
Sheila and Kammy appeared in
Life
: “New Way to Detect a Dread Disease” 1962.
“. . . a child can live a normal life”
: “U.S. Panel Urges Testing at Birth” 1961.
the first person with PKU to gain a PhD
: Beck 1998.
“In Carol's case nothing matters . . .”
: Quoted in Paul and Brosco 2013, p. 226.
“. . . the same unusual odor”
: Centerwall and Centerwall 2000, p. 89.
Pearl “had trouble accepting . . .”
: Buck 1992, p. 97.
Crayons and coloring books
: Conn 1996.
“The possession of a genetic map . . .”
: Quoted in Paul and Brosco 2013.
“If you simply remove foods . . .”
: Quoted in Collins, Weiss, and Kathy 2001.
“PKU is the example where the paradigm was proven”
: Quoted in Paul and Brosco 2013.
deep flaws
: See Panofsky 2014; Yudell 2014.
“. . . both disingenuous and misleading”
: Rose 1972.
“It turns out,” he cheerfully wrote
: See Wright 1995.
children growing up on a low-phenylalanine diet
: Paul and Brosco 2013.