Racialization and Reproduction: Asian Immigrants and California's Twentieth-Century Eugenic Sterilization Program.

During the twentieth century, state health authorities in California recommended sterilization for over 20,000 individuals held in state institutions. Asian immigrants occupied a marginalized position in racial, gender, and class hierarchies in California at the height of its eugenic sterilization program. Scholars have documented the disproportionate sterilization of other racialized groups, but little research exists connecting the racist, gendered implementation of Asian immigration restriction to the racism and sexism inherent in eugenics.

Operationalizing racialized exposures in historical research on anti-Asian racism and health: a comparison of two methods.

Background: Addressing contemporary anti-Asian racism and its impacts on health requires understanding its historical roots, including discriminatory restrictions on immigration, citizenship, and land ownership. Archival secondary data such as historical census records provide opportunities to quantitatively analyze structural dynamics that affect the health of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans. Census data overcome weaknesses of other data sources, such as small sample size and aggregation of Asian subgroups.

Entanglements of Eugenics, Public Health, and Academic Medicine: Reckoning with the Life and Legacies of Victor C. Vaughan.

Victor C. Vaughan (1851-1929) was a noted medical educator, microbiologist, and active proponent for the idea of eugenics. Vaughan spent his career at the University of Michigan, where he served as Medical School Dean for many years.

Cautions About Medicalized Dehumanization.

Critical lessons can be gleaned by examining 2 of the most salient relationships between racism and medicine during the Holocaust: (1) connections between racism and dehumanization that have immediate, lethal, deleterious, longer-term consequences and (2) intersections of racism and other forms of hatred and bigotry, including discrimination against people with disabilities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people; and social and religious minorities. When considered in the US context, these lessons amplify need for reflection about the history of eugenics and human experimentation and about the persistence of racism and ableism in health care.

Disproportionate Sterilization of Latinos Under California's Eugenic Sterilization Program, 1920-1945.

Objectives: To compare population-based sterilization rates between Latinas/os and non-Latinas/os sterilized under California's eugenics law.

Methods: We used data from 17 362 forms recommending institutionalized patients for sterilization between 1920 and 1945. We abstracted patient gender, age, and institution of residence into a data set.

Shadows of doubt: the uneasy incorporation of identification science into legal determination of paternity in Brazil.

The arrival of DNA paternity testing in the 1980s was met with great enthusiasm in the Brazilian courts. Yet, over the past two decades, Brazilian legal doctrine and jurisprudence have increasingly rejected DNA proof as the sine qua non for paternity cases. Instead, DNA paternity testing has generated mountains of litigation, as biological proof has been challenged by the argument that paternity is primarily "socio-affective".

Eugenics, sterilization, and historical memory in the United States.

From the 1920s to the 1950s, California sterilized approximately 20,000 people in state homes and hospitals based on a eugenic law that authorized medical superintendents to perform reproductive surgeries on patients deemed unfit and "suffering from a mental affliction likely to be inherited." Working with a unique resource - a dataset created from 19,000 sterilization recommendations - my team and I have reconstructed patterns and experiences of institutionalization of sterilizations. This article presents several of our important initial findings related to ethnic and gender bias in sterilization policies, and reflects on the relevance of the history for contemporary issues in genomics and social justice.

California's Sterilization Survivors: An Estimate and Call for Redress.

From 1919 to 1952, approximately 20 000 individuals were sterilized in California's state institutions on the basis of eugenic laws that sought to control the reproductive capacity of people labeled unfit and defective. Using data from more than 19 000 sterilization recommendations processed by state institutions over this 33-year period, we provide the most accurate estimate of living sterilization survivors. As of 2016, we estimate that as many as 831 individuals, with an average age of 87.

Spatial Stigma and Health in Postindustrial Detroit.

An emerging body of research suggests that those who reside in socially and economically marginalized places may be marked by a stigma of place, referred to as spatial stigma, which influences their sense of self, their daily experiences, and their relations with outsiders. Researchers conducted 60 semistructured interviews at partnering community-based organizations during summer 2011 with African American and Latina/o, structurally disadvantaged youth of diverse gender and sexual identities who were between 18 and 26 years of age residing in Detroit, Michigan. The disadvantaged structural conditions and dilapidated built environment were common themes in participants' narratives.

Assessing Argentina's response to H1N1 in austral winter 2009: from presidential lethargy to local ingenuity.

Argentina experienced a heavy burden of novel H1N1 influenza in austral winter 2009. In early July 2009, Argentina reported more than 1,500 cases and was confronting the highest per capita H1N1 mortality rate in the world. By September 2009, more than 500 people had died of H1N1 in Argentina.

Lucien Howe, hereditary blindness, and the eugenics movement.

Ophthalmologists admire Lucien Howe, MD (1848-1928) (Figure 1), for his leadership and philanthropy. During his presidency of the American Ophthalmological Society (AOS), the organization established an award for contributions to ophthalmology, now known as the Howe Medal (Figure 2), one of the highest honors in the specialty. In addition, there are 2 other Howe Medals and a Howe Award, each of which is given at irregular intervals.

"Better off in school": School medical inspection as a public health strategy during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in the United States.

During the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in the United States, most cities responded by implementing community mitigation strategies, such as school closure. However, three cities--New York City, Chicago, and New Haven, Connecticut--diverged from the dominant pattern by keeping their public schools open while the pandemic raged. This article situates the experiences of these three cities in the broader context of the Progressive era, when officials and experts put great faith in expanding public programs in health and education.

Research findings from nonpharmaceutical intervention studies for pandemic influenza and current gaps in the research.

In June 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a request for applications to identify, improve, and evaluate the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)-strategies other than vaccines and antiviral medications-to mitigate the spread of pandemic influenza within communities and across international borders (RFA-CI06-010). These studies have provided major contributions to seasonal and pandemic influenza knowledge. Nonetheless, key concerns were identified related to the acceptability and protective efficacy of NPIs.

Closing the schools: lessons from the 1918-19 U.S. influenza pandemic.

When the novel strain of A/H1N1 influenza first appeared in spring 2009, closing schools was initially a common and often challenging strategy implemented in many communities. Arguments for and against closing schools are likely to arise anew if influenza spikes in the fall of 2009. Policymakers and community officials considering this and other nonpharmaceutical responses can learn from the experiences of ninety-one years ago, during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic that killed thousands of Americans.

A quiet revolution: the birth of the genetic counselor at Sarah Lawrence College, 1969.

In 1969 Melissa Richter founded the first master's degree genetic counseling program in the country at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. This article examines the myriad factors that contributed to the birth of the genetic counselor and situates this historical watershed in its social, cultural, academic, and medical context. This article highlights Richter's prescience and path-breaking vision, evaluates the Sarah Lawrence program during the years of her directorship (1969-1972), and explores how this early foundation subsequently shaped the field of genetic counseling.

Theodore E. Woodward award: non-pharmaceutical interventions employed by major American cities during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic.

A critical question in pandemic influenza planning is the role that non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as isolation and quarantine, social distancing, and school closure, might play in delaying the temporal impact of a pandemic, reducing the overall and peak attack rate, and reducing the number of cumulative deaths. Such measures could potentially provide valuable time for pandemic-strain vaccine and antiviral medication production and distribution. Optimally, appropriate NPI implementation would decrease the burden on healthcare services and critical infrastructure.

Nonpharmaceutical interventions implemented by US cities during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic.

Context: A critical question in pandemic influenza planning is the role nonpharmaceutical interventions might play in delaying the temporal effects of a pandemic, reducing the overall and peak attack rate, and reducing the number of cumulative deaths. Such measures could potentially provide valuable time for pandemic-strain vaccine and antiviral medication production and distribution. Optimally, appropriate implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions would decrease the burden on health care services and critical infrastructure.