How to Civilize Elites: Controlling "Foreign Scientists" at a Field Station in the Galápagos Islands.

This paper explores the control of visiting "foreign scientists" at the Charles Darwin Research Station (CDRS) after it was established in the Galápagos Islands in 1959. Scholarly accounts of the creation of the Galápagos National Park and of the field station have emphasized their place in an international "land grab," as leading scientists and conservationists sought to control nature in places around the world that seemed less "civilized" to European thinkers. The actual administrative labor in the early years at this scientific field station, however, in practice struggled to control people widely taken to represent "civilization" in its highest form-European and American scientists.

Genetic disease in the 1960s: a structural revolution.

From about 1955 to about 1975, an explosion of new institutions, disciplines, databases, interventions, practices, techniques, and ideas turned technically driven human genetics from a medical backwater to an exotic and appealing medical research frontier. In the early 1960s, health care professionals were attracted to the new insights of cytogenetics, including the chromosomal explanation of Down syndrome and of other congenital defects and abnormalities of sexual development. The discovery of a connection between myeloid leukemia and chromosomal abnormalities in leukemic cells made human cytogenetics suddenly relevant to cancer research and diagnosis.

Genetic disease since 1945.

Although hereditary disease has been recognized for centuries, only recently has it become the prevailing explanation for numerous human pathologies. Before the 1970s, physicians saw genetic disease as rare and irrelevant to clinical care. But, by the 1990s, genes seemed to be critical factors in virtually all human disease.

The revival of eugenics in American popular culture.

This paper explores the possibility of a "new eugenics" from the perspective of American popular culture. Several related ideas have been expressed in recent popular sources: differential rates of reproduction among different groups are threatening the future; there are "lives not worth living"; and the threats of disability are sufficient to justify limiting reproductive rights. These beliefs draw on assumptions that the future will depend on controlling the genetic constitution of the species.