Imagine a world where a couple could get an egg from a supermodel and a sperm from a brain surgeon, and the child turns out gorgeous and smart. Or imagine being able to choose the gender, eye color, personality or intelligence of a child while it is still an embryo.

These scenarios were discussed in a lecture during the one-day eugenics symposium Friday at the Hinde Auditorium.

Mark Brown of the Government Department moderated the panel discussion.

Former California Senator Dede Alpert spoke regarding the state government’s past roles in eugenics. In 1896, California passed the State Commission on Lunacy.

“In the early 1900s, the state had established the Department of Institutions,” Alpert said. “Later they became the Department of Mental Hygiene.”

According to Alpert, California became the second state in the United States to enact sterilizations in 1909. In the beginning, only patients in state hospitals were sterilized. But then the government decided to include prisoners, especially those who had twice committed sexual offenses or prisoners who were convicted three times of other dangerous crimes.

In 1917, a law was passed that people whose mental disease could (not proven) have been inherited could be eligible for sterilization.

By 1930, 5,200 patients in California had been sterilized. Eight years later, those numbers jumped up to 12,000.

After 1951, when the legislature demanded procedural protection laws, the number of sterilizations dramatically decreased. However, they did not stop until 1979 when then-Assemblyman Art Torres wrote a bill to repeal the sterilization laws.

Since 1979, there has been relatively no talk about eugenics until 1997 when Dolly the sheep was cloned. Then people were trying to educate the public more about the pseudoscience. After Paul Lombardo, the director of the Center for Law and Medicine at the University of Virginia, gave a lecture to the legislature in March 2003, California Governor Grey Davis and Attorney General Bill Lockyer formally apologized to the victims.

Senator Alpert finished her lecture with, “We can never learn from our mistakes if we do not learn our past.”

Brown then introduced Mark Dowie, an investigative journalist. Dowie spoke about the media coverage of eugenics.

Dowie said one of the loudest media supporters in the nation for eugenics was the New York Times. In 1903, they published a column that launched the newspaper into the issue. The writer, a reverend, basically said that he would support restrictions on marriages between two people who were not suitable to be mothers or fathers.

In December of 1912, a dean of an Episcopalian church in Chicago, Ill., said, “There should be no marriage until a clean bill of health for both parties is presented.”

“The newspapers used derogatory terms such as ‘passables’,” Dowie said, “and saying that horses and dogs are examples of what eugenics can do for people,”

Dowie also said that billboards, magazines and movies promoted eugenics. The movies began in 1914 with “Eugenic Girl” and continue to this day with the 1997 movie “Gattaca.”

“What the media are now doing is using covert language to discuss eugenics,” Dowie said.

Dowie used examples of sperm banking, egg donating and articles from magazines such as National Geographic to back up his theory. He ended his speech with a 1994 article from

Washington Post writer Phillip Kennicott: “Seduction of Science to Perfect an Imperfect Race.”

The final speaker of the panel was Dr. Marcy Darnovsky, the assistant executive director of the Center for Genetics & Society.

With the aid of a PowerPoint presentation, Darnovsky spoke about several aspects of modern eugenics. She mentioned that in 2004, Ronald Reagan Jr. endorsed stem cell research and called it a “personal biological repair kit.” This comment backed Darnovsky’s theory that designer medicine, along with designer babies, should be cautioned.

She warned of the misusage of biotechnologies, which include gamete (egg) donor selection, sex selection, and pre-genetic testing and screening. She also said that human cloning, stem cell research and race-based medicine are modern-day eugenics in a new form.

Darnovsky said that people are surrounded by advertisements for these new technologies and most people do not know it. These ads have been sited in in-flight magazines and in some newspapers such as the New York Times.

She also said that numerous people have been promoting this new eugenics, including university professors. UCLA in 1998 had a conference “to make germline engineering acceptable to American public.”

She also said that these new promoters are using keywords to entice people. These keywords include “fitter families,” “positive versus negative,” “individual” and “freedom.” They are insisting that this new form allows the individual to choose and not have the government choose for the people.

Darnovsky said one way to limit the biotechnologies is to have the government regulate what these companies and university researchers can do. Also people can be educated more on modern eugenics and to prevent the misuse of biotechnology.

During a question-and-answer period, she said, “Stem cell research requires hundreds of millions of egg. Where are they going to get these eggs? And have they discussed with the donors that women have and can die from the donation process?”

After the lecture was over, people were invited to visit the “Human Plants, Human Harvest: The Hidden History of California Eugenics” exhibit at the University Library Gallery. Dr. Chloe Burke, the director of the Center for Science, History, Policy & Ethics, said this will be one of the last times that it can be seen since the exhibit will be gone by Sunday. She mentioned that the exhibit would be back later in the semester.

The symposium ended with a lecture by Tony Platt, from the division of social work, at the Julia Morgan House on T Street. The Julia Morgan House was the former residence of Sacramento State donator and renowned eugenicist Charles M. Goethe.

Jamie Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]