On “Good” and “Bad” Eugenics: Refocusing on Human Genetic Counseling and the Truggle Against “Overpopulation”

Abstract

In July 1948, the management board of the French Institut National d’Études Démographiques (INED) inquired of the British Eugenics Society as to whether the British eugenicists could undertake the reestablishment of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations.¹ The interest of the demography institute in the revival of the international eugenics organization did not come out of the blue. The INED was an offshoot of the Fondation française pour l’étude des problèmes humaines, started by Alexis Carrel, a French Nobel Prize winner and champion of National Socialist race policies.² The founding document of this Institut National of October 24, 1945, had expressly called for studying the means to bring about “quantitative growth and qualitative improvement of the population.” The course of the institute was set primarily by two French eugenicists, Alfred Sauvey, the director of the INED, and Jean Sutter, the head of the division of qualitative demography.³