Institutionalized Heredity: Asylums, Statistics, and the Origins of Human Genetics

制度化遗传：庇护所、统计数据和人类遗传学的起源

• 批准号: 1027100
• 负责人: Theodore Porter
• 金额: $ 14.55万
• 依托单位: University of California-Los Angeles
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-15 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1027100&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Institutionalized; Heredity; Asylums; Statistics; Origins

IntroductionThis project will re-examine the origins of the study of human heredity, including the eugenics movement. Classical accounts of the history of human heredity (from 1900) have portrayed it as an outgrowth of basic science, with genetics coming first followed by its application to humans. This project will carry forward preliminary research that broadens the scope of relevant developments related to human heredity to include the use of statistics in institutions such as asylums, prisons, and schools. The PI's research to date indicates an alternative account of the history of human heredity in which that research was mainly a statistical and an administrative endeavor, rather than the standard view in which it is understood to be driven by work in biology laboratories. The PI will continue his research along these lines to support this alternative account and ultimately produce a book on the subject.Intellectual MeritThe twentieth century has been called "the century of the gene," and genetics is no less prominent in the twenty-first. In the era of genomics, the study of human heredity has become still more central to this project. Historians have usually understood it as an outgrowth of basic science, and also, in the form of eugenics, as a perversion of it. The PI will determine whether the flourishing after 1900 of eugenic investigations and dogmas, especially in the study and management of vulnerable human populations called "defective," was really due to the new genetics. He has discovered and is exploring a vast endeavor involving the collection, circulation, and analysis of data on human heredity carried on in such institutions as schools, prisons, life insurance companies, and especially asylums. Research on human heredity was not mainly a laboratory field but a statistical and administrative one. Potential Broader ImpactsThis project will serve to highlight the dangers as well as the possibilities of contemporary genomic research, which notably extends beyond the laboratory to studies of populations and institutions that concentrate certain genetic traits. It also provides background to a scientific endeavor that has always been as much about the gathering and quantitative analysis of data as about laboratory research and molecular technologies.

本项目将重新审视人类遗传研究的起源，包括优生学运动。人类遗传历史的经典描述（从1900年开始）将其描述为基础科学的产物，遗传学首先出现，然后将其应用于人类。该项目将开展初步研究，扩大与人类遗传有关的相关发展的范围，包括在收容所、监狱和学校等机构中使用统计数据。迄今为止，PI的研究表明了人类遗传历史的另一种说法，即研究主要是一种统计和行政努力，而不是被理解为受生物实验室工作驱动的标准观点。PI将沿着这些路线继续他的研究，以支持这一替代说法，并最终出版一本关于这一主题的书。智力成就20世纪被称为“基因的世纪”，而遗传学在21世纪同样举足轻重。在基因组学时代，对人类遗传的研究在这个项目中变得更加重要。历史学家通常将其理解为基础科学的产物，同时以优生学的形式，将其理解为对基础科学的曲解。PI将确定1900年之后优生研究和教条的繁荣，特别是对被称为“缺陷”的脆弱人群的研究和管理，是否真的是由于新的遗传学。他已经发现并正在探索一项涉及收集、流通和分析人类遗传数据的巨大努力，这些数据是在学校、监狱、人寿保险公司，尤其是精神病院等机构进行的。对人类遗传的研究主要不是一个实验室领域，而是一个统计和管理领域。潜在的更广泛的影响这个项目将有助于强调当代基因组研究的危险和可能性，这显然已经超越了实验室，扩展到集中某些遗传特征的人群和机构的研究。它还为一项科学努力提供了背景，这项科学努力一直是关于实验室研究和分子技术的数据收集和定量分析。