Naslov
Not in Your Genes: Andrija Štampar's Rejection of Eugenics

Autori
Kuhar, Martin

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
AAHM 2013 ANNUAL MEETING

Mjesto i datum
Atlanta (GA), Sjedinjene Američke Države, 16.05.2013. - 19.05.2013

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
eugenics ; Croatia, Andrija Štampar

Sažetak
Andrija Štampar (1888-1958), the public health czar in the 1920s Yugoslavia, a leading Rockefeller and League of Nations health expert and one of the founders of the World Health Organization, stands among the most fascinating figures of public health history. Besides his internationally recognized work in promoting ideas of social medicine, he was also an advocate of negative eugenics during the 1910s and early 1920s. Following the footsteps of Alfred Grotjahn's social pathology, Štampar envisaged a chronically sick society in dire need of elaborate state measures to counteract degeneration, which weakened nations and threatened to lead them to political extinction. However, in his 1940 social medicine university textbook, Štampar toned down his enthusiasm towards eugenics and noted that in some aspects it represented an oversimplified and reductionistic project. What happened in the late 1920s and 1930s for Štampar to marginalize eugenics? I propose four reasons. First, Yugoslavia struggled with public health issues and limited financing, and Štampar's top priorities while working at the Ministry of Public Health were to establish institutional foundations of modern social medicine. In that context, organizing and executing wide eugenic measures was out of the question, not least because of the larger problems of low birth rate and high mortality. Second, Štampar lost his position in the Ministry in 1931, not long after King Alexander proclaimed dictatorship. National tensions erupted, and Štampar was perceived by Serbian authorities as a Croatian nationalist ; his nemesis, Stevan Ivanić, was a radical right-wing eugenicist. This episode made Štampar painfully aware that eugenics can easily be adapted to nationalistic agendas. Third, after his removal Štampar was recruited by the League of Nations to help erect modern public health institutions in China and this project occupied him throughout the 1930s. Fourth, Štampar's personal diaries reveal deep resentment towards Nazism and Fascism. Štampar's insistence on environmental factors in shaping people's health and decreasing interest in eugenics a year prior to the establishment of the Nazi puppet-state, Independent State of Croatia, was an important counterweight to the emerging nationalistic and racial interpretations of eugenics, coming from a well-respected authority in social medicine.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Temeljne medicinske znanosti, Povijest

POVEZANOST RADA