Interviewee: James Watson. Davenport's 1910 pamphlet, Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding, begins with a chapter on fit and unfit matings. Here James Watson discusses the founding of eugenics and explores some archival materials remaining from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor. (DNAi Location: Chronicle > Threat of the unfit > Founders > "Fit and unfit matings")

Here's that little pamphlet by Charles Davenport, published in 1910, called Eugenics. And it was published for the YMCA Health League. And the first chapter is called "Fit and Unfit Matings." And it's interesting to see the first sentence: "There comes a time in the life of most thoughtful, cultured people when they realize they are drifting toward marriage, and when they stop to consider if a proposed union, will lead to healthful, mentally well-endowed offspring. Were our knowledge of heredity more precisely formulated, there is little doubt that many certainly unfit matings would be prevented, and other fit matings that are avoided through false scruples, would be happily contracted."

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