Better for All the World

This is a review of a new book called "Better for All the World," about the eugenics movement. Virginia was a leader in the movement, and the opening chapter of the book takes place in Lynchburg at the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, which is now known as the Central Virginia Training Center. The forced sterilization of a retarded woman at the Virginia Colony led to the United States Supreme Court's approval of the practice in the famous case of Buck v. Bell. The book's title is a quote from the opinion, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can precent those who are manifestly unfit for continuing their kind....Three generations of imbeciles are enough."