The Emergence of Genetic Counseling in Sweden: Examples from Eugenics and Medical Genetics

Abstract

This paper examines the intertwined relations between eugenics and medical genetics from a Swedish perspective in the 1940s and 1950s. The Swedish case shows that a rudimentary form of genetic counseling emerged within eugenic practices in the applications of the Swedish Sterilization Act of 1941, here analyzed from the phenomenon of "heredophobia" (ärftlighetsskräck). At the same time genetic counseling also existed outside eugenic practices, within the discipline of medical genetics. The paper argues that a demand for genetic counseling increased in the 1940s and 1950s in response to a sense of reproductive responsibility engendered by earlier eugenic discourse. The paper also questions the claim made by theoreticians of biopolitics that biological citizens have emerged only during the last decades, especially in neoliberal societies. From the Swedish case it is possible to argue that this had already happened earlier in relation to the proliferation of various aspects of eugenics to the public.

Medical decisions influenced by eugenics: Hungarian gynecological practices during the 1910s

“…One of the central questions that is discussed in this paper is how citizenship was shaped by medical actors who played a key role in defining what kind of bodies were valuable from a medical-political perspective, and how citizens were influenced to become responsible members of Hungarian society. Maria Björkman (2015) suggests extending the use of the concept of biological citizenship-developed by Carlos Novas and Nikolas Rose (2000)-by exploring how collective responsibility was influenced by eugenic and racial hygienic ideas in the past. In the discussions that took place in the first two decades of the twentieth century, medical professionals contributed to the articulation of a very repressive and exclusionary discourse that defined individual responsibility in terms of a racial future.…”