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Eugenics movements came into vogue in the early 20th century. With a name coined in 1833 by British anthropologist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, who hoped to see arranged marriages improve mankind, the movement eventually led to racist laws such as ones prohibiting the mixing of races (or miscegenation). Progressive reformers had a strong faith in science as the panacea that would herald in a new era of rational control of both nature and human society (Vergano, 2003). Under these conditions, it was not surprising that the revelation of a new science of genetics gave birth to a new science of social engineering called eugenics. Genetics appeared to explain the underlying cause of human social problems such as pauperism, rebelliousness, anomalism, criminality and prostitution as the inheritance of defective genes (Hamilton, 2005). Eugenicists argued that society paid a high price by allowing the birth of defective individuals who would have to be cared for by the state. Sterilization of one defective adult could save future generations thousands of dollars (Freeden, 1979). Eugenics was seen as a way to solve all of these combined problems because it placed the cause on defective genes of individuals and ethnic groups, and not in the structure of society itself. Eugenics used the cover of science to blame victims for their own problems. During the 20th century, many countries enacted various eugenics policies and programs, including promoting differential birth rates, compulsory sterilization, restrictions in marriage, genetic screening, birth control, immigration control, segregation and genocide. Vasectomy and tubal ligation were favored tools and methods of sterilization in the hands of eugenicists, because most doctors probably felt that sterilization was a more humane way of dealing with people who could not help themselves. Sterilization did alter the physical and psychological contribution of the reproductive organs (Kennedy, 1942), but allowed the convicted criminal or mental patient to participate in society, rather than being institutionalized at public expenses. Sterilization was not viewed as a punishment because these doctors erroneously believed that the social failure of the "unfit" people was due to irreversibly degenerate germplasm (Brigham, 1939). Eugenics programs were inherently racist, elitist and sexist. The 20th century American proponents of eugenics had substantive ties to the architects of Hitler's racial hygiene and extermination machine. There were financial supports of genetics researches and travels by Nazi doctors from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a leading genetics research institute (Vergano, 2003). There were research collaborations and reports on the Nazi efforts in the respected American journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association. North Carolina eugenics movement dramatically targeted African Americans in the general population because welfare recipients who were African Americans grew from 31% in 1950 to 48% in 1961. It was seen as necessary to sterilize these recipients of welfare to decrease the growing financial burden on the state (North Carolina Eugenics, 2009). Social workers were mandated to recommend sterilization based on such reasons as epilepsy, sickness, feeblemindedness, even promiscuity and homosexuality. In North Carolina, more whites than African Americans were sterilized until the 1960s. During the 1960s when social workers had the authority to recommend sterilization, the number of African Americans who were sterilized, increased dramatically to approximately 99%. The Biannual Eugenics Report for 1961 to 1968 stated that 99% of the operations were performed on women and 64% of the women were African Americans (Railey and Begos, 2002). The Negro Project conspiracy of 1939 and the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment between 1932 and 1972 were all rooted in the American eugenics mentality. The Negro Project, initiated by Margaret Sanger, aimed to reduce and eliminate the population of African Americans through abortion. Margaret Sanger regarded African Americans as weeds and menace to civilization that needed to be exterminated. For fifty years, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted experiment involving 339 African American men in the late stages of syphilis, using them as laboratory guinea pigs. They were falsely told that they were being treated for bad blood. Their doctors had no intention of curing them of their syphilis at all. On May 16, 1997, former president William Jefferson Clinton apologized for the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to the eight remaining survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]