.0 v. w 9 0 w uw9 w eV _a _ e 9 OW - " - t LITTLE Continued from page 10B of a not very strict standard of mental selection in our present methods of civi- lization." And yet compared to some of the com- pany he kept at the conference, Little comes across almost as soft and compas- sionate. Appealing to a strain of xenopho- bia so base it would make even the campus organizers of "Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day" flinch, the chairman of the Commit- tee on Immigration and Naturalization of the U.S. House of Representatives made this observation is a speech titled "The Menace of the Melting Pot Myth": "History records that the Founders of the Republic felt keenly that the indiscriminate min- gling of varied races and inharmonious cultures constituted a danger to the suc- cess of the great experiment that they had launched upon the seas of time." Certainly, the Smithsonian Institution would no lon- ger advocate the racist views a curator from its division of physical anthropology shared at the Race Betterment Conference: "The limited influx of white (blood) into the colored blood is a gain to the latter. The danger lies in the colored stream flow- ing eventually wholly into the body of the larger white group." The relative moderation of Little's com- ments at the conference might reflect a degree of tolerance in his thought, his eugenic views notwithstanding. It's per- haps more likely that after the criticism he received for advocating birth control, Lit- tle had learned to temper, at least slightly, his controversial views. Little ultimately didn't have much suc- cess avoiding turmoil. In addition to criticism for his views on birth control, eugenics and euthanasia, Little's often combative personal style - and his divorce, at a time when such things simply weren't done - didn't win him many friends in Ann Arbor. He resigned the presidency in 1929, and spent the next 25 years research- ing eugenics and cancer research at a pri- vate institute, the Jackson Laboratory. His lifelong support for eugenics aside, the final phase of Little's career leaves his character rather in doubt. After leaving the Jackson Laboratory in 1954, Little became the first scientific director of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, an organi- zation funded by the tobacco companies themselves. As a respected geneticist skep- tical of environmental causes of cancer as well as of statistical epidemiological stud- ies, Little was the perfect scientific mer- cenary to defend Big Tobacco against an increasing consensus that smoking caused cancer. Little's critics during his time at the Uni- versity found that the President was stub- born; that tenacity helped him hold on to scientific beliefs as they fell out of fashion. He persisted in his support for eugenics after its disastrous application in Germa- ny; he continued defending cigarettes until his retirement at age 81 in 1969. For those keeping score at home, that's five years after a prominent 1964 report by the U.S. surgeon general linked smoking to cancer and other diseases. It's perhaps unfair to judge historical figures by today's standards: We don't ignore George Washington's or Thomas Jefferson's contributions to our nation, even though both were slave owners. Little, however, was a controversial and arguably immoral figure even in his own day. It cer- tainly seems he should have known better in his old age than to continue defending the tobacco companies. Yet a closer examination of his ideas reveals he wasn't always off base. Euthanasia, which Little supported, remains divisive and got Jack Kevorkian (or "Dr. Death") thrown in prison decades later. Eugenics has become unspeakable - though some of its principles live on more or less benignly in genetic counsel- Little was the perfect scientific method to defend Big Tobacco against an increas- ing consensus that smoking caused cancer. ing. But birth control, which was shocking in Little's day, is mainstream today. The exponential population growth that led Malthusian fears in Little's day has leveled off, at least in the developed world. His- torical figures like Clarence Cook Little might seem amoral at best viewed in the light of their own day and grossly immoral by today's standards. They nonetheless can wind up contributing to what we today view as right and just.