Artificial insemination by donor (AID) began in 1948 in Japan at Keio University. Due to criticism of this procedure, perhaps for the first time in the world, the university’s obstetrics and gynecology researchers conducted follow-up surveys of children conceived through AID, showing the “superiority” of these children based on their mental development. This paper, by considering such surveys as evidence of children’s “superiority” and positive eugenics, aims to clarify how such evidence was created and used. The survey reports were published in the medical journals from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and obstetrics and gynecology researchers at the university referred to the survey results when writing articles for various media, including popular women’s magazines, to promote AID. Eugenics started to lose its legitimacy from the 1970s due to the prevalence of movements for the disabled. After the 1990s, the “superiority” of the children was no longer claimed while the safety of assisted reproductive technology (ART) was being pursued to produce children who were “not inferior.” This study concludes that, in the context of ART, physicians are adhering to the safety of the technology and prolonging the values of eugenics while dissociating from the pursuit of “superior” children.
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The history of medical intervention for infertility has recently gained attention from many researchers. For example, Davis and Loughran’s (Citation2017) The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History describes different countries’ historical experiences, although most of them are Western countries. Artificial insemination, especially artificial insemination by donor (AID) or donor insemination (DI), is a significant issue in medical history and is focused on in some chapters of the aforementioned The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History (Gurtler (Citation2017) on America, Andrew (Citation2017) and Davis (Citation2017) on Britain). Remarkable studies on this topic have been published, especially in America (e.g. Daniels and Golden Citation2004; Gurtler Citation2013; Marsh and Ronner Citation1996; Swanson Citation2012), showing that AID in America, like in other countries, was assumed to be generally used for two purposes from the early to middle of the 20th century. The first purpose was for creating a family consisting of a heterosexual couple and children; that is, it was used as a method for infertility treatment. Of course, today, we need to acknowledge the fact that since the 1970s, the use of AID for lesbian couples or single women has become prominent (Gurtler Citation2013). The second purpose was for social reform, that is, to create “superior” children via the sperm of “superior” donors otherwise known as positive eugenics, as depicted by Hermann Joseph Muller, who was the Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation, in his book Out of the Night (Muller Citation1935). His idea impressed Robert Graham, who was the founder of a commercial sperm bank named the Repository for Germinal Choice, also known as the “Nobel Prize Sperm Bank,” which operated from the 1980s to 1990s (Plotz Citation2005). Although physicians usually used AID to provide a child to an infertile heterosexual couple, they sometimes mentioned the “superiority” of the sperm donor in these cases as well. Thus, aside from the intention for social reform, AID had the potential to produce “superior” children, and to that extent, was compatible with the purpose of positive eugenics. Even in East Asian countries like Taiwan and Japan, previous studies have shown that physicians using AID as a means of infertility treatment for heterosexual couples esteemed the “superiority” of donors (Wu Citation2011; Yui Citation2015).
