Paul A. Lombardo is an American legal historian known for his work on the legacy of eugenics and sterilization in the United States. Lombardo’s foundational research corrected the historical record of the 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell. He found Carrie Buck’s school grades[1] and the grades of her child Vivian.[2] He was the last person to interview her, and he discovered the pictures of all three generations of the Buck family.[3] In 2002, he sponsored and paid for a memorial plaque that was installed in Buck’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.[4][5]
He is coeditor of Fletcher's Clinical Ethics, 3rd edition (2005).[7] His book Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell (2008)[8] was recognized at the 2009 Library of Virginia Literary Awards;[9] it also earned him designation as a 2009 Georgia Author of the Year.[10] It has just been reissued in a new, updated edition (2022).[11] Lombardo also published an edited volume: A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era (2010).[12]
He testified as an expert witness in Lowe v. Atlas,[17] a landmark federal genetic discrimination case, and his work was recently cited in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion, (Kristina Box, Commissioner, Indiana Department of Health, et al. v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc., et al (587 U. S. ____ (2019)).[18]
In 2021 he received the Jay Healey Health Law Professor of the Year, from the American Society of Law, Medicine, & Ethics, and in 2019 he was named a Fulbright Specialist.[19]
In 2023, Lombardo was named Distinguished Professor of Bioethics and Law, by the Sindh Institute of Medical Sciences in Karachi, Pakistan, for his contribution to teaching there over the past two decades[20] and recognized as a Hastings Center Fellow, “a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed scholarship and public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, science, and technology.”[21]
Lombardo consulted for several films, including Belly of the Beast (2020),[32]The Lynchburg Story (1993),[33]Race: the Power of an Illusion Part I,[34]The Difference Between Us (2003) and The Golden Door (2006).[35] He was a featured commentator and historical consultant on the PBS program American Experience (“The Eugenics Crusade,” 2018,)[36] NPR's Hidden Brain (“Emma, Carrie, Vivian: How A Family Became A Test Case For Forced Sterilizations,” 2018),[37] and WNYC's RadioLab ("G: Unfit," 2019).[38]
References
^Lombardo, Paul (2022) [2008]. Three Generations, No Imbeciles. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 105.
^Gould, Stephen Jay (July 1984). "Carrie Buck's Daughter". Natural History Magazine. 93: 14–18.
^Lombardo, Paul A. (March–April 2003). "Facing Carrie Buck". Hastings Center Report. 33 (2): 14–17.
^Georgia Author of the Year Award "45th GAYA". Archived from the original on 2012-03-17. Retrieved 2012-11-05. Creative Non-Fiction History: Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations No Imbeciles
^Lombardo, Paul A. (February 2022). Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell. ISBN978-1421443188.
.JPG)
