When is sterilization socially and morally justified to prevent the transmission of feeblemindedness or other handicaps to offspring? No answer is universally agreed upon .
Only "recessive" genes are involved in feeblemindedness, "which means that such genes must come from both parents for the effect to assert itself.
A strict Mendelian, Davenport believed so-called single-unit genes determined such traits as alcoholism and feeblemindedness.