A Horvath

Most commented posts

  1. Helen Keller: Physicians Juries for Defective Babies, Article in the New Republic, 1915 — 9 comments
  2. Crypto-Eugenics: Quotes of Eugenicists Discussing the Need for a Covert Eugenics Program — 7 comments
  3. Joseph Fletcher, A Right to Die; Down Syndrome people are not persons and OUGHT to be killed — 6 comments
  4. Frederick Taylor and the Connection Between Eugenics, Capitalism, and Communism: Scientific Management — 5 comments
  5. The Duty of the State in the Treatment of the Deformed: R. Z. Mason, Appleton WI, 1879 — 4 comments

Author's posts

Joseph Fletcher, A Right to Die; Down Syndrome people are not persons and OUGHT to be killed

[People] have no reason to feel guilty about putting a Down’s syndrome baby away, whether it’s “put away” in the sense of hidden in a sanitarium or in a more responsible lethal sense. It is sad; yes. Dreadful. But it carries no guilt. True guilt arises only from an offense against a person, and a Down’s is not a person.

Frederick Osborn: “birth control and abortion are turning out to be great eugenic advances”

In March 1973, two months after Roe was handed down, Frederick Osborn, a former head of the American Eugenics Society and the president of the Rockefeller funded Population Council, changed its name to the “Society for the Study of Social Biology.” The announcement said: “The change of name of the Society does not coincide with any change of …

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Virginia Woolf: Defective idiots and imbeciles “should certainly be killed.” (1915)

Author Virginia Woolf, in a 1915 diary entry describing some people she saw while on a walk: we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles.  the first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the second shuffled, & looked aside; and then one …

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Frederick Osborn, Galton and Mid-Century Eugenics, 1956 Eugenics Review published lecture and “Voluntary Unconscious Selection”

Frederick Osborn, president of the Population Council and steadfast advocate for eugenics, in a 1956 speech recorded in the Eugenics Review.  [SOURCE] […] Galton never envisaged any system of arbitrary controls, except for the more serious mental and physical handicaps, which should be treated like a form of communicable disease.  But he did propose that …

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Ernest William Barnes: Too many people, sterilize the unfit, euthanize defective infants, and family planning

From the “Daily Express”, Tuesday, November 29th, 1949 Too Many People, Says Dr. Barnes Two hundred business men and one solitary woman yesterday heard a bishop argue scientifically that the unfit must be prevented from having children if Britain is not to collapse. Dr. Ernest William Barnes, Bishop of Birmingham, mathematician and theologian, gave a …

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“Right to Die” defeated in England, 1936

This article needs to be transcribed. If you are willing, you may send the transcription to director@policyintersections.org

Death Urged for Idiots, 1934, Richard Berry

 The Daily Express Thursday, July 12 1934 Death Urged For Idiots  Doctors call it “Kindness” ‘Why keep human monstrosities?’ Two doctors advocated painless death for hopeless cases of mental defectives at the Royal Sanitary Health Congress in Bristol yesterday. Professor R. J. A Berry, director of medical services at Stoke Patt Colony, Bristol, said that …

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Leon Cole on the Social Body and Our Duty to Future Generations

From The Relation of Philanthropy and Medicine to Race Betterment by Leon J. Cole, University of Wisconsin, at the First Conference for Race Betterment (1914) Among those who have in their treatment of this subject emphasized the importance of the natural selection viewpoint may be mentioned especially Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, and Karl Pearson, the …

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G. P. Mudge, “Biology, Theology and Medicine in Relation to the State.” and the crippling of the nation

G. P. Mudge,  “Biology, Theology and Medicine in Relation to the State.” London Hospital Gazette, Yol. 17, No. S. May, 1911. pp. 189-193.  As quoted by Leonard Cole at the First Conference for Race Betterment in 1914.  No doubt it seemeth right to alleviate misery, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to pamper …

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Helen Keller: Physicians Juries for Defective Babies, Article in the New Republic, 1915

Due to the successful sanitization of the past in regards to eugenics, it is largely unknown how pervasive eugenics attitudes were, and how expansive eugenicists believed their program to be.  Here we have Helen Keller, writing in a prominent liberal magazine, advocating explicitly for infanticide–in the name of the race.  For more information and the …

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