Category: defectives

The Geneticists Manifesto (1939) or Social Biology and Population Improvement, by H.J. Muller

Social Biology and Population Improvement (aka, the Geneticist’s Manifesto) by H.J. Muller [Source #1, Source #2] The Seventh International Congress of Genetics adjourned at Edinburgh only three days before World War II got under way. It is interesting to recall that just before the shooting started a group of geneticists at that Congress-informally formulated what …

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Bentley Glass: “No parent will have the right to burden society with a defective child”

Excerpt from Dangerous Diagnostics by Dorothy Nelkin and Laurence R. Tancredi (pg 12, 1994) [Source] And in the same year [1970], Bentley Glass, in his retirement address as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, called for “the use of the new biology to assure the quality of all new babies.  … …

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On the Elimination of Defectives: Hitler, in Mein Kampf

Note the utilitarian appeal to the reduction of suffering, the appeal to the ‘common good’, and the basic belief that all he is doing is applying biological principles. Hitler, in Mein Kampf.  [Source] In this field the People’s State will have to repair the damage that arises from the fact that the problem is at …

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Eugenics Quote of the Day: Eugenics is Not likely to Infringe on Individual Freedom

Paul Popenoe in his widely used 1920 textbook, Applied Eugenics.  pg 364-365.  “Not likely” indeed! It is charged that eugenics infringes on the freedom of the individual.  This charge (really that of the individualists more than of socialists, strictly speaking) is based mainly on a misconception of what eugenics attempts to do.  Coercive measures have …

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Buck vs. Bell Supreme Court Decision, Opinion by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1927)

Oliver Wendell Holmes delivering the Supreme Court’s decision in Buck vs. Bell [Source] 274 U.S. 200 Buck v. Bell (No. 292) Argued: April 22, 1927 Decided: May 2, 1927 143 Va. 310, affirmed. Syllabus 1. The Virginia statute providing for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions supported by the State who shall be found …

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Eugenics Quote of the Day: ‘Defective (ie, ‘disabled’) people should not be allowed to reproduce for the good of the state.’ RZ Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI

R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and obligations to these unfortunate classes.  At …

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The Duty of the State in the Treatment of the Deformed: R. Z. Mason, Appleton WI, 1879

R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source / Italics added, bold text added] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and …

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DH Lawrence pines for the lethal chamber for the sick and maimed (1908)

DH Lawrence in a letter to Blanche Jennings, October 9, 1908.  [Reference] If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I’d go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, …

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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.

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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