mental defectives Archives | Eugenics and Other Evils

Carrel: eugenics asks for the sacrifice of many individuals.

Filed under 1939, applied biology, aristocratic, Biological Laws, birth defects, birth rate, civilization, compulsory marriage, conscious selection, defectives, degeneration, democracy, dysgenic breeding, education, eugenics, feeble-minded, feebleminded, Fit and Unfit, Genetics, hereditary courts, human breeding, IQ, laws of heredity, Laws of Nature, lunacy, man as animal, marriage, mental defectives, miscegenation, national degeneration, national stock, Natural selection, planned evolution, population control, positive eugenics, poverty, psychiatry, rational selection, society, Soviet Union, unfit, Year

Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize Winner. Man the Unknown, 1939. [Source] A choice must be made among the multitude of civilized human beings. We have mentioned that natural selection has not played its part for a long while. That many inferior individuals have been conserved through the efforts of hygiene and medicine. But we cannot prevent …

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“Strategic Planning for Mental Health” by J. R. Rees, 1940

Filed under 1940, Britain, crypto-eugenics, education, Efficiency Movement, Evolution, insanity, intelligence, mental defectives, progress, propaganda, psychiatry, public health, race, Year

Strategic Planning for Mental Health By Colonel J. R. (John Rawlings) Rees, M.D. [SOURCE: mental-health-vol-1-no-4-october-1940] Summary of an address given at the Annual Meeting of the National Council for Mental Hygiene on June 18th, 1940. By Colonel J. R. Rees, M.D. It would be hard to imagine a time more unusual or more trying than …

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Lord Adrian: “be prepared to separate mothers from children”

Filed under 1956, individual freedom, mental defectives, public health, public opinion, public school

Source: Lord Adrian The British Medical Journal Vol. 1, No. 4977 (May 26, 1956), pp. 1189-1192. It is true also that what can be done elsewhere depends in part on what the public opinion of the country allows; preventive health services are bound to interfere with individual liberty, whether they condemn a slaughterhouse or send …

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Foster Kennedy: Euthanasia for “Nature’s Mistakes” up to the age of 5

Filed under 1941, Action T4 Program, adaptation, After-birth abortion, American Eugenics, American Psychiatric Association, applied biology, birth defects, breeders, breeding horses or cattle, Charity, civilization, compulsory sterilization, compulsory vaccination, conscious selection, death as creative, defectives, democracy, dysgenic breeding, eugenics, euthanasia, Evolution, feebleminded, Fit and Unfit, Foster Kennedy, genetic counseling, German Eugenics, hereditary courts, human breeding, humanitarianism, infanticide, IQ, medical killing, mental defectives, national degeneration, national stock, Oliver Wendell Holmes, sentimentalism, social body, social organism, Spartans, sterilization, suffering, The God Committee, unfit, useless eaters, vaccination, Year

Kennedy’s address at the 97th annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1941 encapsulates well how the acceptance of evolution and utilitarian thinking are tied into arguments for eugenics (and euthanasia), which is ironic, of course, since many advocates for euthanasia deny such connections and modern proponents of evolution become apoplectic at the insinuation …

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Sterilization May Lead to Sexual Promiscuity, Frank C. Richmond, 1934

Filed under capital punishiment, Charity, compulsory sterilization, criminals, family planning, infanticide, marriage, mental defectives, mental deficient, public health, segregation, social body, society, the State, vasectomy, Wisconsin, Year

Frank C. Richmond, Sterilization in Wisconsin, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 25, Issue 4 (November-December), Winter, 1934. Page: 593. Human surgical sterilization may lead to sexual promiscuity and incidentally to spread of venereal disease. Voluntary sterilization tends to promote social evils in this way and answers why sterilization should be practiced only on …

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Sydney Webb: The parasites should not be allowed to compete as wage-earners, for it prevents natural selection from working…

Filed under 1920, Charitable organizations, Charity, criminals, death as creative, defectives, degeneration, Fit and Unfit, idiots, lunacy, mental defectives, minimum wage, moral perverts, morality, national efficiency, Natural selection, Parasitism, pauperism, poverty, Progressive Era, public welfare, social organism, Year

Sydney Webb in Industrial Democracy (regarding the minimum wage) – 1920 The problem of the Unemployable is not created by the fixing of a National Minimum by law. The Unemployable we have always with us. With regards to certain sections of the population, this unemployment is not a mark of social disease, but of social …

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Julian Huxley: Population Control, Eugenics, and Birth Control all part of the same Program

Filed under 1962, altruism, American Eugenics, Andrew Carnegie, artificial insemination, birth control, birth defects, Britain, China, compulsory sterilization, compulsory vaccination, Contraception, Darwinism, defectives, degeneration, duty, dysgenic breeding, dysgenics, education, Efficiency Movement, eugenics, Evolution, Evolutionary Humanism, family planning, family size, fertility control, Ford Foundation, Francis Galton, genetic counseling, genetic load, Genetics, H.J. Muller, homosexuality, human breeding, Humanism, India, insane asylums, insanity, intelligence, IQ, Jamaica, Japan, John Rockefeller, Julian Huxley, liberalism, marriage, medical genetics, mental defectives, national efficiency, national stock, nature vs nurture, negative eugenics, Negro, over-population, Parasitism, philanthropy, planned evolution, population control, population explosion, positive eugenics, poverty, Progressives, public health, public welfare, race, race hygiene, rational selection, science, social organism, social problem group, sterilization, technology, United Nations, vaccination, vasectomy, Year

Contemporary advocates for birth control exhibit no awareness whatsoever that birth control was always conceived in the context of ‘eliminating the unfit,’ ie., eugenics. Eugenics, in turn, was considered a straight-forward logical extension of Darwinism. Eugenics was seen as human control of human evolution, and was always tied into discussions on ‘population control.’ These are …

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Julian Huxley: Diversity and Eugenics in Education

Filed under 1964, American Eugenics, Dwight Ingle, education, Efficiency Movement, equal rights, Evolution, Evolutionary Humanism, Humanism, Julian Huxley, liberalism, mental defectives, national efficiency, planned evolution, Progressives, public school, Year

Humanism and eugenics have long been associated together, although it is the brave secularist today who would dream of admitting it. In this 1964 excerpt from his essay, “Education and Humanism” (found in Evolutionary Humanism, pg 135), Julian Huxley is reflecting on the need to transform education into an evolutionary mechanism, which, by virtue of …

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Excerpt: Darwin’s Dilemma as told by Bertrand Russell, from Designing Babies

Filed under 1999, American Eugenics, applied biology, Bertrand Russell, Charles Darwin, Darwinism, dysgenic breeding, education, eugenics, family (the institution of), Fit and Unfit, G.E. Moore, Genetics, German Eugenics, human breeding, inferior people, liberalism, mental defectives, scientism, society, Year

From Designing Babies: The Brave New World of Reproductive Technology by Roger Gosden. W.H. Freeman and Company, New York. 1999. Page 3-4 According to Darwin’s theory, natural selection decides which individuals are fit to survive and breed. So powerful was this idea that it quickly engaged not only fellow biologists but also intellectuals who were …

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Davenport: Death is Nature’s Great Blessing to the Race. Why Keep Defectives Alive?

Filed under 1914, American Eugenics, Artificial Selection, birth defects, Charity, Charles Davenport, criminals, death, death as creative, death rate, defectives, education, eugenics, feebleminded, laws of heredity, legislative eugenics, marriage, mental defectives, Natural selection, negative eugenics, Oops!, positive eugenics, race betterment, race hygiene, racial progress, rational selection, religion, segregation, society, sterilization, the State, Year

Charles Davenport, in The Eugenic Programme And Progress in its Achievement (1914) [italics in original, bold added] The lowest stratum of society has, on the other hand, neither intelligence nor self-control enough to justify the State to leave its matings in their own hands. On the contrary, the defectives and criminalistic are, so far as …

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Category: mental defectives