Eugenics in America

[Ukraine Train]

I'm reading this book called The State Boys Rebellion which is about the segregation of "feeble minded" people in the first half of the 1900s. It was believed that intelligence is hereditary so people with an IQ below 70 were put into state homes for life to keep them from breeding and propogating crime, though people of average intelligence were often committed too because they were valuable as workers in the homes. Those that were released to society were sterilized. Hitler's holocaust was based on research done by American "scientists." I had never heard of this happening til I read the book, it's pretty unbelievable what people are capable of on such a large scale.

[Antibubba]

Sadly, some of them bred and founded Democratic Underground.

[roo_ster]

The founder of Planned Parenthood was a big proponent of eugenics.  It seems she did not like the idea of "inferior" types & races breeding: feebleminded or not.

[K Frame]

Eugenics programs continued in the Commonwealth of Virginia until the early 1960s.

[BryanP]

jfruser, that statement is a bit of a distortion.   Go here:

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/birthcontrol/bio-margaret-sanger.xml

Read.

[DustinD]

Wow! I never knew eugenics was so widespread. I am glad forced eugenics has ended.

I knew a guy that got his community to release a deaf guy from an institution that misdiagnosed him as mentaly handicaped. From what I have learned since then I have about zero respect for mental health institutions.

[RaggedClaws]

From what I have learned since then I have about zero respect for mental health institutions.

I remember in college, in my Psych 101 class, we reviewed a case where a PhD student got himself admitted to an institution in order to chronicle the experience of a patient.  He merely told them that he was "hearing voices", nothing more, and he was voluntarily committed.  Once he was inside, he started acting like himself again, no more voices, normal behavior.  Apparently it took like over a year or something like that for him to get out.  And he had to stop writing in his journal because the PTB saw that as evidence of some sort of abnormal compulsory behavior.

I don't have the reference on hand here, and I might not have it at home anymore, but if anyone else has heard of this case, please chime in!  It's really affected my perception of the mental health profession...

[kfranz]

Eugenics programs continued in the Commonwealth of Virginia until the early 1960s.

Three generations of imbeciles are enough....

[roo_ster]

BryanP:

I read.  1/4 of the PP page on Margaert Sanger is about the "wonderful" things she did and 4/5 is a defense against the eugenics and racism that came from her own mouth and pen.

PP does its best to deflect charges of eugenics & racism, but they have too difficult a job and do not succeed.  Most of thier defense is of the shell game type: "Eugenicists believed in , but MS favored open immigration."

In the end, Margaret Sanger is damned by her own words.

Some Articles Published by MS

While Planned Parenthood's current apologists try to place some distance between the eugenics and birth control movements, history definitively says otherwise. The eugenic theme figured prominently in the Birth Control Review, which Sanger founded in 1917. She published such articles as "Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics" (June 1920), "The Eugenic Conscience" (February 1921), "The purpose of Eugenics" (December 1924), "Birth Control and Positive Eugenics" (July 1925), "Birth Control: The True Eugenics" (August 1928), and many others.

Eugenic Snuggly Goodness from MS

Margaret Sanger had learned of eugenics form Havelock Ellis. She first acknowledged the place of birth control in the eugenicists' program when she announced in 1919: "More children from the fit, less from the unfit---that is the chief issue of birth control." Margaret Sanger usually used the term "unfit" to refer to the mentally retarded and physically deformed. "Birth control," she said in 1920, "is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out of the unfit, or preventing the birth defectives or of those who will become defectives."

WWWW? or What Would Wikipedia Write?

Sanger was a fervent believer in eugenics, a philosophy which led to the rise of such practices as compulsory sterilization. In 1932, for example, Sanger argued for

    "A stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring."

"...certain dysgenic groups in our population," she continued, should be given their choice of "segregation or sterilization." [1] (http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/ms_apwp.html). Then considered enlightened in some circles, today such measures are often regarded as violations of human rights.

In a mix of socialist and eugenic thought, Sanger blamed economic factors in choice of spouses for contributing to suboptimal human reproduction, and argued for more assertive public health and eugenics measures.

[SteveS]

Ragged Claws, I remember a similar case, though I can't remember the name either.  I work in the mental health field, but not in an institution.  While there certainly are and were documented cases of abuse and downright stupidity on the parts of the institutions, the pendulum has swung too far the other way.  In the late 70's and early 90's, many institutions were closed and the patients were released into community based programs.  While this was appropriate for some, for others it was a bad choice.  The jail system has seen a huge rise in the number of mentally ill inmates.  I am not talking about people that are pretending to be "nuts," thinking they will get away with it, I am talking about people that are seriously disturbed.

Today, if you walked into an ER and said you were hearing voices, you would receive a brief assessment.  If you didn't articulate some threat or suicidal ideation, you would likely be encouraged to go see a doctor on your own.  If you were really acting out, you might be hospitalized for a week or so, pumped full of anti-psychotics, and set loose.

[brimic]

On the opposite end of the eugenics spectrum, the US government took a page out of Hitlers handbook for breeding the supreme race during the 40s and 50s.

The government identified people of fairly high intelligence, high social standing because of achievements, scientists, engineers, doctors, pilots, etc, and put them in a program where they paid them big incentives to have children and extra money to raise these children.

The kids from families involved in this program grew up, by in large to be average Joes, most of them being productive members of society, but not spectacular achievers.

[Guest]

There were multiple state-run sterilization programs around the country clear into the 1960s and 70s as part of a eugenics program. They were more popular prior to world war II, after that people got a bit uneasy at the connection with similar programs in Nazi Germany and they fell out of favor.

The idea behind a sterilization program is that the state would subsidize the surgery (and sometimes pay a fee, often to the parents of the person being sterilized) because it was felt that the society was better off if that person didnt reproduce. There are some really nasty stories about how these programs were applied and I doubt that any government agency still has any involvement.

[Sean Smith]

What makes alot of these stories especially nasty is HOW the sterilizations were done.

It seems like the mental health profession has gone from one extreme to another.  Instead of mass institutionalization under wildly inconsistent conditions (from humane to nightmare), it looks like the severely mentally ill are under-treated to an extreme degree... see your local homeless population for details.