Posted on 03/29/2008 10:31:00 AM PDT by wagglebee
At the dawn of the Nazi era, a prominent Minneapolis physician sent a letter to Adolf Hitler, praising his "plan to stamp out mental inferiority among the German people."
At the time, Dr. Charles Dight was an influential public leader, a former city alderman who had founded the Minnesota Eugenics Society. As such, he believed that the "feebleminded" were unfit to have children. He didn't hide his admiration for the German chancellor.
"I trust you will accept my sincere wish that your efforts along that line will be a great success," he wrote on Aug. 1, 1933, "and will advance the eugenics movement in other nations as well as in Germany."
Dight died before he could see where that movement would lead.
The lure of eugenics -- the idea that science could improve on humanity by weeding out "undesirable traits" -- is the focus of "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race," an exhibit opening tomorrow at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
The traveling collection of books, artifacts, posters, historic newsreels and interviews with survivors was produced by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and runs through May 4 in St. Paul.
It explores how highly educated people on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Dight, were swept up in the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. In the United States, that led to forced sterilizations in mental institutions, including thousands of Minnesotans.
In Nazi Germany, mass sterilization was just the beginning.
"This exhibition was designed to answer one of the big 'how was the Holocaust possible' questions," said Susan Bachrach, curator of the exhibition at the Holocaust Museum. "One of the answers has to do with the role of physicians and scientists."
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Which is EXACTLY what we hear almost every day from FReepers who claim to be conservatives.
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Eugenics began way before Hitler. He wasn’t that much of an enthusiast. The real ones were not even in Germany. Eugenicists are still with us and being better funded than ever.
With rapidly advancing DNA technology, it seems to be the way we are heading for good or bad.
eugenics is bad. euthanasia is good. right?
You’re right, it comes from the Darwin family.
Both are morally reprehensible.
it was sarcasm, waglebee; a statement intended to highlight the insane hypocrisy of the media. but thanks for the reminder.
No, it doesn’t. It was there before science, that is, before Descartes.
There is only a financial burden on the state when the state is given or allowed to take over that burden.
Margaret Sanger - talk about your dedicated eugenics-lover there.
From the recent recorded conversations (”understandable, understandable”) at PP donation lines, it seems that spirit is alive and well there.
You’re right. Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist, and the organization she founded, Planned Parenthood, is highly regarded to this day, and receives government funding.
Sorry, I misinterpreted your statement.
Contrast with the situation we have today, in which a huge percentage of babies are produced by the least intelligent people in the country, and the educated middle class is not replacing itself.
Perhaps there are ways to improve the quality of the gene pool without murdering babies, or forcing anybody against their will?
Of course, as you imply, it depends on how we use it like any other scientific advance. If we use DNA testing to "weed" out unborn children with genetic deficiencies, we are as evil as were to Nazis. However, if we use genetic research to correct genetic defects, which is the subject of much research, I can't see anything but good. Science doesn't make the moral choices, we do.
Of great concern just now is the tendency to see life on a cost benefit basis. Not many of us old folks could justify the expense of our medicines against the goods and services we produce. Is it economically justified to keep Grandma alive when all she does is sit there and knit? Such questions are being asked, particularly in European socialized medicine environments.
Of course, abortion on demand is an ongoing holocaust.
So, you agree with Justice Holme's statement that, "three generations of imbeciles are enough"?
C'mon, it's FR. It happens all the time. ;)
Dysgenics, the opposite of eugenics, seems to be most prevalent today. Stupid people are breeding like rabbits whereas intelligent, successful couples forego bearing children. The future of this country is going to resemble the Mike Judge film Idiocracy except not nearly as funny and much more violent.
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