A Brief History of Down syndrome - Part 7: Abused, Neglected, Forgotten

"Euthanasia through neglect..."

– Albert Deutsch

As World War II raged on, the number of admissions to institutions continued to increase.  The amount of workers in the institutions continued to decrease however, as more men were being drafted every day for the war effort. Overcrowding quickly became the norm once again, with patients in hallways and even sharing beds. Without privacy, without comfort, without possessions, without support, patients were completely dehumanized and ready targets for abuse.  Conscientious objectors, those citizens who refused to fight in the war for ethical reasons, were readily employed by the institutions to help fill the ranks.  It is these people that began to expose the horrors of mass violence and neglect.

Patient record from Letchworth Villiage.
Photo courtesy of The DNA Learning Center

Those with disabilities were viewed as sick within a system that was highly medicalized;  each institution was run by physicians and staffed by nurses.  In the US, "state hospitals" housed the mentally ill while "state schools" held those with intellectual disabilities.  Areas within both were referred to in terms of "wards" or nursing units. "Patients" had "charts" and attended "therapy" or "programs".  People were referred to by their disabilities, thereby fostering more dependance on the medical establishment.  As feeble-mindedness was "incurable", patients under this system would require complete care as it was due to their "sickness" that people were institutionalized.  At the same time, many cities in the US continued to uphold "Ugly Laws", passed earlier in the century which made being disabled a crime.  This piece from the Chicago Municipal Code, sec. 36034 includes the following ordinance (that was not repealed until 1974):

"No person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person to be allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in this city, or shall therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under a penalty of not less than one dollar nor more than fifty dollars for each offense."

"We were greatly heartened by the appearance. It resembled a
college campus." Image courtesy of the Disability History Museum

After the war, doctors continued to urge parents to place their children in institutions.  During this time, having a child or family member with a disability was seen as a burden.  This story from The Rotarian in 1945 clearly displays the thinking of the day where "A Father" outlines the reason for institutionalizing his daughter for a "hopeless brain condition", diagnosed after a stay at a children's centre:

"After two weeks of observation and a brain X ray, the doctors decided that Mary Lou had a hopeless brain condition and recommended that for our own good and the welfare of the two children we place her in an institution."

The "brain x-ray" in this case is probably referring to a common diagnostic technique of the time, Pneumoencephalography, whereby small holes were bored in the skull, the protective cerebral spinal fluid drained from around the brain and replaced with gas, usually room air, oxygen or helium.  An x-ray was then taken.  The procedure was quite painful, caused headaches, nausea, vomiting and delerium that could last months until the body naturally replaced the cerebral spinal fluid. At worst, it could cause brain damage, paralysis and death.

"A Father" felt, if Mary-Lou was kept at home, it would disrupt family life and result in public ridicule and shame;

"If we did [keep her at home], we should have to curtail normal family activities, to make the environment as simple as possible, for, as is typical in such cases, Mary Lou became frantic over the bustle of the simplest household tasks. We knew, too, that we would have to devote the major part of our time to her, leaving her little brother to develop as best he could. We felt that he already had been neglected.

Also, having witnessed the ridicule and ill treatment which residents of our home town turned on the "village half-wit" and his family, we understood what keeping her with us would mean to our family..."

Her admission to a state facility was described as quick and efficient;  the results curative.  The story concludes with "And so tragedy came into a family that barely knew the word. We think, we pray, we have faced it wisely".

Between 1946 and 1967, the number of people with disabilities that were housed in public institutions in America increased from almost 117 000 to over 193 000, a population increase that was almost double that of the general post-war "baby boom".  As time went on, those admitted were becoming younger and their disabilities more pronounced. In regards to Down syndrome in particular, there were many cases where fathers and doctors conspired to have a baby institutionalized and then told the mother that the baby had died.

Albert Deutsch, who has been described as "a crusading journalist" wrote The Shame of the States in 1948, a compilation of his serial articles (previously published in major newspapers) which exposed the conditions of Letchworth Village in New York.  At the time, Letchworth was considered to be one of the better institutions in the US, as it had taken great pains in its creation to ensure that the overcrowding and abuses that had occurred in other places would not be repeated there.

Opening in 1911, Letchworth Village was one of the first completely encapsulated "state schools".  It included its own farm, power plant and hospital.  In the words of the first superintendent, Charles S. Little;

..."buildings should not be more than two stories high, nor should they contain more than seventy inmates; that the basements should not be used for purposes other than storage; that the dormitories should be at least two hundred feet apart, with sufficient space for each to have its own playgrounds; that there should be such separation of groups that inmates of one grade could not come in contact with those of another grade; and that in locating the buildings advantage should be taken of the natural beauty of the place."

Photo of Letchworth Village, looking like a college campus.

Patients were divided into separate categories or "grades" and were kept apart:  "moron", "imbecile" and "idiot", the last deemed "untrainable" and therefore initially excluded from admittance to Letchworth as they were unable, in his eyes, "to benefit the state".  As further described by Little:

"...it is a home where the feeble-minded and epileptic of all ages may be given the pleasures and comforts of the ordinary home. To this end our day rooms will be provided with games, colored pictures, flowers, music, etc. Each dormitory will have its own playgrounds where base-ball, football, basket-ball, croquet, etc., may be played by the children. Swings, hammocks, and picnic grounds will be provided for in a grove. Holidays will be celebrated in an appropriate and American fashion. A birthday party will be given each month for those having birthdays that month, making a gala evening for all. Inmates and employes will join in a weekly dance. There will be Sunday services appropriate to the condition and belief of the various inmates."

Residents tended to fields and flocks of livestock, built roads, shoveled coal and made toys at Christmastime.  It may sound idyllic, but by 1921, of the 506 people listed at Letchworth, 317 were between the ages of 5 and 17, while 11 were under the age of 5.  Their labour force consisted mainly of children and visitors and staff would report shortages of food and that the patients looked ill and malnourished. 

As time went on the population at Letchworth continued to grow.   Despite this, the state refused to construct any additional buildings and by the end of 1921, 1200 patients were housed there.  By the 1950's, that number had swollen to over 4,000.  Families were abandoning their relatives there to be forgotten.  Deutsch called it "euthanasia through neglect...".

Photographer Irving Haberman did a photo series on Letchworth which further exposed the conditions of the dirty, malnourished, neglected unkempt patients.  Residents are seen huddling naked in the day rooms. Similar exposés were done on many other institutions;  Time magazine would feature Byberry Hospital, also known as the Philadelphia State Hospital, in 1946 which exhibited appalling imagery of overcrowding, abuse and severe neglect.

The Nuremburg Code was created in 1947 and gave worldwide guidelines for human trials and experimentation.  However, many children in the state schools were still the subjects of experiments, including early testing for vaccinations. Many doctors at the time argued that these rules applied only to Nazi atrocities, not American medicine.  The first polio vaccine was in fact tested at Letchworth in 1950, after much lobbying by the then superintendent, Dr. Jervis.  By that time, Letchworth was considered to be highly regarded in the medical community, despite it's shady reputation in the greater community.  The Fernald Center in Massachusetts (superintended by eugenisist Walter E. Fernald) was the site of a joint experiment between MIT, Harvard University, The Atomic Energy commission and the Quaker Oats Company that exposed male patients to radioactive isotopes between 1946-1953.   Parents were given the following notice:

Dear Parent:
In the previous years we have done some examination in connection with the nutritional department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the purposes of helping to improve the nutrition of our children and to help them in general more efficiently than before.
For the checking up of the children, we occasionally need to take some blood samples which are then analyzed. The blood samples are taken after one test meal which consists of a special breakfast meal containing a certain amount of calcium. We have asked for volunteers to give a sample of blood once a month for three months, and your son has agreed to volunteer because the boys who belong to the Science Club have many additional privileges. They get one quart of milk daily during that time, and are taken to a baseball game, to the beach and to some outside dinners and they enjoy it greatly.
I hope that you have no objection that your son is voluntarily participating in this study. The first study will start Monday, June 8th, and if you have not expressed any objections we will assume that your son may participate.
Sincerely yours,
Clemens E. Benda, M.D.
[Fernald] Clinical Director

What was not mentioned to the parents was that the calcium given to their children in the milk was radioactive.

From the mid 1950's to the early 1970's, researchers at the Willowbrook State School in New York, carried out experiments on children that were deliberately infected with Hepatitis A and then treated with gamma globulin.  In the early years of the study, patients were fed infected fecal matter.  Later they would be injected with more pure versions of the virus.  Those that investigated the abuses surmised that the children would probably have gotten Hepatitis at Willowbrook anyway due to frequent outbreaks, so that it was probably "for the best" that they got it under such scientific circumstances.  At one point the school was closed to new admissions, except for the Hepatitis program.  This led to parents agreeing to allow their children to be the subjects of experiments, just to be able to admit their child to Willowbrook.  Either way, both parents and children were given very little choice whether or not to participate in the program.

Patients at Letchworth.  Photo courtesy of Bob Paley

Between 1917 and 1967, those that died at Letchworth, Willowbrook and other facilities like them, were buried anonymously. Steel or stone numbers were their only monument, possibly due to cost or at the families wishes of privacy.  Regardless, even in death, these people were denied their basic humanity, up to and including their own name.

In 1948 in Great Britain, the National Health Service (NHS) was introduced and institutions were now nationalized and transformed into actual hospitals (yet run like schools).  Emphasis then shifted to admitting only the most disabled and those with behavioural issues. Also that year, the National Assistance Act (which replaced the "Poor Laws" of Elizabeth I) made it a duty of local authorities to  arrange assistance for those who were deaf, blind, dumb, handicapped by illness, injury, congenital deformity or suffering from a mental disorder (which included developmental delays). This included increasing access to specialized education.

Image courtesy of The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities

In 1950, another surge of advocacy took place in the United States.  Parents had begun to organize and had created the National Association of Parents and Friends of Retarded Children (which would later become The ARC).  By 1952 many US states had created legislation for educating children with intellectual disabilities (although those that were classified "moderate" to "severe" were excluded).  As the 20th century would progress, the horrors of the institutions were becoming more commonly known, yet still persisted.  Sterilization, lobotomization, tortuous experimental "treatments" and physical abuse were still the norm and the numbers of children being admitted continued to climb.  Instead of "feeble-minded" "moron" "imbecile" and "idiot" the terminology of choice was now changed to retarded, a blanket term that included any and all learning disabilities and developmental delays. ("Mongolism" would still be used to describe Down syndrome until 1965).  With the ease of one word, society was now able to dismiss an entire segment of the disability community, while callously watching their plight on the evening news.
 

By the 1960's even the architecture of the institutional buildings had evolved to reflect the culture of medicine, of the hospital.  Staff had separate showers, lounges and toilets.  The floors were easy to wash tile, bathrooms were stall-less and completely devoid of privacy for ease of both cleaning and supervising residents en masse.  Furniture was sparse, hard and unwelcoming.  Medical professionals wore clinical white uniforms and jackets, their names and position clearly displayed on name tags.  It was a stark contrast to the patients who wore communal clothing of various states of (dis)repair. It was very clear who was in control.

Niels Erk Bank-Mikkelsen, the director of the Danish national services for Mental Retardation visited an institution in California in the 1960's.  His report included the following "I couldn't believe my eyes. It was worse than any institution I have seen in visits to a dozen foreign countries. . . . In our country, we would not be allowed to treat cattle like that."

From "Christmas in Purgatory".  Image courtesy
of the Disability History Museum

President John F. Kennedy Jr. formed The President's Panel on Mental Retardation in 1962.  The panel was comprised mainly of medical professionals and focused on both treatment and prevention.  "Retardation" itself was seen as something to "combat".

Senator Robert Kennedy toured Willowbrook in 1965, (accompanied by a TV crew) and compared it to a "snake pit".  It's population of 6000 children was 2000 over capacity.  He described the children as "living in filth and dirt, their clothing in rags, in rooms less comfortable and cheerful than the cages in which we put animals in a zoo".  Later he would address a joint session of the New York legislation regarding the "dehumanizing" conditions at both the Willowbrook and Rome State Schools.  During his speech, he declared that the residents of the institutions were denied both access to appropriate education and their overall civil liberties.  The following year, Willowbrook was featured again as one of the institutions in "Christmas in Purgatory" when Dr. Burton Blatt and photographer Fred Kaplan used hidden cameras to capture images of the atrocities in several institutions.  According to Dr. Blatt "there is a hell on earth and in America there is a special inferno".  Senator Kennedy received a great deal of backlash from his comments, most insinuating that non-medical personnel would be unable to classify or understand what they were witnessing in "whirlwind tours".  Dr. Blatt reacted to them thusly:

"It does not require a scientific background or a great deal of observation to determine that one has entered the "land of the living dead." It does not require too imaginative a mind or too sensitive a proboscis to realize that one has stumbled into a dung hill, regardless of how it is camouflaged..."

"Christmas in Purgatory" also gives insight into the treatment of infants and very young children in such places.  Warehoused in extremely overcrowded, spartan surroundings and devoid of stimulation including human touch, it is easy to see how the people there never stood a chance.

From "Christmas in Purgatory".  Image courtesy
of the Disability History Museum

"The infant dormitories depressed us the most. Here, cribs were placed-as in the other dormitories-side by side and head to head. Very young children, one and two years of age, were lying in cribs, without interaction with any adult, without playthings, without any apparent stimulation. In one dormitory, that had over 100 infants and was connected to 9 other dormitories that totaled 1,000 infants, we experienced a heartbreaking encounter. As we entered, we heard a muffled sound emanating from the "blind'' side of a doorway. A young child seemed to be calling, "Come. Come play with me. Touch me."

"In other day rooms, we saw groups of 20 and 30 very young children lying, rocking, sleeping, sitting- alone. Each of these rooms were without toys or adult human contact, although each had desperate looking adult attendants "standing by."

"In some of the children's dormitories we observed "nursery programs." What surprised us most was their scarcity and the primitiveness of those in operation. Therefore, we were not unprepared to see several children with severe head lacerations. We were told these were "head bangers." Head banging is another condition that some people think is inevitable when confronted with young severely mentally retarded children. We challenge this. We have reason to believe that head banging can be drastically reduced in an environment where children have other things to do. The "Special Education" we observed in the dormitories for young children was certainly not education. But, it was special. It was among the most especially frightening and depressing encounters with human beings we have ever experienced..."

This news special produced by NBC in 1968 still clearly shows subhuman living conditions in The Pennhurst State Home in Pennsylvania.

"Suffer the Little Children" by Bill Baldini

Although these reports and many like it would spark legislation that would begin the closing of the institutions, many were open and still functioning like this until the early 1980's. Despite frequent exposés in the Staten Island Advance and other area papers, the allegations of abuse at Willowbrook continued to surface.  In 1972, Geraldo Rivera, then working as an ABC News reporter, went to Willowbrook to film "Willowbrook:  The Last Disgrace".  His story, which won a Peabody Award, showcased the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions and the physical abuse of the patients by the staff.

Even with all the publicity, even with all the images, stories and coverage, the institutions, according to one doctor at Willowbrook, had only worsened since Kennedy's visit.

The classification of "retarded" and related terms would continue to affect public perception and access to care for people with intellectual disabilities well into the 21st century.  In the UK, a pamphlet published by The National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children in 1973 (eight years after the term mongolism had been changed to "Down's Syndrome"), had this to say:

"when informed by their doctor that their child is affected with mongolism and warned that it may show some mental backwardness, parents often imagine the worst and think that their child will never walk or talk.  Although a few mongol children are as handicapped as this and they can live at home when young, they will probably later need permanent hospital care..."

"... Due to their slow intellectual growth most mongols are precluded from making satisfactory progress in formal education of the type provided by Local education authorities. However they benefit from the less formal type of education which they receive at the special centres provided by the local Department of Health although these are not always yet available in the more sparsely populated areas of Britain.

In addition to the two already mentioned there is a third considerably smaller group of children with mongolism who are even less backward and devlop intellectually from a half to two thirds the rate of an average child. Many of this group can profit from formal education, particularly when given in the smaller classes with specially trained teachers in schools for the educationally subnormal"

Doctors continued to refuse lifesaving procedures (such as heart surgery) to those with Down syndrome up until 1984;  in fact there were many physicians that still classified feeding a child with an intellectual disability to be a lifesaving procedure.  Until the institutions were finally closed, hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities had been discarded by their families, segregated, abused sexually, physically and mentally, not to mention violated by sterilization and experimentation.  All with society's blessing as it was considered "the right thing to do".

We may never know the full extent of the abuse, nor of how many people with disabilities were disposed of out of hand, like so much garbage.  It would take almost to the end of the last century for the final institution to be closed.  It would take even longer for the general public to begin to understand terms such as "dignity" "rights" and "civil liberties" in relation to those with intellectual disabilities.  The term "retarded" is just now being replaced in the medical literature; it will no doubt take many more to remove it from Western vernacular.

We in society have a responsibility to ensure that these victims are not forgotten.  We also have a mandate to ensure that such atrocities never happen to another human being ever again. 

Anonymous graves at Letchfield Village.  Photo courtesy of the New York Times.

[Next time:  The rise of the parent advocate]

----------- Applebome, Peter. "Giving Names to Souls Forgotten No Longer." The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 Dec. 2007.

Buteux, Lindsay. "Letchworth: The Village of Secrets." Outlook Student Press. Outlook Student Press, 8 Nov. 2010.

Chicago Municipal Code, sec. 36034 (repealed 1974).

Christmas in Purgatory, Blatt and Kaplan, (Previously published by Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1966) current copyright, Human Policy Press, Center on Human Policy Syracuse University P.O. Box 35127 Syracuse, NY, 1974. 
 
Corcoran, David. "THIELLS JOURNAL; Graves Without Names for the Forgotten Mentally Retarded." The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 Dec. 1991.

"Disability History Exhibit." Disability History Panels. Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.

Harkins, Don. "Federal Government Publishes Confession; 1995 Report to Clinton Documents 30 Years of Radiation Experiments." The Idaho Observer [Spirit Lake, Idaho] May 1999: The Idaho Observer.

"Legend Tripping in Letchworth Village." AbandonedNYC. N.p., 5 Aug. 2012.
Little, Charles S., MD. Letchworth Village: The Newest State Institution For The Feeble-minded And Epileptic.  The Survey, 12 Mar. 1912.

Paralells in Time; A History of Developmental Disabilities, The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities, 2012.

Staff (September 10, 1965). "Excerpts From Statement by Kennedy". The New York Times.

Suffer The Little Children, Pennhurst State Home: Eugenics + Social Services - Pennsylvania. Perf. Bill Baldini. NBC10, 1968.

Slater, Catherine, MA. "A History of Mental Disability 1000AD-2000AD:From Idiocy to Intellectual Impairment Web. 22 July 2013.

The Child with Mongolism: 80 to 90 Per Cent Can Learn to Do Simple Tasks. Great Britain: National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children, 1973. Print.

"We Committed Our Child." The Rotarian (1945): Disability History Museum.

"Willowbrook State School." Asylum Projects. Asylum Projects, n.d. Web.
--------------------

[Originally appeared on Down Wit Dat] 

A Brief History of Down syndrome - Part 6: From Eugenics to Extermination

With the popularity of eugenic theories, the segregation and institutionalization of the differently abled and general public vilification, a fertile ground had been prepared for what came next.

A Call for Euthanasia

Many countries followed America's eugenics movement and imitated it's legislation.  In countries such as France, Belgium, Sweden, England and Germany, eugenic principles were introduced into everyday life.  Many US states had passed sterilization laws, Indiana being the first in 1907.

The 1912 International Eugenics Congress featured a paper called "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeders' Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population", in which ten solutions were put forth to deal with the "socially unfit".  They were, in order:  Life segregation (or segregation during the reproductive period), Sterilization, Restrictive Marriage laws and customs, Eugenic Education of the public and of prospective marriage mates, Systems of matings purporting to remove defective traits, General environmental betterment, Polygamy, Euthanasia, Neo-Malthusian doctrine, artificial interference to prevent conception and Laissez-faire. An 1918 Eugenics Textbook "Applied Eugenics" by Paul Popenoe and Roswell H. Johnson, listed many suggestions as well, among which:

"... the first method which presents itself is execution. This has been used since the beginning of the race, very probably, although rarely with a distinct understanding of its eugenic effect; and its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated."

American eugenicists felt that American society was not ready yet to implement organized euthanasia, however many institutions and physicians within employed their own methods.  Passive methods included allowing infants to starve to death (such as famed MD and wanna-be-movie star Harry J Haiselden) and withholding treatment. One large institution in Illinois however, fed it's patients tuberculosis infected milk believing that the genetically superior inmates would have immunity.  That particular institution, not surprisingly, had a 30 to 40 percent death rate per year.  Sterilization remained the most popular method;  in the first year of California's sterilization legislation for example, 9,782 people were sterilized.  Most of these were women.

Charles Davenport, author of Eugenics, The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding and one of the creators of the Eugenics Record Office (with funding from the estate of railroad baron E. H. Harriman) was particularly close with his German colleagues; even after America was in the grips of the Great Depression, American charities such as the Carnegie Institute and Rockefeller Foundation continued to fund German eugenics research.   However, the eugenics world continued to watch closely the American "accomplishments" of "biological courts", involuntary sterilization, segregation, detention, propaganda, perpetuating of pseudo-science and the ongoing discussion of euthanasia.

In 1924, an imprisoned corporal of the German Army began to study eugenic writings, including those of Davenport, Popenoe, Leon Witney and Madison Grant, who blamed the corruption of the Nordic ideal on Jews, Slavs, Afro-Americans and many others who were not blonde or blue eyed.  In his book The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial Bias of European History, Grant wrote:

"Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life, tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit, and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race."  

"You are bearing this too".  Courtesy of H. E. A. R. T.

The young corporal, Adolf Hitler, went on to write fan mail to both Whitney and Grant. Hitler's letter to Grant thanked him for his book and referred to it as "my bible". In his own book, Mein Kampf, published shortly thereafter, Hitler echoed his eugenics heroes with the following call for euthanasia:

"The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and if systematically executed represents the most humane act of mankind. It will spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will lead to a rising improvement of health as a whole."

He also references the United States frequently, including his his admiration of restricting immigration.  His keen interest in American eugenics legislation is reflected in this comment to a comrade;

Nazi Eugenics propaganda poster from 1939,
stating "We Do Not Stand Alone"

"...it is possible to a large extent to prevent unhealthy and severely handicapped beings from coming into the world. I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Adolf Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933.  For the first 10 years of the 12 year Reich, eugenicists welcomed his proposed fulfillment of their tenets of identification, segregation, sterilization, eugenic courts and euthanasia.  In July of 1933, Germany passed the "Law for the Prevention of Heriditarily Diseased Offspring".  This law provided legal grounds for the sterilization of people deemed by a court hearing to be "unfit".  This law provided that any person with a hereditary disease could be sterilized if there was a high probability of it being passed on to future generations.  Those listed included "Congenital Mental Deficiency" (such as Down syndrome), schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, epilepsy, Huntington's chorea, blindness, deafness, any severe deformity and those with severe alcoholism.  In the general public, the notion of the "useless eater" was perpetuated.

Children at the Schönbrunn Psychiatric Hospital, 1934.
(Bundesarchiv, Bild 152-04-28 / Friedrich Franz Bauer / CC-BY-SA\)

In 1934, the superintendent of Virgina's Western State Hospital complained in the local paper "The Germans are beating us at their own game".   For years, Nazi doctors would continue to routinely consult with eugenicists across America.

Extermination and Aktion T4

The first incidence of state performed euthanasia in Germany was known as the "Child K" case.  Hitler was approached by the parents of a "deformed" child and asked his permission to allow the child to be put to death.  After consulting with his personal physician and chancellor, Hitler granted the child's doctor the ability to euthanize the child.

This poster proclaims “Sterilization is liberation, not
a punishment.” and asks “Who would want to be
responsible for this?” and features three children
with disabilities.  Photo courtesy of Calvin College

By August 18th 1939, Hitler had created the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses (Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung erb- und anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden) which required mandatory registration of all births of developmentally delayed and handicapped children by doctors and midwives.  Children up to three years of age had to be reported to the offices of  the Reich Health Ministry. Code named Aktion T4, Hitler ordered the "mercy killing" of all deemed "life unworthy of life";  this plan focused initially on newborns and young children. The program was managed by Hitler's personal physician, Karl Brandt and the chief of Hitler's private chancellery, Philipp Bouler (the same two whose counsel he sought with Child K). To be included in this program were those with "idiocy and mongolism" (Down syndrome), those with blindness and deafness, microcephaly, hydrocephalus, absence of limbs, mid line defects of the head and spine and paralysis (such as cerebral palsy).  The decision to end a child's life was based on the results of a questionnaire.  No medical examination took place or records were consulted.  Three "medical experts" placed a red + or a blue - on a form marked "treatment".  A minus sign represented a decision by an "expert" to not kill the child.  Three plus signs meant the issue of a euthanasia warrant and transfer to a "Children's Specialty Department".  A unanimous decision was required;  in the event of a split decision, the child was "observed" for a period of time and another attempt would be made to achieve a consensus.

	"Life unworthy of life"

These children were sent to one of six facilities where they were killed by drugs or by starvation.  It is belived that 8,000 children were to lose their lives this way.  In October of the same year, this decree was extended to include older children and adults.  Hitler backdated his declaration to September first and increased the power of

"the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death." 

This would not only dispose of the "useless eaters" but also free up beds in hospitals for wounded Nazi soldiers.  Questionnaires were sent to institutions for the mentally ill, chronically ill and hospitals.  Patients were required to be reported if they had schizophrenia, epilepsy, dementia, paralysis, syphillis, developmental delays, encephalitis, neurological conditions, had been in hospital or institutionalized for 5 years or more, was criminally insane, was a foreigner or was Jewish, African-American or Gypsy.

Tiergartenstraße 4, Courtesy of H. E. A. R. T.

There were four main divisions that aided the program that were created in 1939.  The first, the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft Heil- und Pflegeanstalten (RAG) was responsible for the distribution and return of the registration forms to the institutions.  The completed forms were forwarded to the "experts" who decided the patients fate.  The Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH" (Gekrat)  was charged with transporting the patients via Gekrat buses to the killing centres, while the Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Anstaltspflege" (Stiftung) created extermination sites by renting spaces, setting up the equipment, hiring staff and managing their budgets.  Finally the  Zentralverrechnungsstelle Heil- und Pflegeanstalten" (ZVST) served as the central clearing office.  The main office was located in Berlin on Tiergartenstraße 4, which gave the program it's name of "T4".  Physicians and medical assistants were eager to assist with this programme as the salaries were made very attractive.

Six main euthenasia sites were created across Germany and Austria.  In January 1940, Brandenburg (near Berlin), Grafeneck (near Stuttgart) and Hartheim (near Linz, Austria) were established;  both Brandenburg and Grafeneck ceased functioning (officially) between September and December of the same year.  Sonnenstin/Pirna (near Dresden) opened in April of 1940 and Bernberg (near Magdeburg) was established in September.  The last to open was Hadamar (near Koblenz) which opened in January the following year (and closed that August).  Bernburg ceased operation in April 1943, while Sonnenstein/Pirna ended in August 1943.  Hartheim was the last to cease it's operation, which it did officially in December of 1944. The Zwischenanstalten were intermediate stops between the patients institution of origin and the killing centres.  They also managed the capacity of the centres and were tasked with 'cover up' for inquiring relatives. It was at Brandenburg, a converted prison, that the first Nazi gas exterminations took place. The T4 victims were gassed in chambers disguised as showers and their remains burned in giant ovens. Families were told that the victims had died of various illnesses including pneumonia or heart failure.  They would each recieve an urn contianing mixed ashes.  The routine deception and gassing/cremation would be used again, only on a much larger scale.

The billowing chimney at Hadamar. Ashes with
human hair would rain down upon the townspeople.
Courtesy of H. E. A. R. T.

Although it was a top secret operation, Aktion T4 became difficult to hide, especially with the dwindiling numbers of the mentally or physically disabled and mentally ill.  Also, the thick, constant, maloderous plumes of smoke from the crematoriums was also difficult to conceal.  It is rumoured that at Haldamar, a former hospital for the mentally ill, children would watch the incoming buses and taunt the inhabitants with "here are some more to be gassed".   Ashes containing human hair would rain down on the town.  Those aware of the goings-on at the six centers were either in favour of the program or completely silenced by fear.

The following three testimonials speak volumes about the killing centres (in this case, Hadamar):

“After doors were closed, the air was sucked out of the gas chamber through a ventilator by the same doctor who carried out the earlier `examination.’ Then for about ten minutes, carbon monoxide was let in [by that doctor] and its effect observed through a small window. As soon as he thought that those shut in had died, he had the gas chamber emptied. First fresh air was introduced through the ventilator, and the gas was forced out. From the beginning of the gassing until the reopening of the gas chamber took about one hour. The corpses that were to be dissected were removed to a special room. However, the great majority of corpses were immediately taken to the ovens and burned there.”

"Through it I saw 40-45 men who were pressed together in the next room and were now slowly dying. Some lay on the ground, others had slumped down, many had their mouths open as if they could not get any more air. The form of death was so painful that one cannot talk of a humane killing, especially since many of the dead men may have had moments of clarity. I watched the process for about 2-3 minutes and then left because I could no longer bear to look and felt sick.”

“Did I ever watch a gassing? Dear God, unfortunately, yes. And it was all due to my curiosity.... Downstairs on the left was a short pathway, and there I looked through the window.... In the chamber there were patients, naked people, some semi-collapsed, others with their mouths terribly wide open, their chests heaving. I saw that, I have never seen anything more gruesome. I turned away, went up the steps, upstairs was a toilet. I vomited everything I had eaten. This pursued me days on end.... Looking into the chamber, I could not imagine that this was completely without pain. Of course, I am a layman and this is just my opinion. A few were lying on the ground. The spines of all the naked people protruded. Some sat on the bench with their mouth wide open, their eyes wide open, and breathing with difficulty.”

[Testimonials courtesy of H. E. A. R. T]

A Catholic Bishop in Münster, named Clemens von Galen, delivered a sermon on August 3, 1941 which denounced Aktion T4 as murder.  The Nazi party was publicly condemned and the faithful encouraged to withdraw from the party due to their "ungodly" policies.  Hitler officially suspended the program 20 days later and in retaliation, beheaded three priests.  At that point, over 70 000 lives had been ended.  Although it had officially been stopped, it continued quietly in the background, especially in the hospitals of conqured territories and for those that remained in the institutions.  Instead of gas, patients were poisoned or starved to death.  Physicians were encouraged to err on the side of death when considering such an action.

The gas chambers used in the euthanasia centres were a testing ground;  the Nazi party used the Aktion T4 experience to aid in the construction of the death camps in places such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.  In fact, many SS officers that participated in the killing centres would go on to command in the camps.  Although officially abandoned, Aktion T4 was still considered a "success" and became the opening chapter in what would become the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, in the Allied countries, increasing numbers of institutional workers were being drafted, leaving the already overcrowded conditions even more destitute.  Although the horrors of the camps and Aktion T4 were exposed after the war, people continued to be sterilized against their will, long after eugenics was abandoned as a "science". In parts of Canada for example, this would continue well into the 1970's.

[Next time:  Abandonment and Abuse]

----------------

Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003. Print.

"Disability History Exhibit." Disability History Panels. Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, n.d. Web. <http://www.hss.state.ak.us/gcdse/history/HTML_Content_Main.htm>.

Grant, Madison. The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial Bias of European History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916. Print.

Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Germany: Eher Verlag, 1925. Print.

Lifton, Robert J. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic, 2000. The Holocaust History Project. Web.

"Nazi Eugenics and Euthanasia." Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. H. E. A. R. T., 2010. Web. <www.HolocaustResearchProject.org>.

Paralells in Time; A History of Developmental Disabilities, The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities, 2012.

Popenoe, Paul, and Roswell H. Johnson. Applied Eugenics. New York: MacMillan, 1918. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Applied Eugenics. Project Gutenberg, 17 Oct. 2006. Web. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19560/19560-h/19560-h.htm>.

Van Wagenen, Bleeker, "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeders' Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population" (2009). College of Law Faculty Publications. Paper 74. <http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/col_facpub/74> 

[Originally appeared on Down Wit Dat]  

A Brief History of Down syndrome - Part 5: From Education to Eugenics

A Brief History of Down syndrome, Part 5: From Education to Eugenics

The training schools for the developmentally delayed in the middle 1800's were an instant success;  although they did not offer a cure, they did show improvements in behaviour, physical prowress and social interactions.  Many students were able to develop skills that would ensure a successful return to their loved ones.

Sadly, a post-Civil war poor economy did not allow for many employment opportunities for the developmentally disabled in America, no matter how well trained.  Jobs were scarce and there were many new immigrants who were willing to work for low wages.  People with disabilities were looked at as burdens and were counted (once again) amongst criminals, prostitutes and vagrants in the census reports. 

Not surprisingly, there was a simultaneous increase in the demand for training schools;  many of the existing schools expanded and initially served a broader disabled community.  However, as time went on, the schools quickly became asylums, providing only rudimentary care for their 'inmates'.  By 1875, many US states had started construction on institutions for the developmentally disabled.  The leaders of these new institutions were now doctors;  1876 saw the establishment of the Association of Medical Officers of the American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons (who would later become the American Association for Mental Retardation, now the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities or AAIDD).  One of the primary purposes of this organization is taken from Article II of their constitution:

"The object of the Association shall be the discussion of all questions relating to the causes, conditions, and statistics of idiocy, and the management, training, and education of idiots and feeble-minded persons; it will also lend its influence to the establishment and fostering of institutions for this purpose." 

How Boys are Taught Simple Manual Labor, Massachusetts School
for the Feeble-Minded, William A. Webster, circa 1903.
Photo courtesy of the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum

The institutions were now medically based,the differently abled now "sick" and in need of treatment (and surely, cure).  The superintendents believed that each disability should be grouped accordingly, creating a colony system within the institution itself.  Examples of such are an "epileptic colony", a building for "low-grades" or lower functioning individuals and a "girls cottage".   The focus had shifted from educating young people to return to the community to housing a large number of individuals of all ages and abilities. To stay financially solvent, these institutions began to train some of the higher functioning inmates to work in the asylum.  They provided cheap (slave) labour as the institutions became self sufficient, often running their own farms and even power plants.  Often located in very rural settings, the inmates were essentially cut off from the rest of society.  Cheap farm land and abandoned farms in depressed rural areas was purchased  allowing for the creation of "farm colonies" where higher functioning "patients" provided hard physical labour, without pay, to produce enough food for one of the large institutions.  These farms also relieved some of the overcrowding of the main institution.  Care was custodial at best, with the idea that safety and security was all that could be expected. 

Both Seguin and Howe, two physicians, educators and advocates for the disabled, foresaw the new direction that the schools were heading to.  Instead of presenting the keynote address for a groundbreaking for a new institution in New York, Howe begged them not to open it instead.  Regardless, the populations in the institutions continued to rise.  There were, on average, 250 people per institution in 1890;  that number had doubled by 1905.

Walter E. Fernald, the then president of the American Association on Mental Deficiency, described the institutions as an economic solution to the disabled.  In his words, "each hundred dollars invested [in institutions] now saves a thousand [dollars] in the next generation.".  Money allocated to the poorhouses and almshouses by the state was already being redirected to the large institutions as well.  By the close of the century, the annual cost of housing a person in such a place ranged from $150 to $250 USD.  In a generation, the public view towards the differently abled, especially the developmentally delayed, had gone from one of compassion and eduction to fear and segregation.  By 1923 there were over 80 "schools", "farms", "hospitals", "institutes" and "academies" for the disabled.   With it's inmates no longer welcome in the outside world, these asylums could now say that they were relieving society of a great burden. 

Protect Us from the Feeble

As the institutions grew and conditions continued to worsen, the public perception of the disabled and "feeble-minded" continued to decline as well.  Such "illnesses" were considered to be moral failings of the person or their parents.

Immigration to North America was at an all time high and by 1900, one in seven Americans was born elsewhere.  Fear and suspicion of both immigrants and disabled persons was also growing exponentially;  this was only augmented by government actions that segregated and excluded these new Americans, which in turn only reinforced and systematized prejudices.  The US Public Health Service classified the following together as one group: "criminals, defectives and delinquents". With this in mind, the Public Health Service, administered the new Binel IQ test to immigrants at Ellis Island.  Devised originally by the French psychologist (on behest of his government) Alfred Binet,  it was created to quickly identify developmentally delayed children for placement in 'special education'.  Even Binet himself felt that case studies were more appropriate, however such assessments were lengthy and costly, especially on the larger numbers of people seeking entrance into such facilities.  However, there were three codicils to his test:  one, the scores are not to be considered permanent. Two, the scale was to be a rough guide for the identification and aid of developmentally delayed children and, three a low score did not determine an innate incapability on the part of the child.  However, these tenets were easily brushed aside and from the testing at Ellis Island, it was determined that "79% of the Italians, 80% of the Hungarians, 83% of the Jews, and 87% of the Russians are feeble-minded.", a conclusion which now, scientifically, legitimized the marginalization and prejudice.

As time went on, the view of the institutions shifted further from education to protection;  once again the developmentally and physically disabled had become demonized and the public now needed protection.

The Rise of Eugenics

Much like in centuries past, the uncertainty of the economy and world affairs provided a fertile ground for the reappearance of ideas now known as Social Darwinism and Eugenics.  The term "Eugenics" was coined in 1883 in Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, a book written by Sir Francis Galton, cousin to Charles Darwin.  The Eugenics movement advocated for the improvement of society through the elimination of certain traits.

Misinformation and propaganda began to circulate, citing supposed immorality and the danger to the future of humankind.   Feeble mindedness needed to be controlled, if not cured.  The term moral imbecility also included such things as juvenile delinquency, behaviour problems and epilepsy and was regarded as a main cause of societal ills including poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, violence and crime in general. Often, those who committed crimes were portrayed in the newspapers in such a way to suggest developmental delay.
 
Henry Goddard, a psychiatrist at The Vineland Training School, translated the Binet IQ test into English and made a few adjustments;  he developed a category of developmental delay known as "moron", which became synonymous with 'moral imbecile' and reinforced the notion that feeble mindedness and therefore delinquency, was hereditary.

John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of corn flakes, ran a holistic sanatorium in Battle Creek Michigan.  In 1906, he created the Race Betterment Foundation, which would hold Eugenics conferences at the sanitarium in the years to come (1914, 1915 and 1928).

The year 1909 saw the publication of The Eugenics Review, the journal of the Eugenics Education Society in Britain. Galton, who was the honorary president, wrote the foreword.

In his 1910 book, Eugenics, The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding, Charles Davenport speaks of the formation of a 'Committee on Eugenics' from the American Breeder's Society including such famous names as himself, David Starr Jordan, botanist Luther Burbank,  Alexander Graham Bell, zoologist V. L. Kellogg, Swiss psychiatrist (and future president of the American Psychiatric Association) Adolf Meyer, naturalist J. Arthur Thomson, W. E. Castle, Charles Henderson, Aleš Hrdlička, Herbert J. Webber, C. E. Woodruff,  and Frederick A. Woods (who coined the phrase Historiometry).  According to Davenport, the "various duties of this Committee may be summed up in the three words:  investigation, education and legislation".  On the surface, this sounds very philanthropic, however, Davenport later continues on with the following:

"...This three or four percent of our population is a fearful drag on our civilization.  Shall we as an intelligent people, proud of our control of nature in other respects, do nothing but vote more taxes or be satisfied with the great gifts and bequests that philanthropists have made for the support of the delinquent, defective and dependent classes?  Shall we not rather take the steps that scientific study dictates as necessary and dry up the springs that feed the torrent of defective and degenerate protoplasm?"

"...If only one-half of one percent of the 30 million dollars annually spent on hospitals, 20 millions on insane asylums, 20 millions for almshouses, 13 millions on prisons, and 5 millions on the feeble minded, deaf and blind were spent on the study of the bad germ-plasm that makes necessary the annual expenditure of nearly 100 millions in the care of its produce we might hope to learn just how it is being reproduced and the best way to diminish its further spread."

A "sub-committee on Feeble-Mindedness" was also created;  it was "under the chairmanship of Dr. A. F. Rogers, Superintendent of the Minnesota School for Feeble Minded and Colony of Epileptics, and with Dr. H. H. Goddard, Director of the Department of Psychological Research at the New Jersey Training School for Feeble-Minded Boys and Girls."  Similar committees were created for other "problems", including "Insanity" (Chaired by Dr. Adolf Meyer), eye defects, deafness, crippled limbs, disease, musculature, etc.  The 'main committee' was given the task of obtaining records from American families regarding "the inheritance of characteristics of health, ability and temperament".  At the time of publication, only 300 of the 5000 family records forms had been returned to be studied, so it was suggested that "data of this sort might be collected by the national Bureau of Census...".   

Davenport, along with Harry Laughlin and financial support from Mrs. E. H. Harriman (the widow of the railroad baron), created the Eugenics Record Office in 1910.

Kallikaks, Morons and the Justification of Sterilization

The lineages of "Martin Kallikak"

Goddard administered his modified Binet test again, this time to 1.75 million army recruits in 1917 and found that 40% of the white, male population was feeble minded.  By 1912, he had written The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, a supposed genealogical account (and moral tale) of a patient in The Vineland Training School.  Named Deborah "Kallikak" (a name made up of the Greek word kallos or beautiful and kakos meaning bad),  Goddard maintained that Deborah's great-great-grandfather was a soldier in the Revolutionary war who "dallied with a feeble minded bar maid".  Although he was to go on and marry a proper Quaker wife and father healthy upstanding citizens, his earlier indiscretion fathered another line.  That resulting lineage, Goddard maintained, not only produced Deborah, whom he described as:

"...a typical illustration of the mentality of a high-grade feeble-minded person, the moron, the delinquent, the kind of girl or woman who fills our reformatories.  They are wayward, they get in all sorts of troubles and difficulties, sexually and otherwise, and yet we have been accustomed to account for their defects on the basis of viciousness, environment or ignorance."

The caption reads: "Great-grandson of
"Daddy" Kallikak.  This boy is an imbecile
of the Mongolian type"

...but also a variety of 'degenerate' members of the family, including those felt to be feeble-minded, sexually immoral, alcoholic, insane, syphilitic, criminals, deaf, tuberculous or simply died in infancy. Many case studies of are provided with accompanying photographs, which, even to the most untrained eye of today, appear to be poorly altered to appear more monstrous. However, at the time, this publication did what it was supposed to do; provide 'proof' that feeble mindedness and therefore, all of society's problems, were hereditary.   

"There are Kallikak families all about us. They are multiplying at twice the rate of the general population, and not until we recognize this fact, and work on this basis, will we begin to solve [our] social problems."

 It also validated the use of segregation in an institutional setting and "...sterilization may be accepted as a makeshift, as a help to solve this problem because the conditions have become so intolerable." Clearly, sterilization was the solution for the time being, until something more permanent could be devised.

The first International Congress of Eugenics was held in London in 1912 (they would be held again in 1921 and 1932) .  Attendees of note were Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the British Admiralty, Chief Justice Lord Alverstone, Lord Balfour and then ambassadors of France, Greece and Norway.  In the US, the Galton Society was created in 1918;  it further popularized eugenic theories through its newsletter the Eugenical News.  Contributors included racist authors Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard.

By 1915, many of America's prominent universities were offering courses on eugenics:  Brown, Harvard, Columbia and Cornell are among those that taught these theories.  This is not surprising given the academic backing of eugenics from such persons as psychologists Edward Thorndike and Leta Hollingworth, as well as psychometricians Carl Brigham and Robert Yerkes.  Goddard took his presentation on the road and using lantern slides, warned the masses of the "rising tide of feeble mindedness".

A 1917 movie, entitled "The Black Stork"  told the fictional story of a couple that were "ill matched" and as a result, gave birth to a disabled baby.  The baby in the movie was "mercifully killed" by starvation by eugenicist Harry J Haiselden, who not only starred in the movie as himself, was in real life was a prominent Chicago physician who refused to give life saving care to "defective" babies.  Not only were the dying infants displayed to journalists, but he also documented them publicly in the Hearst Newspapers.

Photo from the North Carolina State Board of
Charities and Public Welfare Biennial Report
of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare,
December 1, 1920 to June 30, 1922

The American Eugenics Society was formed after the second Intentional Congress and formed committees to better aid in popularizing their theories.  These committees included "Co-operation with Clergymen", "Sermon Contests", "Crime Prevention", "Selective Immigration" and "Formal Education".  They also sponsored "Fitter Families Contests" and Eugenics information booths at various state fairs.  An example of this is a display in Philadelphia in 1926 that featured flashing lights to illustrate the dire consequences of uncontrolled inferior procreation and the phrase "...some Americans are born to be a burden on the rest".  The National Education Association's Committee on Racial Well Being also sponsored programs to help college professors include eugenic doctrine in their classes throughout the 1920's.

By 1924, the US Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act, specifically targeting those from Europe and Eastern Europe, the majority of which had been labeled "feeble minded" a decade before.  Those who were differently abled with mild to moderate disabilities were now considered morons and part of the "moral menace".  As the institutions were overflowing, the superintendents, many of which have been named here as Eugenicists (and promoted the idea of the degenerate moron), 'paroled' the higher functioning patients after sterilizing them.  It did not take long however, for lower functioning individuals to also be sterilized, especially those who displayed habits considered to be obscene.  The men were forced to undergo vasectomies and the females underwent tubal ligation. 

Photo courtesy of the DNA Learning Center,
Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory

One contested sterilization case made it to the US Supreme Court in 1927.  In Buck v. Bell, Carrie Buck was an young woman that had been declared feeble minded and scheduled for sterilization.  A family tree, brought forth during the trial showed that she was the child of a feeble minded woman and that her then infant daughter was the same.  The Chief Justice, the iconic Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., stated that:

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.  The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Carrie was sterilized and it was found later that she was, in fact, of normal intelligence, as was her daughter who went on to win awards in school.  The entire family tree had been fabricated and her entrance into the institution was surmised to be a cover up of her rape at the hands of a foster-cousin, from which her daughter had originated.  Carrie went on to be paroled from the institution, got married and eventually died in 1983 in a nursing home.  She was buried next to her daughter Vivian, who had been adopted by Carrie's former foster parents (due to her supposed lack of competence) and died at eight years of age.  Buck v. Bell has never been overturned.

By 1928, Eugenics was taught in over 376 courses in the US, which covered approximately 20,000 students.  High school science textbooks between 1914 and 1948 presented Eugenics as fact, creating two entire generations that believed in segregation, restriction of immigration and sterilization of the "unfit".  Compulsory sterilizations of the developmentally and physically disabled were performed worldwide, including in Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Panama and the United Kingdom. The Eugenics movement eventually lost scientific credibility, but not before hundreds of thousands of developmentally and physically people had been sterilized in the name of social purity.


[Next time: Extermination]

----------

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) <caselaw.lp.findlaw.com>

Burr Johnson, Kate. North Carolina State Board of Charities and Public Welfare Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, December 1, 1920 to June 30, 1922. Raleigh: North Carolina State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, 1922. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The University Library. Web. <http://docsouth.unc.edu/>.

Davenport, C. B. Eugenics, The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding. New York: Henry Holt and, 1910. Print.

Goddard, Henery Herbert, The Kallikak Family: A Study of the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, (2009). College of Law Faculty Publications. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/col_facpub/7

Paralells in Time; A History of Developmental Disabilities, The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities, 2012.

Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons. Vol. 1,2. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott &, 1877. Print.

Selden, Steve. "Social Origins of Eugenics." Social Origins of Eugenics. University of Maryland, n.d. Web. <http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay6text.html>.

[Originally appeared on Down Wit Dat]