Never Again--Yet Again

Non-voluntary Euthanasia

2007-08-02T17:09:00.000-07:00

Non-voluntary Euthanasia

Non-Voluntary Euthanasia
DR. BRIAN POLLARD

Advocates of legalised euthanasia almost always insist that they only want voluntary euthanasia (VE) — and they say they are as opposed to the taking of life without the subject’s knowledge or consent, that is, non-voluntary euthanasia (NVE), as anyone else.

Some do extend their advocacy to some examples of NVE, such as seriously deformed newborns, [1] where consent would not be possible, but this is not usual. It is widely accepted that sufficient protection against the unwanted extension of VE to NVE would be ensured by the inclusion of appropriate legal safeguards.

As safeguards, clauses are proposed that would require the doctor to be satisfied that the patient’s request was freely made and sufficiently informed, that there was no psychological abnormality such as depression, and possibly by requiring psychiatric consultation, that more than one doctor be involved in the decision that it was medically appropriate to take life in the circumstances, and that there be adequate documentation. It is also common to find lawyers who declare that such laws would be feasible to devise, though it is less common to find actual draft laws published for discussion. In one sense, those lawyers are correct when they say such law would be possible — but they stop short of addressing the question of whether they would be safe, in practice. It is uncommon to find any analysis that assesses the effectiveness of the so-called safeguards.

By contrast, overwhelming evidence is now available in the published reports of a number of independent committees of inquiry into the consequences of legalising VE, which all concluded that NO such law could be guaranteed to be safe against the likelihood of abuse. In fact, no committee set up for this purpose has ever reached any conclusion other than prohibition of legalisation.
Though the first of these reports appeared in 1994 and the last in 1998, their arguments are so compelling that no criticism of them has ever been published. Until and unless it can be shown that their common conclusion is unwarranted, they must be regarded as having established the truth.

This seems to some to be such an unexpected development, and so contrary to what is confidently often asserted, that it barely seems credible. The commonest and most serious form of abuse of any euthanasia law would be the endangering or the actual taking of the lives of some of the other terminally ill or disadvantaged groups of the sick or disabled who did not want their lives taken. That is, the apparently strict control over the practice of VE would be illusory, and in the worst case, acceptance of VE would lead to the practise of NVE. Additionally, since concealment would be easy to carry out, and hence correspondingly difficult to discover, a truly compassionate society must rate the risk as too high to be acceptable.

This common finding by each committee is consistent with what had already been predicted many times, namely that NVE is such a logical extension of VE that its occurrence should be regarded more as a fulfilled expectation than a matter for surprise. The arguments for VE already encompass the rationale for NVE.

That progression would be logical because, once it had been decided that taking life provided a benefit to one whose quality of life had led him/her to ask for death, it could then be thought discriminatory and unfair to withhold that supposed benefit from others in a similar plight, just because they did not, or could not, ask. NVE, like VE, is also thought by its practitioners to be compassionate and benevolent, not malicious or malevolent.

Since nobody would take a life they valued, in each instance of VE or NVE the ultimate justification is that the particular life no longer has sufficient value to mandate its continuance. Such reasoning would be incompatible with recognising the equal, inherent dignity of every person, as that dignity is declared in statements of human rights to attach to every life, without exception. That view of human dignity is also the one that provides the basis in criminal law for the provision of universal protection for every innocent human life, without exception. Hence, both practices are radically incompatible both with what needs to be acknowledged if we are to live well and peaceably with each other and with the very notion of justice in society, since justice is founded on and exists to respect equal dignity.

It may be objected that these arguments are theoretical and do not necessarily apply to the actual decision-making required in medical practice at or near the end of life. Thus, it is said doctors are not monsters who would suddenly begin to take life indiscriminately, and the risk of extension of one euthanasia practice to the other is overstated and no more than scare mongering, for which, in any case, there is no evidence. The difficulty with that position is that the evidence for NVE at present is readily found, even though it is carried out in secret and to an unknown extent.

THE NETHERLANDS
Dutch euthanasia has been known to be commonly practised since 1973, when a court determined that a doctor, who had killed her mother who was dying and had requested euthanasia, was guilty but that her action was justified. At her trial, evidence was given on her behalf that she was doing no more than what was already common but unpublicised. The court also described circumstances in which it thought that doctors may be excused after euthanasia.
There ensued many years during which the Dutch maintained that euthanasia was closely supervised and controlled by the authorities, while some well informed outsiders maintained that this was certainly not the case, and that abuse was already common and extended as far as medical life-taking without the patient’s consent.

During this period, even though VE was the only practice publicly discussed, official support for NVE could be readily found in the Netherlands. The State Commission on Euthanasia in 1987 had recommended that NVE should not be an offence, if carried out in the context of ‘careful medical practice’, though that term was not defined. [2] In 1988, a Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) working party condoned euthanasia for deformed infants, in some instances thinking it might be compulsory. In 1991, a KNMG committee condoned the killing of patients in persistent coma. [3]

Dutch euthanasia practices were first officially examined in the Remmelink Report of 1991 which was based on medical practice throughout 1990, [4] for which the statistical study was done by van der Maas and others. [5] This study was later repeated and its findings were reported in 1996. [6]
In 1991, by adopting the narrow definition of euthanasia only as ‘active termination of life upon the patient’s request’, there were 2,300 instances of euthanasia in the year of the study, or 1.8% of all deaths. When, however, to these are added instances of life-taking without request and intentionally shortening the lives of both conscious and unconscious patients, the figures for which are found in the statistical study, the conclusions are dramatically altered.

They now become: 2,300 instances of euthanasia on request; 400 of assisted suicide; 1,000 instances of life-ending actions without patient request; 8,750 patients in whom life-sustaining treatment was withdrawn or withheld without request, ‘partly with the purpose’ (4,750) or ‘with the explicit purpose’ (4,000) of shortening life; 8,100 cases of morphine overdose ‘partly with the purpose’ (6,750) or ‘with the explicit purpose’ (1,350) of shortening life; 5,800 cases of withdrawing or withholding treatment on explicit request ‘partly with the purpose’ (4,292) or ‘with the explicit purpose’ (1,508) of shortening life. [7] Thus, there were up to 23,359 instances of doctors intending, by act or omission, to shorten life. The true incidence of euthanasia could have been as high as 20% of all deaths in the year.

Although the Report stated that the 1,000 instances of ‘life ending actions without request’ were carried out on incompetent persons ‘in their death agony’, on the doctors’ testimony at interview as described in the Survey, 14% of these patients were competent and 11% were partly so. According to that part of the Survey known as the death certificate study, 36% were competent. While NVE is generally thought of, and defined, as taking the life of an incompetent patient who could not choose at the time, these figures include another and unexpected category of NVE as killing practised on persons who were competent — those who could have been consulted, but were not. [8]
One observer who has closely studied Dutch euthanasia estimated that the Dutch statistics allow for the possibility that there were ‘about five thousand cases in which physicians made decisions that might or were intended to end the lives of competent patients without consulting them’. When he tried to obtain a possible explanation for this astonishing practice while he was visiting the Netherlands, he could get none. He was left to conjecture that when a doctor already thought it was appropriate to end the patient’s life, he might think it safer not to seek consent, since if it was refused, to proceed would evidently be murder. [9]

In the preamble to its Guidelines for Euthanasia in 1987, the KNMG had written: ‘If there is no request from the patient, then proceeding with the termination of his life is juridically a matter of murder or killing, and not of euthanasia’. [10] Using their own society’s definition, Dutch doctors were carrying out medical murder in 1991, and have continued to do so ever since.
There followed a period of official inactivity because some of the findings were so unexpected, and because euthanasia was well supported by the community. Euthanasia activists lobbied to have it formally legalised, but without success. In particular, NVE presented a semantic problem because by the official definition, it was not any form of euthanasia. To meet this difficulty, the authorities abandoned their candour of 1987 in favour of an innocuous-sounding acronym, LAWER, ‘life-terminating acts without explicit request’. [11] The topic could now be openly discussed as though it were morally, medically and socially neutral, and it was soon to become just another medical alternative available to doctors and the community.

In 1993, authors from the department of Public Health at the Erasmus University could write: ‘But is it not true that once one accepts euthanasia and assisted suicide, the principle of universalizability forces one to accept termination of life without explicit request, at least sometimes, as well? In our view, the answer to this question must be in the affirmative’. [12]
In February 1993, new regulations about the medical reporting of euthanasia were issued, [13] but they had little impact, either on reporting or on the practices themselves. The new rules required the reporting of both VE and NVE on the same form. This had the effect of confirming in many doctors the view that both were equally acceptable to the authorities. Indeed, in 1993 the Secretary of Health, referring to these practices, said: ‘For a physician, the considerations in these two cases are not essentially different; from the moral point of view, the two actions are not of an essentially different kind’. [14]
In the official 1996 review of developments since 1991, it was concluded that ‘euthanasia seems to have increased in incidence since 1990, and the ending of life without the patient’s explicit request seems to have decreased slightly’. Later in this paper, the matter of a possible ‘slippery slope’ associated with euthanasia is discussed, and it is mentioned that some euthanasia supporters insist there is no evidence that it has ever happened or would even be likely to happen. The reader’s attention is therefore drawn again to the last quote above, where the Dutch can say simply, in essence, that medical murder (their own term) seems to have decreased slightly in the five years since it was first officially detected. The Dutch have reached the position where medical murder is now entrenched, and is not seen by their authorities as anything that might represent a deterioration in standards or call for correction. Not only have the Dutch become unwilling or unable to recognise the corruption of medicine and law attributable to their acceptance of any form of euthanasia, it seems that neither have some of the Australian supporters.

In 1995, two separate Dutch courts upheld the actions of doctors who had deliberately ended the lives of handicapped neonates with lethal injections, thus providing the first legal endorsement of NVE. In one case, the judge said ‘In the decision of active ending of life, Dr Kadjik had acted with scientific responsible insight and in accordance with the medical ethic and accepted norms and in due consideration of due care resulting therefrom; he is entitled to an appeal of force majeure’. [15] To justify what is admittedly an offence, courts in the Netherlands are allowed to decide that it is lawful for a doctor, faced with the alternative of leaving a patient in pain or of giving relief by taking life, to take the ‘compassionate’ option, by taking life. The doctor is said to be acting under a higher duty.

Most jurisdictions elsewhere regard this so-called dilemma as a fiction, on account of the proven effectiveness of palliative care to control such pain. This was specifically referred to by the US Supreme Court in its historic judgment of November 1996, when Justice O’Connor noted: ‘A patient who is...experiencing great pain has no legal barriers to obtaining medication from qualified physicians to alleviate that suffering, even to the point of causing unconsciousness and hastening death’. [16]
The significance of NVE in the Netherlands has now been reduced almost to the point where discussion about it relates only to its detail, while the fact that it is still a major criminal offence by Dutch statute law, as it is elsewhere throughout the world, is no longer given special mention. That its incidence hardly fell between 1991 and 1995, or that it occurs at all, elicits no critical comment. An American psychiatrist estimated that, if NVE had been practised in the US at the same rate as prevailed in the Netherlands in 1990, the figure would have exceeded the ‘combined total of all deaths from suicides and homicides’ in that year. [17]

AUSTRALIA
In all Australian states, euthanasia is the crime of murder. In a study by sociologists in South Australia reported in 1994, using an anonymous questionnaire sent to 10% of the medical practitioners in that state, a significant incidence of NVE was discovered. [18] The authors had seeded linked questions in different parts of their questionnaire, so that their association would be less evident to the respondents. 19% of doctors surveyed admitted they had ended life deliberately, and on 49% of those occasions, the answers revealed they had done so without patient request.
This study has not been repeated in Australia, but it is known that there is a high incidence of illegal euthanasia among the gay communities in the large cities, and it is probable that this includes NVE also.

UNITED STATES
In 1998, the results were published of a national survey of the attitudes and practices, concerning assisted suicide and euthanasia, of physicians in the 10 specialties in which doctors are most likely to receive requests for euthanasia. [19] 61% of the 3,102 physicians surveyed responded. Under the heading ‘Characteristics of Patients Receiving Assistance’ where a request for death had been met, it is reported that ‘54 per cent of the requests for a lethal injection were made by a family member or partner’. This brought no specific comment from the authors, though it reveals that slightly more than half the medical killing reported by some 1,800 doctors was NVE. Does this mean that, as in the Netherlands, NVE no longer causes surprise in the US, or did the authors not realise that they had uncovered a deeply disturbing state of affairs?
This paper went on: “requests for a lethal injection were characterised as indirect rather than explicit in 79 per cent of cases. Five per cent of patients who received prescriptions and 7 per cent of those who received a lethal injection were described as ‘confused 50% or more of the time”‘. Since all these events were carried out in private and therefore unsupervised, the figures give grounds for great concern about the potential for the uncontrolled extension of the euthanasia practices of some doctors. Because they are done in secret, not even a law to allow VE could hope to prevent such extension.
The opinion that there is no evidence for a ‘slippery slope’, by which is meant the progression of VE to NVE, is still commonly heard, even though evidence for it is available, as just discussed. When this is pointed out, the response has been that, though this may be so, there is no evidence that one has actually led to the other. This evasive answer fails to offer any explanation at all for the occurrence of NVE, which is, by any legal criterion, medical murder, and shows little concern that it is happening at all. It would seem that, to some, it is more important simply to deny the facts or to denigrate those who draw attention to them, than to lose face by condemning NVE.

Ready proof that the progression of VE to NVE has grounds in logic is available whenever euthanasia becomes a topic for public discussion following the media disclosure of some instance of mercy killing. At such times, radio talk-back programs quickly come round to discussing the plight of the senile, elderly people in nursing homes, how their lives are futile, how they, their families and the public purse would all experience great relief from their demise, and particularly singled out for comment are those who are irreversibly mentally incompetent. This is heard from those who, shortly before, professed to want only VE, and who, I suspect, do not even realise they have made this subtle but significant mental shift.

Two dangerous ideas lie just below the surface of awareness in an unknown number of people in the community, though they are not usually thought proper to be voiced openly: that there are groups of unfortunate people whom society could well do without, and that they cost a lot of money that could be better spent. These ideas are rejected by the usual advocates of VE, as they should be, but those who hold them would constitute a significant problem were legalisation of VE to be voted on. They would cast a vote in favour, but they would not forever be satisfied with VE only, and would be likely to push for its extension to NVE. And if that vote were made reliant on compassion, even though it may be misplaced compassion, these disadvantaged people would often seem to be the most deserving of compassionate release.
It is impossible for those who would have VE legalised to guarantee that such law could or would remain unaltered in the future. When legalised VE had in time caused a lowering of the community’s respect for all human life, as it undoubtedly would, and when health costs had escalated to what were seen to be unsustainable levels, as they undoubtedly will, a precedent for the further erosion of protection for human life would already exist, having been created when VE was legalised.

CONCLUSION
As long as notions of life-taking without consent are simplistically thought to be only associated with some degree of malicious intent, it can be considered insulting to suggest that NVE might also be practised, if VE were legally permitted. Especially is such a suggestion thought to reflect adversely on doctors, who, while they are often criticised on other grounds, are not generally thought to be unprincipled or malicious. But when the actual motivation for NVE, in its practitioners’ estimation, is that it is an act of kindness, the risk to the lives of some of the more vulnerable in society then becomes more apparent.
The prospect of NVE then changes from being repugnant and rare to an act that can be thought to be desirable and beneficial, in some circumstances. So regarded, NVE could be confidently predicted to be, in time, virtually inevitable. Any instance of NVE is a case in practice of ‘the tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limits of its logic’.

ENDNOTES
Kuhse H, Singer P. Should the Baby Live? Oxford; Oxford University Press. 1985. p v. Back to text.
The Legalisation of Euthanasia. Web page, NSW Right to Life,1999. Back to text.
Keown J. The Law and Practice of Euthanasia in the Netherlands. Law Q Rev 1992; 108: 51-78. Back to text.
Report of the Committee to Investigate Medical Practice Concerning Euthanasia. Medical Decisions about the End of Life. I. Remmelink Report. The Hague; Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Welfare, Public Health and Culture. 1991. Back to text.
Van der Maas PJ et al. Euthanasia and Other Decisions Concerning the End of Life. Elsevier Science Publications, Amsterdam. 1992. Back to text.
Van der Maas PJ, van ver Wal G, Haverkate I, de Graaf CML, Kester J et al. Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide and other Medical Practices Involving the End of Life in the Netherlands. 1990-1995. New Eng J Med 1996; 335: 1699-1705. Back to text.
Keown J. Further Reflections of Euthanasia in the Netherlands in the Light of The Remmelink Report and the van der Maas Study. Chapter in Euthanasia, Clinical Practice and the Law. Ed Gormally L. The Linacre Centre 1994. p219-240. Back to text.
Do. p 230. Back to text.
Hendin H. Seduced by Death: Doctors, Patients and the Dutch Cure. Issues Law Med 1994. 10: 123-168. Back to text.
Guidelines for Euthanasia (KNMG). trans Lagerwey W. Issues Law Med 1988; 3: 429-437. Back to text.
Pijnenborg L, van der Maas PJ, van Delden JJM, Looman CWN. Life terminating acts without explicit request of patient. Lancet 1993; 341: 1196-1199. Back to text.
Van Delden JJM, Pijnenborg L, van der Maas PJ. The Remmelink Report; Two Years Later. Hastings Center Report 1993; Nov/Dec 24-27. Back to text.
Fenigsen R. The Netherlands; New Regulations Concerning Euthanasia. Issues Law Med 1993; 9: 167-171. Back to text.
Do. p 170. Back to text.
Brownstein EG. Neonatal Euthanasia Case Law in the Netherlands. Aust Law J 1997; 7: 54-58. Back to text.
Washington vs Glucksberg, 117 SCt 2303. Back to text.
Op cit 8. p 165. Back to text.
Stevens C, Hassan R. Management of death, dying and euthanasia; attitudes and practices of medical practitioners in South Australia. J Med Ethics 1994. Back to text.
Meier DE, Emmons CA, Wallenstein S, Quill T, Morrison RS, Cassel CK. A National Survey of Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in the United States. N Eng J Med 1998; 338: 1193-1201. 20: 41-46. Back to text.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Pollard, Dr. Brian. “Non-voluntary Euthanasia.” NSW Website (1999).
Published by permission of Dr. Brian Pollard.
AUTHOR
Dr. Brian Pollard is a former anaesthetist (anesthesiologist) who founded and directed, from 1982, one of Australia’s first palliative care services. Dr. Pollard is the author of The Challenge of Euthanasia and is involved in active opposition to legalised euthanasia in Australia.
Copyright © 1999 NSW Right to Life Association

APS Observer - On Not Being Human

2007-02-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

APS Observer - On Not Being Human

On Not Being Human
APS President Morton Ann Gernsbacher, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Around the time I took office as president of the Association for Psychological Science, Wray Herbert, Public Affairs Director of APS, began e-publishing his now syndicated blog, “We’re Only Human.” Although I won’t pretend to be privy to the inner workings of Wray’s mind, I’m guessing that Wray chose his blog’s moniker to allow wide berth for our diverse curiosities, eccentricities, and proclivities. We might do this, we might even do that, because, well, after all, we are human.But are we? Do we all agree that all humans are indeed, human?
The anonymous tract, Disputatio Nova Contra Mulieres, Qua Probatur Eas Homines Non Esse (A New Argument Against Women, in Which it Is Demonstrated That They Are not Human Beings), first published in 1595, was reprinted prolifically during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 1860s, British anthropologists espoused that Blacks were an inferior species, more comparable to apes than to Caucasians, and therefore well suited for slavery. At the Nuremberg Trial, one SS general explained his allegiance to genocide by the simple contention that “Jews are not even human.”
Sixteenth-century theologians, Victorian anthropologists, and 20th-century Nazis are not the only ones who have deemed various groups of humans ape-like or nonhuman; some current-day American psychological scientists are just as guilty of this crime.

A few years ago, I was at a conference on language and evolution when an audience member questioned a prominent child language researcher’s thesis by raising a counter-example: One aspect of the development of children with Williams syndrome didn’t quite fit the researcher’s theory. The prominent child language researcher quickly retorted, “Oh, I’ve seen children with Williams syndrome. They don’t count. They’re not even human. They must belong to some other species entirely.”

With the wave of a hand, an entire group of people was erased from the human race. Without a contesting word, members of the human species were sacrificed — but a theory was saved. And what was the distinctly nonhuman behavior demonstrated by some children with William syndrome? It was their ability to develop a prodigious vocabulary, prior to developing the ability to extend an index finger to point.

Admittedly, this psychological scientist’s dehumanizing pronouncement occurred during a relatively free-flowing discussion at a rela-tively small, invitation-only conference. The outrageous comment wasn’t even illuminated on a PowerPoint slide. But similar pronounce-ments have been typeset on the pages of other psychological scientists’ best-selling books and bound into our field’s most prestigious scholarly journals.

For example, in a recent New York Times “notable book of the year,” an internationally acclaimed psychological scientist segregated autistic1 people from other humans and placed them “together with robots and chimpanzees.” The distinguishing feature, according to this psychological scientist, is humans’ “innate equipment to discern other people’s beliefs and intentions,” which he proposed that robots, chimpanzees, and autistic people inherently lack.
However, laboratory tasks that probe people’s understanding of the intentionality of other humans’ intentions fail to distinguish autistic from nonautistic people (Aldridge, Stone, Sweeney, & Bower, 2000; Carpenter, Pennington, & Rogers, 2001; Russell & Hill, 2001; Se-banz, Knoblich, Stumpf, & Prinz, 2005) and failure on laboratory tasks that probe people’s understanding of other humans’ beliefs is nei-ther universal among autistic people (Happe, 1995; Kleinman, Marciano, & Ault, 2001; Ozonoff, Rogers, & Pennington, 1991; Peterson, 2002) nor unique to autistic people (Benson, Abbeduto, Short, Bibler-Nuccio, & Mass, 1993; Miller, 2001; Peterson & Siegal, 1995; Rowe, Bullock, Polkey, & Morris, 2001; Saltzman, Strauss, Hunter, & Archibald, 2000; Tager-Flusberg, 2001). Nonetheless, such theoriz-ing was recapitulated in the popular press as the claim, “it’s as if they [autistic people] do not understand or are missing a core aspect of what it is to be human” (Falcon & Shoop, 2002). If that they referred to members of any other minority group, we’d call the statement hate speech.

Consider the theorizing of another internationally acclaimed psychological scientist, presented in a widely circulated scholarly journal. After proposing the thesis that “cultural learning” is “a uniquely human form of social learning that allows for a fidelity of transition of behaviors and information among conspecifics,” the authors argued that, like chimpanzees, “autistic children show little or no evidence of cultural learning.” However, the authors ran into a similar deficit of empirical proof, best captured by their admission: “It can be stated with confidence that the vast majority of autistic children do not engage in [a specific type of cultural] learning. Although we are aware of no studies that specifically test for [this type of cultural] learning per se...” In this case, the authors salvaged their thesis by observing that “one robust and recurrent finding is that throughout their development autistic children show significant deficits in their ability to interact with and relate to peers.”

The authors are right; difficulty developing “peer relationships appropriate to developmental level” is a bona fide DSM-IV diagnostic criterion for autism. But by this logic, any DSM-IV diagnostic criterion for any DSM-IV diagnosis could be used as a basis for segregating humans who fit the diagnosis from humans who don’t. And if the diagnostic criterion (e.g., reading disorder, written expression disorder, or erectile disorder) is also met by any nonhuman species, it can become the basis for dehumanization.

In a more recent scholarly article, also written with the aim of delineating “the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species,” autistic people were again segregated from other humans and placed with great apes. After acknowledging that the empiri-cal literature demonstrates that “great apes and children with autism are clearly not blind to all aspects of intentional action,” the authors raised the bar (“understanding the intentional actions and perceptions of others is not by itself sufficient to produce humanlike social and cultural activities”), and continued to pound home their belief that autistic children do not “engage socially and culturally with others in the ways that human children do”; they do not “interact with other persons in the species-typical manner.” Their social behavior is just not human.

Why are humans dehumanized? According to Morton Deutsch, this year’s APS James McKeen Cattell award recipient, humans are de-humanized when they are perceived as a threat. What threat do humans with Williams syndrome and autistic humans pose to psychological scientists? A threat to the universality of the scientists’ theories, a threat to the scientists’ ability to accept human diversity?

Last fall, a Duquesne University sophomore violated his Catholic university’s code of conduct by posting on Facebook his opinion that homosexual behavior was “subhuman.” Shouldn’t psychological scientists be held to an equally high code of conduct? In addition to being required to remove his offensive comment from the Web, the Duquesne sophomore had to write a 10-page essay on respect for human dignity. I wish some psychological scientists would at least read, if not write, a similar essay.

References
Aldridge, M. A., Stone, K. R., Sweeney, M. H., & Bower, T. G. R. (2000). Preverbal children with autism understand the intentions of others. Developmental Science, 3, 294-301.
Benson, G., Abbeduto, L., Short, K., Bibler-Nuccio, J., & Mass, F. (1993). Development of theory of mind in individuals with MR. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 98, 427-433.
Carpenter, M., Pennington, B. F., & Rogers, S. J. (2001). Understanding of others’ intentions in children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 589-599.
Falcon, M., & Shoop, S. A. (2002, April 10). Stars ‘CAN-do’ about defeating autism. USA Today. Retrieved May 1, 2005 from http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/spotlight/2002/04/10-autism.htm
Happe, F. G. (1995). The role of age and verbal ability in the theory of mind task performance of subjects with autism. Child Development, 66, 843-855.
Kleinman, J., Marciano, P. L., & Ault, R. L. (2001). Advanced theory of mind in high-functioning adults with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 29-36.
Miller, C. (2001). False belief understanding in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Communication Disorders, 34, 73-86.
Ozonoff, S., Rogers, S. J., & Pennington, B. F. (1991). Asperger’s syndrome: Evidence of an empirical distinction from high-functioning autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 32, 1107-1022.
Peterson, C. C. (2002). Drawing insight from pictures: The development of concepts of false drawing and false belief in children with deafness, normal hearing, and autism. Child Development, 73, 1442-1459.
Peterson, C. C., & Siegal, M. (1995). Deafness, conversation and theory of mind. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36, 459-474.
Rowe, A. D., Bullock, P. R., Polkey, C. E., & Morris, R. G. (2001). “Theory of mind” impairments and the relationship to executive functioning following frontal lobe excisions. Brain, 124, 600-616.
Russell, J., & Hill, E. (2001). Action-monitoring and intention reporting in children with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 1105-1113.
Saltzman, J., Strauss, E., Hunter, M., & Archibald, S. (2000). Theory of mind and executive functions in normal human aging and Parkinson’s disease. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 6, 781-788.
Sebanz, N., Knoblich, G., Stumpf, L., & Prinz, W. (2005). Far from action-blind: Representation of others’ actions in individuals with autism. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22, 433-454.
Tager-Flusberg, H. (2001). A reexamination of the theory of mind hypothesis of autism. In J. A. Burack (Ed.), The development of autism: Perspectives from theory and research (pp. 173-193). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Morton Ann Gernsbacher is the Vilas Research Professor and Sir Frederic C. Bartlett Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She can be reached via email at mgernsbacher@psychologicalscience.org.
1 See Sinclair (1999; http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/person_first.htm ) to appreciate my respectful use of the term “autistic” rather than “person with autism.”

The Mystery of Consciousness -- Friday, Jan. 19, 2007 -- Printout -- TIME

2007-01-20T15:12:00.000-08:00

...I disagree with what this article says about the afterlife, but it is interesing that there is more and more proof that what was done to Terri Schiavo was utterly without basis in science or fact, never mind the immorality of murder.

The Mystery of Consciousness -- Friday, Jan. 19, 2007 -- Printout -- TIME

Friday, Jan. 19, 2007
The Mystery of Consciousness

By Steven Pinker

The young women had survived the car crash, after a fashion. In the five months since parts of her brain had been crushed, she could open her eyes but didn't respond to sights, sounds or jabs. In the jargon of neurology, she was judged to be in a persistent vegetative state. In crueler everyday language, she was a vegetable.

So picture the astonishment of British and Belgian scientists as they scanned her brain using a kind of MRI that detects blood flow to active parts of the brain. When they recited sentences, the parts involved in language lit up. When they asked her to imagine visiting the rooms of her house, the parts involved in navigating space and recognizing places ramped up. And when they asked her to imagine playing tennis, the regions that trigger motion joined in. Indeed, her scans were barely different from those of healthy volunteers. The woman, it appears, had glimmerings of consciousness.

Try to comprehend what it is like to be that woman. Do you appreciate the words and caresses of your distraught family while racked with frustration at your inability to reassure them that they are getting through? Or do you drift in a haze, springing to life with a concrete thought when a voice prods you, only to slip back into blankness? If we could experience this existence, would we prefer it to death? And if these questions have answers, would they change our policies toward unresponsive patients--making the Terri Schiavo case look like child's play?

The report of this unusual case last September was just the latest shock from a bracing new field, the science of consciousness. Questions once confined to theological speculations and late-night dorm-room bull sessions are now at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience. With some problems, a modicum of consensus has taken shape. With others, the puzzlement is so deep that they may never be resolved. Some of our deepest convictions about what it means to be human have been shaken.

It shouldn't be surprising that research on consciousness is alternately exhilarating and disturbing. No other topic is like it. As René Descartes noted, our own consciousness is the most indubitable thing there is. The major religions locate it in a soul that survives the body's death to receive its just deserts or to meld into a global mind. For each of us, consciousness is life itself, the reason Woody Allen said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying." And the conviction that other people can suffer and flourish as each of us does is the essence of empathy and the foundation of morality.

To make scientific headway in a topic as tangled as consciousness, it helps to clear away some red herrings. Consciousness surely does not depend on language. Babies, many animals and patients robbed of speech by brain damage are not insensate robots; they have reactions like ours that indicate that someone's home. Nor can consciousness be equated with self-awareness. At times we have all lost ourselves in music, exercise or sensual pleasure, but that is different from being knocked out cold.

THE "EASY" AND "HARD" PROBLEMS

WHAT REMAINS IS NOT ONE PROBLEM ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS BUT two, which the philosopher David Chalmers has dubbed the Easy Problem and the Hard Problem. Calling the first one easy is an in-joke: it is easy in the sense that curing cancer or sending someone to Mars is easy. That is, scientists more or less know what to look for, and with enough brainpower and funding, they would probably crack it in this century.

What exactly is the Easy Problem? It's the one that Freud made famous, the difference between conscious and unconscious thoughts. Some kinds of information in the brain--such as the surfaces in front of you, your daydreams, your plans for the day, your pleasures and peeves--are conscious. You can ponder them, discuss them and let them guide your behavior. Other kinds, like the control of your heart rate, the rules that order the words as you speak and the sequence of muscle contractions that allow you to hold a pencil, are unconscious. They must be in the brain somewhere because you couldn't walk and talk and see without them, but they are sealed off from your planning and reasoning circuits, and you can't say a thing about them.

The Easy Problem, then, is to distinguish conscious from unconscious mental computation, identify its correlates in the brain and explain why it evolved.
The Hard Problem, on the other hand, is why it feels like something to have a conscious process going on in one's head--why there is first-person, subjective experience. Not only does a green thing look different from a red thing, remind us of other green things and inspire us to say, "That's green" (the Easy Problem), but it also actually looks green: it produces an experience of sheer greenness that isn't reducible to anything else. As Louis Armstrong said in response to a request to define jazz, "When you got to ask what it is, you never get to know."

The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience arises from neural computation. The problem is hard because no one knows what a solution might look like or even whether it is a genuine scientific problem in the first place. And not surprisingly, everyone agrees that the hard problem (if it is a problem) remains a mystery.

Although neither problem has been solved, neuroscientists agree on many features of both of them, and the feature they find least controversial is the one that many people outside the field find the most shocking. Francis Crick called it "the astonishing hypothesis"--the idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain.

THE BRAIN AS MACHINE
SCIENTISTS HAVE EXORCISED THE GHOST FROM THE MACHINE NOT because they are mechanistic killjoys but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain. Using functional MRI, cognitive neuroscientists can almost read people's thoughts from the blood flow in their brains. They can tell, for instance, whether a person is thinking about a face or a place or whether a picture the person is looking at is of a bottle or a shoe.

And consciousness can be pushed around by physical manipulations. Electrical stimulation of the brain during surgery can cause a person to have hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality, such as a song playing in the room or a childhood birthday party. Chemicals that affect the brain, from caffeine and alcohol to Prozac and LSD, can profoundly alter how people think, feel and see. Surgery that severs the corpus callosum, separating the two hemispheres (a treatment for epilepsy), spawns two consciousnesses within the same skull, as if the soul could be cleaved in two with a knife.

And when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as anyone can tell the person's consciousness goes out of existence. Attempts to contact the souls of the dead (a pursuit of serious scientists a century ago) turned up only cheap magic tricks, and near death experiences are not the eyewitness reports of a soul parting company from the body but symptoms of oxygen starvation in the eyes and brain. In September, a team of Swiss neuroscientists reported that they could turn out-of-body experiences on and off by stimulating the part of the brain in which vision and bodily sensations converge.

THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL
ANOTHER STARTLING CONCLUSION FROM the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there's an executive "I" that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion. Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.

Take the famous cognitive-dissonance experiments. When an experimenter got people to endure electric shocks in a sham experiment on learning, those who were given a good rationale ("It will help scientists understand learning") rated the shocks as more painful than the ones given a feeble rationale ("We're curious.") Presumably, it's because the second group would have felt foolish to have suffered for no good reason. Yet when these people were asked why they agreed to be shocked, they offered bogus reasons of their own in all sincerity, like "I used to mess around with radios and got used to electric shocks."
It's not only decisions in sketchy circumstances that get rationalized but also the texture of our immediate experience. We all feel we are conscious of a rich and detailed world in front of our eyes. Yet outside the dead center of our gaze, vision is amazingly coarse. Just try holding your hand a few inches from your line of sight and counting your fingers. And if someone removed and reinserted an object every time you blinked (which experimenters can simulate by flashing two pictures in rapid sequence), you would be hard pressed to notice the change. Ordinarily, our eyes flit from place to place, alighting on whichever object needs our attention on a need-to-know basis. This fools us into thinking that wall-to-wall detail was there all along--an example of how we overestimate the scope and power of our own consciousness.

Our authorship of voluntary actions can also be an illusion, the result of noticing a correlation between what we decide and how our bodies move. The psychologist Dan Wegner studied the party game in which a subject is seated in front of a mirror while someone behind him extends his arms under the subject's armpits and moves his arms around, making it look as if the subject is moving his own arms. If the subject hears a tape telling the person behind him how to move (wave, touch the subject's nose and so on), he feels as if he is actually in command of the arms.

The brain's spin doctoring is displayed even more dramatically in neurological conditions in which the healthy parts of the brain explain away the foibles of the damaged parts (which are invisible to the self because they are part of the self). A patient who fails to experience a visceral click of recognition when he sees his wife but who acknowledges that she looks and acts just like her deduces that she is an amazingly well-trained impostor. A patient who believes he is at home and is shown the hospital elevator says without missing a beat, "You wouldn't believe what it cost us to have that installed."

Why does consciousness exist at all, at least in the Easy Problem sense in which some kinds of information are accessible and others hidden? One reason is information overload. Just as a person can be overwhelmed today by the gusher of data coming in from electronic media, decision circuits inside the brain would be swamped if every curlicue and muscle twitch that was registered somewhere in the brain were constantly being delivered to them. Instead, our working memory and spotlight of attention receive executive summaries of the events and states that are most relevant to updating an understanding of the world and figuring out what to do next. The cognitive psychologist Bernard Baars likens consciousness to a global blackboard on which brain processes post their results and monitor the results of the others.

BELIEVING OUR OWN LIES
A SECOND REASON THAT INFORMATION MAY BE SEALED OFF FROM consciousness is strategic. Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers has noted that people have a motive to sell themselves as beneficent, rational, competent agents. The best propagandist is the one who believes his own lies, ensuring that he can't leak his deceit through nervous twitches or self-contradictions. So the brain might have been shaped to keep compromising data away from the conscious processes that govern our interaction with other people. At the same time, it keeps the data around in unconscious processes to prevent the person from getting too far out of touch with reality.

What about the brain itself? You might wonder how scientists could even begin to find the seat of awareness in the cacophony of a hundred billion jabbering neurons. The trick is to see what parts of the brain change when a person's consciousness flips from one experience to another. In one technique, called binocular rivalry, vertical stripes are presented to the left eye, horizontal stripes to the right. The eyes compete for consciousness, and the person sees vertical stripes for a few seconds, then horizontal stripes, and so on.
A low-tech way to experience the effect yourself is to look through a paper tube at a white wall with your right eye and hold your left hand in front of your left eye. After a few seconds, a white hole in your hand should appear, then disappear, then reappear.

Monkeys experience binocular rivalry. They can learn to press a button every time their perception flips, while their brains are impaled with electrodes that record any change in activity. Neuroscientist Nikos Logothetis found that the earliest way stations for visual input in the back of the brain barely budged as the monkeys' consciousness flipped from one state to another. Instead, it was a region that sits further down the information stream and that registers coherent shapes and objects that tracks the monkeys' awareness. Now this doesn't mean that this place on the underside of the brain is the TV screen of consciousness. What it means, according to a theory by Crick and his collaborator Christof Koch, is that consciousness resides only in the "higher" parts of the brain that are connected to circuits for emotion and decision making, just what one would expect from the blackboard metaphor.

WAVES OF BRAIN
CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BRAIN CAN BE TRACKED NOT JUST IN SPACE but also in time. Neuroscientists have long known that consciousness depends on certain frequencies of oscillation in the electroencephalograph (EEG). These brain waves consist of loops of activation between the cortex (the wrinkled surface of the brain) and the thalamus (the cluster of hubs at the center that serve as input-output relay stations). Large, slow, regular waves signal a coma, anesthesia or a dreamless sleep; smaller, faster, spikier ones correspond to being awake and alert. These waves are not like the useless hum from a noisy appliance but may allow consciousness to do its job in the brain. They may bind the activity in far-flung regions (one for color, another for shape, a third for motion) into a coherent conscious experience, a bit like radio transmitters and receivers tuned to the same frequency. Sure enough, when two patterns compete for awareness in a binocular-rivalry display, the neurons representing the eye that is "winning" the competition oscillate in synchrony, while the ones representing the eye that is suppressed fall out of synch.
So neuroscientists are well on the way to identifying the neural correlates of consciousness, a part of the Easy Problem. But what about explaining how these events actually cause consciousness in the sense of inner experience--the Hard Problem?

TACKLING THE HARD PROBLEM
TO APPRECIATE THE HARDNESS OF THE HARD PROBLEM, CONSIDER how you could ever know whether you see colors the same way that I do. Sure, you and I both call grass green, but perhaps you see grass as having the color that I would describe, if I were in your shoes, as purple. Or ponder whether there could be a true zombie--a being who acts just like you or me but in whom there is no self actually feeling anything. This was the crux of a Star Trek plot in which officials wanted to reverse-engineer Lieut. Commander Data, and a furious debate erupted as to whether this was merely dismantling a machine or snuffing out a sentient life.

No one knows what to do with the Hard Problem. Some people may see it as an opening to sneak the soul back in, but this just relabels the mystery of "consciousness" as the mystery of "the soul"--a word game that provides no insight.

Many philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, deny that the Hard Problem exists at all. Speculating about zombies and inverted colors is a waste of time, they say, because nothing could ever settle the issue one way or another. Anything you could do to understand consciousness--like finding out what wavelengths make people see green or how similar they say it is to blue, or what emotions they associate with it--boils down to information processing in the brain and thus gets sucked back into the Easy Problem, leaving nothing else to explain. Most people react to this argument with incredulity because it seems to deny the ultimate undeniable fact: our own experience.

The most popular attitude to the Hard Problem among neuroscientists is that it remains unsolved for now but will eventually succumb to research that chips away at the Easy Problem. Others are skeptical about this cheery optimism because none of the inroads into the Easy Problem brings a solution to the Hard Problem even a bit closer. Identifying awareness with brain physiology, they say, is a kind of "meat chauvinism" that would dogmatically deny consciousness to Lieut. Commander Data just because he doesn't have the soft tissue of a human brain. Identifying it with information processing would go too far in the other direction and grant a simple consciousness to thermostats and calculators--a leap that most people find hard to stomach. Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But to my ear, this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness.

And then there is the theory put forward by philosopher Colin McGinn that our vertigo when pondering the Hard Problem is itself a quirk of our brains. The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside. This is where I place my bet, though I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius--a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness--comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us.

Whatever the solutions to the Easy and Hard problems turn out to be, few scientists doubt that they will locate consciousness in the activity of the brain. For many nonscientists, this is a terrifying prospect. Not only does it strangle the hope that we might survive the death of our bodies, but it also seems to undermine the notion that we are free agents responsible for our choices--not just in this lifetime but also in a life to come. In his millennial essay "Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died," Tom Wolfe worried that when science has killed the soul, "the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase 'the total eclipse of all values' seem tame."

TOWARD A NEW MORALITY
MY OWN VIEW IS THAT THIS IS backward: the biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul. It's not just that an understanding of the physiology of consciousness will reduce human suffering through new treatments for pain and depression. That understanding can also force us to recognize the interests of other beings--the core of morality.
As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise but an all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty. Yet once we realize that our own consciousness is a product of our brains and that other people have brains like ours, a denial of other people's sentience becomes ludicrous. "Hath not a Jew eyes?" asked Shylock. Today the question is more pointed: Hath not a Jew--or an Arab, or an African, or a baby, or a dog--a cerebral cortex and a thalamus? The undeniable fact that we are all made of the same neural flesh makes it impossible to deny our common capacity to suffer.

And when you think about it, the doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth. Just remember the most famous people in recent memory who acted in expectation of a reward in the hereafter: the conspirators who hijacked the airliners on 9/11.
Think, too, about why we sometimes remind ourselves that "life is short." It is an impetus to extend a gesture of affection to a loved one, to bury the hatchet in a pointless dispute, to use time productively rather than squander it. I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard and the author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate

Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html

Princeton Professor Singer: And I repeat, I would kill Disabled Infants

2006-11-15T16:53:00.000-08:00

Princeton Professor Singer: And I repeat, I would kill Disabled Infants

Princeton Professor Singer: And I repeat, I would kill Disabled Infants
He is consistent. States "there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby"
By John-Henry Westen

PRINCETON, September 12, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a question and answer article published in the UK's Independent today, controversial Princeton University Professor Peter Singer repeats his notorious stand on the killing of disabled newborns. Asked, "Would you kill a disabled baby?", Singer responded, "Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole."

People who oppose Singer's position have maintained that Singer is the logical extension of the culture of death and that society will eventually embrace his stance if there is no shift to the culture of life. Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition commented to LifeSiteNews.com about Singer saying, "at least he's consistent."
In fact, Singer himself uses the abortion debate to justify his murderous stance.
"Many people find this shocking," continued Singer, "yet they support a woman's right to have an abortion." Concluding his point, Singer said, "One point on which I agree with opponents of abortion is that, from the point of view of ethics rather than the law, there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby."

Singer's position, similar to the culture of death, is that there is no inherent dignity in man, there is no sanctity of human life. Man deserves no special treatment since, Singer rejects that man was created in the image and likeness of God.

Asked about the choice between killing 10 cows or a human, Singer said he would kill the cows, but not because they were of less value, but because humans would mourn the death more. "I've written that it is much worse to kill a being who is aware of having a past and a future, and who plans for the future. Normal humans have such plans, but I don't think cows do. And normal humans have family and friends who will grieve their death in ways more vivid and longer-lasting than the way cows may care about other cows. (Although a cow certainly misses her calf for a long time, if the calf is taken from her. That's why there is a major ethical problem with dairy products.) If I really had to make such a decision, I'd kill the cows."

Schadenberg commented saying, "Once again Singer is making distinctions between human beings he would consider normal and those he would consider not normal, thus he is deciding who is a person and who is not. Non-persons are allowed to be killed." The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition leader concluded, "even though Singer does not like to be compared to the Nazi's especially since his parents died in the Holocaust, his philosophical position is identical to what the Nazi's proposed. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is primarily concerned for the lives of people with disabilities and other vulnerable persons."
See the whole interview:http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article1466409...

Peter Singer: Architect of the Culture of Death

2006-11-15T16:47:00.000-08:00

Peter Singer: Architect of the Culture of Death

Peter Singer: Architect of the Culture of Death
DONALD DEMARCO
The new tradition that Peter Singer welcomes is founded on a "quality-of-life" ethic. It allegedly replaces the outgoing morality that is based on the "sanctity-of-life."
Peter Singer
"After ruling our thoughts and our decisions about life and death for nearly two thousand years, the traditional Western ethic has collapsed."

On this triumphant note, Professor Peter Singer begins his milestone book, Rethinking Life and Death. It conveys an attitude of revolutionary confidence that brings to mind another atheistic iconoclast, Derek Humphry, who has said, "We are trying to overturn 2,000 years of Christian tradition."

The new tradition that Singer welcomes is founded on a "quality-of-life" ethic. It allegedly replaces the outgoing morality that is based on the "sanctity-of-life." Wesley J. Smith states that Rethinking Life and Death can fairly be called the Mein Kampf of the euthanasia movement, in that it drops many of the euphemisms common to pro-euthanasia writing and acknowledges euthanasia for what it is: killing." A disability advocacy group that calls itself "Not Dead Yet" has fiercely objected to Singer's views on euthanasia. Some refer to him as "Professor Death." Others have gone as far as to liken him to Josef Mengele. Troy McClure, an advocate for the disabled, calls him "the most dangerous man in the world today." There is indeed a bluntness to Singer's pronouncements that gives his thought a certain transparency. This makes his philosophy, comparatively speaking, easy to understand and to evaluate.

Despite the vehemence of some of his opponents, Professor Singer is regarded, in other circles, as an important and highly respected philosopher and bioethicist. His books are widely read, his articles frequently appear in anthologies, he is very much in demand throughout the world as a speaker, and has lectured at prestigious universities in different countries. He currently holds the Ira W. Decamp chair of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Human Values. And he has written a major article for Encyclopedia Britannica.

Singer's philosophy begins in a broad egalitarianism and culminates in a narrow preferentialism. His egalitarianism has won him many supporters; his preferentialism has earned him his detractors. Hence, he is both strongly admired and soundly vilified. In his widely read article, "All Animals Are Equal," Singer expresses his disdain for racism and sexism. Here he is on solid ground. From this beachhead, he invites his readers to conquer "the last remaining form of discrimination," which is discrimination against animals. He refers to this form of discrimination, borrowing the term from Richard Ryder, "speciesism." This latter form of discrimination rests on the wholly unwarranted assumption, in Singer's view, that one species is superior to another. "I am urging," he writes, "that we extend to other species the basic principle of equality that most of us recognize should be extended to all members of our own species." Here Singer endears himself to animal "rights" activists. In 1992, he devoted an entire book to the subject, Animal Liberation: A New Ethic for Our Treatment of Animals.

Singer rejects what he regards as non-philosophical ways of understanding human beings and non-human animals. He finds notions of "sanctity-of-life," "dignity," "created in the image of God," and so on to be spurious. "Fine phrases," he says, "are the last resource of those who have run out of argument." He also sees no moral or philosophical significance to traditional teens such as "being," "nature" and "essence." He takes pride in being a modern philosopher who has cast off such "metaphysical and religious shackles."
What is fundamentally relevant, for Singer, is the capacity of humans and non-human animals to suffer. Surely non-human animals, especially mammals, suffer. At this point, Singer adds to his egalitarian followers those who base their ethics on compassion. Singer deplores the fact that we cruelly and unconscionably oppress and misuse non-human animals by eating their flesh and experimenting on them. Thus he advocates a vegetarian diet for everyone and a greatly restricted use of animal experimentation.

By using a broad egalitarian base that elicits a compassionate response to the capacity of human and non-human animals to suffer, Singer thereby replaces the sanctity-of-life ethic with a quality-of-life ethic that, in his view, has a more solid and realistic foundation. In this way Singer appears to possess a myriad of modern virtues. He is broadminded, fair, non-discriminatory, compassionate, innovative, iconoclastic, and consistent. It is the quality of life that counts, not some abstract and gratuitous notion that cannot be validated or substantiated through rational inquiry.

Charles Darwin once conjectured that "animals, our fellow brethren in pain, disease, suffering and famine ... may partake of our origin in one common ancestor — we may all be melted together." Singer takes Darwin's "conjecture" and turns it into a conviction. Thus he adds to his coterie of adherents, Darwinists and assorted evolutionists.

Humans and non-human animals are fundamentally sufferers. They possess consciousness that gives them the capacity to suffer or to enjoy life, to be miserable or to be happy. This incontrovertible fact gives Singer a basis, ironically, for a new form of discrimination that is more invidious than the ones he roundly condemns. Singer identifies the suffering/enjoying status of all animals with their quality of life. It follows from this precept, then, that those who suffer more than others have less quality-of-life, and those who do not possess an insufficiently developed consciousness fall below the plane of personhood. He argues, for example, that where a baby has Down syndrome, and in other instances of "life that has begun very badly," parents should be free to kill the child within 28 days after birth. Here he is in fundamental agreement with Michael Tooley, a philosopher he admires, who states that "new-born humans are neither persons nor quasi-persons, and their destruction is in no way intrinsically wrong." Tooley believes that killing infants becomes wrong when they acquire "morally significant properties," an event he believes occurs about three months after their birth.

According to Singer, some humans are non-persons, while some non-human animals are persons. The key is not nature or species membership, but consciousness. A pre-conscious human cannot suffer as much as a conscious horse. In dealing with animals, we care only about their quality of life. We put a horse that has broken its leg out of its misery as quickly as possible. This merciful act spares the animal an untold amount of needless suffering. If we look upon human animals in the same fashion, our opposition to killing those who are suffering will begin to dissolve. The "quality-of-life" ethic has a tangible correlative when it relates to suffering; the "sanctity-of-life" seemingly relates to a mere vapor.

Here is where Singer picks up his detractors. According to this avant garde thinker, unborn babies or neonates, lacking the requisite consciousness to qualify as persons, have less right to continue to live than an adult gorilla. By the same token, a suffering or disabled child would have a weaker claim not to be killed than a mature pig. Singer writes, in Rethinking Life and Death:
Human babies are not born self-aware or capable of grasping their lives over time. They are not persons. Hence their lives would seem to be no more worthy of protection that the life of a fetus.

And writing specifically about Down syndrome babies, he advocates trading a disabled or defective child (one who is apparently doomed to too much suffering) for one who has better prospects for happiness:
We may not want a child to start on life's uncertain voyage if the prospects arc clouded. When this can be known at a very early stage in the voyage, we may still have a chance to make a fresh start. This means detaching ourselves from the infant who has been born, cutting ourselves free before the ties that have already begun to bind us to our child have become irresistible. Instead of going forward and putting all our effort into making the best of the situation, we can still say no, and start again from the beginning.

Needless to say, we all begin our lives on an uncertain voyage. Life is full of surprises. A Helen Keller can enjoy a fulfilling life, despite her limitations; Loeb and Leopold can become hardened killers, despite the fact that they were darlings of fortune. Who can prognosticate? Human beings should not be subject to factory control criteria. Even in starting again, one still does not generate the same individual that was lost. Singer's concern for quality-of-life causes him to miss the reality and the value of the underlying life.
Ironically, the man who claimed to be conquering the last domain of discrimination was offending his readers precisely because of his penchant for discrimination (and even in failing to discriminate). A number of statements that appeared in the first edition of his Practical Ethics were expurgated from the second edition. They include his demeaning of persons with Down syndrome, reviling mentally challenged individuals as "vegetables," rating the mind of a one-year-old human below that of many brute animals, and stating that "not ... everything the Nazis did was horrendous; we cannot condemn euthanasia just because the Nazis did it."

For Peter Singer a human being is not a subject who suffers, but a sufferer. Singer's error here is to identify the subject with consciousness. This is an error that dates back to 17th Century Cartesianism — "I think therefore I am" (which is to identify being with thinking). Descartes defined man solely in terms of his consciousness as a thinking thing (res cogitans) rather than as a subject who possesses consciousness.

At the heart of Pope John Paul II's personalism (his philosophy of the person) is the recognition that it is the concrete individual person who is the subject of consciousness. The subject comes before consciousness. That subject may exist prior to consciousness (as in the case of the human embryo) or during lapses of consciousness (as in sleep or in a coma). But the existing subject is not to be identified with consciousness itself, which is an operation or activity of the subject. The Holy Father rejects what he calls the "hypostatization of the cogito" (the reification of consciousness) precisely because it ignores the fundamental reality of the subject of consciousness — the person — who is also the object of love. "Consciousness itself' is to be regarded "neither as an individual subject nor as an independent faculty."

John Paul refers to the elevation of consciousness to the equivalent of the person's being as "the great anthropocentric shift in philosophy." What he means by this "shift" is a movement away from existence to a kind of absolutization of consciousness. Referring to Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Holy Father reiterates that "it is not thought which determines existence, but existence, "esse," which determines thought!"

Singer, by trying to be more broadminded than is reasonable, has created a philosophy that actually dehumanizes people, reducing them to points of consciousness that are indistinguishable from those of many non-human animals. Therefore, what is of primary importance for the Princeton bioethicists is not the existence of the being in question, but its quality of life. But this process of dehumanization leads directly to discrimination against those whose quality of life is not sufficiently developed. Singer has little choice but to divide humanity into those who have a preferred state of life from those who do not. In this way, his broad egalitarianism decays into a narrow preferentialism:
When we reject belief in God we must give up the idea that life on this planet has some preordained meaning. Life as a whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us, in a chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any overall purpose. Now that it has resulted in the existence of beings who prefer some states of affairs to others, however, it may be possible for particular lives to be meaningful. In this sense some atheists can find meaning in life.

Life can be meaningful for an atheist when he is able to spend his life in a "preferred state." The atheistic perspective here does not center on people, however, it centers on happiness. This curious preference for happiness over people engenders a rather chilling logic. It is not human life or the existing human being that is good, but the "preferred state." Human life is not sacrosanct, but a certain kind of life can be "meaningful." If one baby is disabled, does it not make sense to kill it and replace it with one who is not and "therefore" has a better chance for happiness? "When the death of the disabled infant," writes Singer, "will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed."

Singer has a point, though perhaps marginal at best, that all other things being equal, it is better to be more happy than to be less happy. Yet this point hardly forms a basis for ending the life of a person who has less happiness than the hypothetically conceived greater happiness of his possible replacement. Ethics should center on the person, not the quantum of happiness a person may or may not enjoy. It is the subject who exists that has the right to life, and neither Peter Singer nor anyone else who employs a "relative happiness calculator" should expropriate that right.
Having neglected concrete existence, Singer inevitably wanders into abstractions. He is a humanist, one might say, because he wants people to enjoy better and happier states of life. But the more relevant point is that he is not particularly interested in the actual lives of those who are faced with states that he believes to be less than preferable. On the other hand, Pope John Paul II stresses that each human life is "inviolable, unrepeatable, and irreplaceable." In stating this, the Pontiff is implying that our first priority should be loving human beings rather than preferring better states.
In a 1995 article in the London Spectator entitled "Killing Babies Isn't Always Wrong," Singer said of the Pope, "I sometimes think that he and I at least share the virtue of seeing clearly what is at stake." The Culture of Life based on the sanctity-of-life ethic is at stake. The Pope and the Meister Singer are poles apart. "That day had to come," states Singer, "when Copernicus proved that the earth is not at the center of the universe. It is ridiculous to pretend that the old ethics make sense when plainly they do not. The notion that human life is sacred just because it's human is medieval."
There are a number of things that are "plain." One is that Copernicus did not "prove" that the earth is not at the center of the universe. He proposed a theory based on the erroneous assumption that planets travel in perfect circles and hypothesized that the sun was at the center, not of the universe, but of what we now refer to as the solar system, Another is that the sacredness of life is a Judaeo-Christian notion, not an arbitrary fabrication of the Middle Ages. Yet another is that it is unethical to kill disabled people just because they are disabled.

At a Princeton forum Professor Singer remarked that he would have supported the parents of his disabled protesters, if they had sought to kill their disabled offspring in infancy. This is the kind of unkind remark that will ensure that his disabled protesters will continue to protest.
An additional error in Singer's thinking is the assumption he makes that the suffering (or happiness) of individuals can somehow be added to each other and thus create "all this suffering in the world." C. S. Lewis explains that if you have a toothache of intensity x and another person in the room with you also has a toothache of intensity x, "You may, if you choose, say that the total amount of pain in the room is now 2x. But you must remember that no one is suffering 2x." There is no composite pain in anyone's consciousness. There is no such thing as the sum of collective human suffering, because no one suffers it.
Yet another error in Singer's thinking is that philosophy should be built up solely on the basis of rational thinking, and that feelings and emotions should be distrusted, if not uprooted. Concerning the infant child, he advises us, in Practical Ethics, to "put aside feelings based on its small, helpless and — sometimes — cute appearance," so we can look at the more ethically relevant aspects, such as its quality of life. This coldly cerebral approach is radically incompatible with our ability to derive any enjoyment whatsoever from life. By "putting feelings aside," we would be putting enjoyment aside. It is not the mind that becomes filled with joy, but the heart. Thus the man (Peter Singer) who allegedly prizes happiness is eager to de-activate the very faculty that makes happiness possible. Dr. David Gend, who is a general practitioner and secretary of the Queensland, Australia, branch of the World Federation of Doctors who Respect Human Life, suggests that Singer's announcement of the collapse of the sanctity-of-life ethic is premature:
Nevertheless, Herod could not slaughter all the innocents, and Singer will not corrupt the love of innocence in every reader. As long as some hearts are softened by the image of an infant stirring in its sleep, or even by their baby's movements on ultrasound at sixteen weeks, Singer's call to "put feelings aside" in killing babies will reek of decay."
Reason and emotion are not antagonistic to each other. This is the assumption intrinsic to Cartesian dualism in the integrated person, reason and emotion form an indissoluble unity. For a person to set aside his feelings, therefore, in order to view a situation "ethically" is tantamount to setting aside his humanity. It is precisely this utter detachment from one's moral feelings, particularly relevant in the case where an individual experiences no emotions whatsoever while holding an infant, that is suggestive of a moral disorder. Singer seems to view practical ethics the way one views practical mathematics. But this is to dehumanize ethics. Perceiving the ethical significance of things is not a specialized activity of reason. There is a "moral sense" (James Q. Wilson) and a "wisdom in disgust" (Leon Kass), a "knowledge through connaturality" (Jacques Maritain), and a "copresence" (Gabriel Marcel), that involves the harmonious integration of reason and emotion.
"The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of," said Pascal. Neurobiologist Antonio Damasio, author of Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, finds scientific evidence that "Absence of emotion appears to be at least as pernicious for rationality as excessive emotion ... Emotion may well be the support system without which the edifice of reason cannot function properly and may even collapse." The ethic that is more likely to "collapse," therefore is not one that is based on the personal integration of reason and emotion, but the rational approach that is dissociated from emotion and thereby left one-sided, vulnerable, and counterproductive.
Professor Singer underscores the importance of reason, broadmindedness, and compassion. But his emphasis on reason displaces human feelings. His advocacy of broadmindedness causes him to lose sight of the distinctiveness of the human being (he does not object to sexual "relationships" between humans and non-human animals). And his sensitivity for compassion is exercised at the expense of failing to understand how suffering can have personal meaning. In the end, his philosophy is one-sided and distorted. It plays into the Culture of Death because it distrusts the province of the heart, fails to discern the true dignity of the human person, and elevates the killing of innocent human beings — young and old — to the level of a social therapeutic.ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
DeMarco, Donald. "Peter Singer: Architect of the Culture of Death." Social Justice Review 94 no. 9-10 (September/October 2003):154-157Reprinted with permission of Social Justice Review.
SOcial Justice Review is a pioneer American journal of Catholic social action founded in 1908 by Frederick P. Kenkel. It is the official organ of the Catholic Central Union of America. SJR is published bi-monthly. Subscribe by calling 314-371-1653 or click here.

We must debate mercy killing of disabled babies, say top doctors | News | This is London

2006-11-05T21:54:00.000-08:00

We must debate mercy killing of disabled babies, say top doctors News This is London

We must debate mercy killing of disabled babies, say top doctors05.11.06
Add your view

Severely disabled: Charlotte Wyatt's parents fought to keep her alive
A doctors' group today called for a debate on the mercy killing of disabled babies.
The medical profession should examine the "active euthanasia" of desperatelyill newborns, said the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology.
It wants an inquiry into whether the "deliberate intervention to cause the death of an infant" should be legalised.
The proposal met with a furious response from some quarters last night.
Labour MP Jim Dobbin compared it to the eugenics policies of the Nazis and said: "This sends the message that only the perfect are acceptable and the disabled can be discarded."
The college suggested that decisions on when young babies should be killed or allowed to die should depend not only on the gravity of their condition.
Its submission to an inquiry on the ethics of treatment for severely ill and disabled newborns raises the question of whether such children should be killed if they are not wanted by their parents.
The study comes against the background of growing acceptance of the ideas of euthanasia, suicide and hastening death for mortally sick adults and the dying elderly.
The college said of euthanasia in babies: "If assisted dying legislation is to be anticipated or enacted at the other end of life, now would be a pertinent time to discuss this."
The Disability Rights Commission said it would vehemently oppose such a move.
"It is morally reprehensible to place the value of one life above another," said a spokesman.
John Wyatt, a neonatologist at University College London Hospital, said euthanasia would turn medicine into social engineering where those considered worthless were doomed to die.
Any law allowing newborn babies to be killed would cover cases like that of Charlotte Wyatt, who was born three months prematurely, weighing just one pound and with severe brain and lung damage.
Doctors wanted to switch off her life support machine but her parents - who have now separated - fought to keep her alive.
Charlotte has confounded medical opinion and is now three years old. However, she is severely disabled and needs constant medical care.
The call for a discussion on euthanasia was made in a report for an inquiry into the ethics of treatment of premature babies conducted by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. The highly influential medical forum's final report is to be published later this month.
There is increasing debate over abortion and the survival of babies born at ever-earlier stages of pregnancy. Those delivered after 23 weeks in the womb often survive yet abortion laws allow termination of pregnancy at 24 weeks.
The emotion behind the debate has been deepened by film showing a 12-week-old foetus moving its limbs and 'walking' in the womb.
Some doctors consider, however, that a baby born so prematurely and who survives thanks to modern medical treatment is likely to be so badly disabled that worthwhile life is impossible.
At the same time, Labour's Mental Capacity Act allows adults to order their own deaths in advance through 'living wills' or appoint 'attorneys' who can tell doctors to let them die if they are desperately sick.
Government legal advisers are also considering downgrading euthanasia from its status.
Any such move is unlikely to become law in the near future although pro-euthanasia MPs and peers are trying to establish a euthanasia law for adults.
The college's report, signed by its ethics chief Dr Susan Bewley, said the Nuffield inquiry should "think more radically about non-resuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions, the best interests test and active euthanasia" in the care of sickly newborns.
It added that concerns over suffering "might lead to a positive argument for resuscitation limits for the extremely premature infant or to intentional assisted dying".
The college also raised the question of "whether there should be other factors for babies, such as being wanted by their parents or other carers and having the potential to make some, even if small, contribution to wider society".

Nazi Persecution of the Disabled: Murder of "The Unfit"

2006-10-04T16:14:00.000-07:00

Nazi Persecution of the Disabled: Murder of "The Unfit"

NAZI PERSECUTION OF THE DISABLED: MURDER OF "The Unfit"The Nazi persecution of persons with disabilities in Germany was one component of radical public health policies aimed at excluding hereditarily "unfit" Germans from the national community. These strategies began with forced sterilization and escalated toward mass murder. The most extreme measure, the Euthanasia Program, was in itself a rehearsal for Nazi Germany's broader genocidal policies. It is estimated that 275,000 adults and children were murdered because of their disabilities.

The ideological justification conceived by medical perpetrators for the destruction of the "unfit" was also applied to other categories of "biological enemies," most notably to Jews and Roma (Gypsies). Compulsory sterilization and "euthanasia," like the "Final Solution," were components of a biomedical vision which imagined a racially and genetically pure and productive society, and embraced unthinkable strategies to eliminate those who did not fit within that vision.Throughout this Special Focus page and its related links, you will see translations of terms used during the Nazi regime; please note that although many of these terms are unacceptable or offensive today, they are included here as examples of Nazi terminology and the propaganda campaign used to justify mass murder.
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCELinks:
Euthanasia Program Gassing Operations Mosaic of Victims The Handicapped(USHMM Library bibliography)The Mentally and Physically Handicapped: Victims of the Nazi Era(USHMM brochure)Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany(USHMM Library featured item)The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution(USHMM Library featured item)The Nazi Persecution of Deaf People(Panel Presentation, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, August 2001)

Welcome to The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation

2006-09-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

Welcome to The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation

Learning from Deadly Dutch Mistakes

Recent News

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The Netherlands has earned a dubious distinction in recent years as one of the suicide capitals of the world.Euthanasia of adults and teenagers has been legal there since 2002 and the Dutch Royal Medical Association recently made international headlines by persuading the Dutch government to establish a committee to regulate infant euthanasia. Not that doctors there needed the government’s blessing to practice their healing arts: By their own accounting, Dutch physicians had already been euthanizing about 15 sick babies each year.Euthanasia advocates hail the Dutch model as progressive and reasonable, offering a humane escape from this fallen world for everyone from terminally ill cancer patients to depressed adolescents and sickly infants. If they want to die (or, in the case of newborns, if their parents wish they had never been born), who has the right to stop them?Read Entire Article From PoliticalMavens.com . . .
Read Wesley’s J. Smith Comments . . .

Colleen Carroll Campbell on Infant Euthanasia on National Review Online

2006-09-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

Colleen Carroll Campbell on Infant Euthanasia on National Review Online

March 13, 2006, 8:18 a.m.Chilling ProtocolEnding young life — now, and even here.By Colleen Carroll Campbell
When little Chanou was born in 2000 with a rare and painful illness that leads to abnormal bone development, doctors gave the Dutch infant less than three years to live. As it turns out, she only had seven months.

That’s when her parents and physicians, discouraged by her grim prognosis, joined forces to do something that has become increasingly accepted in the Netherlands: They euthanized her.
“It is in some ways beautiful,” Dutch pediatrician Eduard Verhagen told the London Times, when describing the dying moments of children like Chanou. “But it is also extremely emotional and very difficult.”
Not as difficult as it should be. In the Netherlands, euthanasia of teenagers and adults is legal and baby euthanasia — already practiced among Dutch doctors — will soon be sanctioned by the government. According to the Times, a committee established at the urging of the Dutch Royal Medical Association will begin regulating baby euthanasia in a few weeks. Its standard for deciding who lives and dies will be Verhagen’s own invention, the Groningen Protocol.
The Groningen Protocol is chilling, not only because of its audacity in attempting to judge the worth of human lives but because of its subjectivity in making those judgments. The protocol says that a newborn can be euthanized if his diagnosis and prognosis are “certain,” his suffering is “hopeless and unbearable,” and his quality of life is “very poor,” according to the child’s parents and “at least one independent doctor.”
That standard assumes that physicians are infallible, our current medical knowledge is complete, and human beings are omniscient. How else could one assess with certainty another’s prognosis, experience of suffering, and quality of life? We can know a child suffers; we can know a disease has no known cure. But we cannot pronounce with certainty that another person has no hope or that his suffering has rendered his life worthless. Verhagen himself suggested as much when he told the Times, “No doctor likes to do this. You will always ask yourself, ‘Is there something I have not thought of?’ That is why it needs to be done under a spotlight: you can never, ever be wrong.”
But human beings will be wrong. Discouraged doctors, distraught parents, and distant bureaucrats will make mistakes. And even when their deadly decisions conform perfectly to the protocol, they will commit grave evil by destroying innocent human life in a futile quest to destroy suffering itself.
Americans may be tempted to think that such things could never happen here. But support for infant and child euthanasia has a long history in the United States, stretching from the founding days of the Euthanasia Society of America in 1938 to the recent pronouncements of Peter Singer, a prominent Princeton ethicist who favors a parent’s right to kill disabled newborns.
The threat of euthanasia is already a reality for some American children. Haleigh Poutre, the 12-year-old Massachusetts girl severely beaten by her stepfather last fall, had spent only eight days in the hospital when her state custodians began fighting for the right to remove her ventilator and feeding tube. Doctors had diagnosed her condition as a persistent vegetative state, but Haleigh recovered before they could euthanize her.
Haleigh’s case reminds us that child euthanasia can happen in any nation that has lost respect for the intrinsic value of life and the inviolable dignity of the person. The chilling reality is that although our depraved indifference to the sanctity of human life may not be as advanced as Holland’s, we are moving in that direction.
— Colleen Carroll Campbell, an NRO contributor, is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a former speechwriter to President George W. Bush, and author of The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy.
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NEJM -- The Groningen Protocol -- Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns

2006-09-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

NEJM -- The Groningen Protocol -- Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns

To the Editor: Verhagen and Sauer (March 10 issue)1 emphasize that euthanasia is becoming acceptable medical practice for infants in the Netherlands in whom hopeless and unbearable suffering is present. Doctors are not all-knowing, but pediatric palliative care is a dynamic process that remediates suffering in children through careful assessment and treatment of all symptoms; the quality of life is enhanced, and families are supported.2
Access to pediatric palliation is poor, even in countries with first-class medical systems. A study in the Netherlands3 revealed that the youngest patient receiving palliative care between March 2001 and February 2002 was seven years old. Verhagen and Sauer's conviction that life-ending measures can be acceptable in newborns conflicts with the recommendations Sauer made on behalf of the Confederation of European Specialists in Paediatrics. He and his colleagues invoked the doctrine of double effect and stated that every form of intentional killing should be rejected in pediatrics.4 Perhaps if he and his patients had better access to palliative care, he might return to his ethical stance of 2001.
Dermot M. Murphy, M.B., B.S. Royal Hospital for Sick Children Glasgow G38SJ, United Kingdom dermot.murphy@yorkhill.scot.nhs.uk
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Jon Pritchard, F.R.C.P.(Edin.) Royal Hospital for Sick Children Edinburgh EH91LF, United Kingdom
References

Verhagen E, Sauer PJJ. The Groningen protocol -- euthanasia in severely ill newborns. N Engl J Med 2005;352:959-962. [Full Text]
Thornes R, Elston S, eds. Palliative care for young people, aged 13-24. Bristol, England: Association for Children with Life-Threatening Terminal Conditions & their Families, National Council for Hospice and Specialist Palliative Care Services, Scottish Partnership Agency For Palliative and Cancer Care, September 2001.
Kuin A, Courtens AM, Deliens L, et al. Palliative care consultation in the Netherlands: a nationwide evaluation study. J Pain Symptom Manage 2004;27:53-60. [CrossRef][ISI][Medline]
Sauer PJJ. Ethical dilemmas in neonatology: recommendations of the Ethics Working Group of the CESP (Confederation of European Specialists in Paediatrics). Eur J Pediatr 2001;160:364-368. [CrossRef][ISI][Medline]
To the Editor: Verhagen and Sauer observe that all reported cases of euthanasia in newborns in the Netherlands involved infants with severe forms of spina bifida. Mandatory folic acid fortification of flour would have prevented the development of spina bifida in most of these infants. The failure of the Dutch government and that of many other countries to require folic acid fortification remains a tragic policy error.1 When will European and other governments require this simple, safe, and inexpensive action? Folic acid fortification has been shown in several countries not only to prevent spina bifida, but also virtually to eliminate folate-deficiency anemia and to reduce serum concentrations of homocysteine, with likely reductions in deaths from strokes and heart attacks.2,3,4 I encourage all physicians to advocate forcefully for their governments to require folic acid fortification, using the emergency powers and expedited, short review process provided for in public health regulations. These regulations should be invoked to prevent the severe disease and disability that will continue to occur unnecessarily until mandatory folic acid fortification is implemented.
Godfrey P. Oakley, Jr., M.D. Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 gpoakley@mindspring.com
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Dr. Oakley reports having served as a consultant for Johnson & Johnson and Ortho McNeil.
References

Oakley GP. Delaying folic acid fortification of flour. BMJ 2002;324:1348-1349. [Erratum, BMJ 2002;325:259.] [Full Text]
Mersereau P, Kilker K, Carter H, et al. Spina bifida and anencephaly before and after folic acid mandate -- United States, 1995-1996 and 1999-2000. JAMA 2004;292:325-326. [Full Text]
American Heart Association. Folic acid fortification may have lowered stroke deaths. 2004. (Accessed May 12, 2005, at http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3019554.)
Casas JP, Bautista LE, Smeeth L, Sharma P, Hingorani AD. Homocysteine and stroke: evidence on a causal link from mendelian randomisation. Lancet 2005;365:224-232. [CrossRef][ISI][Medline]
To the Editor: When my cousin Jay was born, the doctors said, in so many words, that his diagnosis and prognosis were certain: severe spina bifida, a very poor quality of life, and no hope of improvement.1 Jay did suffer. He suffered 26 surgeries and all of the indignities that follow from paralysis, incontinence, and bodily disfigurement. Moreover, like the rest of us, Jay never became fully self-sufficient.
Yet Jay bore his suffering with irrepressible hope and good humor that inspired and encouraged innumerable people who had the privilege of knowing him. When he died three days before his 14th birthday, 2000 people attended the funeral to celebrate Jay's uncommonly rich life. A passerby commented, "Someone important must have died."
With different parents, Jay could have qualified for the Groningen protocol. Doctors might have "performed a deliberate life-ending procedure"1 in Jay after making claims no mortal can sustain2 — that his prognosis was "certain," and his suffering was "hopeless and unbearable."1 Those of us who knew Jay are glad there was no such opportunity.
Farr A. Curlin, M.D. University of Chicago Chicago, IL 60637
References

Verhagen E, Sauer PJJ. The Groningen protocol -- euthanasia in severely ill newborns. N Engl J Med 2005;352:959-962. [Full Text]
Koogler TK, Wilfond BS, Ross LF. Lethal language, lethal decisions. Hastings Cent Rep 2003;33:37-41.
Drs. Verhagen and Sauer reply: We agree with Oakley that folic acid fortification is important. However, it cannot prevent all abnormalities in newborns that cause unbearable suffering.
We cannot comment on Jay's case, described by Curlin, because we did not know him. He suffered, but according to Curlin, the suffering was acceptable. As we noted in our Perspective article, the role of the parents is paramount. Clearly, these parents were supportive, but the question is whether, without these parents, would the suffering have been bearable?
Murphy and Pritchard raise the issue that pediatric palliative care is not always accessible or adequate. They suggest that improvement in palliative care services could lead to a situation in which euthanasia in sick newborns would no longer be practiced. We agree that patients will certainly profit from improved access to palliative care. At the same time, we are convinced that euthanasia in patients with a hopeless prognosis and severe and sustained suffering, waiting for the "ideal" standard of care, can be acceptable. The Groningen protocol was designed to motivate physicians to adhere to the highest standards of decision making and to reduce hidden euthanasia by facilitating reporting. The protocol requires that all possible palliative measures be exhausted before euthanasia is performed. This requirement might do more in mobilizing the availability of palliative care services than the current situation of unreported practice.
The recommendations that Murphy and Pritchard refer to are a consensus statement of pediatricians in Europe.1 Sauer's personal view is that active life-ending procedures can be acceptable.
Eduard Verhagen, M.D., J.D. Pieter J.J. Sauer, M.D., Ph.D. University Medical Center Groningen 9700 RB Groningen, the Netherlands
References

Sauer PJ. Ethical dilemmas in neonatology: recommendations of the Ethics Working Group of the CESP (Confederation of European Specialists in Paediatrics). Eur J Pediatr 2001;160:364-368. [CrossRef][ISI][Medline]

Eugenics, Population Control, Racism, Birth Control

2006-07-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

Eugenics, Population Control, Racism, Birth Control

Introduction to Eugenics

John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe
(Prolife Activist, Researcher and Writer )
January, 1995

The principal manifestations of eugenics are racism and abortion. Eugenics is the driving force behind euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, and embryo and fetal research. It is the driving force in global population policy, and affects American foreign policy. It is the force driving much of the environmentalist movement, welfare policy and welfare reform, and health care. It is found in anthropology, sociology, psychology all the social sciences. Further, it is reflected in much literature, especially science fiction. So it is worth some study.

DEFINITION
Eugenics is the study of methods to improve the human race by controlling reproduction. The word was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton believed that the proper evolution of the human race was thwarted by philanthropic outreach to the poor when such efforts encouraged them to bear more children. Charity upset the mechanism of natural selection. Hence, the human race needed a kind of artificial selection: eugenics. The word is from Greek for good birth. Galton wanted eugenics to develop from a science to a policy to a religion.

A Study ...
Galton defined eugenics as "the science of improvement of the human race germ plasm through better breeding." He also said: "Eugenics is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, whether physically or mentally." This definition was used for years on the cover of the Eugenics Review, a journal published by the Eugenics Education Society.

A Program ...
The American Journal of Eugenics (1906) defined it as "the science of good generation" and noted that the Century Dictionary defined it (rather primly) as "the doctrine of Progress, or Evolution, especially in the human race, through improved conditions in the relations of the sexes."
In 1970, I. I. Gottesman, a director of the American Eugenics Society, defined it in this way: "The essence of evolution is natural selection; the essence of eugenics is the replacement of 'natural' selection by conscious, premeditated, or artificial selection in the hope of speeding up the evolution of 'desirable' characteristics and the elimination of undesirable ones."

A Religion ...
Eugenics has had a religious dimension. Galton suggested that it should function as a religion, and this proposal was echoed by George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russel and others. In the United States shortly after the turn of the century, the American Journal of Eugenics advertised itself by noting that it was "formerly known as Lucifer the Light Bearer."
A pungent assertion of the religious character of eugenics comes from Julian Huxley, the first Director-General of UNESCO and a member of the English Eugenics Society : "We must face the fact that now, in this year of grace, the great majority of human beings are substandard: they are undernourished, or ill, or condemned to a ceaseless struggle for bare existence; they are imprisoned in ignorance or superstition. ... We must see to it that life is no longer a hell paved with unrealized opportunity.... In this light, the highest and most sacred duty of man is seen as the proper utilization of the untapped resources of human beings."
Huxley continued, "I find myself inevitably driven to use the language of religion. For the fact is that all this does add up to something in the nature of a religion: perhaps one might call it Evolutionary Humanism. The word religion is often used restrictively to mean belief in gods; but I am not using it in this sense ... I am using it in a broader sense, to denote an overall relation between man and his destiny, and one involving his deepest feelings, including his sense of what is sacred. In this broad sense, evolutionary humanism, it seems to me, is capable of becoming the germ of a new religion, not necessarily supplanting existing religions but supplementing them."
The Population Council, one of the new eugenic organizations that emerged after World War II, no longer spoke of eugenics as a religion (in fact, avoided the word eugenics altogether), but launched "studies relating to the social, ethical and moral dimensions" of population studies, recognizing that these questions involve matters "of a cultural, moral and spiritual nature." The new field of bioethics is a response to issues raised by eugenics. Bioethics is based on situation ethics, which was developed largely by Joseph Fletcher, a member of the American Eugenics Society.
In a recent book, the confusion over the term is discussed by Diane B. Paul, who notes that some definitions describe it as a science or a study, but that study alone would not have aroused grave concerns; the word must also refer to social policy. That is, the word refers not only to the methods to improve the human race, but also the deliberate intent to improve. She also notes that some people use the word to refer to the consequences of an action, regardless of intent. She does not allude to the religious or even ethical content of eugenics.

HISTORY OF EUGENICS
In 1798, an English clergyman and economist named Thomas Robert Malthus published the Essay on the Principle of Population. The central idea of the book is that population increases exponentially and will therefore eventually outstrip food supply. If parents failed to limit the size of their families, then war or famine would kill off the excess. The idea has been remarkably resilient, although the specific predictions that Malthus made were wrong. Malthus argued that the island of Britain could not sustain a population of 20 million, but 150 years later the population was more than triple Malthus' ceiling.
Charles Darwin, the biologist, was immensely impressed by Malthus' ideas, and the Malthusian theories are embedded in Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection (The Origin of Species, 1859, and the Descent of Man, 1871). But after Darwin borrowed ideas from economics and inserted them into biology, his cousin reversed the process and discovered ideas in biology that could be applied to humans. This is one of the first tricks that amateur magicians learn, like "finding" a coin in a child's ear. The amazing thing about Galton's stunt is that it has fooled so many people for so long.
At least one contemporary understood what Galton was doing. Friedrich Engels, a collaborator with Karl Marx, was contemptuous of the way Malthus' ideas about economics were inserted into biology and then retrieved as gospel: "The whole Darwinist teaching of the struggle for existence is simply a transference from society to living nature of Hobbes' doctrine of bellum omnium contra omnes and of the bourgeois doctrine of competition together with Malthus' theory of population. When this conjurer's trick has been performed ... the same theories are transferred back again from organic nature into history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved. The puerility of this proceeding is so obvious that not a word need be said about it."
It is noteworthy that this ideology of arrogance proved to be appealing on the right (Galton), then the left (British Socialists), then the right (German National Socialists), then the left (American environmentalists), then the right (see The Bell Curve debate). Galton's work is still used today. He used statistical methods, including the now-famous "bell curve," to describe the distribution of intelligence within a population. He devised various methods for measuring intelligence, and concluded that Europeans are smarter than Africans, on average. And he suggested systematic studies of twins to distinguish the effects of heredity from the effects of environment.
Galton's work was carried on, especially at the University of London, where he endowed a Chair of Eugenics. According to eugenics scholar J. Philippe Rushton, Galton's work was carried on especially by: Karl Pearson and Charles Spearman, then by Cyril Burt, and in our time by Raymond Cattell, Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen. However, these academics were carrying on work that was built specifically on Galton's theories. The eugenics ideology spread far beyond this core of true believers.

EUGENIC SOCIETIES
In 1904, Galton endowed a research chair in eugenics at University College, London University. In Germany in 1905, Dr. Alfred Ploetz and Dr. Ernst R6din founded the Gesellschaft f6r Rassenhygiene, or Society of Race-Hygiene.
In 1907 in England, the Eugenic Education Society (later the Eugenics Society) was founded.
In 1910, the Eugenic Record Office (ERO) was founded in the United States. The ERO had a different emphasis from the Birth Control League which sought "fewer children for laboring classes." The ERO felt that "ultimate economic betterment should be sought by breeding better people, not fewer of the existing sort."
The First International Eugenics Congress was held at London University in 1912. Although representatives came from a number of nations, the congress revealed the strength of the movement especially in England, Germany and the United States.
In October 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. Several months later, she founded the Birth Control Review. She and her co-workers incorporated the American Birth Control League in 1922. (The organization was renamed the Birth Control Federation of Americain 1939, and in 1942 was renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.) She wrote: "Birth control is thus the entering wedge for the Eugenic educator ... the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit' is admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization ... The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the overfertility of the mentally and physically defective."
In 1922, the American Eugenics Society was founded. Founders included: Madison Grant, Henry H. Laughlin, Irving Fisher, Fairfield Osborn, and Henry Crampton. Grant was the author of The Passing of the Great Race (1916) and wrote the preface to The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy. Laughlin was the Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from 1910 to 1921; he was later President of the Pioneer Fund, a white supremacist organization that is still functioning today. Fisher, who taught economics and political economy and economics at Yale University for 40 years, said that the purpose of the society was to "stem the tide of threatened race degeneracy" and to protect the United States against "indiscriminate immigration, criminal degenerates, and race suicide." Fairfield Osborn was the president of the American Museum of Natural History from 1908 to 1933; he wrote about evolution in From the Greeks to Darwin. In 1923, during a national debate on restricting immigration, Osborn spoke enthusiastically about the results of intelligence testing carried out by the Army: "I believe those tests were worth what the war [World War I] cost, even in human life, if they served to show clearly to our people the lack of intelligence in our country, and the degrees of intelligence in different races who are coming to us, in a way which no one can say is the result of prejudice. ... We have learned once and for all that the negro is not like us."
This list of organizations is far from exhaustive. The point here is simply that eugenics in the first part of the 20th century was not an academic exercise. Eugenicists were organizing, particularly in Germany, England and the United States, to implement policies consistent with their theories. The work of the eugenicists included: racism and white supremacy, promoting birth control among the dysgenic, restricting immigration, sterilizing the handicapped, promoting euthanasia, and seeking for ways to increase the number of genetically well-endowed individuals.

HITLER'S EMBRACE
A key program of the eugenicists was cleansing the human race by sterilizing the "unfit." By 1931, sterilization laws had been enacted in 27 states in the United States, and by 1935 sterilization laws had been enacted in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany. But the efficiency of the German eugenicists caused trouble.
Galton's ideas had been taken up in Germany by Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century. Then Ploetz and R6din laid the foundations of an effective eugenics program in Germany. In 1922, two men, a lawyer and a psychiatrist, Karl Binding, J. D., and Alfred Hoche, M.D. cooperated on a short book entitled Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (Permission to Destroy Life Devoid of Value). The book encouraged Austrian physicians who were beginning to practice euthanasia illegally. And then Adolf Hitler, who had described his own eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf, came to power.
Hitler's determination to establish his "Master Race" was embraced by German eugenicists. And eugenicists elsewhere failed to criticize the Germans. In the United States, the Birth Control Review praised the effectiveness of the Germans, and published articles by R6din and others.
In the United States today, there is a great deal of confusion about Hitler's view of abortion. Pro-lifers denounce abortionists furiously for imitating Hitler, who legalized abortion, and proponents of abortion denounce pro-lifers furiously for imitating Hitler, who outlawed abortion. In fact, both sides are half right. Hitler was a eugenicist, and he outlawed aborting Aryan babies for eugenic reasons, but encouraged aborting Slavs and Jews also for eugenic reasons.
After Hitler had killed millions of people, including one third of the Jews in the world, he lost the war. The name of his political party became and remains one of the most offensive words in the language, and ideas that are tightly associated with him are universally condemned. So the idea of building a master race became extremely unpopular. However, the eugenics movement did not die.

EUGENICS AFTER WORLD WAR II
Most people have never heard of eugenics, and most of those who have heard of it think it died with Hitler. Of the few people who are aware that eugenics was still a force after World War II, many believe that its remnants were reformed. In fact, the eugenics movement continued to thrive, without reform. The development and promotion of birth control was a major eugenic success. The discovery of the population explosion and the hysteria about the need to control it was a major eugenic success. The field of genetics grew faster than fruit flies in the 1950s, and although the accumulating knowledge was valuable, the field was dominated by eugenicists, who could use their knowledge for eugenic purposes. UNESCO, founded in 1948, was directed by Julian Huxley, a determined eugenicist who used his global platform very effectively. The welfare state in Britain was based largely of the work of Richard Titmuss, John Maynard Keynes and William Henry Beveridge, members of the Eugenics Society.
Historians who rely too heavily on the eugenicists themselves will overlook a great deal. Daniel Kevles, for example, makes the post-war eugenics movement sound like a group of dusty academics. But one of their activities in Britain beginning in the 1960s was running a flourishing abortion business. Beginning in the 1960s, a few members of the Eugenics Society built and controlled almost the entire private abortion industry. Whether you think abortion is killing a child or exercising a fundamental liberty, this bloody and emotional activity is not the work of dusty academics: at least some of the eugenicists were activists.
The influence on the eugenicists on abortion in America is perhaps best seen by comparing Roe v. Wade and a book by Professor Glanville Williams, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law. The book is cited repeatedly in the 1973 abortion decision, but the numerous citations do not reveal the full extent of the influence. Justice Blackmun lifted his whole argument from Williams, including the history of abortion, ancient attitudes, the influence of Christianity, common law, Augustine's and Aquinas' teaching, canon law and English statutory law. And Williams was a member of the Eugenics Society. Roe v. Wade was based on eugenics.

CRYPTO-EUGENICS
In 1968, the Eugenics Review ran an article summarizing some of the activities of the Eugenics Society. The article quoted a proposal made by in the late 1950s by Dr. Carlos Paton Blacker, who had been an officer in the Eugenics Society since 1931 (Secretary, then General Secretary, then Director, then Chairman):
"That the Society should pursue eugenic ends by less obvious means, that is by a policy of crypto-eugenics, which was apparently proving successful in the US Eugenics Society."
In 1960, Blacker's proposal was adopted by the Eugenics Society. A resolution which was accepted stated (in part):
"The Society's activities in crypto-eugenics should be pursued vigorously, and specifically that the Society should increase its monetary support of the FPA [Family Planning Association, the English branch of Planned Parenthood] and the IPPF [International Planned Parenthood Federation] and should make contact with the Society for the Study of Human Biology, which already has a strong and active membership, to find out if any relevant projects are contemplated with which the Eugenics Society could assist."
At the time this resolution was adopted by the Eugenics Society, Blacker was the Administrative Chairman of IPPF. When IPPF was founded in 1952, it was housed in the offices of the Eugenics Society.
The dominant figure in the eugenics movement in the United States, considered by the English to be a model of crypto-eugenics, was Major General Frederick Osborn, a master propagandist. In 1956, he said people "won't accept the idea that they are in general, second rate. We must rely on other motivation." He called the new motivation "a system of voluntary unconscious selection." The way to persuade people to exercise this voluntary unconscious selection was to appeal to the idea of "wanted" children. Osborn said, "Let's base our proposals on the desirability of having children born in homes where they will get affectionate and responsible care." In this way, the eugenics movement "will move at last towards the high goal which Galton set for it."
Osborn stated the public relations problem bluntly: "Eugenic goals are most likely to be attained under a name other than eugenics." He pointed to genetic counseling as a prime example: "Heredity clinics are the first eugenic proposals that have been adopted in a practical form and accepted by the public. ... The word eugenics is not associated with them."
Osborn is often credited with reforming the eugenics movement after World War II, and purging the racism. However, during the time of this reform, he was President of the Pioneer Fund, holding that office secretly from 1947 to 1956. The Pioneer Fund is a notorious white supremacist organization. Obviously, a secret racist wouldn't purge racism; he would purge open racism, leaving a policy that critics might call "crypto-racism."
In 1960, a member of the Eugenics Society, Reginald Ruggles Gates, founded a new periodical to advance racist ideas. The Advisory Council of the new journal, Mankind Quarterly, included yet another member of the Darwin family, Charles Galton Darwin. One idea advanced in the journal is the belief that anthropology, if it is understood honestly, shows that mankind is divided into four species. The first issue stated that desegregation happened because "American anthropologists were responsible for introducing equalitarianism into anthropology, ignoring the hereditary differences between races, ...until the uninstructed public were gradually misled. Equality of opportunity, which everyone supports, was replaced by a doctrine of genetic and social equality, which is something quite different."
Even in Germany, the eugenics movement did not die out. The most offensive example of its resurgence after Hitler was the rehabilitation of Professor Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer.
In 1935, von Verschuer said that he was "responsible for ensuring that the care of genes and race, which Germany is leading worldwide, has such a strong base that it will withstand any attacks from outside." In 1937, he was Director of the Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology and Racial Purity.
Von Verschuer was Josef Mengele's mentor before the Nazi holocaust, and his collaborator during the holocaust. Mengele's horrific experiments at Auschwitz have put his name alongside those of Hitler and Eichmann. And yet, a few years after the war, von Verschuer founded the Institute of Human Genetics in Munster, where he worked educating another generation until his death in 1969. He had not turned away from his old ideas: was an adviser for the Mankind Quarterly, and a member of the American Eugenics Society.
The rehabilitation of Mengele's mentor and collaborator was not an accidental oversight. Eugenicists in America were aware of von Verschuer; several stories about him appeared in English in the Eugenical News in the 1930's. The first, a review of his book Erbpathologie, said: "Race culture, the selection of proposed cases for sterilization or marriage advice [i.e., genetic counseling] are impossible without the earnest collaboration of the entire medical profession ... In this book the author clearly outlines the duties of the physician to the nation. The word 'nation' no longer means a number of citizens living within certain boundaries, but a biological entity. This point of view also changes the obligation of the physician ... Dr. von Verschuer has successfully bridged the gap between medical practice and theoretic scientific research."
Another article about von Verschuer appeared in the Eugenical News May/June 1936. This article specifically mentions that von Verschuer intended to use twin studies to test a racist idea (the race doctrine of Count Gobineau). Mengele's horrors at Auschwitz were twin studies. There was a follow-up article in October 1937.

THE SHIFT TO GENETICS
Before the war, the American Eugenics Society laid out its research aims, including many investigations in sociology, psychology, anthropology and biology. But they noted especially the important new fields: population study and genetics.
After the war, research in genetics was led by one of the German eugenicist besides von Verschuer who had continued his work, Dr. Franz J. Kallmann. He had been "associated with Dr. Ernst R6din, investigating in genetic psychiatry." He was half Jewish, so he was driven out of Germany in 1936 by Hitler. Nonetheless, he testified on behalf of von Verschuer after the war. Kallmann taught psychiatry at Columbia, and in 1948 he founded the American Society of Human Genetics. He became a member of the American Eugenics Society. This Society developed hundreds of prenatal tests but did not look for cures, although every test was hyped as a potential lead towards a cure.
Over the next years, at least 124 people were members of both Kallmann's American Society of Human Genetics and the American Eugenics Society. The overwhelming evidence of a commitment to eugenics at the American Society of Human Genetics is especially troubling when you note that members of this society promoted, developed and now lead the multi-billion dollar Human Genome Project.
Negative eugenics, or ending the over-production of the "unfit," is obviously well underway with widespread contraception, sterilization and abortion. But positive eugenics, or the increased production of the "fit," can be advanced through artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and genetic engineering. The Human Genome Project would certainly help in a scheme of positive eugenics.

SECOND NEW FIELD: POPULATION CONTROL
After World War II, the eugenics movement discovered (or invented) the population explosion, and whipped up global hysteria about it. From 1952 on, a major part of the eugenics movement was the population control movement. The population explosion made it possible for eugenics movement to continue its work more from the fit, less from the unfit with the same people to do the same things, but with a new public rationale.
The transformation from open eugenics to population planning is described well by Germaine Greer: "It now seems strange that men who had been conspicuous in the eugenics movement were able to move quite painlessly into the population establishment at the highest level, but if we reflect that the paymasters were the same Ford, Mellon, Du Pont, Standard Oil, Rockefeller and Shell are still the same, we can only assume that people like Kingsley Davis, Frank W. Notestein, C. C. Little, E. A. Ross, the Osborns Frederick and Fairfield, Philip M. Hauser, Alan Guttmacher and Sheldon Segal were being rewarded for past services." That is, the population control movement was the same money, the same leaders, the same activities with a new excuse.
One of the organizations that promoted eugenics under the new population rubric was the Population Council. It was founded in 1952 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, and spent $173,621,654 in its first 25 years. That is not a bad budget for one of the organizations in a dead movement! Clearly, the people who think the eugenics movement died in the rubble in Berlin do not understand crypto-eugenics, genetics or population control!
The extent of the population control movement is hard to imagine, and harder to exaggerate. During the past 25 years, there have been approximately 1.5 billion surgical abortions globally. The United Nations Population Fund has sponsored three meetings bringing together the heads of state from most of the world to develop a global population strategy, in Bucharest in 1974, Mexico City in 1984, and in Cairo in 1994. No other global problem has been the occasion for meetings comparable to these three. The World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and governmental agencies from nearly all the industrialized nations have contributed billions of dollars to campaigns designed to decrease population growth.
The population control movement has not been noted for respect for human rights. In 1972, for example, essays by members of the American Eugenics Society appeared in Readings in Population. Kingsley Davis explained the need for genetic control, and examined the obstacles, including a widespread attachment to the ideal of family life. But he saw some hope of developing a more effective program of improving the human race, although improvement would be slow:
"Under the circumstances, we shall probably struggle along with small measures at a time, with the remote possibility that these may eventually evolve into a genetic control system. ... The morality of specific techniques of applied genetics artificial insemination, selective sterilization, ovular transplantation, eugenic abortion, genetic record keeping, genetic testing will be thunderously debated in theological and Marxian terms dating from ages past. Possibly, within half a century or so, this may add up to a comprehensive program."
What he wanted, though was "the deliberate alteration of the species for sociological purposes," which would be "a more fateful step than any previously taken by mankind. ... When man has conquered his own biological evolution he will have laid the basis for conquering everything else. The universe will be his, at last."
In the same book, Philip M. Hauser, also a member of the American Eugenics Society, explained the difference between family planning, which relies on the voluntary decisions of individuals or couples, and population control, which would include abortion, a commitment to zero population growth, coercion, euthanasia and restrictions on international migration.
Perhaps the clearest example of the power of the eugenics movement today is in China, with its one-child-only family policy. This policy is an assault on prenatal life and on women's privacy, both. The program was described and praised in 16 articles in a remarkable issue of IPPF's quarterly journal, People, in 1989, on the eve of the massacre in Tiananmen Square. But this anti-life, anti-choice policy is not unique to China; most of the nations of Asia have some coercive elements in their population policies.
The coercive Chinese policy has a great deal of acceptance and support in the United States, including from feminist leaders like Eleanor Smeal and Molly Yard. When the Reagan administration cut off funds for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) because of its support for the Chinese population program, two American organizations sued to restore funds: Rockefeller's Population Council and the Population Institute in Washington. A 1978 survey of members of the Population Association of America found that 34 percent of members agreed that "coercive birth control programs should be initiated in at least some countries immediately."
In fact, the United States government is responsible for much of the global population control. In 1976, a formal definition of national security interests, NSSM 200, described the major threats to the United States. Some of these are obvious. The first, of course, was Communism in Europe, with the military charged with principal responsibility for defending American national security from this threat. In the Pacific, the threat was the possibility of losing bases; the military was charged with the principal responsibility for defending this national interest. In Latin America, there was the threat of incipient Communism; the CIA had principal responsibility for our defense. In Africa, according to the American government in 1976 and ever since, the threat to American national security interests is population growth. The Agency for International Development was given the responsibility of defending America from this grave threat. This document was classified until 1992; when it was de-classified, the Information project for Africa distributed it, and the covert depopulation policy tucked into the American foreign aid program caused a great deal of resentment.

CURRENT DEVELOPMENT
In late 1994, the publication of The Bell Curve made the word "eugenics" known again. The research quoted in the book is drawn overwhelmingly from members of the American Eugenics Society and other eugenic groups. Curiously, most commentators focused on one chapter in the lengthy book, and debated whether it was racist. The conclusion of the book is that men are not equal, and that the Declaration of Independence is badly worded. This lengthy restatement of eugenics was on the bestseller list for weeks.
The book was generally praised by conservatives (see The National Review, December 5, 1994, an issue devoted to The Bell Curve) and attacked by liberals (see The New Republic, October 31, 1994, which included a lengthy defense of the book by its authors and 21 critical or hostile responses).

SYSTEMATIC RESPONSE
One excellent way to understand the eugenics movement in our time is to read through a list of the members of the Eugenics Society and its successor, the Society for the Study of Social Biology. Eugenics is not a conspiracy, it is a movement and an ideology. But the pieces of it are often considered in isolation, perhaps because of the success of the strategy of crypto-eugenics. Reading through the list of members helps to see the whole picture. (A list of members of the American Eugenics Society, with notes, is available from American Life League.)
In 1925, John Thomas Scopes was charged with teaching evolution in a public school in Tennessee, in violation of state law. The trial became a highly visible confrontation between Fundamentalist views of Scripture and the theory of evolution. Shaping the debate this way allowed the proponents of evolution to score a tremendous public relations victory. Nonetheless, the questions, then and now, are theological and moral, not just scientific. Darwin and the evolutionists and eugenicists had indeed precipitated a religious crisis, and were debating the existence of God and the meaning of human life.
From the beginning, the great obstacle to the eugenics movement has been the Roman Catholic Church, and the Church's position has been repeatedly distorted. A sketch of the Church's position can be found in:
Gaudium et Spes or The Church in the Modern World the Vatican II document explaining to all people of good will why the Church wants to be involved in discussions of the problems facing the world and what she thinks she offers; Humanae Vitae Pope Paul VI's letter on human life, best known for his re-statement of the Church's unwavering assertion that contraception is objectively and cannot be made moral, but also contains a sharp warning about the threat of coercive population control; Populorum Progressio Pope Paul VI's powerful letter on development, urging the wealthy nations to help the poor generously, and calling development the "new name for peace"; Laborem Exercens Pope John Paul II's letter on work, offering a radically new approach to the place of work in the life of an individual and a society; and Familiaris Consortio Pope John Paul II's letter on family life, best known for re-stating opposition to contraception, but defends the rights of families, including the right to migrate in search of a better economic life; Sollicitudo Rei Socialis one of Pope John Paul II's letters on the crises facing the modern world, stating that the measure of a social program is its impact on the dignity of the individual, and stating that the route to freedom from social evil is solidarity with the victims of the evil. The social sciences in our time are thoroughly imbued with eugenic theory. It would be a noble work to rescue them, to work through the basic texts and theories of each field, identifying the eugenic taint and replacing it with an unswerving devotion to the dignity of the individual, including the poor.

John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe
January, 1995

Bibliography

History of Eugenics
Adams, Mark, ed. The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil and Russia (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
Bajema, Carl L., ed. Eugenics, Then and Now (Stroudsburg,: Hutchinson & Ross, 1976)
Baker-Benfield, G. J. The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Harper Colophon, 1976
Bigelow, Maurice A. "Brief History of the American Eugenics Society," Eugenic News, 31 (1946): 49-51.
Chase, Allen. The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977).
Degler, Carl N. In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)
Haller, Mark H. Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963)
Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986)
Kuhl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection, (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Lifton, Robert. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986)
Ludmerer, Kenneth M. Genetics and American Society (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972)
Mehler, Barry. "A History of the American Eugenics Society, 1921-1940," dissertation, University of Illinois, 1988.
Pernick, Martin S. The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of Defective Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
Pickens, Donald K. Eugenics and the Progressives (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968)
Rosenberg, Charles E. No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976)
Shapiro, Thomas M. Population Control Politics: Women, Sterilization and Reproductive Choice(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985)
Stepan, Nancy. The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800-1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982), The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)
Trombley, Stephen. The Right to Reproduce: A History of Coercive Sterilization (London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988)
Weinreich, Max. Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany's Crimes Against the Jewish People (New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1946)
Weiss, Sheila F. Race Hygiene and National Efficiency: The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1987)

Reproductive Technology
Corea, G., The Mother Machine (New York: Harper and Row, 1985)
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origins and on the Dignity of Procreation (Vatican City: 1987)
De Marco, Don, Biotechnology and the Assault on Parenthood (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991)
Fletcher, Joseph, Morals and Medicine (Boston: Bacon Press, 1960)
Frank, Diana, and Vogel, Marta, The Baby Makers (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1988)
Howard, Ted, and Rifkin, Jeremy, Who Should Play God? (New York: Dell Publishing, 1987)
Lejeune, Jerome; Ramsey, Paul; and Wright, Gerard, The Question of In Vitro Fertilization (London: SPUC Educational Trust, 1984)
McLaughlin, Loretta, The Pill, John Rock, and the Church (Boston: Little,Brown and Co, 1982)
Rini, Suzanne M. Beyond Abortion: A Chronicle of Fetal Experimentation (Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1988)
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Infertility: Medical and Social Choices (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988)

Population Control
Aird, John S., Slaughter of the Innocents: Coercive Birth Control in China (Washington: AEI Press, 1990)
Greer, Germaine, Sex and Destiny (New York: Harper & Row, 1984)
Hartmann, Betsy, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs (New York: Harper & Row, 1987)
Information Project for Africa, Population Control and National Security (Washington, 1991). IPFA has four other studies that have also been used by opponents of population imperialism throughout the developing world.

Fiction
H. G. Wells and Isaac Asimov were eugenicists, and much science fiction follows their lead. It is, therefore, good to know there is some excellent science fiction that challenges eugenics:
Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World
Lewis, C.S., That Hideous Strength
Miller, Walter M., A Canticle for Liebowitz (New York: Bantam Books, 1969)
Percy, Walker, The Thanatos Syndrome (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1987)

Recent Eugenic Theory
Gore, Al, Earth in the Balance (Boston, New York and London: Houghton Mifflin, 1992)
Herrnstein, Richard J. and Murray, Charles, The Bell Curve (New York: Free Press, 1994)
Odom, Guy R., Mothers, Leadership, and Success (Houston: Polybius Press, 1990)
Rushton, J. Philippe, Race, Evolution, and Behavior (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995)

2006-07-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race A special exhibition In the late 1980s, when I first began working on the ethical issues raised by the involvement of Nazi medicine and science in the Holocaust, the US Holocaust Museum did not exist. In January of 1996, I had the honour of delivering a speech at the then 3-year-old museum. The topic I chose was the role of medicine in the Holocaust. I was also given a tour of the museum. While I was greatly impressed and moved by what I saw, I pointed out to my hosts, somewhat heatedly, that the permanent exhibition neglected the key role played by medicine and science. It is of no small import that a distinguishing feature of the Holocaust memorialised in the museum is the central role played by medicine and science in what was the pre-eminent scientific nation of the time. That lacuna has now been fully rectified with last month’s opening of the special exhibition, Deadly Medicine; the enthusiastic role of medicine and science in mass murder is now quite plainly on display. The exhibition carefully traces the evolution of thinking about eugenics and racial hygiene in Germany from the end of World War I to shortly after the conclusion of World War II. An amazing set of pictures, posters, films, charts, maps, books, instruments, masks, and paintings tells the incredible tale. Alfred Ploetz on the cover of Eugenik magazine Ploetz, a physician and economist, founded the German eugenics movement in 1905. The visitor sees the innocuous rise of eugenics in Weimar Germany as an adjunct to efforts at public-health reform. Germans eager for a rebirth after the disaster of the first World War eagerly seized on the hope extended by physicians, geneticists, psychiatrists, and anthropologists that using social Darwinism to guide public health was the vehicle for German regeneration. Soon, governmental exhortations to marry well and live virtuously were followed by the emergence of virulent bigotry against the costs to society imposed by those who could not or would not: the disabled, the mentally ill, the tubercular, prostitutes, and alcoholics. Hard on the heels of this intolerance of frailty and foolhardiness, as the Nazis tightened their grip on power, came the forced sterilisation of these groups as well as so-called racial misfits—the children of inter-racial liaisons in the border area between Germany and France, which was occupied by French troops from Africa during the 1920s. Dr von Verschuer, head of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute’s Department for Human Heredity, examines twins Verschuer, a physician and geneticist, examined many twins to study whether criminality, “feeble-mindedness”, tuberculosis, and cancer were inheritable. In 1927, he recommended forced sterilisation of the “mentally and morally subnormal”. He typified academics motivated by interest in Germany’s “national regeneration”. Murder soon replaced sterilisation as the public policy of choice for those who could not contribute healthy children or economic productivity to the state as killing multiplied in the insane asylums and in the notorious T4 programme that targeted the demented elderly. The slaughter then accelerated to unimaginable proportions as racism was added to the public-health drive to rid the Reich of the “threats” posed to its health and genetic purity by Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and Slavs. Germany was not alone in its fascination with eugenics. The USA was well ahead of Germany by the early 1930s in its efforts to control the economic and social costs of mental illness and retardation through sterilisation. As the exhibition makes clear, Spain, Norway, Denmark, the Soviet Union, France, and the UK, among other nations, mixed public health and eugenics into their policies. It was the virulent racism that Hitler and the Nazis added to eugenics that created the events that led to the death camps. “Qualitative decline in the population . . . it will come to this if individuals with lesser value have four children and those of higher value have two” Nazi propaganda showing athlete shrinking and deformed man growing; intended to demonstrate the importance of preventing births among the “unfit” and achieving high birth rates among the “fit”. A number of features stand out about this exhibition. The fate of the staunchest Nazi eugenicists is carefully documented. Most fared well after the war, retaining high positions in German medicine and science. The horror of the killings is personalised through photos of specific individuals annotated with their names and histories. Susan Bachrach, the curator of Deadly Medicine, devised a system of identity cards that are issued to all visitors. Each card traces the fate of a real person who fell into the maw of the Nazi Holocaust. In ways such as this, she brings to life the stories of real, identifiable people. There are a few flaws in the exhibition. The complex story it tells, spanning 40 or so years, is made all the more so by being presented in the form of a maze, which seemed to confuse some of my fellow visitors. More substantively, not much is said about why doctors were the most enthusiastic participants in the Nazi genocide. We hear little about the ethical justifications that doctors and scientists had for their lethal actions. As the Nuremberg trial transcripts make clear, they had many of these, and it is important to realise that these were men who strongly believed in the rightness and righteousness of their actions. Nor is much offered in the way of an explanation of how so many vicious killers landed on their feet at the end of the war. My own hunch is that there were so many doctors and scientists involved in the Nazi crimes that to weed them all out would have left postwar Germany with hardly any at all, an intolerable situation in a nation reeling from starvation and decimation. Happily, Deadly Medicine’s few substantive flaws can be easily rectified by further reading and research after a visit. And I suspect that those who have the privilege of visiting this highly praiseworthy exhibition will be moved to do exactly that. Arthur Caplan Emanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics; Chair, Department of Medical Ethics; and Director, Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA e-mail: caplan@mail.med.upenn.edu Used with permission from Arthur Caplan.

The Autism Prenatal Testing Eugenics Programme

2006-07-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

The Autism Prenatal Testing Eugenics Programme

The Autism Prenatal Testing Eugenics Programme

Some thoughts from B's Mum

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Imagine that a political leader went before the cameras, one day, to make a public announcement like this:
"We have a very serious crisis in dealing with a minority population of several million people. Educating their children in our schools is getting to be quite a bother. Providing services for them is too much of a nuisance and expense. They are just too different from us: their strange ways are incomprehensible, and we don't need them in our society. Therefore, we are building gas chambers that will be completed in 5 to 10 years, so that we can solve the problem once and for all."
Surely there would be a huge public outcry, you must be thinking, and everyone involved with the gas-chamber plan would be sacked immediately. We're good people, after all, and we couldn't possibly stand mute while such evil unfolded. Or could we?
"We have a very serious crisis in dealing with autism, a hereditary condition found in several million people. Educating autistic children is a burden to our schools. Providing services for the autistic population is too much of a drain on the budget. Autistic people are just too different from us: their behaviours are strange and incomprehensible, and we don't need them in our society. Therefore, we are funding genetic research studies that will result in a prenatal test within 5 to 10 years, so that we can solve the problem by putting pressure on frightened parents to abort them all."
Such studies are being funded in real life. Where is the public outcry?
The supporters of the eugenics programme say that it is a charitable effort to prevent suffering. An autistic life, they claim, is a defective and warped existence that cannot truly be considered a human life, and such unfortunate wretches would be better off dead.
There's just one problem with this claim: It's prejudiced rubbish without a shred of truth to it. Of course, you don't have to take my word as a mother of an autistic child. Instead, do your own research. An Internet search for autistic pride, autistic culture, or similar phrases will turn up large numbers of intelligent, articulate, caring autistic people who write eloquently about their families, their experiences, their moral values, the international culture that they share, and their desire for social acceptance and integration.

Autism Information Library: Then and Now

2006-07-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

Autism Information Library- Then and Now

Then and Now
1926, The Bad Old Days

A popular 1926 exhibit from the American Eugenics movement reads, "Some people are born to be a burden on the rest. Learn about heredity. You can help to correct these conditions." Five panels are displayed, with flashing lights on them.
The top one is captioned, "This light flashes every 15 seconds. Ever 15 seconds $100 of your money goes for the care of persons with bad heredity such as the insane, feeble-minded, criminals, and other defectives."
Under "America needs less of these," there is a light that flashes every 48 seconds -- "Every 48 seconds a person is born in the United states who will never grow up mentally beyond that stage of a normal 8 year old boy or girl" -- and one that flashes every 50 seconds -- "Every 50 seconds a person is committed to jail in the United States. Very few normal persons ever go to jail."
Under "America needs more of these," there is a light that flashes every 16 seconds -- "Every 16 seconds a person is born in the United States", and another that flashes every 7 and a half minutes -- "Every 7 1/2 minutes a high grade person is born in the United States who will have ability to do creative work and be fit for leadership. About 4% of all Americans come within this class."
These flashing-light exhibits were very popular at American eugenics exhibitions, and smaller, more portable versions were made to show everyone how rapidly all these costly and defective people were being born. These days, the eugenics movement is looked upon as a dismal part of American history that some would like to forget and others openly condemn. Few claim to want to repeat it.

2004, These Enlightened Times
A popular webgraphic from an organization devoted to "fighting autism" calls itself "The Autism Clock". It contains a current estimate of the number of autistic people between the ages of 3 and 22 in the American population, the "U.S. Annual Economic Cost", and the time when the next autistic person will be diagnosed. In the background is a pitiful-looking image of a child's face looking upwards.
The website this graphic is attached to describes the cost of "educating" and "caring" for autistic people as a "burden on parents and society", and compares us unfavorably to the less-expensive normal children, reducing human beings to numbers, dollars, and statistics. It promotes the usual cure and prevention to stop this, and urges people to post this graphic all over the web, showing how autistic people are diagnosed every 23 minutes, burdening more and more people.

HAVEN'T WE SEEN THIS BEFORE?

Scotsman.com News - Opinion - A skinhead mentality is the wrong approach to genetics

2006-06-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

Scotsman.com News - Opinion - A skinhead mentality is the wrong approach to genetics

A skinhead mentality is the wrong approach to genetics

DANI GARAVELLI
ANOTHER development in the field of genetic engineering, another round of predictable screeching.
With reproductive science advancing so quickly that new ethical dilemmas are pitched at us with the relentlessness force of a fast bowler at a Test match, it's a pity the debate on the issues it throws up is stuck in a groove carved out by the passing of the Abortion Act more than 30 years ago.
Take last week's offerings. First, fertility specialists announce they have developed a powerful new way to test embryos for inherited diseases such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), even when the mutation that causes them is unknown, allowing IVF couples to cherry-pick healthy embryos for implantation. Then, it emerges a London hospital has asked for permission to destroy male embryos conceived by couples with a family history of autism, on the grounds that they are more likely than the female ones to have the condition.
Developments like this are of huge significance and raise profound questions about the way in which we want the world to progress. The manner in which we use the scientific knowledge we accrue impacts not only on individual families, but on society as a whole. And it's important to make the right decisions from the beginning. Reproductive technology has its own momentum. If we get it wrong, there will be no back-tracking.
With this in mind, you would hope that we would be applying ourselves to coming up with sophisticated, 21st-century responses to multi-layered dilemmas. Instead, what we get is a debate with all the subtlety of a group of skinheads on immigration. Vested interests take up entrenched positions: pro-choicers versus anti-abortionists; religious absolutists versus atheists; idealists versus pragmatists. The rhetoric used on both sides is manipulatively emotive and needlessly insulting. But worse still, much of it is deliberately misleading.
I have lost count of the number of newspapers columns that laud genetic screening and IVF for "creating" healthy babies. Yet this is completely erroneous. What the process actually does is to allow them to identify and destroy unhealthy ones. Whether or not this is a good thing is a valid point for argument, but let's at least get the terms of reference right.
On the other side of the argument, opponents of genetic screening refer to it as "the thin end of the wedge", as if termination on the grounds of imperfection was a pernicious new concept. Yet, we have been testing for, and aborting foetuses with, Down's Syndrome for years, despite the fact that babies born with the condition have a reasonable quality of life and often live well into their forties or fifties. If this is already routine, then surely our consciences need not be troubled by the destruction of embryos with far more debilitating conditions.
The difference with IVF of course is the issue of selection: that someone is picking which embryo will be implanted and which destroyed. But since the success of IVF depends on producing surplus embryos, it seems eminently sensible to choose to implant the disease-free ones, and destroy the others, and not the other way round.
In order to move forward we need, first and foremost, to divest the debate of its religious baggage. To suggest concerns over the morality of genetic screening are confined to religious zealots who believe the right to take life resides with the Supreme Being is insulting both to the devout (because it implies faith is incompatible with more sophisticated thinking) and to those without (because it insinuates they place a lower value on prenatal life). You don't need to believe in the existence of a soul to feel uneasy about the destruction of "imperfect" embryos, nor do atheists have a monopoly on rationality.
Once we have done this, and long before we get to the nitty-gritty of actual law-making, there are some huge philosophical questions to mull over: for example, do we really believe it is possible to rid the world of disease, and even if it is, is it something we should aspire to? Is there such a thing as a right to a healthy baby? Is the eradication of pain an inherently good thing, or does pain have its own part to play in moulding humanity?
We also need to address the inconsistency in thinking that welcomes developments which help doctors detect and destroy embryos with debilitating conditions, on the one hand, and uses technological advances to save the lives of extremely premature and often severely brain-damaged babies, on the other.
For my part, I have residual doubts about the wisdom of the genetic screening of embryos, although I remain open-minded. On a human level, it would, of course, be difficult to deny a family, which has already lost two babies to a degenerative wasting disease, the opportunity to ensure their third was free of the condition. But, since the new test can apparently screen for 6,000 diseases - each of which will have a different impact on the sufferer - a blanket approach to genetic screening seems inappropriate.
As the medical ethics expert Sheila McLean once pointed out: to destroy an embryo with the breast cancer gene may be "to apply today's technology to tomorrow's adult." The baby in question may never contract the disease. And even if she does, it will be many years down the line, by which time doctors may have discovered a cure.
Instinctively, too, I feel that to destroy an embryo on the grounds that it is a carrier - rather than a sufferer - of a hereditary condition smacks more of social experimentation than good medicine. And yet, on a logical level it is clear that if hereditary diseases could be eradicated so would the need for genetic screening.
Because of the immense complexity of the issues, I hope the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority will continue to proceed cautiously, examining all the potential applications of each new development and ruling on an issue-by-issue basis. In the meantime, it is our duty to raise our game in contributing to the public debate. If we continue to get bogged down in facile name-calling and bitter anti-religious rants, then we will miss the boat. Science will march on regardless, and we will find ourselves in a landscape we scarcely recognise, and which we played no part in shaping.

This article:
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=926902006

History of Euthanasia

2006-04-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

History of Euthanasia

History of Euthanasia
About 400 B.C. - The Hippocratic Oath (By the "Father of Medicine' Greek physician Hippocrates)
"I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel"
Click here for full text of the Hippocratic Oath.
14th through 20th Century English Common Law (Excerpt is from the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1997 Washington v. Glucksberg - opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist.)
"More specifically, for over 700 years, the Anglo American common law tradition has punished or otherwise disapproved of both suicide and assisting suicide."

19th Century United States (Excerpt is from the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1997 Washington v. Glucksberg - opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist.)
That suicide remained a grievous, though nonfelonious, wrong is confirmed by the fact that colonial and early state legislatures and courts did not retreat from prohibiting assisting suicide. Swift, in his early 19th century treatise on the laws of Connecticut, stated that "[i]f one counsels another to commit suicide, and the other by reason of the advice kills himself, the advisor is guilty of murder as principal." 2 Z. Swift, A Digest of the Laws of the State of Connecticut 270 (1823). This was the well established common law view, see In re Joseph G., 34 Cal. 3d 429, 434-435, 667 P. 2d 1176, 1179 (1983); Commonwealth v. Mink, 123 Mass. 422, 428 (1877) ("`Now if the murder of one's self is felony, the accessory is equally guilty as if he had aided and abetted in the murder'") (quoting Chief Justice Parker's charge to the jury in Commonwealth v. Bowen, 13 Mass. 356 (1816)), as was the similar principle that the consent of a homicide victim is "wholly immaterial to the guilt of the person who cause[d] [his death]," 3 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 16 (1883); see 1 F. Wharton, Criminal Law §§451-452 (9th ed. 1885); Martin v. Commonwealth, 184 Va. 1009, 1018-1019, 37 S. E. 2d 43, 47 (1946) (" `The right to life and to personal security is not only sacred in the estimation of the common law, but it is inalienable' "). And the prohibitions against assisting suicide never contained exceptions for those who were near death. Rather, "[t]he life of those to whom life ha[d] become a burden--of those who [were] hopelessly diseased or fatally wounded--nay, even the lives of criminals condemned to death, [were] under the protection of law, equally as the lives of those who [were] in the full tide of life's enjoyment, and anxious to continue to live." Blackburn v. State, 23 Ohio St. 146, 163 (1872); see Bowen, supra, at 360 (prisoner who persuaded another to commit suicide could be tried for murder, even though victim was scheduled shortly to be executed).

1828 - Earliest American statute explicitly to outlaw assisting suicide (Excerpt is from the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1997 Washington v. Glucksberg - opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist.)
The earliest American statute explicitly to outlaw assisting suicide was enacted in New York in 1828, Act of Dec. 10, 1828, ch. 20, §4, 1828 N. Y. Laws 19 (codified at 2 N. Y. Rev. Stat. pt. 4, ch. 1, tit. 2, art. 1, §7, p. 661 (1829)), and many of the new States and Territories followed New York's example. Marzen 73-74. Between 1857 and 1865, a New York commission led by Dudley Field drafted a criminal code that prohibited "aiding" a suicide and, specifically, "furnish[ing] another person with any deadly weapon or poisonous drug, knowing that such person intends to use such weapon or drug in taking his own life." Id., at 76-77.
20th Century United States (Excerpt is from the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1997 Washington v. Glucksberg - opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist.)
Though deeply rooted, the States' assisted suicide bans have in recent years been reexamined and, generally, reaffirmed. Because of advances in medicine and technology, Americans today are increasingly likely to die in institutions, from chronic illnesses. President's Comm'n for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Deciding to Forego Life Sustaining Treatment 16-18 (1983). Public concern and democratic action are therefore sharply focused on how best to protect dignity and independence at the end of life, with the result that there have been many significant changes in state laws and in the attitudes these laws reflect. Many States, for example, now permit "living wills," surrogate health care decisionmaking, and the withdrawal or refusal of life sustaining medical treatment. See Vacco v. Quill, post, at 9-11; 79 F. 3d, at 818-820; People v. Kevorkian, 447 Mich. 436, 478-480, and nn. 53-56, 527 N. W. 2d 714, 731-732, and nn. 53-56 (1994). At the same time, however, voters and legislators continue for the most part to reaffirm their States' prohibitions on assisting suicide.

1920 The book "Permitting the Destruction of Life not Worthy of Life" was published.
In this book, authors Alfred Hoche, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, and Karl Binding, a professor of law from the University of Leipzig, argued that patients who ask for "death assistance" should, under very carefully controlled conditions, be able to obtain it from a physician. This book helped support involuntary euthanasia by Nazi Germany.

1935 The Euthanasia Society of England was formed to promote euthanasia.

1939 Nazi Germany (From "The History Place" web site)
"In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war Hitler ordered widespread "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled. Code named "Aktion T 4," the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate "life unworthy of life" at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry."
"The Nazi euthanasia program quickly expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler's decree of October, 1939, typed on his personal stationery and back dated to Sept. 1, enlarged '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.'"
Click here to go to Questionnaire for Nazi Euthanasia Program (1939).
Click here to go to Nurses' Participation in the Nazi Euthanasia Programs .
Click here to go to Sermon Delivered by Bishop Clemens August Count of Galen on August 3, 1941.
1995 Australia's Northern Territory approved a euthanasia bill

It went into effect in 1996 and was overturned by the Australian Parliament in 1997.
1998 U.S. state of Oregon legalizes assisted suicide

1999 Dr. Jack Kevorkian sentenced to a 10-25 year prison term for giving a lethal injection to Thomas Youk whose death was shown on the "60 Minutes" television program.

2000 The Netherlands legalizes euthanasia.

2002 Belgium legalizes euthanasia.

Click here to go to Euthanasia Definitions Page.
Return to the Euthanasia Home Page.

Nurses' Participation in the Nazi Euthanasia Programs

2006-04-08T15:13:00.000-07:00

Nurses' Participation in the Nazi Euthanasia Programs

www.baycrest.org
If Not Now....e-Journal
Nurses' Participation in the Nazi Euthanasia ProgramsSusan Benedict, CRNA, DSN, FAAN Professor College of Nursing Medical University of South Carolina Charleston, e-mail: Benedics@musc.edu Jochen Kuhla Krankenpfleger und Lehrer fur Pflegeberufe Albert-Schneider-Strasse 17 74821 Mosbach Germany
Originally published in the Western Journal of Nursing Research, April 1999, 21(2), 246-263.This project is the result of a fellowship for Research on Medical Ethics and the Holocaust granted to Susan Benedict by the Research Institute of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with funds provided by The Merck Company Foundation. Copyright, Susan Benedict Translation by Sabine Baumann.

Abstract
During the Nazi era, so-called "euthanasia programs" were established for handicapped and mentally ill children and adults. Organized killings of an estimated 70,000 German citizens took place at killing centers and in psychiatric institutions.
Nurses were active participants and killed over 10,000 people in these involuntary "euthanasia programs". After the war was over, most of the nurses were never punished for these crimes against humanity although some nurses were tried along with the physicians they assisted. One such trial was of 14 nurses and was held in Munich in 1965. Although some of these nurses reported that they struggled with a guilty conscience, others did not see anything wrong with their actions and believed that they were releasing these patients from their suffering.
The end of 1996 marked the 50th anniversary of the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg in which physicians were convicted of crimes against humanity. Although little has been written about the role of nurses in the Nazis' so-called "euthanasia" programs and the subsequent genocide known as the Holocaust, it is important to know of the involvement of nurses and to understand - to the extent possible - how nurses came to be active participants and, in fact, intentionally killed over 10,000 people in the Nazi era (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 219).
The German nurse-historian, Hilde Steppe, has written: "...we have a moral obligation to the millions of victims of National Socialism, even if it only means that, through historical research, we assure that they are not forgotten. By taking responsibility for this part of our history, we can become more sensitive for the future, with eyes and ears open for all social injustices" (Steppe, 1992, p. 753).
The purpose of this paper is to increase the awareness of the nurses' involvement in these crimes against humanity and, in so doing, present various factors that could have affected the individual nurses' decisions to commitment these actions against patients in their care.
BackgroundBefore the time of the genocide of millions known as the Holocaust, the German government established "euthanasia" programs for handicapped German children and adults. Nurses were participants in both. In reality, these programs had little to do with the contemporary understanding of the word "euthanasia". In actuality, the programs were the involuntary killing of handicapped children and adults that were sanctioned by the government and society.
The origins of planned euthanasia were in place earlier than the Nazi era. "The idea of ending 'lives not worth living' did not begin with the Nazis, but had been discussed in the legal and medical literatures since the end of the First World War", with supportive articles appearing in both European and American literature (Proctor, 1992, p. 24). In 1920, Dr. Alfred Hoche, a physician, and Karl Binding published a pamphlet entitled "The Sanctioning of the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living". The emphasis of the book was on the reduction of suffering of the acutely ill and their families (Nadav, 1994, p. 45). Later, in 1935, Hitler told the Reich physician leader, Dr. Gerhard Wagner, that he would implement euthanasia once war began (US Military Tribunal, Transcripts of the Proceedings in Case 1, p. 2482, Testimony of Karl Brandt).
The German people were exposed to the idea of euthanasia through posters, movies, and books supporting the destruction of "lives not worth living". A 1936 book entitled Sendung und Gewissen (Mission and Conscience) was published in Germany by an ophthalmologist and was widely read. This novel told the story of a young wife with multiple sclerosis who was euthanized by her physician-husband. This novel was important in preparing the ground for the euthanasia programs (Proctor, 1988, p. 183). It was made into a movie "Ich Klage an!" ("I Accuse") and was widely shown during these years. Two other popular movies of the time also dealt with euthanasia, Life Unworth Life (1934-1935) and Presence without Life (1940-1941) (Amir, 1977, p. 97). "Opfer der Vergangenheit (Victims of the Past, 1937) was produced under Hitler's direct order and shown by law in all 5,300 German theaters" (Michalczyk, 1994, p. 65). These films argued that keeping seriously ill people alive was against the basic principles of nature (Michalczyk, 1994, p. 65).
Posters were displayed throughout German showing a healthy German supporting on his shoulders the weight of handicapped individuals with the saying "You Are Sharing the Load! A Genetically Ill Individual Costs Approximately 50,000 Reichsmarks by the Age of Sixty" (Gross, 1935, p. 335). Even high school textbooks contained mathematical problems using the cost of caring for the mentally ill as examples (Dorner, 1935). The elderly and the ill, too, were considered by some to be burdens: "It must be made clear to anyone suffering from an incurable disease that the useless dissipation of costly medications drawn from the public store cannot be justified" and "...it made no sense for persons 'on the threshold of old age' to receive services such as orthopedic therapy or dental bridgework; such services were to be reserved for healthier elements of the population" (Proctor, 1988, p. 183). It is important to see these attitudes as the context for nursing at that time.
Bernberg Euthanasia Facility
The Children's Euthanasia Program Because of the prevalence of the negative attitude of the public toward the handicapped, "Parents were made to feel shame and embarrassment at having to raise an abnormal or malformed child" (Proctor, 1992, p. 25). The children's euthanasia program in Germany during the Nazi era is reported to have had its origin in the request by a father of a deformed and retarded child to Hitler to have this child killed. Hitler asked his personal physician to investigate the situation and the child was eventually killed. In 1936-1937, a secret "Reich Committee for the scientific registering of serious hereditary and congenital illnesses" was established in Hitler's Chancellory. This committee of three with medical and psychiatric expertise discussed euthanasia and, in 1939, drafted a prospective law calling for the "destruction of life unworthy of life". This prospective law would have provided legal sanction for "killing people suffering from serious congenital mental or physical 'malformation', because they required long-term care, aroused 'horror' in other people, and were situated on 'the lowest animal level'" (Burleigh, 1994, p. 98).
In 1939, a Ministry of Justice commission proposed the following: Clause 1: Whoever is suffering from an incurable or terminal illness which is a major burden to him or others, can request mercy killing by a doctor, provided it is his express wish and has the approval of a specially empowered doctor.
Clause 2: The life of a person who because of incurable mental illness requires permanent institutionalization and is not able to sustain an independent existence, may be prematurely terminated by medical measures in a painless and covert manner (Burleigh, 1994, p. 99).
It became compulsory to register all "malformed" newborn children with the Reich Committee. The Reich Committee for Research on Hereditary Diseases and Constitutional Susceptibility to Severe Diseases "was an organization for the killing of children who were born mentally deficient or bodily deformed. All physicians attending at births, midwives, and maternity hospitals were ordered by the Ministry of Interior to report such cases"... (Office of US Chief of Council for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Document Number 630--PS, 17 September 1945). Three referees - two pediatricians and one physician director of a psychiatric institution - were to decide which of the reported children were to be killed. These physicians made the decisions without seeing the children and based solely upon the diagnoses of the midwives and reporting physicians.
When the Public Health Offices were notified of a decision they were to arrange for the child's admission to one of approximately thirty inpatient pediatric clinics. The Reich Committee promised the parents that the child would be treated by specialists in the clinic and this promise often allowed the parents to believe they were acting in the child's best interest. "Other parents were talked into parting with their child by their family doctor, or by public health or national Socialist People's Welfare nurses doing the round of family home visits or servicing mothers' advisory centers" (Burleigh, 1994, p. 102).
The Killings At the specialized centers, children who were designated by the Reich Committee for euthanasia were killed shortly after arrival by medication or were starved to death. In the pediatric unit of Haar, for example, 332 children died of deliberate starvation or by an overdose of Luminal [Phenobarbital]. This drug was mixed into the children's food every morning and night until they became unconscious and developed pneumonia. Some were also given injections of morphine and scopolamine (Burleigh, 1994, p. 102).
The nursing staff of the pediatric unit of Haar was led by a senior nurse, Emma D., and two younger colleagues, Emma L. and Maria S. They were forced to swear an oath of loyalty, pledging eternal silence regarding what went on in the clinic, under pain of death. Initially, however, they swallowed the line that what they were doing was scientifically important, rationalizing the high number of deaths as being merely what one might call collateral casualties. Although they sometimes requested transfers, and undoubtedly found the work disturbing, nonetheless they also regarded it as necessary to 'release' the 'regrettable creatures' in their care from their suffering. Like many nurses who worked in these clinics, they received a 25RM-per-month [approximately $80 US] supplementary payment, know pejoratively as 'Schmutzgeld' [dirty money]. The doctors sometimes received a 250RM [approximately $800 US] Christmas bonus. In some clinics (notoriously the Kalmenhof at Idstein), the tensions of the job were soothed by a visit to the wine cellars to mark every fiftieth killing with copious amounts of wine and cider (Burleigh, 1994, p. 104-105).
An estimated 5,000 children were killed during the so-called children's euthanasia program (US Military Tribunal, Transcripts of the Proceedings in Case 1, p. 177, Testimony of Karl Brandt).
The "T-4" Adult Euthanasia Program In 1939, Hitler issued an order to expand the euthanasia program to "the worthless lives of seriously ill mental patients" which would "result in certain savings in terms of hospitals, doctors and nursing staff" (Friedlander, 1995, p. 63). In order to do this, the Reich Committee was expanded from the original three members to include a number of academics and asylum directors. The organization went by the name "Aktion T-4", named after the location of the offices, Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Charlottenburg [a district of Berlin].
In July 1939, these men were told that a number of psychiatric patients had to be killed to make hospital space for war casuals and to free up nursing staff (Burleigh, 1994, p. 119). Six killing centers were set up in existing psychiatric hospitals - Grafeneck, Brandenburg, Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Bernburg, and Hadamar (Office of US Chief of Council for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Document Number 630-PS, 17 September 1945).
In 1941, Hadamar "celebrated the cremation of its ten-thousandth patient in a special ceremony, where everyone in attendance - secretaries, nurses, and psychiatrists - received a bottle of beer for the occasion" (Proctor, 1992, p. 25).
Although the children were killed with injections or starvation, these methods were not efficient for the large number of adults at the killing centers. In these locations, gas was used. Patients were transported by bus from local and regional hospitals to the killing centers. "At the killing center, the arriving patients were met by the staff and led to the reception room by a male or female nurse, who might have accompanied them on their trip" (Friedlander, 1995, p. 94). Patients were examined individually by a physician, photographed, and measured. They were then taken to gas chambers which were disguised as shower rooms. "The patients were already prepared for the showers because, while they were undressing, the nurses had told them that they would be bathed" (Friedlander, 1995, p. 95). "Most patients accepted the nurses' explanation that they were going to the showers..." (Friedlander, 1995, p. 96). "On rare occasions, nurses might even have to remove bodies from the gas chamber, a job usually reserved for unskilled laborers" (Friedlander, 1995, p. 101).
By 1941, more than 70,000 patients from German mental hospitals had been killed (US National Archives and Records, Record Group 338, Microfilm Publication T-1021, Roll 18, Frame 98). Later the killing centers were used for the killing of selected concentration camp prisoners in the "Special Treatment 14f13" euthanasia program (Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes, Document Number 3354).
Memorial to the victims of the "euthanasia" program. According to records kept by the Nazi regime, 9,385 mentally and physically handicapped persons were murdered here between November 21, 1940, and August 24, 1941. Some 5,000 concentration camp prisoners were also sent to the Bernburg euthanasia facility.
The "Wild" Euthanasia Programs Hitler ordered the organized euthanasia program for the adults to end in August 1941. The killings had become public knowledge and opposition to the programs came from individuals and churches; however, the children's euthanasia program continued without interruption and the stop order applied only to the killings in the gas chambers of the killing centers. "As with the children, after the stop order, physicians and nurses killed handicapped adults with tablets, injections, and starvation. In fact, more victims of euthanasia perished after the stop order was issued than before" (Friedlander, 1995, p. 151).
Just as the children had never been killed in gas chambers, but by medication or starvation, the "selected" adults were killed by physicians and nurses in designated institutions. This decentralized euthanasia program was called by the killers "wild" euthanasia (United States National Archives and Records, Record Group 238, Microfilm Publication M-1019, Roll 46). Killing hospitals were set up at Hadamar, Meseritz-Obrawalde, and Tiegenhof (Dziekanka) but killings were not limited to these institutions. Many handicapped patients were killed at other hospitals throughout the region (Friedlander, 1995, p. 152).
During the "wild" euthanasia phase, handicapped patients that were to be killed at the killing centers arrived by transport, often in the middle of the night. The staff selected for killing patients who were unable to work as well as "patients who caused extra work for the nurses, those who were deaf-mute, ill, obstructive, or undisciplined, and anyone else who was simply annoying" (Friedlander, 1995, p. 160). Those selected to be killed were "taken to so-called killing rooms where physicians and nurses killed them using orally-administered drug overdoses or lethal injections." "After they had been killed by the male and female nurses" (Friedlander, 1995, p. 161), fraudulent death certificates were prepared and the bodies were cremated. Families were notified of the deaths of these relatives and could receive an urn of ashes purported to be those of their loved one. In reality, the urns contained combined ashes of many people from the crematorium.
At the beginning of 1942, the first trains with about 700 patients arrived at Obrawalde. At the end of the year and especially in 1943 these trains arrived more and more frequently. From all parts of Germany patients were abducted to be killed in Obrawalde. All the nurses and orderlies - according to their statements - had to "unload" the patients. The ill persons were in horrible condition: many were emaciated and they were very dirty. This condition contributed to the fact that the nursing personnel were able to distance themselves emotionally from those people who had been brought into such a condition beneath human dignity and that the personnel, without considerable pressure, could be convinced to kill thousands of people (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 224). "When questioned, the senior nurse Ratajczak estimated that 18,000 people had been killed at Obrawalde. Her estimate corresponds to other statements. In later legal proceedings mostly a number of 10,000 patients killed by nursing personnel at Meseritz-Obrawalde are stated" (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 219).
Anna G. had been a nurse at the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Treptow (Healing and nursing institution - a state hospital and nursing home) for more than ten years. When it closed, she and other nurses were transferred to Obrawalde. She was accused of participating in the killing of 150 patients.
When the round was finished, the patients selected by Dr. Mootz had to be taken to the extra room. Generally the nurse on duty had to undress the patients and take them to the extra room. Depending on the circumstances, there were different methods. If the patient was very confused or ill to such an extent that she didn't think about it, after having her undress, I just took her to the extra room. If the patients were in their right minds and could see through everything, we told them that their health condition had improved in a manner that they only would have to take a cure in order to get discharged. The patients believed us in most cases and undressed themselves voluntarily, so we didn't have any difficulties with them. We really wanted to make the last way as easy as possible for the selected patients. In this connection I remember that one patient was a strict Catholic and the last day she asked for a priest to get the last sacraments. I remember very clearly and can say with absolute certainty that the priest was informed before the killing and that the patient, who at least that day was completely in her right mind, got the last sacraments from the priest.
I can't remember that I ever appointed a younger nurse to help me. Young nurses deliberately weren't appointed to participate in the killings because we feared they couldn't be able to keep their mouths shut.
If my memory serves me right, the patients supposed to be killed weren't taken to the extra room together. I think the second patient was only taken to the extra room when the first one was starting to fall asleep. We then covered her with a towel.
The killing of patients was never done by only one nurse. Practical experience had shown that it was absolutely necessary for the killing to be done by at least two nurses. I will give the reasons for this necessity. Nurses are also only humans and the strength of their nerves is limited. I think the two nurses had to support and help each other when doing the killings. The killing of a person is a hard strain on the nerves of the person doing it. After all, it could have been possible that the strong nerves of one nurse wouldn't have been enough. I will express by this that one nurse could have fainted or she could have shrunk back. But when two or more worked together, the other would have helped to surmount the weak moment. But the cooperation was not only absolutely necessary for psychological, but also for practical, reasons. I didn't experience it one single time that a patient would take such a large quantity of dissolved medicine voluntarily. It's a fact of experience that medicine doesn't taste good and people generally are not readily prepared to take medicine. The same can be said with regard to injections. Almost all of our patients were scared of injections. In order to give the dissolved medicine, particularly the injections, and the cooperation of at least two nurses was necessary.
When giving the dissolved medicine, I proceeded with a lot of compassion. I had told patients that they would have to take a cure. Of course I could tell these fairy tales only to those patients who were still in their right minds to the extent that they could understand it. I took them lovingly and stroked them when I gave the medicine. If, for example, a patient did not empty the entire cup because it was too bitter, I talked to her nicely, telling her that she had already drunk so much that she would drink the rest, otherwise her cure couldn't be finished. Some could be convinced to empty the cup completely. In other cases, I gave the medicine by the spoonful. Like I already told you, our procedure depended on the condition of the patients. Old women, for example, who had to be fed couldn't drink on their own so it wasn't possible to give them the medicine by the spoonful. They were not to be tortured more than necessary and I thought it would be better to give them an injection. In this connection, I would like to say that, like me, Luise E. [Erdmann], Margarete Ratajczak, and Erna E. thought that the patients were not to be tortured more than necessary (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 239).
The accused was asked if patients knew what was going to happen to them. She responded: The patients didn't notice it for a long period. Later there were a few of them who did notice it. Possibly they realized that the physician pointed his finger to individual patients and talked about them to the senior nurse and those patients were taken to the so-called small room. It is also possible that the patients, or a few of them, observed that the patients didn't come back alive from that room. When I gave the above-mentioned patient the injection, I didn't talk to her anymore. The patient also didn't talk anymore. It was a patient in a condition that had to be described as bad. I think the patient didn't notice anything. In general, some patients anxiously already had lifted themselves in the bed. Some drank the medicine on their own. Also, the dose varied from one patient to the other.
In one case, on request of the patient, I called a priest. It was the same priest I already mentioned before and who is living now in East Germany. A colleague told me that this patient would ask for me so I went to see her. The patient told me that it was her turn the next day. I didn't know that. She asked me to get a priest because she wanted to confess. The patient knew exactly what was going on. She asked me to tell her relatives as soon as she was dead that she had passed away peacefully. She also asked me to give her the rosary after her death (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 241).
Why The Nurses Participated After almost fifty years of postwar proceedings, proof has not been provided in a single case that someone who refused to participate in killing operations was shot, incarcerated, or penalized in any way, except perhaps through transfer to the front which was, after all, the destiny of most German soldiers. But it is possible that putative duress did apply, that is, these young, impressionable nurses might have believed that the intimidating Christian Wirth [ the supervisor at Hartheim hospital] would place them in a concentration camp" (Friedlander, 1995, p. 235-236).
The following reasons for not refusing to participate were provided by the nurses of Meseritz-Obrawalde hospital: Helene Wieczorek [accused of killing 'several hundred' patients]: Director Grabowski told us we had to help the senior nurses - it was too much for them. We also would have to give the injections. First I refused and he said that there was no point in it because, being a civil servant of many years standing, I would perform my duty, especially in times of war. He added, it would be a law that the incurable mentally ill persons were to be released from their suffering. (...) I only did my duty and I did everything on order of my superiors. The Director Grabowski always warned us of the Gestapo. He said he would inform the Gestapo if we didn't do what he ordered (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 219).
Luise Erdmann. [The main defendant of the trial, accused of participating in the killing of 210 patients]: Through the behavior of Dr. Wernicke I realized that incurable patients were to be released by giving them Veronal [barbiturate acid] or another medicine. I also declare that I, neither by Dr. Wernicke nor any other person at the home, have been informed about the euthanasia. I wasn't sworn to secrecy in this respect... I was of the opinion that one took it for granted or believed that I would approve of euthanasia. My attitude to euthanasia was, should I become incurably ill - I don't make a difference between mental or physical illness - I would consider it as a release if a physician or, on direction of a physician, another person would give me a dose releasing me from everything. Despite my attitude to euthanasia, I have - when confronted with the problem - fought out serious inner conflicts. Euthanasia, in the form I experienced it at that time, after all was a killing of people and I asked myself if a legislator had the right at all to order or permit the killing of people. Never, however, did I hear about a corresponding law on the use of euthanasia but, on the other hand, Dr. Mootz explained to me once that there was no need for reservation as, should the situation arise, he would cover up for me. From this statement I concluded that there had to be legality for euthanasia (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 232).
In my first questioning I expressed that, for me, there were justified and unjustified cases of euthanasia. In my opinion, I described so clearly what I understand by justified and unjustified cases during my first questioning, that I don't need to give an additional explanation in this matter. A refusal in those cases which I regarded as justified would have been illogical so I don't have to give further explanation of this.
It was different with the cases where I didn't regard the killing as necessary or appropriate. When I did participate in those killings and thus acted against my inner attitude and conviction, this happened because I was used to obey strictly the orders of the physicians. I was brought up and instructed to do so. As a nurse or orderly, you don't have the level of education of a physician and thus one can't evaluate if the order of the physician is right. The permanent process of obeying the order of a physician becomes second nature to the extent that one's own thinking is switched off. (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 234).
I was and still am without interruption of the Protestant faith. I must say that basically I describe the whole Protestant faith also as my faith. I would like to express by this that the commandment "Du sollst nicht toten" (Thou Shall Not Kill) is truth for me. When I did the killings, I must admit that I offended this commandment. But as I expressed in my questioning, I didn't do it with a light heart but only after serious inner fights I obeyed the orders. ... I had to consider that one physician who, after all, also is only a human being, could make mistakes in diagnosis or prognosis. I realized that I offended seriously the divine and moral law by participating in the killings. I would only moderate my guilt by trusting strictly that the physician didn't make a mistake. But as I couldn't completely exclude a mistake, I prayed to my God to forgive me in such a case. In addition, I have to suppose that the ill people selected to be killed by the physicians were such seriously ill people that even in case of a mistake I had to see it as a release for them.
I estimate it important to say that the attitude of people to life and death depends on the situation. I spent my whole life in nursing and experienced more than usual the living and dying of people. I'll not express by this that by experiencing it I became harder, but only that my attitude and position to these human problems was a different one. I was aware of the fact that a person was killed but I didn't see it as a murder but as a release (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 236).
Anna G. [accused of participating in the killing of 150 patients]: It is true that I was brought up as a Christian and that for my whole life I was convinced of the Christian faith. On the other hand, during my work, especially on the ward for the insane, I have seen such horrible misery and have seen all of the different sicknesses until the terminal stage. In view of these experiences, I have seen it as an act of mercy and a release when the killings were done.... I herewith declare that I have never been forced by anybody to participate.... I would never have committed a bank robbery or other theft because that is just not done. In addition, theft wouldn't have belonged to my tasks. I would never have committed a theft because I know one isn't allowed to do it (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 236).
Martha W. [accused of participating in the killing of 150 patients]: I've always disapproved of euthanasia. In the course of my work as a nurse, I could see that a lot of patients were sent to the mental institution who before had been very estimable people. It was a big injustice for me to kill those people because of their illness. When I'm reproached for the fact that I was brought up as a Catholic and the commandments also represent my convictions, this is correct. Until today, it is my conviction that people are not allowed to interfere. Nevertheless, I participated in the killings and I recognize that I acted against the commandments and my conviction and have burdened my conscience seriously. The only explanation I can give is that I didn't have enough time to think about it at that time because the nurses were put under a lot of stress (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 240).
Erna D.: Please believe me, that I didn't do it readily because I really detested it. I repeat, I didn't do it readily. In fact, I can't say why I didn't refuse (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 243).
Margarete T. [accused of killing 150 patients]: I was brought up as a Christian and still today I'm a very religious person and, as far as possible, I attend the service regularly. For this reason, when the killings began at Ward U1, I felt deeply guilty and still do today. (...) Due to the many years of working as a nurse, practically from since I was young, I was educated to strict obedience, and discipline and obedience were the supreme rules among the nurses. We all, including me, took the orders of the physicians, head nurses, and ward nurses as orders to be strictly obeyed to and didn't or couldn't form our own opinion about the legality of these orders. (...) I was a civil servant at that time and, on one hand, I was sworn to secrecy and, on the other hand, I was obliged to obey given orders. I think at that time, I've always lived in conflict with my own opinion and the fact that I was a civil servant. On the one hand I saw the killing of people, even though it was incurable mentally handicapped people who exclusively were accommodated on Ward U1 as a big injustice and often asked myself why it was done. On the other hand, I was a civil servant and obliged to do my work and didn't see a possibility of getting around the orders. (...) You ask me if I had also committed a theft on order, I say that I wouldn't have done it. I saw, however, the act of giving medicine, even in order to kill mentally handicapped persons, as an obligation I wasn't allowed to refuse. In case of refusal, I always imagined my dismissal from the job of nurse and civil servant, which is why I didn't refuse (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 244).
Meta P. [when asked why she became implicated in the killing of patients]: Among the nurses there was strict discipline and every subordinate nurse was obliged to strictly execute the orders of the superior (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 244).
Berta H. [accused of participating in the killing of 35 patients]: In other words, at that time I thought, I wouldn't be guilty if I didn't do the actual killings. To my own conscience, I always felt a little bit guilty and I tried to cope with it as far as possible to forget everything (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 244).
Martha Elisabeth G. [accused of killing 28 patients]: Certainly I felt guilty about it at that time and, although I didn't do any killings by myself, I did help and I had a certain felling of guilt. I'm only an ordinary nurse,...and never realized that, legally speaking, I had become implicated in the killings. When I had to assist in the killings, I acted under duress and never with the intention to kill a person. (...) At that time, nobody would have helped us at Obrawalde if we had refused to do the work and there wasn't anybody to pour out one's heart to and who we could trust. As a sort of slaves we were completely at the mercy of the rulers and their political line (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 245).
Edith B.: Although I knew, respectively assumed from hearsay, that at Ward U2 (...) killings were done and the patients I moved to that ward possibly were condemned women, I didn't see anything wrong with it (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 245).
Margarete Maria M. [accused of killing three patients]: If I had refused to execute her [another nurse's] orders, I would have been dismissed. I could have quit the job, but at that time I was obliged to support my grandparents in Meseritz (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 245).
Gertrude F. [accused of killing five patients]: When I did it by preparing the medicine, I did it without any knowledge of legal consequences. The preparation of medicine in order to give it to the patient actually was one of my duties which was one of the reasons why I didn't realize that I did something wrong. I wasn't able to see a direct connection between my work and the killings. In addition you have to consider that I had worked in a mental institution for years and that the nurses were obliged to strictly obey their superiors, the senior nurses, the physicians and, last but not least, the director of the institution. In addition, I was the youngest nurse at our ward. Still today, I haven't completely become aware of my wrongdoing (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 245).
Erna Elfriede E. [accused of participating in the killing of 200 patients]: They didn't make me swear on a secret matter of the Reich and I wasn't sworn to silence. (...) I considered the killings as injustice. Something like that was not supposed to happen, because nobody was allowed to order it. I was brought up quite as a Christian. I already learned as a child what one may and mustn't do. I learned that one mustn't steal and mustn't kill. [When asked why she didn't refuse to participate in the killings] Because I was ordered to do it. When I am asked again, why I didn't refuse, although I realized that it was an injustice, I can't give an answer to this question. I do and did in the past have a strong feeling of guilt but it is impossible for me to give a reason for the fact that I didn't refuse. It simply was ordered and I had to execute the orders (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 246
Analytic Framework for Understanding the Nurses' Participation Ideological Commitment It is essential to understand the societal values of the Nazi era. The concept of the "life not worthy of life" was a widely held value. The severely mentally and physically ill were considered to be living less than a human existence. This devaluation of the handicapped had its origins in the eugenics movement which was widely embraced in Europe as well as the US. The Third Reich's quest for the development of a superior race called for the elimination of those judged to be "inferior", whether because of handicap, race, or ethnicity.
Humans with severe imperfections were to be prevented from reproducing through involuntary sterilization and others were to be eliminated. The term "useless eaters" was often applied to severely handicapped and others regarded as non-productive (Friedlander, 1995, p. 61). Added to this were also the economic needs of the time. Valuable resources were to go to the war effort and to those who could work and be productive. Perhaps these nurses saw their actions as being congruent with these values.
This is similar to the view of the ethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan who stated that, in his belief, physicians did not set aside their ethics during the Holocaust but saw their actions as congruent with their ethical commitment to heal the people ("Healing the Volk") through the elimination of undesirable elements (Caplan, 1992). Furthermore, many people believed that euthanasia was not "illegal" although a law permitting euthanasia had, in fact, never been passed in Germany (Proctor, 1988, p. 183).
The belief that they were doing nothing wrong or even doing something of benefit was apparent in the statements of several of the nurses who seemed surprised that there were "legal consequences" to their actions. Two (Edith B. and Gertrude F.) Stated that they didn't see anything wrong with it and three others saw the killings as "releasing people from their suffering". Only seven of these fourteen nurses indicated feelings of some degree of guilt over their participation in the killings.
Obedience A second aspect to consider is that of the obedience. Obedience was greatly valued in Germany and nurses were to be obedient to their senior ranking nurses as well as to physicians. In the hospitals, nurses collaborated with physicians in the killings.
This collaboration was usually voluntary. The physicians were given the choice of accepting or declining, and they in turn gave that choice to their nurses. In the hierarchical German hospital system, as in that of most other counties, nurses were trained to obey physicians and often had a dependent relationship with the physicians they assisted. Although this was hardly an excuse for following orders to kill, as the refusal of some to do so proves, it does help explain the motives of some nurses" (Friedlander, 1995, p. 231). It is difficult for us, as contemporary nurses, to imagine that degree of obedience.
Perceptions of powerlessness were evident in the statements of several of the nurses who "didn't see a way around the orders, didn't have anyone to talk to, had no one trust if they told" and "was the youngest nurse on the ward". Others, however, did not remain powerless. They relocated, changed jobs, asked for transfers, and became pregnant (Friedlander, 1995, p. 236).
Role of ReligionReligion has had an effect on the nurses' participation in three ways: as an effect upon the individual, as an element of nursing education, and by its effects upon society. Individual religious commitment and its congruence or conflict with participation in the euthanasia program as been established in the testimony of several nurses at their trials. Several of the nurses did see themselves as religious persons and some, although not all, did admit to having guilty consciences over their killings.
During this era, nursing education was based on religion. There were Catholic and Deaconess nursing programs - both of which incorporated religion into their nursing curricula. Similarly, the religious affiliation of the institutions was a factor. Catholic hospitals were not used as euthanasia sites although patients from these institutions were transferred elsewhere for euthanasia with the knowledge of those employed at the Catholic hospital. It was religion - in the person of Bishop Galen - that is thought to have contributed to a cessation of the euthanasia program (but not an end to euthanasia). Knowledge of the euthanasia programs had become widespread among the population and, in August 1941, Bishop Galen delivered a sermon in which he described the killing of patients, including their registration and transfer. Copies of the sermon were dropped by the RAF over Germany. Shortly thereafter, Hitler ordered a stop to the gassing of patients. This order did not apply to the children's euthanasia program.
Role of Nursing Education and the Nursing Professional Organizations The role of nursing education in the nurses' participation has overlap with both gender and religion. Nursing education was different for males and females. Most female nurses were educated in religious-based institutions. The professional nursing organizations that wee established during the Nazi era were separate for male and females nurses. The female nurses' organizations included the (1) Protestant Nursing Orders, (2) Catholic Sisterhoods, (3) Red Cross Sisterhoods, (4) Federation of Professional Nurses, and (5) the Sister hood of the National Socialists. In 1939, only 9% of the nurses were members of the Nazi sisterhood. The main employment of the Nazi nurses was in community health nursing because this area could provide the greatest opportunity for influencing the population. It was not, therefore, only the Nazi nurses who were involved in the euthanasia programs.
Putative DuressFear of the consequences of refusing to participate in the killings - "would be reported to the Gestapo if refused" and "afraid of losing job" - was not frequently cited by these nurses but has been given by other nurses as the reason for not refusing to help with the killings (Friedlander, 1995, p. 236). Certainly, the Gestapo was greatly feared during this era. In at least one institution, the nurses were made to sign pledges of silence under threat of death if they discussed the euthanasia program at their institution (Richarz, 1987). For the male nurses, there was always the threat of being sent to the Eastern front.
Economic factors made have been an influence for some nurses. Nurses working on the euthanasia units received additional pay and/or bonus payments. For example, the nurses in the children's euthanasia wards at Eglfing-Haar received about $80 extra per month (Burleigh, 1994, p. 104-105). Other nurses later testified that they continued to work in the euthanasia programs because they were afraid of losing their jobs (Ebbinghaus, 1987). As civil servants, the nurses had benefits not available with all other jobs.
Conclusion Following the end of World War II, some nurses were tried with the physicians they had assisted (United States National Archives and Records, Record Group 338, Case File 12-449, US v. Alfons Klein; Testimony of Pauline Kneissler, Document NO-470 US Military Tribunal Case Number 1, Tribunal 1, US v. Karl Brandt et al). When the Russians invaded and found the conditions at Obrawalde, they made the senior nurse, Ratajczak, reenact the killings. She, along with an orderly, was shot a few days later (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 218). The other nurses of Obrawalde were later tried for the killings. On March 12, 1965, "all fourteen women accused in the Munchner Schwesternprozess (nurses' trial at Munich) were proven not guilty because of acting as an accessory to murder" (Ebbinghaus, 1987, p. 246).
It may never be possible to fully understand the participation of nurses in crimes that would seem to be unthinkable today yet their participation must continue to be studied so that nursing never again finds itself in the role of killer. Proponents of the "slippery slope" argument hold that the involvement of health care professionals in assisted suicide could begin the downward decline into voluntary euthanasia then involuntary euthanasia. Others believe that the circumstances in Nazi Germany will never be replicated, thus making the recurrence of the involvement of nurses and physicians in killings impossible.
ReferencesAmir, A. (1977). Euthanasia in Nazi Germany. Dissertation, State University of New York at Albany. University Microfilms International, 77-32, 241. Burleigh, M. (1994). "Wheels must roll for victory!" Children's 'euthanasia' and 'Aktion T-4'. In Death and Deliverance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Caplan, A. (1992). In the Shadow of the Third Reich: Nazi Medicine, a film by John Michalczyk, Boston College. Donner, A. (1935). Mathematik im Dienste der nationalpolitischen Erziehung. Cited in Proctor, R. (1988). The destruction of "lives not worth living". In Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ebbinghaus, A. (1987). Opfer und Taterinnen. Germany: Delphi Politik. Friedlander, H. (1995). The Origins of Nazi Genocide. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Gross, W. (1935). Drei jahre rassenpolitische Aufklarungsarbeit, Volk und Rasse, 10(1935). Cited in Proctor, R. (1988). The destruction of "lives not worth living". In Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Michalczyk, J. (1994). Euthanasia in Nazi propaganda films: Selling murder. In Medicine, Ethics, and the Third Reich: Historical and Contemporary Issues. Kansas City: Sheed and Ward. Nadav, D. (1994). Sterilization, "euthanasia" and the Holocaust - the brutal chain. In Medicine, Ethics, and the Third Reich: Historical and Contemporary Issues. Kansas City: Sheed and Ward. Edited by J. J. Michalczyk. National Archives and Records, Record Group 338, Case File 12-449, US v. Alfons Klein; Testimony of Pauline Kneissler, Document NO-470 US Military Tribunal Case Number 1, Tribunal 1, US v. Karl Brandt et al. National Archives and Records, Record Group 338, Microfilm Publication T-1021, Roll 18, Frame 98. National Archives and Records, Record Group 238, Microfilm Publication M-1019, Roll 46. Office of US Chief of Council for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Document Number 630--PS, 17 September 1945. Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes, Document Number 3354. Proctor, R. (1988). The destruction of "lives not worth living". In Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Proctor, R. (1992). Nazi doctors, racial medicine, and human experimentation. In The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code. Edited by Annas, G. and Grodin, M. New York: Oxford University Press. Richarz, B. (1987). Heilen, Pflegen, Toten. Gottingen: Verlag fur Med. Psychologie im Verl. Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 188. Steppe, H. (1989). Krankenpflege im Nationalsocialismus, Frankfurt am Main: mabuse Verlang. Steppe, H. (1992). Nursing in Nazi Germany. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 14(6). US Military Tribunal, Transcripts of the Proceedings in Case 1, p. 2482, Testimony of Karl Brandt.

Protecting the Innocents: People with Disabilities and Physician-Assisted Dying

2006-04-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

Protecting the Innocents: People with Disabilities and Physician-Assisted Dying Nightingale Alliance® Euthanasia Opposition - Resources, End of Life Alternatives

Protecting the Innocents: People with Disabilities and Physician-Assisted Dying
By Anita SilversAnita Silvers, Protecting the Innocents: People With Disabilities and Physician-Assisted Dying, 166 W. J. MED. 407 (1997). At its core, the anxiety of the disability community is fueled by distrust of medical professionals' commitment to the value of the lives of people with disabilities. Again, the ones most agitated by the thought of increased access to death are those best supported by personal care services. For instance, describing his satisfying life in a pleasant apartment in Berkeley as evidence that quadriplegics have no reason to die, Mark O'Brien doesn't mention that he is supported and cared for, that the breathing equipment on which he depends must be acquired and maintained, and that attendants must be secured and compensated. His achievement in organizing this support is at least as remarkable as the successes he reports in his column (he has a girlfriend, publishes poetry, writes for newspapers). But to extract the level of care he needs, O'Brien must convince others that furnishing it is the preferable course not just for him but also for those who provide his care. Arguably, if society's options for relating to Mark O'Brien were not limited to two-supporting his current self-directed life or relegating him to subjugated dependence-the cost-effectiveness of his independent life might be less evident. Society may choose to sustain people with serious disabilities in misery or in a way in which they thrive. Of the two options, suffering or flourishing, the latter is desirable and humane. But adding a third alternative-the possibility of not sustaining persons with disabilities at all-changes the options, weakening the "flourish" position with which people with disabilities leverage a higher level of care. This third option diffuses responsibility for sustaining those with disabilities. The need to care for people with disabilities can be discharged by one of two means: people without disabilities may help people with disabilities become self-supporting, or, if the former course is rejected as too difficult, people with disabilities may "volunteer" to erase their very presence. Which choice will seem preferable to people without disabilities? Would it be the option that requires their active commitment to improve the social participation of a person with a disability? Or would it be the option in which they need do nothing but induce the person with a disability to solve the problem for them?
Posted on June 26, 2004.

We had to kill our patients | the Daily Mail

2006-03-26T19:05:00.000-08:00

We had to kill our patients the Daily Mail

We had to kill our patients
by C AROLINE GRAHAM and JO KNOWSLEY, Mail on Sunday 09:01am 11th September 2005

Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.
In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

New Orleans: Doctors forced to 'play God'

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials. One emergency official, William 'Forest' McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."
Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana, and The Mail on Sunday is protecting the identities of the medical staff concerned to prevent them being made scapegoats for the events of last week.
Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of American authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless.
'These people were going to die anyway'
The doctor said: "I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right.
"I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony. If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul."
The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of being murdered by the armed looters, said: "This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days. We did not put people down. What we did was give comfort to the end.
"I had cancer patients who were in agony. In some cases the drugs may have speeded up the death process.
"We divided patients into three categories: those who were traumatised but medically fit enough to survive, those who needed urgent care, and the dying.
"People would find it impossible to understand the situation. I had to make life-or-death decisions in a split second.
"It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity.
"There were patients with Do Not Resuscitate signs. Under normal circumstances, some could have lasted several days. But when the power went out, we had nothing.
"Some of the very sick became distressed. We tried to make them as comfortable as possible.
"The pharmacy was under lockdown because gangs of armed looters were roaming around looking for their fix. You have to understand these people were going to die anyway."
Mr McQueen, a utility manager for the town of Abita Springs, half an hour north of New Orleans, told relatives that patients had been 'put down', saying: "They injected them, but nurses stayed with them until they died."
Mr McQueen has been working closely with emergency teams and added: "They had to make unbearable decisions."

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What a truly awful situation for anyone to be in. They did what they had to do under those circumstances and it is not for any of us to judge. If we believe in a merciful God, we know they will be judged with mercy. Contrast their actions with the couple who left the residents of the Nursing Home they owned to die when they fled to safety having refused evacuation.- Valerie, Amman, Jordan
I hope the people died with dignity like they should with the circumstances that I can only imagine. My heart goes out to the people down there along with all the health care workers willing to be in the middle of it all. God Bless them all.- Jackie, WV,USA
I am completely appalled that these Doctors chose to take the life of a human being. Being murdered is never and will never be considered a dignified way to die. They have several drugs they could have used to make these people sleep while they died that way they would have been oblivious to the pain of dying. They have drugs that intentionally put people in a coma. What about the drugs they use to make people sleep before an operation and they would have died peacefully in their sleep. I completely understand their intention but the means in which they accomplished it was morally wrong. No one wants to see someone suffer but suffering is a fact of life because if it wasn't a fact of life no one would suffer. But we can accomplish easing that suffering without killing someone out right. I will pray for those doctors but the fact still remains that they have blood on their hands and something needs to be done to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again.- Jackie York, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Cardinal Galen's Speech - Against Nazi Euthanasia

2006-03-18T21:50:00.000-08:00

Cardinal Galen's Speech - Against Nazi Euthanasia

This is an excerpt of the sermon by Catholic Cardinal Clemens von Galen, delivered on Sunday, August 3, 1941, in Münster Cathedral, in which he risked his life by openly condemning the Nazi euthanasia program.
Code named "Aktion T4," the Nazi program to eliminate "life unworthy of life" began on Hitler's order in October of 1939. The program at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three that showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.
A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made by three medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire, without any examination and without reading any medical records.
Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or - mark in blue pencil under the term "treatment" on a special form. A red plus mark meant a decision to kill the child. A blue minus sign meant meant a decision against killing. Three +++ symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant being issued and the transfer of the child to a 'Children's Specialty Department' for death by injection or gradual starvation.
The decision had to be unanimous. In cases where the decision was not unanimous the child was kept under observation and another attempt would be made to get a unanimous decision.
The Nazi euthanasia program soon expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler granted "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."
Questionnaires were then distributed to mental institutions, hospitals and other institutions caring for the chronically ill. A total of six killing centers were established including the well known psychiatric clinic at Hadamar. The euthanasia program was eventually headed by an SS man named Christian Wirth, a notorious brute with the nickname 'the savage Christian.'
At Brandenburg, a former prison was converted into a killing center where the first experimental gassings took place. The gas chambers were disguised as shower rooms, but were actually hermetically sealed chambers connected by pipes to cylinders of carbon monoxide. Each killing center also included a crematorium where the bodies were taken for disposal. Families were then falsely told the cause of death was medical such as heart failure or pneumonia.

"Fellow Christians! In the pastoral letter of the German bishops of June 26, 1941, which was read out in all the Catholic churches in Germany on July 6, 1941, it states among other things: It is true that there are definite commandments in Catholic moral doctrine which are no longer applicable if their fulfillment involves too many difficulties.
However, there are sacred obligations of conscience from which no one has the power to release us and which we must fulfil even if it costs us our lives. Never under any circumstances may a human being kill an innocent person apart from war and legitimate self-defense. On July 6, I already had cause to add to the pastoral letter the following explanation: for some months we have been hearing reports that, on the orders of Berlin, patients from mental asylums who have been ill for a long time and may appear incurable, are being compulsorily removed. Then, after a short time, the relatives are regularly informed that the corpse has been burnt and the ashes can be delivered. There is a general suspicion verging on certainty, that these numerous unexpected deaths of mentally ill people do not occur of themselves but are deliberately brought about, that the doctrine is being followed, according to which one may destroy so-called 'worthless life,' that is, kill innocent people if one considers that their lives are of no further value for the nation and the state.
I am reliably informed that lists are also being drawn up in the asylums of the province of Westphalia as well of those patients who are to be taken away as so-called 'unproductive national comrades' and shortly to be killed. The first transport left the Marienthal institution near Münster during this past week.
German men and women, section 211 of the Reich Penal Code is still valid. It states: 'He who deliberately kills another person will be punished by death for murder if the killing is premeditated.'
Those patients who are destined to be killed are transported away from home to a distant asylum presumably in order to protect those who deliberately kill those poor people, members of our families, from this legal punishment. Some illness is then given as the cause of death. Since the corpse has been burnt straight away, the relatives and also the criminal police are unable to establish whether the illness really occurred and what the cause of death was.
However, I have been assured that the Reich Interior Ministry and the office of the Reich Doctors' Leader, Dr. Conti, make no bones about the fact that in reality a large number of mentally ill people in Germany have been deliberately killed and more will be killed in the future.
The Penal Code lays down in section 139: 'He who receives credible information concerning the intention to commit a crime against life and neglects to alert the authorities or the person who is threatened in time...will be punished.'
When I learned of the intention to transport patients from Marienthal in order to kill them, I brought a formal charge at the State Court in Münster and with the Police President in Münster by means of a registered letter which read as follows: "According to information which I have received, in the course of this week a large number of patients from the Marienthal Provincial Asylum near Münster are to be transported to the Eichberg asylum as so-called 'unproductive national comrades' and will then soon be deliberately killed, as is generally believed has occurred with such transports from other asylums. Since such an action is not only contrary to the moral laws of God and Nature but also is punishable with death as murder under section 211 of the Penal Code, I hereby bring a charge in accordance with my duty under section 139 of the Penal Code, and request you to provide immediate protection for the national comrades threatened in this way by taking action against those agencies who are intending their removal and murder, and that you inform me of the steps that have been taken."
I have received no news concerning intervention by the Prosecutor's Office or by the police...Thus we must assume that the poor helpless patients will soon be killed.
For what reason?
Not because they have committed a crime worthy of death. Not because they attacked their nurses or orderlies so that the latter had no other choice but to use legitimate force to defend their lives against their attackers. Those are cases where, in addition to the killing of an armed enemy in a just war, the use of force to the point of killing is allowed and is often required.
No, it is not for such reasons that these unfortunate patients must die but rather because, in the opinion of some department, on the testimony of some commission, they have become 'worthless life' because according to this testimony they are 'unproductive national comrades.' The argument goes: they can no longer produce commodities, they are like an old machine that no longer works, they are like an old horse which has become incurably lame, they are like a cow which no longer gives milk.
What does one do with such an old machine? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What does one do with a lame horse, with such an unproductive cow?
No, I do not want to continue the comparison to the end--however fearful the justification for it and the symbolic force of it are. We are not dealing with machines, horses and cows whose only function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for man. One may smash them, one may slaughter them as soon as they no longer fulfil this function.
No, we are dealing with human beings, our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters. With poor people, sick people, if you like unproductive people.
But have they for that reason forfeited the right to life?
Have you, have I the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognized by others as productive?
If you establish and apply the principle that you can kill 'unproductive' fellow human beings then woe betide us all when we become old and frail! If one is allowed to kill the unproductive people then woe betide the invalids who have used up, sacrificed and lost their health and strength in the productive process. If one is allowed forcibly to remove one's unproductive fellow human beings then woe betide loyal soldiers who return to the homeland seriously disabled, as cripples, as invalids. If it is once accepted that people have the right to kill 'unproductive' fellow humans--and even if initially it only affects the poor defenseless mentally ill--then as a matter of principle murder is permitted for all unproductive people, in other words for the incurably sick, the people who have become invalids through labor and war, for us all when we become old, frail and therefore unproductive.
Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other 'unproductive' people, that it should be applied to those suffering from incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the 'unproductive,' who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves.
Who will be able to trust his doctor any more?
He may report his patient as 'unproductive' and receive instructions to kill him. It is impossible to imagine the degree of moral depravity, of general mistrust that would then spread even through families if this dreadful doctrine is tolerated, accepted and followed.
Woe to mankind, woe to our German nation if God's Holy Commandment 'Thou shalt not kill,' which God proclaimed on Mount Sinai amidst thunder and lightning, which God our Creator inscribed in the conscience of mankind from the very beginning, is not only broken, but if this transgression is actually tolerated and permitted to go unpunished. "
Cardinal Clemens von Galen - August 3, 1941

The sermon sent a shockwave through the Nazi leadership all the way up to Hitler. As a result, on August 23, 1941, Hitler suspended Aktion T4 which had accounted for nearly a hundred thousand deaths by this time.
The Nazis pondered what to do about the Cardinal. They eventually retaliated by arresting and then beheading three parish priests who had distributed his sermon, but left the Cardinal unharmed to avoid making him into a martyr.
However, the Nazi euthanasia program quietly continued, but without the widespread gassings. Drugs and starvation were used instead and doctors were encouraged to decide in favor of death whenever euthanasia was being considered.

Nazi Euthanasia

2006-03-18T17:45:00.000-08:00

Nazi Euthanasia

Nazi Euthanasia

In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war Hitler ordered widespread "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled.
Code named "Aktion T 4," the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate "life unworthy of life" at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.
A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made by three medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire, without any examination and without reading any medical records.
Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or - mark in blue pencil under the term "treatment" on a special form. A red plus mark meant a decision to kill the child. A blue minus sign meant a decision against killing. Three plus symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant being issued and the transfer of the child to a 'Children's Specialty Department' for death by injection or gradual starvation.
The decision had to be unanimous. In cases where the decision was not unanimous the child was kept under observation and another attempt would be made to get a unanimous decision.
The Nazi euthanasia program quickly expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler's decree of October, 1939, typed on his personal stationary, enlarged "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."
Questionnaires were then distributed to mental institutions, hospitals and other institutions caring for the chronically ill.
Patients had to be reported if they suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and syphilitic diseases, retardation, encephalitis, Huntington's chorea and other neurological conditions, also those who had been continuously in institutions for at least 5 years, or were criminally insane, or did not posses German citizenship or were not of German or related blood, including Jews, Negroes, and Gypsies.
A total of six killing centers were established including the well known psychiatric clinic at Hadamar. The euthanasia program was eventually headed by an SS man named Christian Wirth, a notorious brute with the nickname 'the savage Christian.'
At Brandenburg, a former prison was converted into a killing center where the first Nazi experimental gassings took place. The gas chambers were disguised as shower rooms, but were actually hermetically sealed chambers connected by pipes to cylinders of carbon monoxide. Patients were generally drugged before being led naked into the gas chamber. Each killing center included a crematorium where the bodies were taken for disposal. Families were then falsely told the cause of death was medical such as heart failure or pneumonia.
But the huge increase in the death rate for the disabled combined with the very obvious plumes of odorous smoke over the killing centers aroused suspicion and fear. At Hadamar, for example, local children even taunted arriving busloads of patients by saying "here comes some more to be gassed."

On August 3, 1941, a Catholic Bishop, Clemens von Galen, delivered a sermon in Münster Cathedral attacking the Nazi euthanasia program calling it "plain murder." The sermon sent a shockwave through the Nazi leadership by publicly condemning the program and urged German Catholics to "withdraw ourselves and our faithful from their (Nazi) influence so that we may not be contaminated by their thinking and their ungodly behavior."

As a result, on August 23, Hitler suspended Aktion T4, which had accounted for nearly a hundred thousand deaths by this time.
The Nazis retaliated against the Bishop by beheading three parish priests who had distributed his sermon, but left the Bishop unharmed to avoid making him into a martyr.

However, the Nazi euthanasia program quietly continued, but without the widespread gassings. Drugs and starvation were used instead and doctors were encouraged to decide in favor of death whenever euthanasia was being considered.
The use of gas chambers at the euthanasia killing centers ultimately served as training centers for the SS. They used the technical knowledge and experience gained during the euthanasia program to construct huge killing centers at Auschwitz, Treblinka and other concentration camps in an attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. SS personnel from the euthanasia killing centers, notably Wirth, Franz Reichleitner and Franz Stangl later commanded extermination camps.
Copyright © 1997 The History Place All Rights Reserved

The Eugenics Movement in the U.S.

2006-03-18T15:46:00.000-08:00

The Eugenics Movement in the U.S.

The Eugenics Movement in the U.S.
Many people are unaware that Hitler's extermination policies began with the large-scale elimination of people with disabilities. Proponents of physician- assisted suicide are offended when allusions are made to this piece of disability history in the course of debate over the so-called "right to die". The fact is that Hitler stole most of his ideas on eugenics from publications originating in the USA.
Popularity of eugenics and social Darwinism continued in the USA during WWII. In 1942, the American Journal of Psychiatry published a "debate" on the ethics of killing children with severe disabilities. The following was written by Foster Kennedy:
I believe when the defective child shall have reached the age of five years - and on the application of his guardians - that the case should be considered under law by a competent medical board; then it should be reviewed twice more at four-month intervals; then, if the board, acting, I repeat, on the applications of the guardians of the child, and after three examinations of a defective who has reached the age of five or more, should decide that that defective has no future or hope of one; then I believe it is a merciful and kindly thing to relieve that defective - often tortured and convulsed, grotesque and absurd, useless and foolish, and entirely undesirable - of the agony of living.
In an unsigned editorial in the same issue, Kennedy's views were enthusiastically endorsed in this official publication of the American Psychiatric Association. It is probable that the opening of the concentration camps (built by a regime devoted to eugenics) was a major factor in driving this sentiment underground.
That was over 50 years ago. Proponents of physician assisted suicide would argue, as many would, that times have changed.
Perhaps, on the other hand, they haven't.
Below is an excerpt from an invited "Commentary" by Peter Singer that appeared in a 1983 issue of Pediatrics. Singer is a philosopher whose contributions to the field of "bioethics" have included the assertion that there is no justification for regarding infants as having any more rights than animals and that parents of babies with certain disabilities be given the right to order the death of the infant within those first 30 days. First, on the issue of treatment withdrawal or refusal:
Although many doctors would sharply distinguish the active termination of life from a decision not to treat a patient for whom the foreseen outcome of this decision is death of the patient, the distinction is a tenuous one, and the claim that it carries moral weight has been rejected by several academic philosophers.
Singer complains in this same article that the "right" to release from pain (through euthanasia) will be denied to individuals unable to espress themselves.
This was a bad year for people with disabilities in Pediatrics. Three issues later and article appeared with the title Early Management and Decision Making for the Treatment of Myelomeningocele. A medical team at Oklahoma Children's Memorial Hospital used a "quality of life" formula to decide whether to give parents of infants with spina bifida an "optimistic" or "pessimistic" prognosis. Parents given an optimistic prognosis were informed of all available treatments and urged to start them immediately. All parents so informed agreed to treatment. The parents of children given "pessimistic" prognoses were advised to forego intervention and treatment as the child would be too disabled to ever enjoy life even if they survived. Most parents, having been told this was in the best interest of their children, agreed. A very few did not. Here are the results in the authors' own words:
The "untreated survivor" has not been a significant problem in our experience. All 24 babies who have not been treated at all have died at an average of 37 days.
Ignored were the implications of the fact that three out of the five babies who were given treatment (surgery and antibiotics) were alive and doing well at the time the article was written. It could be fairly assumed that a majority of children deprived of treatment would also have been alive and well with appropriate medial intervention.
The trail on this issue in professional journals is clear. There is a ready acceptance of the physician's "duty" to judge the quality of life of patients, to deem when it will be unacceptable, and to act as executioner when it is felt to be desirable according to professionally determined criteria. None of the current debate is really new. It just took 50 years to come back out in the open.
References
Gross, R.H., et al. (1983). Early Management and Decision Making for the Treatment of Myelomeningocele. Pediatrics, 72 (4), 450-458.
Kennedy, F. (1942). The problem of social control of the congenital defective - Education, sterilization, euthanasia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 99, 13-16.
Singer, P. (1983). Sanctity of life or quality of life? Pediatrics, 72 (1) 128-129.

Social Origins of Eugenics

2006-03-18T15:43:00.000-08:00

Social Origins of Eugenics

(the reasons for abortion-in use for all too long...)

Eugenic Sterilization Laws
Paul Lombardo, University of Virginia

While some eugenicists privately supported practices such as euthanasia or even genocide, legally-mandated sterilization was the most radical policy supported by the American eugenics movement. A number of American physicians performed sterilizations even before the surgery was legally approved, though no reliable accounting of the practice exists prior to passage of sterilization laws. Indiana enacted the first law allowing sterilization on eugenic grounds in 1907, with Connecticut following soon after. Despite these early statutes, sterilization did not gain widespread popular approval until the late 1920s.
Advocacy in favor of sterilization was one of Harry Laughlin’s first major projects at the Eugenics Record Office. In 1914, he published a Model Eugenical Sterilization Law that proposed to authorize sterilization of the "socially inadequate" – people supported in institutions or "maintained wholly or in part by public expense. The law encompassed the "feebleminded, insane, criminalistic, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf; deformed; and dependent" – including "orphans, ne'er-do-wells, tramps, the homeless and paupers." By the time the Model Law was published in 1914, twelve states had enacted sterilization laws.
By 1924, approximately 3,000 people had been involuntarily sterilized in America; the vast majority (2,500) in California. That year Virginia passed a Eugenical Sterilization Act based on Laughlin’s Model Law. It was adopted as part of a cost-saving strategy to relieve the tax burden in a state where public facilities for the "insane" and "feebleminded" had experienced rapid growth. The law was also written to protect physicians who performed sterilizing operations from malpractice lawsuits. Virginia’s law asserted that "heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and crime…" It focused on "defective persons" whose reproduction represented "a menace to society."
Carrie Buck, a seventeen-year-old girl from Charlottesville, Virginia, was picked as the first person to be sterilized. Carrie had a child, but was not married. Her mother Emma was already a resident at an asylum, the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and the Feebleminded. Officials at the Virginia Colony said that Carrie and her mother shared the hereditary traits of "feeblemindedness" and sexually promiscuity. To those who believed that such traits were genetically transmitted, Carrie fit the law’s description as a "probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring." A legal challenge was arranged on Carrie’s behalf to test the constitutional validity of the law.
At her trial, several witnesses offered evidence of Carrie’s inherited "defects" and those of her mother Emma. Colony Superintendent Dr. Albert Priddy testified that Emma Buck had "a record of immorality, prostitution, untruthfulness and syphilis." His opinion of the Buck family more generally was: "These people belong to the shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South." Although Harry Laughlin never met Carrie, he sent a written deposition echoing Priddy’s conclusions about Carrie’s "feeblemind-edness" and "moral delinquency."
Sociologist Arthur Estabrook, of the Eugenics Record Office, traveled to Virginia to testify against Carrie. He and a Red Cross nurse examined Carrie’s baby Vivian and concluded that she was "below average" and "not quite normal." Relying on these comments, the judge concluded that Carrie should be sterilized to prevent the birth of other "defective" children.
The decision was appealed to United States Supreme Court. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., himself a student of eugenics, wrote the formal opinion for the Court in the case of Buck v. Bell (1927). His opinion repeated the "facts" in Carrie’s case, concluding that a "deficient" mother, daughter, and granddaughter justified the need for sterilization. The decision includes the now infamous words: 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…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Recent scholarship has shown that Carrie Buck’s sterilization was based on a false "diagnosis" and her defense lawyer conspired with the lawyer for the Virginia Colony to guarantee that the sterilization law would be upheld in court. Carrie’s illegitimate child was not the result of promiscuity; she had been raped by a relative of her foster parents. School records also prove that Vivian was not "feebleminded." Her 1st grade report card showed that Vivian was a solid "B" student, received an "A" in deportment, and had been on the honor roll.
Nevertheless, Buck v. Bell supplied a precedent for the eventual sterilization of approximately 8,300 Virginians. Borrowing from Laughlin’s Model Law, the German Nazi government adopted a law in 1933 that provided the legal basis for sterilizing more than 350,000 people. Laughlin proudly published a translation of the German Law for the Prevention of Defective Progeny in The Eugenical News. In 1936, Laughlin was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg as a tribute for his work in "the science of racial cleansing."
The second Supreme Court case generated by the eugenics movement tested a 1935 Oklahoma law that prescribed involuntary sexual sterilization for repeat criminals. Jack Skinner was chosen to test the law’s constitutionality. He was a three-time felon, guilty of stealing chickens at age nineteen, and convicted twice in later years for armed robbery. By the time his case was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1942 some 13 states had laws specifically permitting sterilization of criminals.
The opinion striking down the sterilization law in the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942) was written by Justice William O. Douglas. He highlighted the inequity of Oklahoma's law by noting that a three-time chicken thief could be sterilized while a three-time embezzler could not. Said Douglas: "We have not the slightest basis for inferring that … the inheritability of criminal traits follows the neat legal distinctions which the law has marked between those two offenses."
Despite the Skinner case, sterilization of people in institutions for the mentally ill and mentally retarded continued through the mid-1970's. At one time or another, 33 states had statutes under which more than 60,000 Americans endured involuntary sterilization. The Buck v. Bell precedent allowing sterilization of the so-called "feebleminded" has never been overruled.

War Against the Weak

2006-03-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

War Against the Weak

(....what goes around,comes around. Eugenics began here,according to this author)
How American corporate philanthropies launched a national campaign of ethnic cleansing in the United States, helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele — and then created the modern movement of "human genetics."In the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate philanthropy combined with prestigious academic fraud to create the pseudoscience eugenics that institutionalized race politics as national policy. The goal: create a superior, white, Nordic race and obliterate the viability of everyone else.
How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to legislated segregation and sterilization programs. The victims: poor people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the superior genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. The main culprits were the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune, in league with America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The eugenic network worked in tandem with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State Department and numerous state governmental bodies and legislatures throughout the country, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. They were all bent on breeding a eugenically superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn. The plan was to wipe away the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.
Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized — legally and extra-legally. Many never discovered the truth until decades later. Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
American eugenic crusades proliferated into a worldwide campaign, and in the 1920s came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. Under the Nazis, American eugenic principles were applied without restraint, careening out of control into the Reich's infamous genocide. During the pre-War years, American eugenicists openly supported Germany's program. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists. Once WWII began, Nazi eugenics turned from mass sterilization and euthanasia to genocidal murder. One of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute doctors in the program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation was Josef Mengele who continued his research in Auschwitz, making daily eugenic reports on twins. After the world recoiled from Nazi atrocities, the American eugenics movement — its institutions and leading scientists — renamed and regrouped under the banner of an enlightened science called human genetics.

Catholic Culture : Document Library : Sterilization Law in Germany

2006-03-18T15:28:00.000-08:00

Catholic Culture : Document Library : Sterilization Law in Germany

(part and parcel of the mindset that includes euthanasia is prevention of the birth of any child not deemed worthy to live,or,in today's parlance,'unlikely to have a high quality of life'.)

Sterilization Law in Germany
Statistical Survey Concerning Obligatory Sterilization in Germany
According to the official statistics of the German Ministry of Justice, 84,525 petitions for sterilization were made in the course of 1934 to the respective Courts. Men numbered 42,903 cases and women 41,622. That represents one for every 772 inhabitants. Up to 31 December, 1934, 64,466 cases were dealt with, i.e., 75% of the total number of petitions. Sterilization was ordered in 56,244 cases of which 28,286 were men and 27,958 women. Sterilization was refused in 3692 cases. The number of cases dealt with in other ways was 4563. Therefore, in 93.8% of the cases dealt with, sterilization was ordered to be carried out and in 6.2% it was refused.
An appeal against the judgment for the carrying out of sterilization was made in 8219 cases (14.6%). Up to the end of 1934, 5245 of these appeals were dealt with at the Courts with the result that the appeal was granted in 377 cases (7.2%) and refused in 4559 cases; a small number of cases were dealt with in other ways. For the sake of comparison it is worth noticing that in the U.S.A. for the period from 1905 until 1933 or 1934 there were about 16,000 cases of compulsory or authorized sterilization. (Cf. Deutsche Justiz, Rechtspflege and Rechtspolitik. Amtliches Blatt der deutschen Rechtipflege, Vol. 97, no. 21, Edition A, 24 May, 1935, pp. 780-782.)
From this short statistical survey it is clear that the law has been widely applied. The Catholic moral theologian is, therefore, bound to deal with the questions arising from such a situation.
It is not allowed to men or women to have themselves sterilized, because they are not the absolute owners of their bodies and their members. They have only the right of use. God brought man into existence and wants him to fulfil the divine purpose which the Creator set before Himself in creating man. This purpose of God appears, for example, in the natural capacity of the generative faculty to produce children. Man, therefore, cannot do as he wishes with himself and the integrity of his body, or destroy the functioning of his faculties, arbitrarily, because he is bound to keep within the limits set by the purpose of Nature itself. This end of Nature, and therefore the purpose of God who created Nature, with its ends, would be made impossible if arbitrary sterilization were allowed. The objection is raised that direct sterilization in some cases is absolutely necessary. It is argued that the part is subordinated to the whole, and that from this subordination it follows that if the whole is endangered, the part may be sacrificed to preserve the whole.
But we have to be careful of applying too hastily such general principles. This subordination of the part to the whole warrants the interference with the function, by mutilation or total removal of the part, only when the part by its mere existence, or by its activity, endangers the whole immediately and directly. But such a justification is evidently not proved when the danger is created, not by the faculty itself or by its activity, but by the free will of man.
Let us take the case of a woman who would run great risk to her life if she gave birth to a child. In order to preclude that danger, she has herself or her husband sterilized, so as to be able to enjoy marital intercourse without running any risk to her life. The risk would be run by the free act of the will of the woman, insisting on having intercourse; it is not the faculty itself, then, which puts her life into immediate danger, but the free exercise of the faculty. The only moral and legitimate way for her to avoid the risk which threatens her life from the activity of the generative faculty, would be to refrain from marital intercourse altogether. But if life itself is immediately and directly imperiled by an actual disease of the generative organs, it is obviously allowed to remove such diseased organs, just as it is morally justifiable to remove a leg or an arm to preserve life or health, when milder measures do not suffice.
Let us consider, then, the difference between the two cases. In the first case, the danger is consequent upon the woman's act of free will, insisting on having intercourse; apart from intercourse there is absolutely no danger to her life. In the second case, the generative organs are already diseased without any act of free choice here and now entering into the question. Here either the part or the whole must necessarily be sacrificed.
Hence the principle that the part is to be sacrified to the whole would here apply.
But the more important question arises when the State is the whole to be considered, and the individual is the part to be subordinated. Has the State the right to sterilize persons who are likely to procreate offspring either mentally defective or infected with hereditary diseases?
The argument as proposed runs as follows: the State, in sterilizing such persons, does nothing else but safeguard the common good. If the common good is endangered by the private rights of individuals, then the State (so the defenders of this theory argue) has the right of curtailing the rights of the individuals, and the more so as the common good is jeopardized by the individual. For "Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz", that is "the common good absolutely prevails over the private good," as the Nazi slogan has it. Now first of all, to settle the dispute, the following questions have to be dealt with:
(1) What is the relation of the individual to the State?
(2) What is the true understanding of the term "common good" to which those who propose state-sterilization of the unfit appeal?
(3) How does the true understanding of the term "common good" apply to the question of state-sterilization?
I
What, then, is the relation of the individual to the State? Man, as a rational being, endowed with soul and body, is created by God. This fact has to be taken for granted in the following investigation. God, being the Creator, has the absolute dominion over man; man, as such, has only a qualified dominion over his life and body. God, in creating man, had His purpose, which is expressed in the essential tendencies of man's nature; for it is the Creator who by calling the creature into being has impressed upon it the purpose of its creation. It is, consequently, the duty of man to fulfil God's purpose in a life which corresponds to the tendencies embodied in man's very nature. In other words, God's purpose in creating man is the natural perfection of his personality as a rational being. This is a descriptive definition of the divine purpose in regard to man. Hence man came into being, was given life and body, to fulfil his natural perfection; consequently man has only such a dominion over his life and body as accords with his natural end. This is a qualified dominion, the right, not of absolute ownership, but of use. We see, then, that the duty which is given with the very being, and the strict right to use that being in so far as it accomplishes that duty, correspond with one another.
It is evident that if the individual as such has to fulfil that duty, that is, to arrive at the perfection of his own personality, only by means of his limited individual strength and resources, he would fail to reach the fully developed human life. Only in society, therefore, can man develop his natural faculties to the full extent and arrive at the perfection, the realization of which is commanded by God. "The State is a perfect and self-sufficing society, consisting of many families, united under a common ruler, for the attainment of the complete welfare and life of the community."[1]
It cannot be the purpose of this article to give a full account as to how the State developed historically from the individual and family, how the family widens into the village community, how the village community comes gradually to acquire such a degree of organization as makes it a self-sufficient society or a State. The question is rather how the rights of the individual and those of the State are related to one another. It seems to be obvious that the individual as such is antecedent to the State, and that therefore certain rights of the individual are antecedent in time and in importance to the rights of the State. For the very existence of the State depends on the prior existence of the individuals. A group of individuals or families may reasonably be thought of as living together without forming any kind of highly differentiated community. But it is inconceivable to think of the State without the individuals on whom its existence completely depends. Being, life, body and its integrity, are given to man as an individual before he enters into society. Hence it follows that the rights to existence, to life, and to integrity of body, are also given to man before he enters into the State. The individual certainly does not forego those rights because he has chosen to live with other men in a State, in order that his natural welfare, the natural perfection of his personality, may be better provided for.
II
What is the true meaning of the term "common good"? The chief argument in favor of state-sterilization of the unfit is that the common good prevails over the individual good, and that to safeguard the common good, the State as its guarantor is entitled to interfere with the rights of individuals in so far as they prevent the State from fulfilling the duty and purpose of its existence. This statement is proved in the following argument:
The whole is more important than the part, and consequently to save the whole, the part may rightly be sacrificed if it does harm to the whole. The mental defectives and otherwise hereditarily diseased people certainly do harm to society as a whole, overburdening it with new expenses and taxes, and diminishing the general well-being of the State. Consequently they may be sterilized in order to safeguard the community against "unjust" burdens. The first proposition is proved thus. The State is one great organism, and just as in an organism the part is absolutely subordinate to the whole, and must be sacrificed if the whole runs a risk of serious harm, so the individual as a part of the State-organism, must give up his personal rights if the exercise of these seriously endangers the whole organism.
First of all, this argument would be valid if the individual with his faculties were essentially related by his very being to society as to his proximate end, just as the members of the human body are essentially related by their very being to the human body as their proximate end. But it is false and misleading to conceive the State as a living organism like man's body. Were it so, the claim on the part of the State to complete subordination to itself of the individual would be valid. But it has already been proved that the individual has rights which are not relinquished by his entering into society. With regard to those rights, therefore, the individual is not subordinated to the State so completely as to be a part of it and nothing else. The argument in favor of sterilization put forward by modern statesmen, scientists, and eugenists, seems to over-state the preponderance of the common good, namely, of the whole over the part, or rather, they conceive the common good in a false way.
To prove this statement we have to make clear what ought to be understood by the term "common good", that is, the true common good, and consequently, what rights the State has as the custodian of that true common good with regard to the individuals. It is wrong for the State to define arbitrarily what the common good is to be, and then to deduce from this arbitrary construction, the rights which it has in order to realize that common good. But the true common good has to be determined in accordance with the nature of the individuals who make up the State, as it is from the very nature and the natural rights of the individuals that the State derives its existence and purpose.
This purpose, the reason for the existence of the State, is twofold, namely, to protect the natural rights of its constituent members, and to provide facilities for the development of their manifold capacities, whether physical, intellectual, cultural, or moral. Life, body, and its integrity, and the right to them, are given to man by Nature, that is, by God Himself. These "goods ", and the rights to them on the part of the individual, are not only the foundation of his welfare, and of his temporal perfection; they are moreover the radical basis of the State itself. It is the State's duty to help man that he may build upon this Nature-given foundation that natural perfection which is evidently God's intention, but which he can hardly attain apart from the help of organized society. The primary common good is therefore the protection of those inviolable fundamental rights of the individual which are the foundation of his temporal welfare. Consequently, this is that inviolability, to safeguard which is the foremost duty of the State. A State which thinks itself entitled to interfere with the integrity of man's natural rights, on the ground that the common good, as they understand it, requires and entitles it to do so, destroys in that very action the basis of the common good, that is, the inviolability of man's natural rights.
It is evident, then, that in claiming the right to violate individual natural rights on the ground of the common good, the State does not ground its claim on the true common good. Nevertheless, society as such has higher and nobler rights with regard to its members than the members themselves as such; that is, socially, in the sphere of man's activity which is posterior to his individual and personal rights and responsibilities, the higher authority, of course, in what pertains to man's merely temporal welfare, resides in the State. But because the end of the State is the true common good, the rights of the State, though more extensive than the rights of its members as such, obviously must correspond with and subserve the prior rights of men as individuals. The distinction between man as an individual, with prior rights, and man as a member of society, with subsequent duties and obligations, is of the highest importance. To ignore it is to fall headlong into confusion. For the members are bound to subordinate themselves to the State only in so far as they are members of it. They are members not wholly merged in the State; in other words, they are not merely a part of the whole, since they are independent personalities in their possession of prior natural rights. The spheres of the individual and of society do not simply coincide, although they do overlap. It follows, therefore, that the State may not interfere with rights which belong to the person as a person, and not to the person as a member of society.
In cases where the State is really entitled to interfere with individual rights, for instance, to punish murder or other crimes, that right of interference has to be proved: for the individual is in certain possession of his right. With regard to the argument of the eugenist that in the case of the mentally defective, the common good entitles the State to intrude upon personal natural rights, namely, to destroy the power to use the generative faculty, the very contrary, not to destroy but to protect, seems rather to be the duty of the State. For the protection of such prior rights is the reason for the State's existence.
Besides, the material loss which the whole, that is, the State, must suffer in the case of caring for mental defectives, does not prove of itself the right on the part of the State to apply the only thoroughgoing means that could prevent that loss. These means must first be proved to be morally good or indifferent, or at least to become indifferent or good in view of the loss to which the State would otherwise be subject. But the mere fact of such material loss to the State, and the bare assertion that the application of the only effective means of preventing it must therefore be legitimate, in no way proves that the actual application of the only effective means is good, or at least indifferent, morally.
It is further a wrong and a materialistic principle that the individual may not cause any burden or trouble whatever to the State, as the adversaries argue. The State is looked upon by those persons as an ultimate end in itself: the individual becomes its slave, and is worth only as much as the service he renders the State. That is the State-theory of Bolshevism and Fascism, which in reality derive their principles from the same origin, however diametrically opposed to one another they may appear to be at first sight.
To safeguard our Catholic State-theory, that the State is for the individual and not the individual for the State, we have to distinguish carefully between the true common good and the material goods which the society holds in common. The former, which includes primarily the protection of the inviolable personal natural rights, may never be infringed. Even further, it is precisely the true common good in this sense which requires in individual cases that the material goods held by society in common be sacrificed in the interests of the true common good. For there are burdens and losses in the realm of material goods which have to be borne by the community on behalf of the individual.
III
How does the true meaning of the term "common good" apply to state-sterilization? The law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, promulgated by the German Government on 14 July, 1933, runs, in its first paragraph, as follows:
Whosoever suffers from hereditary disease can be sterilized if, according to the finding of medical science, a great probability exists that his (or her) offspring will suffer from severe bodily or mental hereditary disease.
Under number 2 of the same paragraph, several diseases are mentioned which are to be considered of that nature. Details can be found in the translated text of the law which has been appended to this article.
We have already, in the foregoing section, proved that state-sterilization of the unfit—whether voluntary or compulsory— is immoral, and therefore illegitimate. Why? Because the performance of this operation is an attack not only on the inviolable and inalienable natural rights of the individual, but on the very foundations of the State itself. It is sheer materialism to sacrifice that true common good of the inviolability of human rights merely to save some of the material goods held in common by the community. Above all, if the State were justified in interfering with the inalienable rights of bodily integrity, there would be no essential difference between such interference and the "right" to interfere with the very lives of these innocent people. In either case the State would be exercising an absolute dominion over its subjects, in the supposition that the subjects are mere members of the social organism, and not independent personalities in their own right.
In addition, we must observe that the State would manifestly fail in carrying out an essential duty, if it attacked the bodily integrity of an innocent citizen in any way, as by depriving him of the power of procreating offspring, since the possession of the power is not an attack on the State, even in the most remote degree. The exercise of the power, however, is quite another thing.
Having proved the illegitimacy of depriving a person of the generative faculty in this way, there arises a second question, namely, that of the State and Matrimony.
Independently of the State, man has an absolute right to marry, if capable of doing so. This right is given him with his existence, just as he has a right to life, because "individual existence and the institution of the family precede the State, and therefore, though the State may issue regulations with regard to marriage, it has no right to prohibit marriages totally to any man of class of men".[2] But what if a man is incapable of discharging the responsibilities of marriage? "Although man has an absolute right to marry, as he has to life, if he cannot fulfil the duties of the married state, he may rightly be deprived of the exercise of the right to marry, though radically he retains the right."[3]
The two following questions arise and demand an answer.
(1) Is the State allowed to prevent the marriage of a person who has absolutely lost rational control over himself, and if it has this power, by what title does it claim it?
First of all, we have to consider the definition of marriage. Marriage is the lawful contract between man and woman by which is given and accepted the exclusive and perpetual right to those mutual bodily functions which are naturally apt to generate offspring. The primary purpose of the contract is the generation and education of offspring. Now as marriage is a contract, and as "natural law dictates that one who is non compos, that is, who has not the actual use of reason, is incapable of a human act and therefore can neither accept nor transfer rights",[4] it is evident what the solution must be in the case of mental defectives who have entirely lost rational control over themselves. It goes without saying that, although they retain the radical right to marry, if they wish to enter into the marriage-contract, they may rightly be prevented from doing so by the legitimate authority. For they are not able to carry out the primary purpose of marriage, the education of children. The exercise of the absolute right to marry must be determined not only by the acts of the two partners, but also by the result of marital intercourse, namely, the offspring, over whose education the parents have the essential duty to watch. Now if the execution of that duty is rendered impossible by Nature itself, the exercise of the right with which that duty is inseparably associated may be prohibited by the State. Moreover such mental defectives are ex hypothesi incapable of entering into a contract; marriage is essentially a contract; consequently their marriage would be invalid according to the natural law. If, therefore, the State has the right to prohibit the exercise of a natural right of its subjects in such cases, it is obviously not because mental defective offspring are likely to result from such a marriage, but because in this case the State urges and gives effect to the natural law.
(2) The second question involves quite a different case: Is the State allowed to prevent mental defectives or otherwise diseased persons who have the actual use of reason, but are likely to procreate mental defectives or otherwise hereditarily diseased offspring—is the State allowed, we must ask, to prohibit these persons from marrying? Can the State set up an annulling or prohibitory impediment of marriage?
The fact is that the German Government did so, by issuing the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Race", promulgated at the Reichstag of Nuremberg, on 15 September, 1935. The first paragraph of this law reads thus:
Marriages between Jews and subjects with German blood are prohibited; marriages which have been entered into against this law, are null and void, though they may have been entered into abroad, to evade the law.
Another law of that kind was promulgated by the same Government on the 18 October of 1935, namely, the "Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People." This law forbids marriages between persons who suffer either (a) from such contagious diseases as are likely to do considerable harm to the health of the partner or the offspring; or (b) from hereditary diseases in the sense of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (i.e. the Sterilization Law).
In answering the question as to the legitimacy of such legislation, we must distinguish between baptized and unbaptized persons. Canon 1016 of the Codex Iuris Canonici reads as follows:
The marriage of baptized persons is regulated not only by divine but also by canonical law, the civil power remaining competent in regard to the civil effects of marriage.[5]
It is evident from the history of matrimonial impediments that the Church has never instituted a matrimonial impediment of disease. In cases where persons suffering from serious diseases intend to marry, the principles of the Fifth Commandment concerning the care of health have to be applied. Such persons must investigate whether immediate danger to life and health would arise from their marriage, or whether there are sufficiently grave reasons to compensate the lesser evils, which may then be put up with.
It is now commonly held that the State has the power to constitute impediments in respect of the unbaptized, provided it do so by laws that are good and reasonable. The reasons given for this opinion are two:
a) Outside the Church, there exists no supreme independent authority except the State. There is need for the unbaptized to be ruled by some external authority, since true, legitimate, and orderly marriage is essential for the well-being of mankind. The common good, therefore, demands this authority.
b) Several replies and instructions given to missionaries by the Roman Congregation make it abundantly clear that they were of opinion that such authority existed in the State.[6]
What, then, are the circumstances which allow the State to set up annulling or prohibitory matrimonial impediments in respect of the unbaptized. It is exclusively the protection of the common good which authorizes the State to regulate the marriages of these persons.
(1) The "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Race" claims to justify itself by asserting that the mixture of blood of different races adulterates the blood of the pure stock. This mixture, they say, counteracts the ultimate tendency of nature to form and to preserve the distinction of races, and to erect them into a definite hierarchy. The primacy in this hierarchy belongs by nature to the Aryan race ruling over all other races by virtue of "the nobility and purity of the Aryan blood". Since the typical characteristics are hidden in the radical constituents and in the blood, it is the duty of the Aryan State to protect that blood against all adulteration by intermarriages with other races. The protection of that racial purity, then, is to the Aryan State the supreme good; the supreme evil is, therefore, the contamination of that blood. To doubt or to deny the supremacy of Aryan blood over all other goods is considered to be equivalent to high treason, as being an attack on the foundation of the State itself. The "Faith" of a National Socialist has to be built on this racial world-view (Volkische Weltanschauung).[7]
But does such a mixture of blood really violate the true common good? The answer depends on the validity of the fundamental dogma of the National Socialist Weltanschauung that the purity of blood and the hierarchical order of races, with the Aryan race holding the primacy, is intended by Nature. Now that dogma is by no means proved. On the contrary, this dogma has been openly rejected by such anthropologists of standing as Eickstedt and Menghin.[8] But with that rejection the foundation of the whole theory crumbles; and with the collapse of this dogma of racial purity as the supreme good, the justification collapses also for seeking it in the interest of the common good. Hence there is no justification for setting up matrimonial impediments (in respect of the unbaptized) on racial purity as the supposed common good. Neither the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith nor the missionaries have ever declared all marriages among different races to be, as such, against natural law, namely, to be illicit, much less to be null and void. Now and then, nevertheless, cases may arise where it would be morally right to persuade such people not to enter into the proposed marriage. Hence it not infrequently happens that missionaries who have lived among barbaric tribes have set themselves against such inter-marriages.
(2) In issuing "The Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People," the National Socialist State again has gone far beyond its power. For the right to marry is given by Nature to all men who are capable of entering into the marriage-contract; consequently this right is in certain possession until the State gives irrefutable evidence of its right to interfere. This, as we have seen, the State cannot do. It goes without saying that in exercising his right to marry, man is bound to take sufficient care of the health of his partner and their common offspring. In doing so he takes care of the common good. But if, after having taken sufficient care and precaution, the couple still run the risk of giving birth to diseased offspring, their right to marry is not thereby annulled. Here again the principles of the Fifth Commandment in regard to the care of health supply the true norm of conduct. That the health of the nation suffers from the maladies of those tainted with hereditary or contagious diseases, and that their offspring imposes on the State the burden of supporting them, cannot be denied. This is simply to say that the State is obliged by its very raison d'etre to make expenditures of its material goods to protect the inviolable natural rights of its constituents. The Creator, in giving the right to marry to all men capable of it, implicitly gives also the right to the individual here and now to call upon the State to spend its material goods for the very purpose for which it has such goods. And since it is the will of God, the Lord of Nature, that the State should bear this burden, it has no right whatsoever to "protect" its material goods by curtailing the inviolable natural rights of the individual.
(3) By segregation, mental defectives are practically prevented from exercising their natural right to marry, though the State does not theoretically set up any matrimonial impediments. But what right has the State to segregate these people? Only a few reasons will be given here. For further explanations the reader may consult Eugenics.[9] Segregation of mental defectives who suffer from some degree of insanity may be defended on the ground that such segregation defends the mental defectives themselves, and that to leave them at large is not in harmony with public security. But as Fr. Davis says: "Segregation is not defended on the ground that defectives may, if let loose, procreate defective offspring; were it so, it would be a view that is not proved to be true and all such unrealities cannot sustain any rational argument."
Moreover, human nature with its tendencies and passions is entitled to have within the range of the natural law and God's will an outlet for concupiscence. This outlet is carefully provided for by God's will in the state of matrimony. If then the State could encroach upon the natural right to marry, it would prohibit what God Himself permits. Man, hindered by the State from availing himself of this divinely instituted outlet for concupiscence (remedium concupiscentiae), will certainly find another and unlawful way to gratify his passions. Thus would be opened an avenue to general promiscuity amongst people who are prevented from entering upon matrimony. The public health and resources, in whose interest the State keeps these people from marrying, would suffer from this promiscuity, and evils far worse than those which would have followed in the normal course of events will ensue upon the very measures taken to avoid them. Venereal diseases, unbridled lust, and sex-mania would spread without check or hindrance. We see quite clearly here that the natural law may not be violated without its taking revenge upon those who violate it.
Finally, if we look at the whole question from the standpoint of Christian revelation, it is evident that those mentally defective children are destined not only for this world, but for the complete fulfilment of their destiny and the reward in the world to come of their earthly sufferings. However crippled and defective they may be in this life, they are destined to partake in an eternal bliss in the home of God, their Father. The very drawbacks, mental or physical, from which they must suffer here below, if borne with Christian patience, will but increase their eternal happiness.
As Christians, then, we must reject the principles which underlie these three Laws, namely, for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, for the Protection of German Blood and Race, and for the Protection of the Healthy Heredity of the German People.
Why must we reject these principles? First, because they deify the State and sacrifice all individual freedom and the most sacred natural rights to a falsely conceived common good. But their more fundamental error lies in making this frail life on earth the absolute end of mankind; they forget—or rather, by implication deny—the real destiny for which Almighty God in His goodness and love has created man, which is nothing less than the unimaginable beatitude of eternal life with God. "We have not here a lasting city, but seek one that is to come." (Heb. 13:14).
APPENDIX I
LAW FOR THE PREVENTION OF HEREDITARILY DISEASED OFFSPRING.
(PROMULGATED, ON 14 JULY, 1933.)
The Government of the German Reich has passed the following law which is promulgated herewith.
P. 1, 1. Whoever suffers from hereditary disease can be sterilized if, according to the finding of medical science, a great probability exists that his (or her) offspring will suffer from severe bodily or mental hereditary disease.
2. An hereditarily diseased person in the sense of the law is one who suffers from one of the following disease:
a. Innate mental deficiency, b. Schizophrenia,c. Recurrent (maniac-depressive) insanity, d. Hereditary epilepsy,e. Hereditary St. Vitus' Dance (Huntingdon's chorea), f. Hereditary blindness, g. Hereditary deafness, h. Severe hereditary bodily deformity,
3. Furthermore a person suffering from severe and chronic alcoholism is liable to be sterilized.
P. 2, 1. A person thus liable to be sterilized is entitled to file a petition. If such a person is incapable of transacting business or is under tutelage on account of mental deficiency or if he is under eighteen years of age, his legal representative is entitled to file a petition in his stead, must first seek the authorization of the Court of Chancery. If the person has come of age and has been placed in the care of a guardian, the latter's consent is required.
2. A certificate required from a medical officer approved by the German Government that the person to be sterilized is fully aware of the consequences of the operation, is to accompany the petition.
3. The petition may be withdrawn.
P. 3. The following persons may also present petitions for sterilization:
a. Medical Officer.b. Director of hospital, mental institution, nursing home or prison for the inmates of the institution concerned.
P. 4. The petition is to be made out in writing and sent to the offices of the competent Heredity Health Court. The facts supporting the claim are to be certified by medical experts. The Court is obliged to inform the M.O. concerning the petition.
P. 5. The decision rests with the Heredity Health Court within whose jurisdiction the domicile of the person to be sterilized is situated.
P. 6, 1. These Heredity Health Courts form a branch of the district Courts. Each consists of a district judge, a medical officer and another doctor qualified for practice within the German Reich and a specialist in matters of heredity. For each of these members a representative must be appointed.
2. No one who has sought authorization from the Court of Chancery according to P. 2, I can be president of an Heredity Health Court. If the M. O. himself has filed the petition with the Heredity Health Court he may not vote in the Court.
P. 7, 1. Proceedings of the Heredity Health Court are not public.
2. It is the duty of the Heredity Health Court to make inquiries. It is authorized to examine the witnesses and experts, to summon the candidate for sterilization, to order his medical examination and in case of unjustifiable absence to apprehend him. The rules of Civil Courts are to be applied to the examination and swearing-in of witnesses and experts as well as to the exclusion of particular judges. Doctors examined as witnesses or as experts are strictly bound to give evidence. Law Courts, administrative Authorities, hospitals are bound to answer inquiries made by the Heredity Health Courts.
P. 8. The Court must give judgment based on the result of the examination and evidence and according to its own unbiased conviction. The verdict is given after oral consultation and in accordance with the vote of the majority. It must be set down in writing and signed by the voters. The reasons for deciding on or refusing, sterilization must be stated. The verdict must be communicated to the petitioner, the M. O., and the subject for sterilization, or in the case of his legal inability to file a petition, to his legal representative.
P. 9. The petitioner, the M. O., and the subject for sterilization may appeal in writing to the offices of the competent Court within one month after the receipt of the verdict. (The period for appeal has been shortened by a change in the law to a fortnight). If the period during which appeal may be made has elapsed, the case may be reopened again in accordance with the rules for civil actions.
P. 10,1. The higher Heredity Health Court forms part of a higher provincial Court and its competence extends as far as the jurisdiction of the latter. It consists of a member of a higher provincial Court, a M. O., and another doctor qualified for practice within the German Reich and a specialist in matters of heredity. For each of these members a representative must be appointed. Paragraph 6, 2 must be applied here also.
2. The proceedings of the higher Heredity Health Court are ruled by Paragraphs 7 and 8.
P. II, 1. The surgical operation necessary for sterilization may be carried out only in a hospital and by a doctor qualified for practice within the German Reich. This doctor may not undertake the operation before the verdict has been finally given. The appointment of doctors and hospitals qualified for the performance of the operation is made by the supreme provincial Authorities, within their own territory. The operation may not be carried out by a doctor who filed the petition or took part in the Court as a member thereof.
2. The doctor who performs the operation has to submit to the M. O. a written report as to the carrying out of the sterilization, informing the M. O. of the method used in each particular case.
P. 12, 1. The final verdict of the Court having been given, the Sterilization is to be carried out, even if necessary, against the will of the person to be sterilized, unless this person be the one who also filed the petition. The M. O. has to apply to the police in order that necessary measures be taken. Physical force is admissible should other measures remain insufficient and ineffective.
2. Should circumstances arise which demand re-examination of the case, the Heredity Health Court is required to reconsider the case, in the meantime staying the execution of the sterilization order. Should the petition for sterilization have been refused by the Court, the case may not be re-opened unless new circumstances arise which would justify sterilization.
P. 13, 1. The costs of the action are borne by the state. The costs of the 2. operation by the health insurance companies, in the case of a person insured; in the case of non-insured and indigent persons, by the public welfare department. In all other cases the state defrays the doctor's fees according to the minimum scale set down in official tariffs and the average hospital fees. The remainder has to be paid by the person to be sterilized.
P. 14. Sterilizations performed beyond the prescriptions of this law, as also castrations, may be permitted only when carried out in accordance with sound medical practice, so that serious danger to the life or health of the person to be sterilized or castrated, whose consent must first be obtained, may be avoided. (This paragraph has recently been extended by a subsequent law. "Castration of a male is also allowed with his consent if the M. O. or doctor of the Court consider it to be necessary in order to relieve the person of a perverse sexual impulse which is likely to be the cause of further offences in the sense of PP. 175 to 178, 183, 223 to 226 of the Penal Code.")
P. 15, 1. All persons taking part in the proceedings of the Courts or in the operation of sterilization are bound to professional secrecy. 2. Those guilty of unjust violation of professional secrecy are liable for punishment by imprisonment, not exceeding one year, or by a fine. Prosecution cannot be made except by petition, which petition may also be lodged by the president.
P. 16, 1. The execution of this law is entrusted to the Governments of the German States.
2. The supreme provincial Authorities appoint the seats and areas of jurisdiction of the Courts, notwithstanding the prescriptions of Paragraph 6, 1 Sentence 1, and of Paragraph 10, 1, Sentence 1. They nominate the members of these Courts and their representatives.
P. 17, The Minister of the Interior with the consent of the Minister of Justice issues the judicial and administrative regulations necessary for the execution of this law.
P. 18. This law comes into force on January the first, 1934.
The Chancellor of the Reich, The Minister of the Interior, The Minister of Justice.
Some of the regulations provided for in P. 17:
". . . If a qualified doctor in the course of his practice should come to know of a person suffering from any hereditary disease or subject to severe and chronic alcoholism, he is required to notify the competent M. O. without delay." The same duty is incumbent upon all other persons occupied with therapeutics. In mental institutions the directors and managers are bound to give this information. Those who deliberately or through negligence fail to fulfill this obligation are liable to a fine not exceeding RM 150."
APPENDIX II
NOTES AND REFERENCES
No. 1. Dr. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, p. 461.
2. Ibid., p. 483.
3. Henry Davis, S.J., State Sterilization of the Unfit.
4. Henry Davis, S.J., Moral and Pastoral Theology, Vol. II, p. 327.
5. Henry Davis, S.J., op. cit.. Vol. IV, pp. 74, 75.
6. See also Codex Juris Canonici, cc. 1960, 1961.
7. Chief references may be derived from Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Vol. I, pp. 314, 317; 359/60, 372; Vol. II, pp. 446-448. See also the text of the law itself.
8. Oswald Menghin, Geist und Blut (Mind and Blood), pp. 32-35, 51-52, 63, 92, 94; von Eickstedt, Rassekunde und Ranengeschichte der Menschheit, Stuttgart, 1934, pp. 129-131.
". . . We must check the tendency to regard any class of living things as finally fixed and incapable of further development; this applies also to the races of mankind. We should remember that, viewed from the standpoint of racial history, the laws of heredity have only an ephemeral importance. . . . What we have before our eyes today is, therefore, nothing more than a cross-section through the ever changing flow of the growth-phenomena in the life of races. . . . " (translated from the German original.)
9. Henry Davis, S.J., Eugenics, Aims and Methods.

This item 615 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org

EugenicsArchive.Org: Image Archive on American Eugenics Movement

2006-03-18T15:13:00.000-08:00

EugenicsArchive.Org: Image Archive on American Eugenics Movement

(A wakeup call for those who say, "it can't happen in this country!" These same "reasons" are put out time and again,but the lesson is never learned.)

The philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This adage is appropriate to our current rush into the "gene age," which has striking parallels to the eugenics movement of the early decades of the 20th century. Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes. Eugenicists effectively lobbied for social legislation to keep racial and ethnic groups separate, to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and to sterilize people considered "genetically unfit." Elements of the American eugenics movement were models for the Nazis, whose radical adaptation of eugenics culminated in the Holocaust.
We now invite you to experience the unfiltered story of American eugenics – primarily through materials from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which was the center of American eugenics research from 1910-1940. In the Archive you will see numerous reports, articles, charts, and pedigrees that were considered scientific "facts" in their day. It is important to remind yourself that the vast majority of eugenics work has been completely discredited. In the final analysis, the eugenic description of human life reflected political and social prejudices, rather than scientific facts.
You may find some of the language and images in this Archive offensive. Even supposedly "scientific" terms used by eugenicists were often pervaded with prejudice against racial, ethnic, and disabled groups. Some terms have no scientific meaning today. For example, "feeblemindedness" was used as a catch-all for a number of real and supposed mental disabilities, and was a common "diagnosis" used to make members of ethnic and racial minority groups appear inferior. However, we have made no attempt to censor this documentary record – to do so would distort the past and diminish the significance of the lessons to be learned from this material.

Compulsory sterilization

2006-03-18T15:07:00.000-08:00

Compulsory sterilization

Compulsory sterilization
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Compulsory sterilization programs sprouted up in many countries at the beginning of the 20th century, usually as part of a program of "negative" eugenics—to prevent the reproduction of members of the population considered "undesirable". They generally specified that an institution or legal body could order that an individual be operated upon, for the purpose of preventing further procreation, against their will (and sometimes without their knowledge).
Usually such programs advocated sterilization by means of vasectomy in males and salpingectomy or tubal ligation in females, as they were not operations which significantly affected sexual drive or the personality of the individuals operated upon (unlike, for example, castration). This increased the seemingly innocuous nature of the operations, adding a veneer of scientific objectivity.
Plans for forced sterilization for the purposes of avoiding overpopulation are sometimes, but not usually, directly related to a eugenic intent. (See population control for more information on this type of sterilization.)
Contents[hide]
1 United States
2 Germany
3 Other countries
4 External links
//
[edit]

United States

A poster from a 1921 eugenics conference proudly displays which U.S. states had by then implemented sterilization legislation.
The first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics was the United States. The principal targets of the American program were the mentally retarded and the mentally ill, but also targeted under many state laws were the deaf, the blind, the epileptic and the physically deformed. Some sterilizations also took place in prisons and other penal institutions, targeting criminality, but they were in the relative minority. In the end, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states under state compulsory sterilization programs in the United States.
The first state to introduce compulsory sterilization legislation was Michigan, in 1897 but the law failed to garner enough votes by legislators to be adopted. Eight years later Pennsylvania's state legislators passed a sterilizaiton that was vetoed by the governor. Indiana became the first state to enact sterilization legislation in 1907 followed closely by Washington and California in 1909. Sterilization rates across the country were relatively low (California being the sole exception) until the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell which legitimized the forced sterilization of patients at a Virginia home for the mentally retarded. The number of sterilizations performed per year increased until another Supreme Court case, Skinner v. Oklahoma, complicated the legal situation by ruling against punitive sterilization in 1942.
Most sterilization laws could be divided into three main categories of motivations: eugenic (concerned with heredity), therapeutic (part of an even-then obscure medical theory that sterilization would lead to vitality), or punitive (as a punishment for criminals), though of course these motivations could be combined in practice and theory (sterilization of criminals could be both punitive and eugenic, for example). Buck v. Bell asserted only that eugenic sterilization was constitutional, whereas Skinner v. Oklahoma ruled specifically against punitive sterilization, for example. Most operations only worked to prevent reproduction (such as severing the vas deferens in males), though some states (Oregon and North Dakota in particular) had laws which called for the use of castration. In general, most sterilizations were performed under eugenic statutes, in state-run psychiatric hospitals and homes for the mentally disabled. There was never a federal sterilization statute, though eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, whose state-level "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law" was the basis of the statute affirmed in Buck v. Bell, proposed the structure of one in 1922.[1]
After World War II, public opinion towards eugenics and sterilization programs became more negative in the light of the connection with the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany, though a significant number of sterilizations continued in a few states until the early 1960s. The Oregon Board of Eugenics, later renamed the Board of Social Protection, existed until 1983, with the last forcible sterilization occurring in 1981.[2] The U.S. commonwealth Puerto Rico had a sterilization program as well. Some states continued to have sterilization laws on the books for much longer after that, though they were rarely if ever used. California sterilized more than any other state by a wide margin, and was responsible for over a third of all sterilization operations. Information about the California sterilization program was produced into book form and widely disseminated by eugenicists E.S. Gosney and Paul B. Popenoe, which was said by the government of Adolf Hitler to be of key importance in proving that large-scale compulsory sterilization programs were feasible.
In recent years, the governors of many states have made public apologies for their past programs beginning with Virginia and followed by Oregon and California. None have offered to compensate those sterilized, however, citing that few are likely still living (and by definition would have no affected offspring) and that inadequate records remain by which to verify them. At least one compensation case, Poe v. Lynchburg Training School & Hospital (1981), was filed in the courts on the grounds that the sterilization law was unconstitutional. It was rejected because the law was no longer in effect at the time of the filing. However, the petitioners were granted some compensation as the stipulations of the law itself, which required informing the patients about their operations, had not been carried out in many cases.
[edit]

Germany

"We do not stand alone": Nazi poster from 1936 with flags of other countries with compulsory sterilization legislation.
The most infamous sterilization program of the 20th century took place under the most infamous regime of the 20th century: the Third Reich. One of the first acts by Adolf Hitler after achieving total control over the German state was to pass the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) in July 1933. The law was signed in by Hitler himself, and over 200 eugenic courts were created specifically as a result of the law. Under the German law, any doctor in the Reich was required to report patients of theirs who were mentally retarded, mentally ill (including schizophrenia and manic depression), epileptic, blind, deaf, or physically deformed, and a steep monetary penalty was imposed for any patients who were not properly reported. Individuals suffering from alcoholism or Huntington's Chorea could also be sterilized. The individual's case was then presented in front of a court of Nazi officials and public health officers who would review their medical records, take testimony from friends and colleagues, and eventually decide whether or not to order a sterilization operation performed on the individual, using force if necessary. Though not explicitly covered by the law, 400 mixed-race "Rhineland Bastards" were also sterilized beginning in 1937.
By the end of World War II, over 400,000 individuals were sterilized under the German law and its revisions, most within its first four years of being enacted. When the issue of compulsory sterilization was brought up at the Nuremberg trials after the war, many Nazis defended their actions on the matter by indicating that it was the United States itself from whom they had taken inspiration.
[edit]

Other countries
Even years and decades after the large-scale forced sterilization programs had ceased to exist in the US, many countries maintained post-WWII sterilization campaigns lasting well into the 70s, most notoriously Sweden and Canada. Dozens of countries around the world, especially in Europe, also had similar programs, and in 1997 it was disclosed that Sweden in particular had a strong sterilization program, sterilizing around 62,000 individuals over a period of 40 years until 1976. Other countries that had notably active sterilization programs include Canada, Australia, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Iceland, and some countries in Latin America (including Panama). In the United Kingdom, Home Secretary Winston Churchill introduced a bill that included forced sterilization. Writer G.K. Chesterton led a successful effort to defeat that clause of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act.[3] The Roman Catholic Church has been a notable opponent of eugenics and sterilization programs.
The Soviet Union imposed forced sterilization to female workers deported from Romania to Soviet labor camps. This occurred after World War II, when Romania was supposed to supply reconstruction workforce (according to the armistice convention). A link to the testimony of such a deportee [4] (in Romanian).
India and China have also at various times implemented sterilization campaigns as a population control policy, though only the latter has made any previous overtures towards any potential eugenic random motivations.
[edit]

External links
"Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Virginia, Eugenics, and Buck v. Bell" (USA)
Eugenics Archive (USA)
"Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit) (Germany, USA)
"Sterilization Law in Germany" (includes text of 1933 German law in appendix)
[5] Communism - Dora Dumitru, sterilized during her deportation to the Soviet Union (in Romanian)

Reassessing the Beginning of the ‘Euthanasia’ Programme

2006-03-18T13:31:00.000-08:00

Reassessing the Beginning of the ‘Euthanasia’ Programme

Reassessing the Beginning of the ‘Euthanasia’ Programme
by Ulf Schmidt
University of Oxford
While books have been written about the programme to kill handicapped children and adults, euphemistically called the ‘euthanasia’ programme and code-named ‘Aktion T–4’ to camouflage the involvement of Hitler’s Chancellery of the Führer (KdF), the precise beginning of this first systematic killing programme is somehow shrouded in mystery. We know that the ‘euthanasia’ programme began with the killing of the most defenceless and vulnerable populations: with children. Historians, until recently, have primarily relied on post-war testimony of those involved in the killing programme to establish exactly when and in what context the first child was killed and how this triggered Hitler’s decision to entrust his personal physician, Karl Brandt, and the head of the Chancellery of the Führer, Philipp Bouhler, with organising the ‘euthanasia’ programme.[1]
The origins of the ‘euthanasia’ programme are complex and cannot be dealt with in this brief paper.[2] The article will, however, highlight the beginning of the programme and attempt to clarify some of the various accounts as to how it actually started. According to the accounts of those involved in the killing operation, the ‘euthanasia’ programme was triggered by the so-called severely handicapped ‘Knauer child’, whose parents had petitioned the Chancellery of the Führer to ‘put their child to sleep’. Though some of the accounts varied quite considerably with regard to the timing and circumstances of this incident, in the past historians have strongly believed in the existence of the ‘Knauer child’ and agreed upon the approximate time when the child was killed.[3]
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Questioned at the Nuremberg Doctor’s Trial in 1946/47, the key defendant, Brandt, testified to the circumstances in which the ‘Knauer child’ supposedly was killed:
Brandt: The father of a deformed child approached the Führer and asked that this child or this creature should be killed. Hitler turned this matter over to me and told me to go to Leipzig immediately - it was in Leipzig - to confirm the fact on the spot. It was a child which had been born blind, an idiot - at least it seemed to be an idiot - and it lacked one leg and part of an arm
Question: Witness, you are speaking about the Leipzig affair, about this deformed child. What did Hitler order you to do?
Brandt: He ordered me to talk to the physicians who were looking after the child to find out whether the statements of the father were true. If they were correct, then I was to inform the physicians in his name that they could carry out euthanasia. The important thing was that the parents should not feel themselves incriminated at some later date as a result of this euthanasia - that the parents should not have the impression that they themselves were responsible for the death of this child. I was further ordered to state that if these physician should become involved in some legal proceedings because of this measure, these proceedings would be quashed by order of Hitler (...).
Question: What did the doctors who were involved say?
Brandt: The doctors were of the opinion that there was no justification for keeping such a child alive. It was pointed out that in maternity wards under certain circumstances it is quite natural for the doctors themselves to perform euthanasia in such a case without anything further being said about it. No precise instructions were given in that respect.[4]
Brandt’s statement corresponded to that of other defendants and ‘euthanasia’ doctors, including Hans Hefelmann, the man in charge of the children’s ‘euthanasia’ programme. In August 1960 Hefelmann told a German court: ‘The mentioned case occurred in the year 1938; I cannot name a precise date anymore. It was concerned with the child Knauer. According to my memory the Knauer child was lacking three extremities and was blind’.[5] In November 1960 he added to his statement that he could ‘remember with certainty’ that the Chancellery of the Führer had become involved after a petition of the grandmother of the child had reached the office and that Hefelmann thought that ‘the case Knauer occurred at the latest in the first two months of the year 1939’.[6] All of those involved in setting up the programme agreed that the ‘case K.’, as it was called by some of the defendants, had led Hitler to authorise Brandt and Bouhler to perform euthanasia in cases of similar nature in accordance with that of the Knauer child. Thus the precise context of this case is of significant historical interest.
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Unfortunately other sources which could have corroborated the sequence of events are believed to have been mostly destroyed or lost. For the Chancellery of the Führer only a single relevant file exists at the Federal Archive in Berlin.[7] For the Children’s Clinic at the University of Leipzig the patient files are considered to be lost.[8] Historians therefore assumed that the case had occurred either at the end of 1938 or at the beginning of 1939 and that about nine months later, after the German army had completed the Polish campaign in September 1939, Hitler instructed Brandt and Bouhler with organising the ‘euthanasia’ programme. Scholars also agreed that the child had been a boy and that it had been blind and physically disabled. This account was generally accepted, with only few exceptions. One such exception was reported in Philippe Aziz’s book Les medicins de la mort, which in general was neglected by historians because the author had dramatised the archival sources and provided the reader with no footnotes, thus making it almost impossible for scholars to verify or falsify Aziz’ account.[9] At the beginning of volume four of Doctors of Death, the English translation of Les medicins de la mort, Aziz described his visit to a family named ‘Kressler’ in Pomßen in April 1973.[10] Aziz’s interview with the family supposedly revealed that the case had happened much later, in the summer of 1939, and that Brandt had personally visited the family in Pomßen, located in close proximity to Leipzig, to examine the child.
The Kressler family seem to have been ‘ordinary’ Germans in the true sense of the word, believing most Nazi propaganda of a strong and healthy Germany: ‘We were poor and we worked hard’, Aziz recalled the family saying. ‘When Hitler came to power, we thought things were going to change - that he would build a better Germany ... For us, the Third Reich was not the horrible thing that history has made it out to be. Life was peaceful. I worked in a sawmill, and my wife was expecting a child’.[11] But according to Mr Kressler the child turned out to be a ‘monster’. The child was blind, part of his left arm was missing and his leg was deformed. The Kressler’s first asked Professor Werner Catel, head of the Children’s Clinic at the University of Leipzig and later heavily involved in the killing programme, for help. Catel, however, told the parents that ‘handicapped children like this should not go on living’ because he considered their lives as ‘worthless’.[12] The precise sequence of events which followed is not entirely clear from Aziz’s recollection of the interview, especially with regard to who exactly petitioned to Hitler.[13] Either one of the parents or the uncle seems to have written to the Chancellery of the Führer, requesting permission to help the child to die: ‘That was 1939, and we were on the brink of war. Then one day, ‘it was summer, and the afternoon was hot’, Mr Kressler was called out of his sawmill, where he was working, because Brandt had arrived in Pomßen to see their child. In Aziz’s account Mr Kressler recalled:
It was right here. Karl Brandt was standing, there near the window. He was tall and impressive. He seemed to fill up the whole room. He didn’t want to sit down. He explained to me that the Führer had personally sent him, and that my son’s case interested the Führer very, very much. The Führer wanted to explore the problem of people who had no future - whose life was worthless. That’s why he had sent his personal doctor to see us. From then on, we wouldn’t have to suffer from this terrible misfortune, because the Führer had granted us the mercy killing of our son. Later, we could have other children, handsome and healthy, of whom the Reich could be proud. [14]
Though Aziz’s historical narrative should be treated with care, it is quite surprising to what extent his report of Mr Kressler’s recollection of the events resembled those of Brandt, given to the American Military Tribunal in the Doctor’s Trial in 1946/47. But did the Kressler family really exist and if so, was their child the previously thought ‘Knauer case’? Did Aziz use pseudonyms to protect the identity of the family? When exactly did the ‘Knauer case’ occur? The German scholar Udo Benzenhöfer has recently investigated the ‘Knauer case’ as well as Aziz’ account of events.[15] He found out that the child was neither named ‘Knauer’ nor was the family called ‘Kressler’. It did in fact turn out that Aziz had given the family a pseudonym, but that the family had indeed lived in Pomßen, near Leipzig. It also became clear that the child had not been killed at the end of 1938, but in the late summer of 1939.
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Benzenhöfer places great emphasis on having found the real name of the child, though he is adamant not to disclose it by reason of Germany’s data-protection laws. He argues that historians should call this case in the future the ‘child K.’ and that the main importance of his discovery lies in its factual value; in other words that it is now safe to say that this child ‘really existed’.[16] Though this approach is understandable and sensitive to the feelings of the parents and relatives of the child, it somehow overlooks the personality of the child itself and the individual suffering of the boy. Let us be precise in the context. The parents of this child wanted the child to be killed. According to the available documentation they were ardent Nazis, who regarded their child as ‘not worth living’ and saw to it that their child would be killed in accordance with Nazi ideology. By calling this child the ‘Case K.’ we would not only medicalise the child’s history, but also place the justified claim of the parents for anonymity over the personality and suffering of the first ‘euthanasia’ victim.
The church register (Begräbnisbuch) in Pomßen provides convincing evidence about this first child and we wish to reveal, at least in so far as is permissible, the identity of this child and the context in which the boy was killed. The Pomßen church register lists seven deaths from January until October 1939. Among these there was only one child, aged five months and five days.[17] The child was called Gerhard Herbert K., born on 20 February 1939 and died on 25 July 1939 in Pomßen, Saxony.[18] Three days later the boy was buried in the same village. The cause of death was given as ‘heart weakness’, an indication that the doctors may have used drugs such as luminal or morhium-scopolamin, two drugs generally used in the children’s ‘euthanasia’ programme to camouflage an unnatural death.[19] Gerhard’s father was an agricultural labourer. He and his wife both lived in Pomßen and were of the Protestant-Lutheran faith.[20] With the father an agricultural labourer, it can be assumed that they may have been poor, as ‘Herr Kressler’ stated in Aziz’ account. It also can be assumed that Brandt really visited the family, as the date of death corresponds to ‘Herr Kressler’s’ recollections of Brandt’s visit during a ‘hot summer day’ in 1939.
The date of the child’s death in July 1939 as a crucial turning point in the regime’s decision to go ahead with the actual beginning of the ‘euthanasia’ programme is further corroborated if we take the overall preparation of the programme into account. To launch such a nation-wide programme it was crucial to inform doctors of mental asylums and health administrators in the Ministry of the Interior about the imminent plan to kill handicapped patients. In other words the bureaucratic machinery had to be set up and put on stand-by. And this is what seems to have happened in July 1939. In Nuremberg Werner Heyde, one of the most notorious doctors of the killing programme, told his interrogators that he had received a telephone call in July 1939 to attend a meeting at the Chancellery of the Führer.[21] At this meeting approximately ten to fifteen psychiatrists from all parts of Germany were present. They were informed by Brandt, Bouhler, Conti and Linden, the key organisers of the programme, that action in this question was imminent: ‘We were told that the „euthanasia" of the mentally ill should in practice be put into reality and we were asked to offer our support as experts and advisors. This meeting was followed by a series of meetings from September 1939 onwards ... At the meeting in September or October 1939 it became clear for me and also for the others that Philipp Bouhler as well as Karl Brandt were the men in charge of the so called „euthanasia" programme’.[22]
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Though Heyde’s statement corroborates that there was increasing activity in the Chancellery of the Führer in July 1939 with regard to the imminent beginning of the ‘euthanasia’ programme, it also reveals, to some extent, that preparations for the programme must have been in the pipeline at the highest levels of the Nazi hierarchy for some months at least. A careful reading of some of the statements of the T-4 personnel does support this assumption. By May 1939, for example, Brandt told Hefelmann that Hitler had ordered him (Brandt) to set up an advisory committee which would supervise and prepare the killing of mentally ill children; for reason of secrecy the ‘Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses’ would serve as a cover.[23] What is more, if we assume that the parents, or the child’s uncle, submitted their petition to the Chancellery of the Führer shortly after the child was born in February 1939, then Hefelmann’s earlier mentioned account from 1960 that ‘the case Knauer ... occurred in the first two months of the year 1939’ also suddenly makes a lot of sense. What Hefelmann probably meant by ‘the case Knauer ... occurred’, was the point at which the case was first brought to the attention of the Chancellery of the Führer, which may well have been in the spring of 1939. The petition of one of Gerhard’s relatives to ‘put him to sleep’ was certainly not the only one the KdF received from German parents since 1933, especially after racial propaganda had stressed that such children where ‘ballast existences’ for the German Volkskörper and should be eliminated. Hefelmann, for instance, stated that two thousand petitions reached the Chancellery each day.[24] But it is very likely that Gerhard’s case caught the attention of the KdF officials as they may have realised that this case could well serve as a precedent because of the clear-cut nature of the many disabilities of the boy.
More important than the context of the first ‘euthanasia’ murder, sanctioned by Hitler himself, is the actual meaning of this case. The relevance of this finding lies in the fact that the ‘beginning’ of the euthanasia programme would move much closer to the outbreak of war, thus changing not only the chronology of events quite significantly but also the speed with which the programme to kill handicapped infants was in practice implemented. No one questions that Hitler had for long anticipated killing handicapped children and adults, that plans and committees had been set up, and that he had informally confided his killing programme to some of his closest allies during the years 1933 to 1935 and thereafter. But it is one thing to plan something and state that you will do something, and quite another to actually perform the action. Moreover, in the context of the ‘euthanasia’ programme and even more so in that of the Holocaust, a change of chronology of about six to eight months can be of great importance and may enable us to gain a better insight into how the regime functioned in implementing its murderous policy.
For the events following Gerhard Herbert K.’s death, the following picture seems to emerge. Only three weeks after Gerhard died, on 18 August 1939, the ‘Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses’ introduced the compulsory registering of all ‘malformed’ new-born children. Doctors were told to report all cases of idiocy, Down’s Syndrome, microcephaly, hydrocephaly, physical deformities such as the absence of a limb, and all forms of spastic paralysis. The decision to kill the children was taken by three expert referees, one of whom had been directly involved in the case of Gerhard Herbert K. His name was Professor Catel from Leipzig. The other two were Hans Heinze of Brandenburg-Görden and the paediatrician, Ernst Wentzler, a successful director of a private paediatric clinic in Berlin-Frohnau.[25]
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If Brandt is to be believed, then the sequence of events also reveals the extent to which the expeditious introduction of the children’s ‘euthanasia’ programme during the summer of 1939 was tightly intertwined with the killing of adults in the much larger killing programme ‘Aktion T-4’. Shortly after the conclusion of the Polish campaign Brandt was ordered to see Hitler at the Obersalzberg where, according to Brandt, the following conversation took place:
I was called to him for some reason which I can no longer remember, and he told me that because of a document which he had received from Reichsleiter Bouhler, he wanted to bring about a definite solution in the euthanasia question. He gave me general directives on how he imagined it [emphasis by the author], and the fundamentals were that the insane persons who were in such a condition that they could no longer take any conscious part in life were to be given relief through death. General instructions followed about petitions which he himself had received, and he told me to contact Bouhler himself about the matter.[26]
What we know about Hitler and his personalised rule, his informal decision making, his reluctance to commit himself on paper, his preference to provide his loyal servants with the ‘general gist’ of his ‘wishes’ which would give them an idea ‘how he imagined’ certain policy measures, all this makes Brandt’s statement plausible and credible. As Ian Kershaw has recently pointed out in his impressive Hitler biography, one of the key driving forces of Nazi Germany was that the people were, as he calls it, ‘working toward the Führer’, i.e. that they tried to fulfil those ideas which they imagined would be in the interest of their Führer and which Hitler had broadly outlined.[27]
The evidence which has been presented changes the chronology of events for the introduction of the children’s ‘euthanasia’ programme and gives additional weight to the argument that much of Nazi policy was implemented if actual policy developments suddenly corresponded to previously stated policy intentions. Nazi policies were often introduced shortly after the general situation seemed to indicate to Hitler the possible success of his measures, with the least possible resistance from any kind of opposition. To start the ‘euthanasia’ programme at the beginning of the war seemed to be the right timing, and, as often before, the incident of Gerhard Herbert K. played conveniently into Hitler’s hands. It provided him with a rationale to introduce his murderous policy which he had formulated in the 1920s and which remained surprisingly consistent once he was in power up until his suicide in the bunker under the Chancellery of the Führer.

FOOTNOTES:
Ernst Klee, ‘Euthanasie’ im NS-Staat. Die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), pp. 77f; Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany, 1900-1945 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 93ff; Ulrich Schultz, ‘Dichtkunst, Heilkunst, Forschung: Der Kinderarzt Werner Catel’, Aly, G. (ed.), Reform und Gewissen, ‘Euthanasie’ im Dienst des Fortschritts. Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik (Berlin, 1985), pp. 107-124, pp. 118f; Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’, 1890-1945 (Göttingen, 1987), pp. 182ff; Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene. Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), pp. 185ff; Götz Aly (ed.), Aktion T4, 1939-1945. Die"Euthanasie"-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstraße 4 (Berlin, 1989); Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, 1995), pp. 39ff; Matthias Dahl, Endstation Spiegelgrund. Die Tötung behinderter Kinder während des Nationalsozialismus am Beispiel einer Kinderfachabteilung in Wien 1940 bis 1945 (Wien, 1998), pp. 26-32; see also the chapter ‘Building a Research Laboratory: Medical Film and Children’s ‘Euthanasia’ in Ulf Schmidt, ‘Medical Research Films, Perpetrators, and Victims in National Socialist Germany, 1933-1945’ (Husum, forthcoming 1999).[Return to text]
For a scholarly introduction to the literature on the origins of the ‘euthanasia’ programme see Burleigh (1994), pp. 93-129 and Friedlander (1995), pp. 39-61.[Return to text]
Friedlander, for example, assumes that the death of the first child occurred in 1938 and states that ‘the infant of a family named Knauer’ was ‘apparently born with severe handicaps. The exact nature of its affliction cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but testimony does seem to agree that it was born with a leg and part of an arm missing’; Friedlander, p. 39; Burleigh notes that ‘in the winter of 1938-1939, the parents of a malformed infant called Knauer petitioned Hitler in order to bring about its death’, but concedes that ‘there are being several versions how it [the ‘euthanasia’ programme] started’; Burleigh, p. 93f.[Return to text]
Quoted from Burleigh, pp. 94ff; see also National Archives and Records Service, Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al. (Case 1) November 21, 1946-August 20, 1947 (Washington, 1974), pp. 2396ff.[Return to text]
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abt. 631a/79, GStA Frankfurt. Anklage Heyde, Bohne und Hefelmann, Js 17/59 (GStA), 22 May 1962, p. 48.[Return to text]
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abt. 631a/79, GStA Frankfurt. Anklage Heyde, Bohne und Hefelmann, Js 17/59 (GStA), 22 May 1962, pp. 49-51.[Return to text]
BAB, 62 ka1, Kanzlei des Führers, 242, Reichsausschuß zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung von erb- und anlagebedingten schweren Leiden, Reichsbeihilfen für den Reichsausschuß, 1940-1945.[Return to text]
According to the archive of the Children’s Clinic at the University of Leipzig all patient files and finding aids of the 1930s and 1940s have been destroyed. The only remaining finding aid is a so called ‘coded card-index’ (Verschlüsselungskartei) which dates back to the beginning of the 1950s and provides references to files stored in what the archivist calls the ‘bunker’.[Return to text]
Philippe Aziz, Les medicins de la mort (Geneva, 1975).[Return to text]
Philippe Aziz, Doctors of Death (Geneva, 1976), vol.4, pp. 11-15.[Return to text]Top of page
Aziz, Doctors, vol.4, pp. 11f.[Return to text]
Aziz, Doctors, vol.4, p. 13.[Return to text]
Schmuhl also notes that it is not possible to clarify who exactly petioned to the Chanclery of the Führer since the individual testimonies differ quite substantial from one another. Moreover, the letter requesting that the child should die has never been discovered; see Schmuhl, p. 430.[Return to text]
Aziz, Doctors, vol.4, p. 14.[Return to text]
Udo Benzenhöfer, ‘Der Fall „Kind Knauer"’, Deutsches Ärzteblatt, 95 (1998), No.19, pp. 954-955.[Return to text]
Benzenhöfer, p. 955.[Return to text]
Ev.-Luth. Pfarramt Pomßen mit Großsteinberg und Grethen, Hauptstraße 31, 04668 Pomßen, church register (Begräbnisbuch) for the year 1939. According to Benzenhöfer the two children who died in 1938 in Pomßen did not fit the profile of the ‘Knauer child’, i.e. that the child was severely handicapped and male, that the child was the first child in the family and that, according to Aziz, the killing occurred during the summer months; Benzenhöfer, p. 955.[Return to text]
Ibid.[Return to text]
Ibid; The children were killed separately; usually they were given an overdose of the sedative luminal (Phenobarbitone) and veronal (sleeping tablets) which caused congestion of the lungs. As a result the children generally contracted pneumonia, bronchitis or other breathing deficiencies which eventually resulted in death. The second choice was morphine-scopolamine, the third death by starvation. The children did not die of poisoning, but from the medical complications caused by the overdose of a common medicine; see also Burleigh, p. 103; Friedlander, pp. 54f.[Return to text]
Ibid.[Return to text]Top of page
Nürnberger Staatsarchiv, KV-Anklage, No-3008.[Return to text]
Nürnberger Staatsarchiv, KV-Anklage, No-3008.[Return to text]
Proctor, p. 186.[Return to text]
Burleigh, p. 93. [Return to text]
For Heinze see Franz-Werner Kersting, Anstaltsärzte zwischen Kaiserreich und Bundesrepublik. Das Beispiel Westfalen (Paderborn, 1996), pp. 351f; for Wentzler see Schmidt (forthcoming), pp. 229-268.[Return to text]
Quoted from Burleigh, p. 97; see also National Archives and Records Service, Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al. (Case 1) November 21, 1946-August 20, 1947 (Washington, 1974), pp. 2396ff.[Return to text]
Ian Kershaw, Hitler. 1889-1936: Hubris (London, 1998), pp. 527-591.

EUTHANASIE PROGRAMME

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EUTHANASIE PROGRAMME

The T-4 Euthanasia ProgramIn the fall of 1939 the German government established, under the Reich Chancellery, the Euthanasie Programme under the direction of Philip Bouhler and Dr. Karl Brandt. The headquarters of the operation were at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin and the code name for the program was derived from that address -- T-4.
The choice of terminology for the program is consistent with the Nazis' penchant for euphemism. Euthanasia typically means "mercy killing" and in the 1990's in the United States and other western nations, it is synonymous with "physician-assisted suicide." The kind of killing carried out through the T-4 program bears little resemblance to contemporary concepts of euthanasia.
Hitler's rise to power produced a completely new set of definitions. Guided by the over-riding principles of racial hygiene, racial purity, and national health, the Nazi regime seems fairly consitently commited to the removal of those unfit to live and produce inferior offspring. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws provided for the forced sterilization of the unfit. Not only did Hitler have in mind such "inferior races" as Jews and Gypsies, he also included unfit Aryans -- the mentally defective, severely handicapped, the incurably insane and the incurably sick.
To implement the euthanasia program, special carbon-monoxide chambers were constructed. According to Milton Meltzer:
Between December 1939 and August 1941, about 50,000 to 60,000 Germans--children and adults--were secretly killed by lethal injections or in gassing installations designed to look like shower stalls. It was a foretast of Auschwitz. The victims were taken from the medical institution and put to death...Never to Forget, New York:HarperCollins, 1976:131.
Robert J. Lifton makes the following assessment:
Of the number of people killed in the T4 and the 14f13 projects, the following statistics are usually given: adult mental patients from institutions, 80,000 to 100,000; children in institutions, 5,000; special action against Jews in institutions, 1,000; concentration camp inmates transported to killing centers (14f13), 20,000 (Klee estimated that at the end of 1941, some 93,521 `beds' had been emptied for other uses [70,000 patients gassed, plus over 20,000 dead through starvation and medication] - in other words approximately one-third of the places for the mentally ill.) But these figures may well be too low; twice these numbers of people may have perished. The fact is that we do not know and shall probably never know. Elements of deception, imposed chaos, and the destruction of many records make anything like an accurate estimate impossible.
The same is true concerning the total number of people murdered at specific killing centers. Hartheim victims of both ordinary `euthanasia' and 14f13 are variously estimated from 20,000 (by Dr. Georg Renno, Lonauer's successor as director), to 400,000 (by Franz Ziereis, the former commandant of Mauthausen, on his deathbed); 30,000 is believed to be the best estimate. While these figures may seem unimpressive when placed next to the millions killed in the Final Solution, they represent the murder of shockingly large numbers of people -- all in places characterized as hospitals." (The Nazi Doctors" Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. London: Papermac, 1986 (Reprinted 1990) p. 142).
Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, "The Euthanasia Program," The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Vol II, pp.452-454, informs us:
The first large-scale euthanasia action seems to have taken place in Pomerania and estern Prussia shortly after the Polish campaign. During 1940, four euthanasia institutions went into operation: Grafeneck, in January, Brandenburg, in February, Hartheim, in May and Sonnenstein, in June. In the first half of the year, 8,765 persons were gassed in these four institutions, three-quarters of them in May and June, a time when world attention was focused on the Battle of France. By the end of 1940, a total of 26,459 patients had been put to death, and in the first eight months of 1941, an additional 35,049 were "disinfected." These were the figures given by the accounting section of T4's head office.
Robert E. Conot makes the important connection between the euthanasia program and the Final Solution:
"Concurrent with the start-up of the euthanasia exterminations, Hitler authorized Himmler to establish a Race and Resettlement Office under the aegis of the SS. It was the Race and Resettlement Office that was to be responsible for the `racial' purification of the Reich and the establishment of a Nordic empire. On October 17, 1939, Keitel summoned the victorious Wehrmacht generals for a lecture from the Fu"hrer, who ranted: `The increased severity of the racial struggle permits of no legal restrictions. Jews, Poles, and similar trash are to be cleared from the old and new Reich territories.' Eight million Poles and 800,000 Jews were to be transported from the annexed portion of Poland into the government-general, and replaced by ethnic Germans repatriated from the Baltic lands, the Balkans, Russia, and the Italian Tyrol -- even though, in large part, these Germans had emigrated generations before.
To `render harmless' the Polish intelligensia, political and religious leaders, Jews, and anyone else who might, theoretically, rally an opposition, Heydrich established SS Einsatzgruppen (action groups). The Einsatzgruppen rampaged over the land, terrorizing and killing. Selections for execution were haphazard. Sometimes the commandos erred and included ethnic Germans whom they mistook for Jews. Shootings were carried out publicly to heighten the climate of fear. A Werhmacht intelligence officer reported: `Arrests were almost always accompanied by looting. Evacuations were carried out and blocks of houses were cleared at random, the inhabitants loaded into lorries at night, then taken to concentration camps. Actions against the Jews were carried out with the most serious excesses. A number of Jews were driven into a synagogue, where they had to crawl, singing, between the benches. Forced to take down their trousers, they were continously whipped by the SS men on their bare behinds. A Jew who out of fright dirtied himself was forced to smear the excrement onto the faces of the other Jews.
`After about fifty Jews, who had been used during the day to repair a bridge, finished their work in the evening, two SS men drove them into a synagogue and shot them all without any reason.' (Judgement At Nuremberg, New York: Harper & Row, 1983, pp 211-212.
The euthanasia program proved to be a valuable precursor to the atrocities which were to come in connection with the "Final Solution." SS Major Christian Wirth was transferred from his duties at a euthanasia center to take over the supervision of Chelmo, the first of six extermination camps in Poland to become operational. His expertise in mass extermination seems to have been a major consideration. Wirth later served at Belzek, Treblinka and Sobibor. In 1942, Franz Stangl was transferred from one of the euthanasia centers to Sobibor extermination camp where he served as camp commander. He performed so well there that he was transferred in the summer of 1942 to Treblinka [Many years later, in 1970, Stangl was extradited from Brazil to West Germany to stand trial. He was found guilty of joint responsibility for the murder of 900,000 Jews]. After the Wannsee Conference in 1942, the staff of Euthanasie Program was transferred to Operation Reinhard.

T-4 Euthanasia Program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2006-03-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

T-4 Euthanasia Program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

T-4 Euthanasia Program
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This poster reads: "60,000 Reichsmark is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too. Read 'New People', the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the Nazi Party."

T-4 Euthanasia Program (Tiergartenstraße 4 or Tiergartenstrasse 4) was the official name of the Nazi Germany eugenics program which forcefully conducted mass sterilizations and euthanasia on Germans who were institutionalized or suffering from birth defects. The use of the term "euthanasia" is a typical example of Nazi euphemism and bears little resemblance to the modern usage of this practice. In total, an estimated 200,000 people were killed as a result of the program.

Contents
1 Establishment and purpose
2 History of the program
3 Legacy
4 References
5 External links
6 See also
6.1 See also
6.2 Key figures
6.3 Key concepts
//

Establishment and purpose
The program was established by Adolf Hitler, operated under the authority of Chief of the State Chancellery Philip Bouhler and Doctor Karl Brandt, and was headed by Werner Heyde and Paul Nitsche. The name T-4 derived from the address of the program's offices in Berlin.
The purpose of the program was to both lower expenses by systematically killing the institutionalized as well as preserving the genetic quality of the German population by sterilizing people with physical deformities, handicaps, or mental illnesses. Disabled children were removed from their families and taken to special hospitals. The program was later expanded to include adults, although most disabled adults were already subject to compulsory sterilization as a result of the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring".
The Nazis characterized the killing of those deemed "useless eaters" to be "mercy killings", though the wide scope, lack of consent from either the targeted or their relatives, and the eugenic motives of the program led some contemporaries and later observers to label the deaths as simply a form of medicalized mass murder.

History of the program
Extermination was carried out at Grafeneck (beginning January 20, 1940), Hartheim (beginning May 6, 1940), Hadamar (beginning January 1941), Bernburg (beginning November 21, 1940), Brandenburg (beginning February 8, 1940) and Sonnenstein (beginning June 1940) using gas, suffocation, injection, poisoning, starvation, and overdose of medication. The first experiments with mobile gas vans were performed in March 1940 in the hospital in Kochanowka near Łódź. The Nazis also experimented with piping carbon monoxide from truck engines into sealed chambers. Much of this extermination was supervised by the psychiatrists Carl "Hans Heinze" Sennhenn and Werner Villinger. Sennhenn provided Nazi researchers with the brains of hundreds of victims, while Villinger conducted experiments upon victims before ordering their deaths. Gas chambers were built at Hartheim to suffocate mostly adult victims with carbon monoxide even before the widespread use of such methods during The Holocaust.
By the time Hitler ordered a temporary halt to the program on August 18, 1941 due to protests from churches and relatives of the victims, 70,000 people had already been executed. However such public resistance merely slowed the program, and the killings continued under greater secrecy. Some of the personnel trained under the program later continued their trade in Nazi extermination camps.
Many of the key figures responsible for conducting the program, such as Christian Wirth and Franz Stangl, were also actively involved in developing gas chamber technology for the Holocaust and assisted in the construction of the camps at Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibór in Operation Reinhard. Aside from the well-known camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau these were the main centers of extermination by gas for millions of people.
By the end of 1941, every third inmate of psychiatric institutions in Germany had been killed under the program, whether by direct means or by starvation, resulting in about 93,000 additional deaths.

Legacy
Germany's practice of euthanasia did not end in 1941. Doctors and nurses continued the practice at hospitals around Germany and Austria. Killings and intentional neglect were conducted in such a way as to minimize the suspicion of the German population; however, no such precautions were taken when exterminating people of the occupied territories. Acts of cruelty and violence there were reported and recorded.
Doctors and nursing personnel involved in the euthanasia program were not always brought to justice. Long after the creation of the new German states in 1949, high-ranking officials involved in euthanasia had reportedly escaped prosecution and were still involved in the German health system.

References
"Nazi 'Euthanasia' Programs" in Dieter Kuntz, ed. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race by Michael Burleigh. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/University of North Carolina Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8078-2916-1
Dokumente zur Euthanasie. by Ernst Klee. ISBN 3-5962-4327-0, in German
Euthanasie im NS-Staat. Die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens by Ernst Klee. Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-5962-4326-2, in German
The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution by Henry Friedlander. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London, 1995, ISBN 0-8078-2208-6.
A Sign for Cain by Fredric Wertham. MacMillan Company, New York, 1967, ISBN 0-8488-1657-9
Was sie taten. Was sie wurden by Ernst Klee. ISBN 3596243645, in German

External links
Iatrocracy on a world wide scale - PF/SPK(H)
EuthaNAZIa, nowdays? - PF/SPK(H)
Information on the T4 program
Online inventory of archives dealing with euthanasia under the Nazi regime (in German)
Cardinal Galen's speech against Nazi euthanasia
Questionnaire for Euthanasia Program
Statistics of T4 victims in German-occupied Poland