Eugenics

[KanadaHye]

Re: Eugenics

It's the application of science... that's what makes me say it's kind of a political thing.

A lot of unreasonable creationist types try to blame eugenics on Darwin or the theory of evolution and that's just dumb. It's like blaming Einstein (or special relativity) for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So the atomic bomb was created to be used..... as a giant paper weight?

Let me rephrase. What's the point of science if you're not going to apply it?!?!?!!!

[Siggie]

Re: Eugenics

It's the application of science... that's what makes me say it's kind of a political thing.

A lot of unreasonable creationist types try to blame eugenics on Darwin or the theory of evolution and that's just dumb. It's like blaming Einstein (or special relativity) for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Eugenics

Sir Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin coined the term "eugenics". It's science, it's just mad science. These articles outline the same time frame that lobotomies were being trialed.

[Siggie]

Re: Eugenics

This is more of a political thing than science.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Eugenics

North Carolina hearing explores history of forced sterilization

Deborah Chesson spoke through tears Wednesday as she addressed a North Carolina task force on behalf of her mother.

"I'm writing you with hopes that you will understand the pain, hurt and emptiness I still feel inside," she read.

"A social worker convinced my mom to sign for me to undergo an operation that would prevent me from getting pregnant, not knowing all the while that I was being set up to be sterilized like I was some kind of animal."

Dozens of North Carolina citizens spoke at the public hearing against the state's five-decade forced sterilization program. The listening session, held by the governor's task force, gave victims the opportunity to share their experiences with a state task force charged with recommending compensation for victims and their families.

Eugenics is the process of selectively breeding humans and animals to rid the population of "unfit" characteristics. In 1933, North Carolina passed a revised eugenics law. The law established the North Carolina Eugenics Board, which largely targeted low-income females for sterilization procedures.

Those speaking at the hearing said social workers pressured men and women to undergo sterilization and in some cases lied and said the procedures were reversible.

After World War II, most states abolished their eugenics programs when it became clear that Nazi's used similar practices to further their ideals of racial purity. But the number of sterilizations in North Carolina peaked between 1950-1960, according to state records. Though the eugenics board was abolished in 1977, the law remained a general statute until 2003.

Roughly 3,000 of the 7,600 citizens who were sterilized are still alive. Friends and family members of those sterilized addressed the task force on behalf of their loved ones who could not be present.

In 2003, North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue established the Governor's Eugenics Compensation Task Force to research and provide recommendations for possible compensation for victims. The task force has an August 1 deadline to submit a proposal to the governor.

State representatives considered offering $50,000 in compensation to victims, but legislators deemed the amount too high. Now they are considering whether to offer $20,000 or to pay for medical services.

At least seven other states have issued formal apologies for similar eugenics programs. So far, only North Carolina has considered establishing a program to compensate individual victims.

"What do you think I'm worth?" one victim asked. "It doesn't matter what you think I'm worth. It's what I think I'm worth."

Perdue addressed the audience after the testimonies were heard. She called the state's sterilization program "reprehensible" and thanked victims and their families for having the courage to share their stories with the task force.

"I can't believe that this has ever happened in North Carolina. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here," Perdue said. "This is not a good day for us. It's not a happy day for North Carolina ... and it has to be hard for you to sit in this room."

Chesson said the intervening years have turned victims into survivors who have endured despite the efforts of the eugenics board. She questioned how much longer the victims would have to wait for justice.

"It's easy to make decisions when you don't have faces of the people who have been victimized," she said.

"The eugenics board was a committee, a board. ... I'm not saying that you're just like them, but for me, until I see action, I'm still waiting."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/22/ral...html?hpt=hp_t2

[KanadaHye]

North Carolina Comes to Terms with History of Forced Sterilizations

Eugenics laws allowed more than thirty states to sterilize people "undeemed to breed" for nearly a century. While it is irrevocably associated with the super-race fetish and ethnic cleansing of Nazi Germany, the so-called science of eugenics is actually an American distortion of medical science. Much of the murky original research and theories of how societies might take control of their own gene pools to increase the numbers of intelligent people—and eliminate those deemed feeble-minded—took place on Long Island, at the same laborotory where DNA was first identified.

Several of the nearly 3,000 of the living victims of forced sterilization in North Carolina will testify before a commission today. Until 1974, North Carolina had one of the most aggressive eugenics movements in the country, sterilizing an estimated 7,600 people who were deemed "socially or intellectually unfit" to have children.

North Carolina state Rep. Larry Womble was instrumental in removing the state’s eugenics law from the books in 2003 and in organizing today’s listening session, which he hopes will eventually lead to reparations for the victims. He joins us from North Carolina.

And Paul Lombardo is a professor of law at Georgia State University, who specializes in the history of eugenics laws. He's also the author of "Three Generations, No Imbeciles."

The reason for doing that is because the welfare department at that time in the state of North Carolina declared these people might be a detriment to society... that they were feeble minded, or either they were imbecile, or either they were promiscuous... People who were on welfare were the ones that they targeted.
— Larry Womble

http://www.thetakeaway.org/2011/jun/...terilizations/