Neurosciences in the Third Reich: from Ivory Tower to Death

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Oleg Grigoryev
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Neurosciences in the Third Reich: from Ivory Tower to Death

#1

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 25 Mar 2002, 05:41

Abstract: It is commonly thought that the horrific medical abuses occurring during the era of the Third Reich were limited to fringe physicians acting in extreme locales such as the concentration camps. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that there was a widespread perversion of medical practice and science that extended to mainstream academic physicians. Scientific thought, specifically the theories of racial hygiene, and the political conditions of a totalitarian dictatorship, acted symbiotically to devalue the intrinsic worth to society of those individuals with mental and physical disabilities. This devaluation served to foster the medical abuses which occurred. Neurosciences in the Third Reich serves as a backdrop to highlight what was the slippery slope of medical practice during that era. Points on this slippery slope included the "dejudification" of medicine, unethical experimentation in university clinics, systematic attempts to sterilize and euthanasize targeted populations, the academic use of specimens obtained through such programs and the experimental atrocities within the camps.
THE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF
Neurological Sciences

Full Text is here: http://www.canjneurolsci.org/26maytoc/neuroscience.html

Ant!
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forced sterilization

#2

Post by Ant! » 30 Mar 2002, 03:52

There were more forced sterilizations per capita in the province of Alberta, Canada during the 30's and 40's than all Germany.


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Roberto
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Re: forced sterilization

#3

Post by Roberto » 31 Mar 2002, 20:03

karl antonius wrote:There were more forced sterilizations per capita in the province of Alberta, Canada during the 30's and 40's than all Germany.
Really? Let's see some facts and figures, then.

Tarpon27
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Alberta...

#4

Post by Tarpon27 » 31 Mar 2002, 21:21

Per capita? Well, you will to prove it per sterilizations per year with population figures for the same years. Just some info:

[...]

In Alberta, 2,832 people were sterilized between 1935 and 1972 out of 4,739 presented to the eugenics board.
[...]
http://www.ualberta.ca/htbin/lwgate/ICA ... le-42.html
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[...]
Then there is the case of the state-sponsored eugenics program in Alberta, in the news lately because of Leilani Muir’s lawsuit. Between 1928 and 1972, some three thousand people – so-called "mental deficients" like Muir – suffered forced sterilizations under this program, run by the Alberta Eugenics Board. Similar projects took place in British Columbia and in fifteen American states.
[...]
http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/ ... outh2.html
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[...]

Last year, the Alberta government offered an $82-million compensation package and an apology to those who were forcibly sterilized under that province's Sexual Sterilization Act, which was in effect between 1928 and 1972.

The Alberta law taught that public health and intelligence could be improved by ensuring those branded "mental defectives" didn't reproduce. About 2,800 youths were sterilized.

[...]

http://www.canoe.ca/Health0012/14_women-cp.html
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Soon after Hitler took power, the Nazis formulated policy based on their vision of a biologically "pure" population to create an "Aryan master race." The "Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases", proclaimed July 14, 1933, forced the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary, such as mental illness (schizophrenia and manic depression), retardation ("congenital feeble-mindedness"), physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism.

Forced Sterilization
The "Sterilization Law" explained the importance of weeding out so-called genetic defects from the total German gene pool:
Since the National Revolution public opinion has become increasingly preoccupied with questions of demographic policy and the continuing decline in the birthrate. However, it is not only the decline in population which is a cause for serious concern but equally the increasingly evident genetic composition of our people. Whereas the hereditarily healthy families have for the most part adopted a policy of having only one or two children, countless numbers of inferiors and those suffering from hereditary conditions are reproducing unrestrainedly while their sick and asocial offspring burden the community.
Some scientists and physicians opposed the involuntary aspects of the law while others pointed to possible flaws. But the designation of specific conditions as inherited, and the desire to eliminate such illnesses or handicaps from the population, generally reflected the scientific and medical thinking of the day in Germany and elsewhere.
Nazi Germany was not the first or only country to sterilize people considered "abnormal." Before Hitler, the United States led the world in forced sterilizations. Between 1907 and 1939, more than 30,000 people in twenty-nine states were sterilized, many of them unknowingly or against their will, while they were incarcerated in prisons or institutions for the mentally ill. Nearly half the operations were carried out in California. Advocates of sterilization policies in both Germany and the United States were influenced by eugenics. This socio-biological theory took Charles Darwin's principle of natural selection and applied it to society. Eugenicists believed the human race could be improved by controlled breeding.
Still, no nation carried sterilization as far as Hitler's Germany. The forced sterilizations began in January 1934, and altogether an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people were sterilized under the law. A diagnosis of "feeble-mindedness" provided the grounds in the majority of cases, followed by schizophrenia and epilepsy. The usual method of sterilization was vasectomy and ligation of ovarian tubes of women. Irradiation (x-rays or radium) was used in a small number of cases. Several thousand people died as a result of the operations, woman disproportionately because of the greater risks of tubal ligation.
Most of the persons targeted by the law were patients in mental hospitals and other institutions. The majority of those sterilized were between the ages of twenty and forty, about equally divided between men and women. Most were "Aryan" Germans. The "Sterilization Law" did not target so-called racial groups, such as Jews and Gypsies, although Gypsies were sterilized as deviant "asocials", as were some homosexuals. Also, about 500 teenagers of mixed African and German parentage (the offspring of French colonial troops stationed in the Rhineland in the early 1920s) were sterilized because of their race, by secret order, outside the provisions of the law.
Although the "Sterilization Law" sometimes functioned arbitrarily, the semblance of legality underpinning it was important to the Nazi regime. More than 200 Hereditary Health Courts were set up across Germany and later, annexed territories. Each was made up of two physicians and one district judge. Doctors were required to register with these courts every known case of hereditary illness. Appeals courts were also established, but few decisions were ever reversed. Exemptions were sometimes given artists or other talented persons afflicted with mental illnesses. The "Sterilization Law" was followed by the Marriage Law of 1935, which required for all marriages proof that any offspring from the union would not be afflicted with a disabling hereditary disease.
Only the Roman Catholic Church, for doctrinal reasons, opposed the sterilization program consistently; most German Protestant Churches accepted and often cooperated with the policy. Popular films such as Das Erbe("Inheritance") helped build public support for government policies by stigmatizing the mentally ill and the handicapped and highlighting the costs of care. School mathematics books posed such questions as: "The construction of a lunatic asylum costs 6 million marks. How many houses at 15,000 marks each could have been built for that amount?"
[...]
[Article also then focuses on the euthanasia efforts of the Third Reich.]
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/PEOPLE/USHMMHAN.HTM
Article also published at the US Holocaust Museum web site.
--------
[...]
How many Germans were 'force sterilized'? Most estimates are in the range of 250,000-500,000. The Germans started twenty-seven years later that the U.S. but within a few years they greatly outpaced them.
[...]
http://www.spectacle.org/997/richmond.html

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#5

Post by Dan » 31 Mar 2002, 22:20

Great info, Mark!

You've given us everything we need to prove the assertation except one figure.

Let's take the 250,000 German figure for the sake of debate. Population: 80,000,000.

So, that's one out of every 32,000 Germans.

What's the figure for Albertans?

Very Best
Dan

Ant!
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#6

Post by Ant! » 31 Mar 2002, 23:26

I will speculate that the population in Alberta Canada during the thirties was about 1 million.

Dan
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#7

Post by Dan » 31 Mar 2002, 23:32

Thanks!

That works out to about one in 28,000, which is statisically the same a Nazi Germany.

very best

Dan

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Roberto
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#8

Post by Roberto » 01 Apr 2002, 12:03

karl antonius wrote:I will speculate that the population in Alberta Canada during the thirties was about 1 million.
Interesting information. As a complement, let's have the following data:

1. On what grounds were people sterilized in Alberta, Canada?

2. How many people - in absolute numbers and per capita - were killed rather than sterilized in Alberta on grounds of physical or mental deficiencies?

Tarpon27
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Playing w/Statistics

#9

Post by Tarpon27 » 02 Apr 2002, 17:21

"In Alberta, 2,832 people were sterilized between 1935 and 1972 out of 4,739 presented to the eugenics board."


That is a period of 37 years, not just the original assertion of the 30's and 40's.

You need the population figure for Alberta from 1935 (original start date) to 1949, then how many of these sterilizations of 2,832 took place in that 14 year period?

Now, this is not accurate, as I assume more were performed early than later, but 2,832/37 = ~77 per year over 37 years.


If you say that half ot the sterilizations took place in those years, and a one million population, you have a 1,400/1,000,000 = 0.14% ratio

Also, I used 1935, even though the Act passed in Alberta in 1928, but we do not when the FIRST sterilization took place...was it 1935, as the first quote implies?

For Germany, usind Dan's figures:

250,000/80,000,000 = 0.003125 = 0.3125%

At the high end:

500,000/80,000,000 = 0.00625 = 0.625%

Also, the Nazis did it in a much shorter time span...from 1937 to ???

A rather nasty and fascinating topic, isn't it?

Regards to all!

Mark

PS: Found some more info.

There were 55 sterilizations in the final year of the program in Alberta...1972, according to one site.

Also the Act passed in 1928, with the review Board starting in 1929, so I am *assuming* that the date I used ("1935") was incorrect, and that there were some unknown number of sterilizations beginning in 1929.

Actually lowers the "average" number of "77" I posted above, but *might* increase the percentage from the 30s and 40s the original poster asserted. I do not think that assertion was, or is true, though. JMHO, but I think the Nazis sterilized far more, plus physically killed many more of their so-called "defectives".

Mark

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