beentheredonethat wrote:
The trouble with the "cure" community is that they're talking eugenics. The Nazi's tried that. They killed more than 6 million people trying to rid Europe of "impure" races. Here they are talking (though they seem to be trying not to talk that way) about inflicting something on unborn children.
Beentheredonethat
Total number of people killed by the Nazis in order to purify humanity: about 15 million. The "ret*d" were killed en masse, along with Gypsies (almost wiped out in Europe), the disabled, including veterans of World War One who had lost limbs and such as a result of the war, and even Jehovah's Witnesses, because they refused to place Hitler above Jehovah. (Nazi law required that a pedestal displaying Mein Kampf and a sword be placed at the front of every church.) The Nazis also tried to alter people, doing such things as placing blue dye in the eyes of brown eyed Jews (the victims were blinded permanently) and trying to create a disease resistant human by deliberately introducing diseases into the populace so as to weed out the nonresistant (sounds like The Stand or any other novel where a disease wipes out most humans).
We have seen eugenics at work with the prenatal test for Downs; nearly all positive results are aborted. Indeed, the US has been more gung ho about eugenics than Germany ever was. Hitler praised the American commitment to eugenics, and as late as the late 60s the "feebleminded" were sterilized, long after Europe abandoned such ideas. It seems reasonable that if FDR hadn't been president-and if Edward VIII had remained King of England-that Britain and America would have allied with Hitler, and only blue eyed blonde haired people would exist today.
Some very prominent Americans have advocated eugenics, people who were brilliant in other areas but who were enthusiastic about purifying humanity, including William Shockley, who was instrumental in the development of the transistor, and Charles Goethe, who in the 1950s was one of Northern California's richest men. Goethe spread around his money generously to further his cause, including giving money to Sacramento State University for a eugenics museum and laboratory, to be partially housed in his sprawling mansion. (The school took the money but didn't use it for eugenics research. Today the mansion is used for weddings and such.) Goethe's name was eventually stripped from his mansion (instead it is called The Julia Morgan House after the architect), an arboretum, and an elementary school that he gave money to because of its "pure" student body. (Times change; the school is mostly Latino today.)
Shockley at least lived long enough to become a pariah. Goethe had too much money; greed won out. Incidentally, Shockley disowned his children because they were supposedly inferior genetically to him; he then blamed his wife for their condition and dumped her. Considering the lessons of history, an effort to eliminate aspies is not unimaginable, even to the point of death camps for living aspies.
19 Apr 2008, 9:50 pm
