Euthanasia News
Sick & Wrong Department
| November 5, 2006
| Tim
Der Spiegel:
Mass Grave of Young Children Found in Germany
A mass grave containing the bodies of at least 20 children has been found in a cemetery in western Germany. Authorities are checking indications that the children fell victim to Hitler's "euthanasia" program which killed thousands of people with mental and physical disabilities...
Around 70,000 people deemed "unworthy of life" were murdered in the program between autumn 1939 and summer 1941 through gassing and lethal injections. Several tens of thousands of disabled people were murdered in the years that followed in hospitals and sanatoriums, usually through injections or drug overdoses.
The Australian:
Euthanase disabled babies, say doctors
LONDON: One of Britain's leading medical colleges is calling on the health profession to consider permitting the euthanasia of seriously disabled newborn babies.
The proposal by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology is a response to the number of such children surviving because of medical advances.
The college is arguing that "active euthanasia" should be considered for the overall good of families, and to to spare parents the emotional burden and financial hardship of bringing up the hardest-hit babies....
The college's submission was welcomed by John Harris, a member of the Government's Human Genetics Commission and professor of bioethics at Manchester University.
"We can terminate for serious fetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn," he said. "What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it OK to kill the fetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?"
Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation and The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush:
... we have already looked beyond abortion to infanticide. In so doing we will have confirmed the suspicion of supporters of the sanctity of human life that once abortion is accepted, euthanasia lurks around the next comer - and for them, euthanasia is an unequivocal evil.
Via animal-rights group Animal Liberation Front:
[Peter Singer has said,] "When the death of a disabled infant 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 ... killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all." ...
For Singer's critics, there are two disturbing assumptions here: the fact that for Singer a life can be sacrificed in an effort to bring about a greater good, and that he considers hemophilia, chronic urinary tract infections, and other conditions sufficiently debilitating so as to disqualify their victims from "personhood."
And yet people still believe that Hitler's eugenics weren't a "progressive" idea of that time. Huxley, Margaret Sanger, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Dr. Charles Davenport -- like their modern counterparts (Singer, Dr. John Harris, Dutch leaders) these men were left-leaning progressives, not 'conservatives'.
As PBS writes about Davenport:
His passion for eugenics blinded him to the fact that it muddled science with social philosophy. His passion also blinded others to this fact.
Nothing has changed.
(BTW, there's nothing wrong with blending science and social philosophy -- we'd be amoral monsters if our social views never shaped or limited our scientific endeavors. But it is always those who cannot admit this is happening -- and instead want to bully others into accepting their philosophy by calling it "science" -- and implying anyone who disagrees with that philosophy is "unscientific" (cf Richard Dawkins) -- who inevitably do so much damage.)
One minor question. At the end of the article you mention among the list of pro-euthanasia/pro-eugenics champions "Huxley". Perhaps I'm mistake about his ultimate view on the subject, but Aldous Huxley's most endearing work, the modern classic Brave New World, is about as anti-euthanasia/anti-eugenics a novel I think one can write. Literally exploding with images of the horrors that occur if you follow that particular slippery slope to its logical conclusion. I must admit, I've not studied up enough on the man to say which way he ulitimately leaned on the subject, but it does seem odd to me to mention him. Then I remembered that Aldous had a grandfather that was one of Charles Darwin's greatest supporters and about as radically progressive and its possible to be. So was it the elder Huxley you meant, or his more well known grandson?
Hi Tim,
I've been reading your 'blog for a very, very long time, but I've never commented. I've actually found it one of the most (if not the most) helpful and well-written 'blogs on the whole World Wide Web... it's especially useful on that question. So... thank you! :-)
As awful as euthanasic infanticide sounds, one has to admit that it makes perfect sense from a nihilistic/atheistic/evolutionist worldview...
Troy, regarding the Huxley question, I think it might have been Sir Julian Huxley, first director of UNESCO. According to his Wikipedia article, he was a proponent of eugenics...
-TCG
Troy!
Good to hear from you again!
One minor question. At the end of the article you mention among the list of pro-euthanasia/pro-eugenics champions "Huxley"...
I deliberately used only the surname to invoke the family legacy. Although Julian was more active during the time period in question, it was his grandfather, Thomas, "'Darwin's Bulldog'" and a "principal Social Darwinist" [1] whose ideas most shaped that era. It was the "bulldog" whose influence I had most in mind, but not exclusively.
I'm also currently investigating claims that perhaps Aldous's Brave New World wasn't initially as satirical as it seems today. I find it odd, for example, that he claims to have gotten many of those ideas from a visit to America, when he clearly grew up among them. But the jury is out there, and that's for another day.
To "The Complete Geek": Welcome!
And so good to hear from you!
As awful as euthanasic infanticide sounds, one has to admit that it makes perfect sense from a nihilistic/atheistic/evolutionist worldview...
I agree completely. In my college anthro course, after giving us all the underlying ideas which made social Darwinism seem logical, the professor them said, regarding that, "we don't believe that anymore" but never explained why.
I got the impression she "didn't believe that" not because it wasn't the logical next step given those assumptions, but because they simply didn't like admitting it.
Yet here we are again, growing cow-human fetuses and arguing for infanticide...
Thanks for the response. I knew somewhat about "Darwin's Bulldog" and figured maybe that was who you meant, but I'd never heard of this Julian Huxley, so that clears things up quite a bit.
As for Brave New World not being satirical . . . I suppose its possible, but I really can't see it. I mean, at the end of the novel, doesn't Huxley have the horrors of this world he's imagine ultimately lead to the suicide of the Savage? The book just seems to be too effective a criticism of such ideas to have been meant as a propent of them.
The book just seems to be too effective a criticism of such ideas to have been meant as a propent of them.
You're probably right. It's just been too long since I've read it (approximately around age 12) to comment with any certainty.
Tim - It's been a long time since I've read BNW too, but just a quick thought; My understanding was that Huxley came to America, saw Ford's ideas of mass production, and applied those to human beings. BNW applies concepts of standardization, interchangable parts, etc. to the building of human society (in a fairly dystopian environment). I can't remember BNW being so much about eugenics nearly as much as behavior modification and operant conditioning.
You should read the first couple chapters again. The opening of the books is basicly a tour of an advanced eugenics factory, where they literally exercise complete control over the developing human embryoes. This was of course written decades ago so genetics manipulation doesn't play into it much, but he does elaborate on how the society uses chemicals to make sure certain babies develop certain ways ("Class A" children are allowed to develop fully while "Class D" children, for instance, are rendered mentally handicapped). I believe they even somehow control the size and strength of the developing children. Pavolvian conditioning and drug addiction is certainly part of the system they have in place, but the actual "mass production" you mention is heavily eugenic in nature.
"Class A" children are allowed to develop fully while "Class D" children, for instance, are rendered mentally handicapped
That's what I was thinking of. I don't know of anything in the book which argues against a 'tabula rasa' view of human development. The book says nothing (that I can recall) about races, genetics, inheritance, Darwinian selection or breeding. Everything done to make people fit into society is done after conception. So unless we take a Lamarkian view of inheritance, BNW was probably not eugenic.
Brave New World was published in 1932 so Huxley certainly had exposure to eugenic ideas if he wanted to apply them. The eugenics movement preceeded the understanding of the precise genetic mechanism. Though Mendel did his work during the later half of the 1800s and it was rediscovered in 1900.
Ryan, Troy, and other friends: This article documents the "Americanization" (to which Ryan also refers) of Brave New World as Aldous Huxley crafted the novel. The author cites evidence which indicates Aldous first intended to answer H.G. Wells' Men Like Gods...
Between 27 May and 24 August 1931, Huxley transformed Brave New World from a burlesque of "the Wellsian Utopia" into a modern "satirical novel" of ideas about "the Future" in general.
Consider also this comment, in the footnotes:
Huxley spent most of the twenties, especially the last years of that decade, schooling himself to write a dystopia. In the preface he contributed to J. H. Burns's A Vision of Education (1929), his skepticism regarding a genuinely benevolent system of eugenics and education is already manifest...
If this is true, it is indeed difficult to view BNW as anything but a satire from the start -- at least from when it was revealed in 1931. Perhaps a previous document existed in Huxley's private things prior to that time, but regardless, it is impossible to maintain he somehow he first meant it seriously, as a previous comment of mine implied.
Update: Or perhaps not...
David Bradshaw concluded that Brave New World proved "problematic" for Huxley because he was "unsure" whether he was writing" a satire, a prophecy or a blueprint." (Introduction vii). Actually, the completed novel may be read as all three simultaneously, the result of intentional irony rather than indecision. Bradshaw views the post-1929 Huxley as a supporter of government by men of rational foresight...
Ultimately I guess we'll never know his true, original intentions for the novel, but I still maintain that it functions as too effective a work of satire and criticism to have been meant as a completely serious and postive view on the subject(s).
As for the eugenics angle, I do believe the process decribed in the first chapter or two of the novel fits nicely into the defintion of eugenics as I understand it. You have to keep in mind two things, 1. BNW was written before a real understanding of DNA and genetics in general and 2. In the future described in the book human reproduction has reached the point of being completely artifical, so when you eliminate the proccess of mating two desirables or keeping undesirables from reproducing you move onto the next logical step in philosophy of eugenics, controling through other means than breeding the development of the child, which this society does through means of chemical agents and physical forces like extremes of heat and cold. Basicly, to me it reads like the final and ultimate combination of a caste society with a eugenic reproductive paradigm.
Maybe Huxley picked up a thing or two while in 'America'. A successful eugenics movement had already been established there for years.
Not really surprising though, that the second largest movement of eugenics, the one based in the U.S., established long before a Mr. Hitler figured it out, does not get acknowledged here. Besides that small overlooked fact, it's probably also of interest to note that it's the one that persisted longest, since it continued well into the 60s, when, to give one example, the practice of sterilizing blacks by force, finally came to an end.
Reference: Eugenics
Sorry, ignore the previous post. I thought my preview had posted but it hadn't.
Besides that small overlooked fact, it's probably also of interest to note that it's the one that persisted longest, since it continued well into the 60s
Sweden had a eugenics program which lasted into the early 70's, though I'm not familiar with the details of its operation.
The panel of investigators determined that 63,000 people, mostly women, were sterilized between 1935 and 1975.
...
The commission noted that 5 to 10 years after their operations, nearly 80 percent of those sterilized said they were happy with their condition and did not regret it.
Payment could not be regarded as true compensation for forced sterilization, commission head Carl-Gustaf Andren said in presenting the 22-page report, but it will provide "concrete and visible evidence of personal redress, an expression of taking a stand against and regretting what took place."
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One minor question. At the end of the article you mention among the list of pro-euthanasia/pro-eugenics champions "Huxley". Perhaps I'm mistake about his ultimate view on the subject, but Aldous Huxley's most endearing work, the modern classic Brave New World, is about as anti-euthanasia/anti-eugenics a novel I think one can write. Literally exploding with images of the horrors that occur if you follow that particular slippery slope to its logical conclusion. I must admit, I've not studied up enough on the man to say which way he ulitimately leaned on the subject, but it does seem odd to me to mention him. Then I remembered that Aldous had a grandfather that was one of Charles Darwin's greatest supporters and about as radically progressive and its possible to be. So was it the elder Huxley you meant, or his more well known grandson?
Posted by: Troy on November 7, 2006 12:17 AM