From the New York Times:

Before they began the mass murder of Jews, the Nazis sterilized or killed hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities, who were considered mentally or physically defective. The intensive war against the “genetically unfit” is explored in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibit from the U.S. Holocaust Museum that is on display at Stony Brook University in New York through June 12.

One film shows people in asylums, while a voiceover says that the money spent on them could be better used elsewhere. A wall of photographs focuses on 8 of the 5,000 children killed by injection or starvation.

“The goal of human enhancement and ‘perfectibility’ is still alive,” said Stephen G. Post, director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook …

“We have to be very careful how far we want to go … I can imagine enhanced human beings who think quicker and run quicker, but if they’re self-centered, nasty, brutal and vicious, what have we achieved?”

Earlier posts here and here.

(Photo from New York Times)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 4:35 pm and is filed under eugenics, genetics, history, intellectual/developmental disabilities, public attitudes, sterilization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.