Thursday, February 22, 2007

Contemporary Eugenics

Eugenics ideology is still prevalent throughout psychologists' utterances and writings. American psychologist Richard Herrnstein's 1994 book The Bell Curve, labeled African Americans and Hispanics "genetically disabled", claiming that they were intellectually inferior due to heredity and asserted that neither education nor training could change this. He also advocated selective breeding to prevent human "residue" from being born.

Today, racism still exists in all walks of life. This can be changed by throwing out the idea that individuals of a race, color or creed that is not your own is somehow a lesser human being than yourself, and by making sure we judge people by what they do and not their skin color or religion.

There's a ton more information about psychiatry at
www.cchr.org and there's a DVD you can buy on the website. Also the Psychiatry, An Industry of Death Museum and the traveling Psychiatry, An Industry of Death exhibits.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Eugenics - Behind the Holocaust

In 1895 psychiatrist Alfred Ploetz introduced eugenics to Germany, expanding it to include killing those he considered "undesirables". He published "The Fitness of Our Race and the Protection of the Weak", coining the word "rassenhygiene", which means in English: "racial hygiene". Ploetz used this book to inspire psychiatrists to assess the value of people and to weed out and kill those they deemed inferior.

In 1905, Ploetz and his brother-in-law, Ernst Rudin co-founded the German Society of Racial Hygene and by 1911 - more than 2 decades before the Nazi party came to power - Ernst Ruden was saying that "All nations have to haul around with them an extraordinarily large number of inferiors, weaklings, sickly and cripples. Through the wise legislation (allowing sterilization) along this line... we would also be able to pursue rationally the best avenues for breeding."

By 1932, Ploetz's "cleansing" theories were taught in 26 courses throughout German universities. Hitler consulted Ploetz's work and Fritz Lenz's book, "Foundation of Human Genetics and Racial Hygiene". They became his basis for his vision of Germany.

Alfred Ploetz was considered one of the greatest heroes of the Nazi cause and in 1936 was awarded the Goethe Medallion, Germany's highest honor for achievement in science.

Hitler's personal doctors - eugenicists Karl Brant and Theodor Morell - piloted the first "mercy killing" on "defective children" and helped psychiatrists draw up the plans for a child euthanasia program.

On August 18th, 1939 - 14 day before the invasion of Poland - a committee planned the killing of all deformed children. Psychiatrists and doctors were given the power to "grant mercy death" to "patients". By October of 1939, the first official adult euthanasia applications were sent to psychiatric institutions, were 48 psychiatrists evaluated them and determined who should be killed.

There's more. The gas "shower" rooms we've all heard about, Jews, mentally challenged people, the deformed, the disabled, homosexuals - all got killed during World War II - and all because psychiatrists made up euthanasia as a "cure" for civilization.

After the war, only 23 German doctors were accused at the Nuremberg Trials, out of which only 16 were convicted of crimes against humanity. Of these, only five were psychiatrists.

British psychiatrist J.R. Reese, US psychiatrist Frank Fremont Smith and Germany's psychiatrist Werner Villinger ensured that German psychiatrists continued to treat war-ravaged Germans after the war.
Werner Villinger was a psychiatrist who worked in the infamous "T4" unit - the unit that killed some 300,000 "mentally defective" persons - 94% of Germany's "mentally ill" - all killed at the hands of psychiatrists.

Later, the president of the German Society of Psychiatrists said victims "had to encounter the very people who once inflicted their tortures." He called this grim phase the "second road to sacrifice".

Never identified or tried as the mass murderers they were, psychiatrists continued to promote eugenics around the world.

All of the information I have exposed in my history of psychiatry on this blog has been from the
Citizen's Commission of Human Rights. Their informative documentary information, their magazine, the website and the Psychiatry, an Industry of Death Museum that they have set up on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood California, are all amazing sources of information regarding the truths behind psychiatry.