Eugenics – 4

Negative Eugenics included Hitler’s reported “euthanasia” of upwards of a quarter of a million mentally ill individuals in Germany as a way to save money currently being spent on caring for those individuals who were believed inferior and a burden on society. This position expanded as the Nazis adopted and promulgated eugenics to justify their treatment of disabled individuals, the Jews, and other minority groups. Eugenics gradually earned a negative association mainly from Adolf Hitler and his genocide, and master-race theories. In 1933, the Nazis created the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, which resulted in thousands of forced sterilizations. By 1940, Hitler’s master-race mania took a terrible turn as hundreds of thousands of Germans with mental or physical disabilities were killed by gas or lethal injection. According to Dan Seigman, Eugenics’ reputation never recovered. More tomorrow.