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Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 845
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Buffalo
Page 5 of "Mother Father Deaf" (Preston) said that, in the past, there were studies on hearing children of deaf parents and that most of the "research has attempted to document objectively how having deaf parents damaged those children....". To me, it sounds like they were looking for an excuse/reason to sterilize all deaf people. Jillo, do you think the same? Better yet, is there any document of this nature exists online?
I agree that what happens in UK Parliament is dangerous and too easy to slip toward hard eugenics.
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In the US -
From University of Alabama, Samford: A History of Deaf Education and Critical Reviews of "I See a Voice" and When the Mind Hears"
Bell also was strictly opposed to intermarriage among the deaf; he believed in the improvement of society through selective breeding and felt that two deaf people getting married would naturally breed defective children. Bell called the deaf “a defective variety of the human race” and began a crusade to destroy sign language and pushed for laws forbidding marriage between deaf persons and supported compulsory sterilization of deaf girls in the name of “eugenics.” Some states actually passed this legislation. Bell was a "pure oralist" who was very opposed to even using a combined system of sign and oral instruction such as had been quite successful in Germany. He also advocated breaking up the large numbers of deaf students and minimizing contact among the deaf; he felt that associating with "normal" people would make deaf students more normal.
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From the State University of New York at Binghamptom, Department of History: Buck v. Bell: A Case Study
By 1931, thirty state legislatures had passed involuntary sterilization laws that targeted "defective strains" within the general population, such as the blind, the deaf, the poor, and the feebleminded. Virginia, one of these states, held the position that involuntary sterilization would not only benefit the overall welfare of society, but would promote both the health and happiness of the sterilized individual as well.
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From The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2005 10(3):291-310; doi:10.1093/deafed/eni030: Ethnicity, Ethics, and the Deaf-World
A 1912 report from Bell's eugenics section of the Breeders' Association cites his census of blind and Deaf persons and lists "socially unfit" classes to "be eliminated from the human stock" (American Genetic Association, 1912Go, p. 3). The model eugenic law called for the sterilization of feebleminded, insane, criminalistic ("including the delinquent and the wayward"), epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, Deaf, deformed, and dependent people ("including orphans, ne'er-do-wells, the homeless, tramps, and paupers"). By the time of World War I, 16 states in the United States had sterilization laws in force. By 1940, 30 states had such laws (Haller, 1963Go). Physicians were actively involved in this eugenics movement (May & Hughes, 1987Go).
The eugenics movement as it concerned Deaf people worldwide has only recently been receiving the study it deserves (Biesold, 1999Go; Schuchman & Ryan, 2002Go). When National Socialism came to power in Germany, teachers of Deaf students advocated adherence to the hereditary purity laws, including the sterilization of congenitally Deaf people. Deaf schoolchildren were required to prepare family trees, and the school reported those children who were congenitally Deaf or who had a Deaf relative to the department of health for possible sterilization (Muhs, 1996Go).
The German sterilization law that went into effect in 1934 provided that "Those hereditarily sick may be made unfruitful (sterilized) through surgical intervention. ... The hereditary sick, in the sense of this law, is a person who suffers from one of the following diseases ... hereditary deafness" (Peter, 1934Go, p. 187). The 1933 census showed 45,000 "deaf and dumb" persons in a total population of over 66 million. An estimated 17,000 of these Deaf Germans, a third of them minors, were sterilized. In 9% of the cases, sterilization was accompanied by forced abortion. An additional 1600 Deaf people were exterminated in concentration camps in the 1940s; they were considered "useless eaters," with lives unworthy of being lived (Biesold, 1999; Higgins, 1993Go). As in the United States, the medical profession was the certifying authority for forced sterilization.
Deaf Eugenics Today
Audiometric testing, labeling, special needs schooling, genetic research and counseling, surgery, and reproductive control all are means of currently or potentially exercising power over the Deaf body. In 1992, researchers at Boston University announced that they had identified the so-called genetic error responsible for a common type of inherited deafness. The director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders [sic] called the finding a "major breakthrough that will improve diagnosis and genetic counseling and ultimately lead to substitution therapy or gene transfer therapy" ("BU Team," 1992Go, p. 6; "Deafness gene," 1992Go, p. 141). The goal of such efforts as gene transfer therapy is, of course, to reduce Deaf births, ultimately altogether. Thus, a new form of medical eugenics applied to Deaf people is envisioned, in this case by an agency of the U.S. government. The primary characteristics of Deaf people with this particular genetic background to be eliminated are numerous Deaf relatives, sign language fluency, facial features such as widely spaced eyebrows, and coloring features such as white forelock and freckling (Fraser, 1976Go).
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From the Model Eugenics Law
Section 1. Short Title. This Act shall be known as the "Eugenical Sterilization Law."
(b) The socially inadequate classes, regardless of etiology or prognosis, are the following: (1) Feeble-minded; (2) Insane, (including the psychopathic); (3) Criminalistic - (8) Deaf (including those with seriously impaired hearing) -
Section 3. Office of State Eugenicist. There is hereby established for the State of ............. the office of State Eugenicist, the function of which shall be to protect the state against the procreation of persons socially inadequate
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