This article provides both an analysis of the impact of medical statistics on psychiatric research as well as biographical information on one of its central protagonists, Württemberg medical doctor Wilhelm Weinberg. Against the background of the assumption of genetic inheritance of mental illnesses, a paradigm shift took place in the sense of a further development of so-called statistics for the insane. In addition to innovative diagnostics and nosology of the Kraepelin school, the study of human genetics was expected to become a promising step towards the predictability of mental illnesses. In particular, psychiatrist and racial hygienist Ernst Rüdin did thus integrate Weinberg\'s research findings. Weinberg became the founding figure of a central patient register in Wuerttemberg. During National Socialism, however, usage of this register shifted from being an instrument for research to one of establishing a hereditary biological inventory.
Der Beitrag beschreibt die Bedeutung eines „Katasters“ für Psychiatriepatient:innen und den Beitrag seines Urhebers, des jüdisch-protestantischen Arztes Wilhelm Weinberg in der psychiatrischen Forschung des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. Weinbergs Forschungen und dieses Kataster gewannen vor dem Hintergrund der steigenden Relevanz der Humangenetik in der Psychiatrie an Bedeutung. Der Beitrag zeigt, wie sehr der Psychiater und Rassenhygieniker Ernst Rüdin durch Weinbergs statistische Methodik profitieren konnte. In Württemberg wurde Weinberg zum Begründer eines zentralen Patientenregisters. In der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus diente dieses Register allerdings weniger der Forschung als vielmehr der sogenannten erbbiologischen Bestandsaufnahme.

In this article, I offer historical, jurisprudential, and moral analyses of racial eugenics campaigns against African American, Native American, and Hispanic American women. I argue that African American, Native American, and Hispanic American women were sterilized at a time in US history when doctors working for/with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Indian Health Service, and Medicaid engaged in forced and coerced sterilizations with impunity. As a result, Black and Brown women did not have equal protection of the laws nor unimpeded access to the courts. Therefore, they had few options for protecting themselves from harm or redressing their grievances against the state. For these reasons, I conclude that African American, Native American, and Hispanic American women who were sterilized without their knowledge or consent by doctors working for public health agencies ought to be awarded reparations by the United States Congress. Additionally, I conclude that federal prosecutors and the American Medical Association ought to bring criminal charges and professional sanctions against the doctors and healthcare workers involved. Finally, I conclude that medical professionals ought to engage in a nationwide effort to reconcile people in Black and Brown communities with the healthcare community in the United States.

This essay traces the role of the drug thalidomide in the reform of Canadian abortion law during the late 1960s. Like elsewhere in the British Commonwealth, discussion of the \"thalidomide disaster\" of the early 1960s intensified leading up to the debates that culminated in the 1969 amendment to Canadian abortion law. Although thalidomide was a rallying point for advocates of eugenic abortion, a majority of Canadian MPs, unlike their British and Commonwealth counterparts, rejected this argument. Widespread public and political considerations of the thalidomide tragedy were thus unable to inspire support for a eugenic clause in Canada\'s new abortion law, in spite of the nation\'s infamous eugenic past.

The eugenics movement attracted a wide range of supporters. This article explores this theme with relation to literature about the charitable work of the Salvation Army in Britain and Canada c.1890-1921, with a focus upon the emigration scheme outlined in William Booth\'s book In Darkest England and the Way Out. These writings indicate the widespread dispersal of eugenic ideology, and demonstrate the flexibility with which these theories were interpreted in this period. It will be shown that the Salvation Army adopted elements of both hereditarian and environmentalist views regarding racial health. These arguments were unified by the claim that the work of the organization made a worthy contribution to public health, both in the present and in the future. This case study sheds new light upon the history of a prominent evangelical Christian organization and upon the development of the international eugenics movement.

«Euthanasia» was the cynical euphemism used by the Nazis to refer to the systematic murder of hundreds of thousands of mentally sick and handicapped people between 1939 and 1945, at least 6,000 of whom were children. Based on the example of Günter Nevermann, this paper provides insight into the complex acts of registering, selecting, and targeting children labelled as \"inferior\" and \"unworthy to live.\" This case clearly shows that Nazi doctors were not necessarily enmeshed in some tragic conflict. Rather, apparently without any qualms, they sacrificed the sick children who had been entrusted to their care, for the ideal of obtaining a \"racially healthy corpus,\" a term used without being questioned. Most of the perpetrators were never brought to justice, and not a few of them later held managerial positions in child and adolescent psychiatry in the two German states. Many of them were members or even honorary members of the \"Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie, Psychosomatik und Psychotherapie e. V.\" in its present or previous form. We feel it is necessary to inform the public effectively about this state of affairs, to discover what really happened and to determine who was responsible.
Unter dem euphemistisch-zynischen Begriff der «Euthanasie» wurden zwischen 1939 und 1945 systematisch mehrere hunderttausend kranke und behinderte Menschen ermordet. Unter ihnen waren mindestens 6.000 Kinder und Jugendliche. Anhand des Einzelschicksals von Günter Nevermann aus Wismar wird das System der Erfassung, Aussonderung und Tötung eines als «lebensunwert» und somit für die Gemeinschaft nicht tragfähig erscheinenden Kindes nachgezeichnet. Sein Fall dokumentiert eindringlich, dass Ärzte, wie nach 1945 häufig behauptet, sich keineswegs in einer «tragischen Zwangslage» befanden. Scheinbar ohne moralische Skrupel opferten sie die ihnen anvertrauten jungen Patienten einem kaum hinterfragten Ideal, dessen Ziel die Vervollkommnung des «Volkskörpers» war. Nur sehr wenige der Täter wurden in beiden Teilen Deutschlands zur Verantwortung gezogen. Zumeist praktizierten sie weiter, hatten leitende Funktionen inne und waren Mitglieder oder sogar Ehrenmitglieder der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie, Psychosomatik und Psychotherapie e. V. (DGKJP) bzw. derer Vorgängerorganisation. Hier gilt es künftig aufzuklären und aufzudecken.

It is commonly believed that disability disqualifies people from full participation in or recognition by society. This view is rooted in eugenic logic, which tells us that our world would be a better place if disability could be eliminated. In opposition to this position, I argue that that disability is inherent in the human condition and consider the bioethical question of why we might want to conserve rather than eliminate disability from our shared world. To do so, I draw together an eclectic, rather than systematic, configuration of counter-eugenic arguments for conserving disability. The idea of preserving intact, keeping alive, and even encouraging to flourish denoted by conserve suggests that disabilities would be better understood as benefits rather than deficits. I present, then, a reading of disability as a potentially generative resource rather than unequivocally restrictive liability. In other words, what I consider here is the cultural and material contributions disability offers to the world.

Genetics and Eugenics is a cross-discipline between genetics and eugenics. It is a common curriculum in many Chinese universities. In order to increase the learning interest, we introduced case teaching method and got a better teaching effect. Based on our teaching practices, we summarized some experiences about this subject. In this article, the main problem of case-based method applied in Genetics and Eugenics teaching was discussed.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis offers the possibility of screening and terminating embryos with severe and life-threatening disabilities. This article argues that under certain conditions, the use of this technology is not merely desirable as a means to reduce human suffering but also an ethically required duty of a parent to a potential child.

This paper traces the early (1910s to 1920s) development of Swedish eugenics through a study of the social network that promoted it. The eugenics network consisted mainly of academics from a variety of disciplines, but with medicine and biology dominating; connections with German scientists who would later shape Nazi biopolitics were strong. The paper shows how the network used political lobbying (for example, using contacts with academically accomplished MPs) and various media strategies to gain scientific and political support for their cause, where a major goal was the creation of a eugenics institute (which opened in 1922). It also outlines the eugenic vision of the institute\'s first director, Herman Lundborg. In effect the network, and in particular Lundborg, promoted the view that politics should be guided by eugenics and by a genetically superior elite. The selling of eugenics in Sweden is an example of the co-production of science and social order.

The article shows, through a study of the Berlin-Brandenburg region, that children and juveniles who were subjected to the killings of diseased and disabled, or mentally retarded persons during the Third Reich did not only fall victim to the operations of the \"Reichsausschuss\" (\"Reich Commission for Registration of Severe Disorders in Childhood\"). Many were also included in the gas chamber killings of the \"T4\"-action and in various decentralized killing actions. To gain scientific knowledge, the brains of many of these patients were examined by German neuropathologists. It will be shown that the purpose of the killings was not the painless ending of individual suffering, but that they constituted a means of freeing the public from so-called \"ballast existences\", whose lives were only prolonged if they could be of scientific use.