'Imbeciles' Explores Legacy Of Eugenics In America
By All Things Considered, NPR,
All Things Considered, NPR
| 02. 26. 2016
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Dr. Wieck, you referred to novel National Socialist measure introduced, among them sexual sterilization.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
When I was 14, back in 1961, I saw Stanley Kramer's brilliant movie "Judgment At Nuremberg." It was about the war crimes trial of Nazis after World War II. There was a stunning scene in which a witness, a Dr. Wieck, is testifying about novel techniques of the Nazis, like the sexual sterilization of those considered physically or mentally weak. The German defense lawyer, played by Maximilian Schell, who won an Oscar for that performance, reminds the witness that sterilization in the name of improving the gene pool didn't begin with the Nazis or in Germany. And he read from a High Court ruling in another country that defended the practice. That ruling justified sterilization in order to prevent our being swamped by incompetence. Why wait for the imbeciles - that was the scientific term of the day - to starve or turn to crime?
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG")
MAXIMILIAN SCHELL...
Related Articles
By Jason Kehe, Wired | 04.11.2024
God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have a regular baby or have an Orchid baby. A regular baby might grow up and get cancer. Or be born...
By Jennifer Maas, Variety | 03.22.2024
“We Were Dangerous” is a surprisingly funny film for a movie whose central conflict is the sterilization of a group of young women on the fringes of society in 1950s New Zealand.
Knowing the project, which debuted at ...
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 03.20.2024
There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs as much as a Brooklyn brownstone or a Miami mansion, and more than the average person will earn in a lifetime.
Lenmeldy is a gene treatment for metachromatic...
By Daniel Gilbert, The Washington Post | 03.07.2024
Vitaly Kushnir’s fertility clinic offers to screen an embryo to predict a baby’s sex, but the service can lead to ethically murky territory, like when a couple wanted it so their first child could be a boy.
But the couple...