The Euthanasia Program
In 1945 200,000 people were murdered. All of them were children and disabled. The kids that needed help were killed in the Euthanasia Program to save resources. The Euthanasia program was a program designed for the killing of the disabled and started with infants and children. The Euthanasia program was designed by a few people and these people decided how the disabled were selected and killed through the program. They started the program for a specific reason, to make their race superior and pure, this made the life of the discriminated very difficult, with a lot of restrictions on their rights. With all this going many people had different viewpoints on whether the program was right or not and could not find a way to
…show more content…
To solve this he made a new wave of propaganda “through newspapers, radios, and films” (“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). The colorful commercials covered what would soon become the first mass murder program for the Nazi’s (“Euthanasia Program”). The commercials said that the “program would benefit society by not allowing “inferior people” to be produced and getting a lot more “superior people” in return” (“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). The program was derived from Darwin’s Theories of Evolution (“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). A new field of science called eugenics was created and helped to make the program seem more credible. Eugenics was defined as the “science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding” (“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). The first eugenics institute was at the University College of London (“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). The public believed that Euthanasia was a good thing and Hitler was able to put the killings into …show more content…
Some of the people had a positive viewpoint. ONe such person was Fritz Lawz, who was a professor of race hygiene at the university of Munich (“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). There were also authors that expresssed their strong agreement to the program. One such author was Karl Bindings who partnered with Adolf Hoche to write “The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life”(“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). Throught the propaganda some families became strong supporters of the program. One such family was the family of the blind Gerhard Herbert Kretschmar, who was born with one leg and part of one arm missing. Gerhard was called an idiot by his father and his family requested his killing to Hitler. Hitler approved and Gerhard became known as the Knauer Child and was a catalyst of euthanasia (“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). Some people had a negative viewpoint of the program, like Kurt Gerstein. Kurt was part of the Nazi party, but left after his sister-in-law as killed through the T-4 Program. He used his sorrow to preach at churches of the horrible doings of the Nazi’s. He had no success (Hogan #36). Others, like Samuel Beckett made fun of Hitler’s standards saying that “An Aryan must be blonde like Hitler, think like Gorig, handsome like the Goebbels, virile, like Rӧhn- and named Rosenberg.” With all these viewpoints many were left confused and no actions were being taken to stop the program. It continued
The eugenics movement started in the early 1900s and was adopted by doctors and the general public during the 1920s. The movement aimed to create a better society through the monitoring of genetic traits through selective heredity. Over time, eugenics took on two different views. Supporters of positive eugenics believed in promoting childbearing by a class who was “genetically superior.” On the contrary, proponents of negative eugenics tried to monitor society’s flaws through the sterilization of the “inferior.”
The American Eugenics Movement was led by Charles Davenport and was a social agenda to breed out undesirable traits with an aim of racial purification. Eugenics was a used to breed out the worst and weakest to improve the genetic composition of the human race, and advocated for selective breeding to achieve this. The science of eugenics rested on simple mendelian genetics, which was a mistake because they were assuming complex behaviors could be reduced to simple mendelian genes. After Nazi Germany adopted the ideas behind the American eugenics movement to promote the Aryan race, the eugenics movement was completely discredited.
How did the Nazis kill so many people ? This question is important because somehow the Nazis managed to kill over 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, the S.S deployed Killing Squads which were characterized by their tactics, important dates,and their impact on the Final Solution.
As the human species develops, medicine follows suit. Researchers look down medicinal avenues which promise a better life-- a longer life. However, red and blue paint cannot engender purple paint without proper mixing. Thus, health sciences cannot expand without thorough experimentation. The Nazis exemplified this concept of “thorough experimentation” with their cruel and inhumane medical experiments. The trials varied in nature and reason. Some of the “experiments had legitimate scientific purposes, though the methods that were used violated the canons of medical ethics. Others were racial in nature, designed to advance Nazi racial theories. [However,] Most were simply bad science.” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org). The medical experiments performed by the Nazis were vast and highly divergent, but they can generally be divided into three categories: racial experimentation, war-injury experimentation, and pharmaceutical testing.
On the first of September, 1939 World War II began. Hitler is in power of Nazi Germany and is wanting to cleanse the German people of racially unsound elements. He enacts a program that will aim to eliminate the so called “lives unworthy of life” called the T4 program (History Place). Over the next six years throughout Germany, many people are experimenting with and euthanized to help Nazi Germany reach a “pure” state. Was this program that was enacted ethical and what has happened since then to stop something like this from happening again? What kind of medical advances and data did we achieve from it and is it ethical today to use what they learned in today’s medical trials?
Brandt’s first duties started out by performing abortions on women who were deemed as unfit to reproduce or if their fetus was seen as defective. The reasoning for this was to make a more perfect union, but many of the Nazis found this plan to be too slow. To quicken the purification process, they created the T-4 Euthanasia Program. This program was for mass killing of innocent people who were distinguished as incurable or defective. On September 1, 1939, Brandt was named co-head of the program along side Philipp Bouhler. Here is where Brandt became a part of medical history.
The idea of eugenics was first introduced by Sir Francis Galton, who believed that the breeding of two wealthy and successful members of society would produce a child superior to that of two members of the lower class. This assumption was based on the idea that genes for success or particular excellence were present in our DNA, which is passed from parent to child. Despite the blatant lack of research, two men, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Jon Alfred Mjoen, played to the white supremacists’ desires and claimed that white genes were inherently superior to other races, and with this base formed the first eugenics society. The American Eugenics Movement attempted to unethically obliterate the rising tide of lower classes by immorally mandating organized sterilization and race based experimentation.
In 1941, a time where Germany was dominated by the Nazi Party, Jewish people were constantly being oppressed by the use of various tactics in Nazi Germany. However, all of these tactics were eventually phased out in favor of extermination camps, which Nazi Germany deemed as the most efficient method and “the final solution to solve the Jewish problem”. Prior to the infamous extermination camps; general repressive laws, ghettos, along with death squads were all techniques used on the Jewish population in order to rid Nazi Germany of Jewish people. All of these techniques were denounced as “inefficient” by the government of Germany, which led to the eventual disuse of these practices.
The concept of eugenics was not initially intended to prevent overcrowding, however, it would later be used as a form of population control. Eugenics is the idea of improving society by breeding fitter people. Francis Galton was the first person to originate this term and was a major proponent of the concept during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The practice of eugenics was originally performed through the use of selective breeding. Eugenics was a progressive idea, driven by social perceptions. In fact, "many of its most strident advocates were socialist, who saw eugenics as enlightened state planning of reproduction."2 Fearing the degradation of society, the elite desired to prevent further social decay of the world by eliminating individuals who were considered unfit physically, mentally, or socially.
27 May 2014. The "Nazi Eugenics" Alpha History: Nazi Germany. N.p., n.d. Web.
Many terrible things ensued with eugenics in the US, such as mandatory abortions, sterilizations, discrimination, and devaluation of human life (Hill). “In the USA, eugenics societies held competitions to find the genetically fittest families.” (“Who Am I?”) Human life was treated as a science experiment rather than people with human rights to marry whoever they want. Nazis quoted Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes saying, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind….
Euthanasia is a sensitive topic and its sensitivity brings the world to a division. The two sides are those who support the issue and those who are not in favour. The side that supports the idea can argue that...
More than likely, a good majority of people have heard about euthanasia at least once in their lifetime. For those out there who have been living under a rock their entire lives, euthanasia “is generally understood to mean the bringing about of a good death – ‘mercy killing’, where one person, ‘A’, ends the life of another person, ‘B’, for the sake of ‘B’.” (Kuhse 294). There are people who believe this is a completely logical scenario that should be allowed, and there are others that oppose this view. For the purpose of this essay, I will be defending those who are suffering from euthanasia.
Dying with dignity, mercy death, right to die, and assisted suicide are just a few of the common terms, which describe a person’s death by euthanasia. Euthanasia has and always will be a very sensitive and controversial topic. There are two common questions surrounding this dilemma. The first is when is it considered mercy? Is it when a person is facing a terminal illness? The second is when is considered murder? Is it when a person looking for an easy way out of suffering and pain? This paper will examine the ethical dilemma of euthanasia according to the Christian worldview and compare it to other options of resolving the dilemma.
Everyone, at some point in their life, will grapple with the grievous reality of a loved one dying. Doctors and medical practitioners will do all they can to comfort and help those who are terminally ill, but their efforts will only postpone the inevitable. Modern medical advances have facilitated the use of life-support machines and intubation, but these advances have also facilitated the controversial introduction of euthanasia and physician-assisted dying. A number of pro-choice advocates have recently suggested that euthanasia is the gentlest, easiest, and quickest way to end one 's life with dignity. By focusing on these appealing prospects, however, many people do not adequately take into account what I consider to be important constituents