America eugenics and the Nazis

America eugenics and the Nazis

Mark Struthers,
GP
Bedfordshire, UK

5 November 2002

Below is a letter published today in the New York Times.

James Colburn, has been a paranoid schizophrenic for more than 20 years. He is due to be executed tomorrow after suddenly and inexplicably killing a woman in June 1994.

�Editor: One measure of a civilized nation is the way it treats its most vulnerable members. Of all human ailments, paranoid schizophrenia is among the most devastating. The disorder attacks human reason and distorts the emotions, overwhelming the afflicted individual with panic and terror.

In the most extreme cases the outcomes can be dire; the paranoid schizophrenic may kill himself (the most common tragedy) or kill another person in a disordered act of self-defense. Even the most advanced medications can only alleviate but rarely cure the condition.

The scheduled execution in Texas of James Colburn, a person with classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, is a primitive and "eugenic" response to one of the world's most intractable mental illnesses. NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES Berkeley, Calif., Nov. 4, 2002 The writer is a professor of medical anthropology, University of California at Berkeley. �

Didn�t the Nazis practise �eugenics� and weren�t they aided and abetted by people who called themselves doctors? Is the behaviour of the American people and its medical profession today so different from the Nazis of 60 years ago?