Nazis, Hitler have no place in health debate
In the recent column (“Health Lessons for the U.S. from Great Britain”), Cal Thomas notes that we should be cautious about who has the power in a health care system. He cites Adolf Hitler’s 1933 Sterilization Law as an example.
Click to sendWhat Mr. Thomas didn’t say, or perhaps, like most people, didn’t know, was that Hitler got his ideas on sterilization and laws to support it from the United States, and particularly Virginia. “An act to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of state institutions in certain cases” was passed by the General Assembly in 1924. Hitler used our law as the model for his sterilization program.
Dr. Albert Priddy, the superintendent of the Lynchburg Colony, worked to have a bill passed to sterilize those deemed feeble-minded. Carrie Buck, a 17 year old rape victim who was institutionalized at the Lynchburg Colony and accused of feeble-mindedness, was his test case.
Priddy (and others in that time) thought sterilization would be good for the country economically and socially. Carrie Buck was railroaded through the Virginia court system, all the way to the Supreme Court (Buck v. Bell).
Once Virginia’s law was passed and upheld by the Supreme Court, sterilizations across the country became a reality with more than 65,000 Americans sterilized. Carrie Buck was sterilized on Oct. 19, 1927. One physician in Virginia lamented that we should step up our sterilization rates because “the Germans are beating us at our own game.”
Fortunately, the “science” of eugenics was ultimately proven to be based on faulty science and the sterilizations slowed and then ended. What happened to Carrie Buck was unjust, and I’m glad that Virginia eventually apologized to her and the other people who were childless for their remaining lives. Hitler, of course, continued the sterilizations and killings.
As the health care debate continues, I would hope that people would stop using Hitler and the Nazis as an argument for or against health care changes.
The comparison between what is being proposed for health care (whether you agree or not) and what happened in the days of Nazis is completely inappropriate. Hitler and the Nazis tortured and murdered millions. It was a terrible time. What was done then was heinous and using it as a comparison now is not an invitation to thoughtful dialogue about health care.
KENZIE VanDERWERKER
Bedford
Editor’s Note: The letter writer is an 11th grade student at Liberty High School in Bedford County.
Feeling a bit uneasy
Do I think the national health care plan of Barack Obama and the Democrats is good for the country?
Not at all, but I would feel much better about what our lawmakers are doing if I knew they would be under the same plan and were doing what’s best for all American citizens.
It looks like business as usual for our elected representatives: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
RON WADDELL
Forest
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