The face of women's health: Helen Rodriguez-Trias.
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The American Public Health Association has announced that it will establish an award in the name of Helen Rodriguez-Trias, MD, its first Latina president, who died of lung cancer on December 27, 2001 [corrected]. Rodriguez-Trias, a nationally known advocate for underserved communities, was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Clinton in January 2001 for her work on behalf of children, women, people with AIDS, and the poor. This article is based on a dialogue with Rodriguez-Trias that began in September 2001 and ended December 12, 2001. (+info)
Sterilized in the name of public health: race, immigration, and reproductive control in modern California.
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In exploring the history of involuntary sterilization in California, I connect the approximately 20,000 operations performed on patients in state institutions between 1909 and 1979 to the federally funded procedures carried out at a Los Angeles County hospital in the early 1970s. Highlighting the confluence of factors that facilitated widespread sterilization abuse in the early 1970s, I trace prosterilization arguments predicated on the protection of public health. This historical overview raises important questions about the legacy of eugenics in contemporary California and relates the past to recent developments in health care delivery and genetic screening. (+info)
National Rural Health Mission--hopes and fears. Concerns about targeted sterilisation, retreat of the state and privatisation.
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The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), launched by the present government as part of its honouring the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) commitment, had its content shaped by an active process of dialogue between many stakeholders. This article traces the contours of the discussions on three key concerns of civil society that influenced their contributions to the shaping of the National Rural Health Mission agenda. These three concerns were promotion of targeted sterilisation, a retreat of the state from its commitments to the health sector and that the NRHM agenda would lead to privatisation of public health facilities. Whereas fears on targeted sterilisation and retreat of the state may be unrealistic, there is a thrust to increased involvement of the private sector, which needs to be understood in its entirety. There is need for continued engagement byequity concerned public health professionals and health activists at all levels of implementation and not merely community monitoring to influence and shape the National Rural Health Mission in a pro-poor direction. (+info)
Johannes Heinrich Schultz and National Socialism.
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BACKGROUND: Johannes Heinrich Schultz (1884-1970) established the set of techniques known as "autogenic training." From 1936 until 1945 he worked as assistant director of the Goring Institute. His role during National Socialism has been underestimated in our opinion. METHOD: We considered Schultz's academic publications and his "autobiography" from 1964. RESULTS: Schultz publicly advocated compulsory sterilization as well as the "annihilation of life unworthy of life" and developed a diagnostic scheme which distinguished between the neurotic/curable and the hereditary/ incurable. In fact, this classification was then employed to decide between life and death. In order to justify the "New German Psychotherapy" alongside eugenic psychiatry, Schultz carried out degrading and inhuman "treatments" of homosexual prisoners of concentration camps who were in mortal danger. LIMITATIONS: This study was based on written documents. We were not able to interview contemporary witnesses. CONCLUSION: By advocating compulsory sterilization and the "annihilation of life unworthy of life" and by the abuse of homosexuals as research objects Schultz violated fundamental ethical principles of psychiatry. (+info)
Psychiatric genocide: Nazi attempts to eradicate schizophrenia.
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Reproductive rights of mentally retarded persons.
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Mental retardation denotes sub-average intellectual functioning, based on IQ, i.e. the inability of normal learning, accompanied by behavioral and developmental disorders. Persons with impairments (cognitive, motor, sensory or psychiatric) have often been, both through human history and today victims of discrimination and deprived of their basic human rights, both in the public and the private life spheres. Since the end of the 20th century, throughout the developed world, many disabled persons can accomplish their dreams and rights. However, the issue of sexuality is still an obstacle in realizing oneself as a whole person, of course in accordance with personal psychophysical abilities. The greatest problem is present in persons with severe disablement, considered not apt enough for information on sexuality and for expressing themselves as persons with their own sexual needs. Thus it is desirable to observe each disabled person individually and flexibly enough in order to establish parameters for the functioning of an intimate affair on the level of understanding and assent. The legal system must protect the most vulnerable and ensure for them the right of choice and consent, as well as the possibility of fulfilling their sexual needs, so that they could love and be loved. Naturally, the system must be built on foundations that satisfy the needs of its users, but also of persons engaged in work with them. Sex education should contain information regarding biological, socio-cultural and spiritual dimensions of sexuality, including cognitive, affective and behavioral domains. Unfortunately, very few educational programs with such aims provide sex education, not only for the disabled young population but also for the healthy. This review article is based on international investigations and Croatian legislative postulates. Its aim is to focus the attention of both professionals and non-professionals on this delicate problem. (+info)
"Democracy was never intended for degenerates": Alberta's flirtation with eugenics comes back to haunt it.
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An Alberta woman recently won a lawsuit against the government of Alberta for wrongful sterilization that took place when she was a 14-year-old ward at the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives. It was the first time the province has been held accountable for actions taken under the Sexual Sterilization Act, a 1927 law that promoted the theory of eugenics and led to the sterilization of more than 2800 people. It has since been repealed. A physician who served on the province's Eugenics Board said the decisions were based on the best scientific advice and medical techniques available at the time. Today, she added, eugenics is being practised in a different way through prenatal diagnosis and therapeutic abortion. (+info)