Blog #127: INVOLUNTARY STERILIZATION FOR EPILEPTIC PEOPLE

I write my monthly blogs on LanceFogan.com, 127 to date, in order to raise epilepsy awareness.  One percent of all Americans and one percent of world citizens live with epilepsy and they include all levels of intellectual and physical abilities.

In the early 19^th and 20^th centuries epilepsy was lumped in with individuals considered to have mental retardation, physical handicaps, and genetic disorders. A frightening fact is that these individuals, including those with epilepsy, could be sterilized against their consent and without their knowledge in more than 30 American states to “stop spreading bad genes.” This was achieved by state-ordered-law. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed this injustice to continue beginning in the 1920’s. These state laws finally changed in the 1970’s.

Virginia’s forced sterilization law in 1924 authorized involuntary sterilization to rid society of "idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy." ¹ Carrie Buck, age 20, along with her mother, Emma, was an inmate in the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded. Dr. Albert Priddy, the institution’s superintendent, authorized Carrie’s sterilization without her personal consent. She was the first person to be so subjected to “end her bad gene-line. The Virginia Times Daily, May 2, 1927, wrote that Carrie Buck had the mental age of 9 years. Others wrote that she was “dull but not stupid.”

Adam Cohen's recent book about the Buck case, Imbeciles, takes its name from the terms eugenicists used to categorize the "feebleminded."² In it, he revisits the Buck v. Bell ruling and explores the connection between the American eugenics’ movement of “erasing bad genes” and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Cohen notes that the instinct to "demonize" people who are different is still prevalent in the U.S., particularly in the debate over immigration. This poor young woman, Carrie Buck, was said to really have nothing wrong with her physically or mentally. She had been a victim of a terrible sexual assault. After a brief hearing she was declared feebleminded and was sent off to the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded. Subsequently she was surgically sterilized.  

The American Eugenics Society promoted ideas of racial betterment and genetic education through public lectures, conferences, publications and exhibits at county and state fairs — like this chart labeled "The Triangle of Life" from the Kansas Free Fair in 1926.

 

Epilepsy does not correlate with mental retardation although these conditions may coexist. A seizure is but a symptom of a brain dysfunction, it is not linked to intelligence or mental status.

1. The United States Once Sterilized Tens of Thousands –Here’s How the Supreme Court Allowed It.  Cato Institute COMMENTARY JANUARY 27, 2016. By Trevor Burrus
2. Cohen, Adam. Imbeciles. Published March 1, 2016

 

Lance Fogan, M.D. is Clinical Professor of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “DINGS” is a medical mystery and is his first novel. It is a mother’s dramatic story that teaches epilepsy, now available in eBook, audiobook and soft cover editions.

 

 

Blog #17: It Took the Law to Safeguard the Humanity of People With Epilepsy

(This blog was originally posted on January 13, 2012)

 

On January 10, 2012, CNN carried a story of involuntary sterilizations that were legally authorized in the United States until the 1970s. Courts supported the procedures so as to minimize the population of those who were “unfit” to “succeed” in life, and who would not burden society.

Charles Darwin’s 19^th century nature observations convinced him that heredity is valid: nature favored species that were best prepared to deal with life’s struggles. During the early twentieth-century American and other Western societies popularized the concept of genetically fit human beings. Those who were fit would flourish in society, while those less fit, i.e., less able and thus less worthy, would fail. Eugenics—the effort to increase the stronger population by improving their genetic composition—was very popular and supported by prominent people at the time, but by mid-century it was discounted. This was when Nazi philosophy using the concept to control racial stock and their atrocities, came to light.

 Society considered those belonging to the less fit class to include the “feeble-minded,” the poor, criminals, prostitutes, and even the blind. People with epilepsy were included because seizure-related behaviors appeared strange and even threatening to observers. In addition, epilepsy sometimes accompanies illnesses causing mental deficiencies and psychiatric problems. These prejudices had existed since ancient times. People with epilepsy were believed to be possessed by evil demons, or chosen by gods as “special” anointed people who were afflicted with a “sacred disease.” But definitions of unfit were inexact; the labeling of any of these individuals followed no stringent formula. For example, IQ testing has been shown to be imprecise when cultural/educational backgrounds are not considered in arriving at the overall score.

American society formally tried to prevent these unfit individuals from reproducing children who would be just like them. Thirty-three states legalized surgical sterilizations, and this could be done without the person’s permission. Physicians, social workers and judges supported these cruel and oppressive procedures for the good of society. Even Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes endorsed aspects of eugenics. In the Buck v. Bell case tried before the Supreme Court of the United States, Holmes delivered the court’s opinion in 1927 that society should prevent persons manifestly unfit from continuing to reproduce their kind.

 

 

Lance Fogan, M.D. is Clinical Professor of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. DINGS is his first novel.