Reply #40: Three more interesting websites [View All]

[Mizmoon]

www.frankolsonproject.org

My father, Frank Olson, died in November of 1953 under circumstances that remain both obscure and controversial nearly half a century later.

This Internet site is dedicated to exploring those circumstances and the political and ethical issues embedded in them - issues of paramount importance to the maintenance of an open democratic society.

www.psychosurgery.org

This memorial is dedicated to the victims of lobotomy. Psychosurgery.org seeks to honor their memories and make certain that their tragedy is not forgotten.

Lobotomy was not a procedure on the fringe of science. It was a mainstream treatment advocated by many highly-educated physicians and prestigious institutions, praised in breathless news articles, and touted as the latest in a long string of amazing neurosurgical advances. The inventor of the operation, Egas Moniz, was even awarded a Nobel Prize for it.


www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics

The philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This adage is appropriate to our current rush into the "gene age," which has striking parallels to the eugenics movement of the early decades of the 20th century. Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes. Eugenicists effectively lobbied for social legislation to keep racial and ethnic groups separate, to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and to sterilize people considered "genetically unfit." Elements of the American eugenics movement were models for the Nazis, whose radical adaptation of eugenics culminated in the Holocaust.