Lots of Blame for Nazi Race Science
As a physician and former reader of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, I was distressed to read that the journal was slow to recognize the rise of Nazi antisemitic abuse, including discrimination against Jewish physicians (“Leading American Medical Journal Faces Down its History of Endorsing Nazi Race Science,” April 12). There is another side to this story, namely the role that the American eugenics movement played in leading to the model eugenics sterilization laws that were implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws.
Nazi laws permitting forced sterilization as a means to protect the purity of the Aryan race were inspired by the eugenics movement that was well established in the U.S. before spreading to Germany. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924, carried out to “protect white racial health.” The sterilization program engineered by the Nazis was partly modeled after the California eugenics program that allowed forced sterilizations until 1979. Nazi efforts were also bolstered by support from leading American scientists and politicians, along with publications from the American eugenics movement.
Donald Trump’s recent comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” brings back painful memories of where this type of thinking can lead.
Beryl Rosenstein, M.D.
Pikesville
