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Geneticist Kemp is careful to distinguish Denmark's "genetic hygiene," which he insists is a "purely medical subject," from Nazi ideas of selective breeding: "It rests definitely on the principle of voluntariness. Genetic-hygiene measures are taken exclusively at the desire of the persons concerned. Experience shows that patients, after having been informed on the significance of the hereditary taint, nearly always follow their doctor's advice." He does not explain how a mentally defective patient can understand the medical and social considerations involved, or how "voluntariness" can be achieved...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Medicine: Sterilization & Heredity | 4/15/1957 | See Source »

Changing Definitions. Denmark was the first nation in Europe to enact sterilization laws (1929) ; Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland have followed suit. In the first 25 years of Denmark's plan, there were 8,600 sterilizations (in a population of 4,500,000). More than two-thirds were performed on mental defectives, of whom two-thirds were women. Of the 3,663 patients sterilized for reasons other than mental deficiency (e.g., physical deformities, deaf-mutism), seven-eighths were women. In recent years the number sterilized for feeblemindedness has dropped sharply (from 283 to 165 a year), partly because...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Medicine: Sterilization & Heredity | 4/15/1957 | See Source »

...Denmark's genetic counselors may recommend sterilization in many cases where they know that the condition is not truly hereditary, but where they consider the parent or parents so handicapped that any offspring would have a poor chance of normal development. "Every case," says Kemp, "has to be submitted to individual expert estimation...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Medicine: Sterilization & Heredity | 4/15/1957 | See Source »

Control Evolution? How well has Denmark's plan worked? Kemp believes that it has reduced the blight of hereditary feeblemindedness by 50% or more. It will take generations, Kemp concedes, to prove that hereditary diseases are in fact reduced by genetic hygiene. But he is hopeful: "The time draws near when man to an increasing extent can control his own biological evolution...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Medicine: Sterilization & Heredity | 4/15/1957 | See Source »

...opinion sharply questions whether this is a desirable goal, on moral as well as medical grounds. In the 28 states with statutory sterilizations, 1,065 operations were performed in 1955, giving a proportionate national rate only about one-twentieth of Denmark...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Medicine: Sterilization & Heredity | 4/15/1957 | See Source »

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