The Dark side of Science: The Horror of Eugenics Theory (Short Documentary)

Gotta love how those early English studies just ignored nepotism, favoritism, and access to education as potential factors for why children of rich people stayed rich.

My cousin who passed a few years ago had been forcibly sterilized during the eugenics movement in the united states when she was young. She had speech issues and was sexually abused by a relative. She moved to Michigan from California where she worked for general motors for over 50 years. Using her wages, she paid for speech therapy and gained "normal" speech. She developed Alzheimer's in her final years, but she always remembered her husband. It would break my heart every time she asked me if they had had any children together. I would tell her no, that she hadn't, and she would give me a quiet "oh". It's not a person's place to decide who gets to live or die, and who gets to carry on their line.

You know what? Thank you for calling it "murder" and calling those people "victims" because that's what it was and that's what they were. Too many times people choose a more clinical approach and it all seems so detached but I really appreciated that you looked at the problem right in the eye and said that these people were murdered, through no fault of their own, and anyone who had a part in their murders was a killer. It really brought home the horror of the entire situation.

The hilarious thing is I would've easily been sterilised as I'm autistic, did poorly at primary and high school. After some steps of learning, I'm now studying electrical engineering. This is why Eugenics is BS. It's about the environment you're in. You can change that.

"Germany got most of the credit for it, but it was popular here in the U.S. way before Hitler even knew who he was mad at." Doug Stanhope, "incentivised eugenics"

Over 1,000 women were forcibly sterilized through non-consentual removals of reproductive organs and hysterectomies in Californian prisons from 1997 to 2014. Eugenics still exists to some extent.

OKAY you probably wont read this, but my heart literally STOPPED when you showed the picture of the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre. I life near Bernburg and I have Depression, so I was hospitallized once and it was THAT BUILDING. The Euthanasia Centre is a Psychiatric Clinic nowadays and it still looks the same. Even the ofens and gas showers are still in the attic, they're an open memorial right now. I would've NEVER thought to see that building in this type of video one day, thanks for including it lmao :') (fun fact aside from that - the psyche ward it is now is awful and they treat their patients terribly, not mass murder but guess some things dont change lol)

Y’know, when I first played Wolfenstein: the New Order, I thought it seemed unrealistic that the US would embrace the Nazi regime so quickly. Now I’m having second thoughts

Difficult to condense down 100 years of an entire branch of scientific study into a sub 30 minute video but I think you did a good job

FUN FACT: The Aztecs originally made peanuts mashed into a paste, the original peanut butter. Though it was Will Kellogg who created the machine that makes modern day peanut butter in jars. George Washington Carver, often mistaken as the inventor of peanut butter, found over 300 uses for peanuts, but not peanut butter.

The chilling thing to me personally is how spotty IQ tests can be- when they tested me in elementary school I think their expectation tainted their interpretation of my answers, also some questions were on topics we hadn't been taught yet or about topics that had zero interest to me like the length of a football field and the number of people on a baseball team. (I still don't remember the latter one, tbh. It simply doesn't interest me.) In the end they told my parents I was lucky I could tie my shoes. Then I started reading at a college level and they forgot about that stupid test. But back enough decades I might have been forcibly sterilized before they realized I was actually a genius. Worse was it wasn't just intelligence they based it on- it was also morality. And if a woman couldn't PROVE she was r*ped- which she usually couldn't because how often is it done it public before tons of witnesses?- then she'd be branded morally inadequate and forcibly sterilized, it was so tragic. There was also the flip side- women not being allowed to decline having more children just because their husbands wanted them. One woman had several kids but couldn't handle the stress, she was put into a mental institution. But her husband wanted to visit her and keep impregnating her and she didn't want more kids. The court sided with him and formally stripped her of the right to say no. At that time spousal r*pe wasn't a legal thing either. Then there's the whole lobotomy fiasco.

Thank you for sharing this. It is horrific, and needs to be kept in the spotlight, as too many people are currently trying to regenerate these theories under different names.

The most horrid thing about this is the lack of people (and increasing) that don't know about this. Knowledge is power and power thru knowledge is the best way to make true change

11:20 Just to be fair, it was not actually J.H. Kellogg, but his brother William who founded the cereal company. Originally J.H. convinced his brother to support his endeavors in mental health through the company, but early on they had a falling out over this, and William broke all ties with his brother and ensured all cereals made by his company were NOT officially endorsed by his brother or the mental asylum he ran. Its kind of a fascinating story, I'd recommend looking into it closer :3

I appreciate you referring to euthanasia in this instance as straightforward murder.

As dark as the topic is, its part of history and if we dont learn from it we are doomed to repeat it. Thanks for the video and keep up the good work

I do not remember ever being taught this in school, my mind is blown. America made Eugenics popular first and none of my textbooks ever talked about it

I actually did my high school paper on this topic lol I was in the IB programme, which is a step up from AP. In IB, we are required to write a EE or extended essay. I remember I wrote a 18 to 20-page essay about Eugenics in the US. It still astounds me how little people know about when I bring it up.

While the concept of selective breeding is a legitimate way of improving the human race it completely falls apart once you take into account that people are worth more than their "intelligence" I've met some of the dumbest people you could ever expect to exist and yet they have had hearts of gold and genuinely have improved my life just by being the caring, thoughtful people they are. Intelligence isn't all that matters in fact I wouldn't say it matters at all, as long as we have a group of intellectuals pushing the human race forward everyone else should focus on being happy and doing their bit for others whether it be working in a store, street sweeping or designing the next big social media, everyone has value.

I work as a historian at a former institution for individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities. This was informative in the history of eugenics and overall very well done. I feel that we’ve forgotten disabled people in this conversation, who suffered the most for the longest.