Scope of Eugenics – Call for Submission – extended until March 1, 2015

The Scope of Eugenics
Call for Submissions

Eugenics Archives (eugenicsarchive.ca) is pleased to announce a four-day workshop at the Banff Centre, May 22nd-25th, 2015, in Banff, Alberta. To acknowledge the significant contributions made by students to the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada project over the past four years, we invite submissions from early career scholars—students and those within three years of completing their doctorates—from any discipline on topics related to eugenics and its contemporary significance.

Submissions should consist of a single document that includes a (i) summary abstract (<150 words), (ii) longer description (<750 words) outlining the presentation and explaining the relevance of the topic to eugenics, (iii) short biographical statement (<100 words), and (iv) CV. Possible topics include, but are in no way restricted to, the following :

Apologies to eugenics survivors Child welfare
Collective memory Human diversity
Nationalism Quality of life
Queer sexuality Roma peoples
Schizophrenia World Health Organization
Whiteness Particular Countries / Geographic Regions

The project director is happy to provide feedback to potential participants on these and other suggestions (e.g., on particular countries or regions of the world). Participants are expected to attend the whole workshop and to contribute a short article to eugenicsarchive.ca, ideally based on their presentation, within one month of the workshop. Articles accessible via the Encyc or Around the World modules at the site indicate the type of article we have in mind.

Accommodation and meals for all workshop participants will be covered by Eugenics Archives. Participants will also be notified upon acceptance if we are able to cover in full, or contribute to in part, additional travel expenses. The workshop will allow for substantial opportunities to enjoy the Banff surrounds and will encourage networking, mentoring, and informal discussion between junior scholars interested in eugenics and Eugenics Archives team members.

Scope of Eugenics Poster with Mountains
Deadline for submissions : February 15th, 2015 EXTENDED to March 1, 2015 Acceptances : March 15th, 2015

Questions and submissions to the project director, Professor Rob Wilson : scopeofeugenics@gmail.com

Website: https://scopeofeugenics.wordpress.com/

Hosted by the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada

Eugenic sterilization NOW

courtesy of Miroslava Chavez-Garcia and from The Modesto Bee:

Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval

Published: July 7, 2013 Updated 8 hours ago

By Corey G. Johnson — The Center for Investigative Reporting

Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, the Center for Investigative Reporting has found.  Read more:

http://www.modbee.com/2013/07/07/2796548/female-inmates-sterilized-in-california.html

Rob Sparrow: talks on eugenics TODAY in Edmonton

Just a quick reminder:

Professor Rob Sparrow will be giving two talks in Edmonton at the University of Alberta on Monday April 8 and Tuesday April 9, 2013. Both talks are open to the public and free! Talks are being held on campus in ETLC (Engineering Teaching & Learning Complex)

Students Fight to Include Difficult History in California Schools

from Facing History; you might also want to check out their publication for schools on eugenics here:

March 8, 2013

In San Francisco, a group of Facing History and Ourselves students is spearheading a movement that could change public high school history classes for generations of future California teens. Their goal: to include California’s history with eugenics and sterilization in the state’s public high school curricula.  To read more, see the original post.

Contemporary practices of sterilization in Australia

As a follow up to the post in the first link below, here is a list of further related links on those wanting to know more.  Thanks to a helpful anonymous reader of the What Sorts blog who provided most of the links below but who doesn’t wish to be identified.  Folks in Oz: let us know if you have more information, are undertaking action, whatever.

• https://whatsortsofpeople.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/forced-sterilization-and-disability-in-australia/  Recent What sorts blog post on forced sterilization in Australia TODAY:

• 1997 & 2001: reports from the Human Rights Commission in Australia that discuss the practice.
• 1998– official document assessing situation, number of sterilizations per year, convenience of sterilizing disabled woman http://www.familycourt.gov.au/wps/wcm/resources/file/ebb8810487b4021/MURRAY.pdf
• 2001- Study and report from Women With Disabilities Australia.  Thorough, including much relevant history, sterilization survivor testimony and narratives, as well as a talk given by Adrienne Asch, and references to the significance of the Canadian eugenic history here, and reports “The Sterilization of Leilani Muir” as one of two video source. http://www.ag.gov.au/Documents/HRPB%20-%20NHRAP%20-%20Baseline%20Study%20-%20Submission%20-%20Women%20with%20Disabilities%20Australia%20-%20Attachment%205.PDF
• Leilani Muir on The Current, with Anna Maria Tremonti

For the Love of Annie

There’s a recent interview with Barb Farlow up at Bloom–Parenting Kids with Disabilities–by Louise Kinross. It starts with the following background information:

When Barb Farlow learned the baby she was carrying had Trisomy 13, her decision to continue the pregnancy “was immediate and innate, and in complete contrast to what I thought I might do,” says the Toronto mother and engineer. She was told the syndrome was lethal, but through online support groups met families whose children were living with Trisomy 13. “It was very important to us that she not suffer unnecessarily, but we wanted to consider any surgical treatments and make ‘best-interest’ decisions for her, like any parent.”

Barb’s daughter Annie (above) was born without the brain and heart defects common in Trisomy 13, but died at 80 days in 2005 after being rushed to a children’s hospital in respiratory distress. Following her death, Barb acquired Annie’s medical records and learned a “not for intubation” order had been written without consent. “This discovery was like the first domino in a long line of questionable events that left us unclear as to whether our daughter’s death was preventable.” Determined to change what she believes is systemic discrimination against treating children with certain genetic conditions, Barb shares Annie’s story at health-care conferences and ethics talks, with medical and law students, in medical journals and through her work with Patients for Patient Safety Canada.

To read the interview itself, which is informative about how Barb and Annie were treated within the medical establishment, including by medical staff at one of Canada’s leading hospitals for sick children, click here.

Bankruptcy for Justice?

Barb and Tim Farlow elected to have a malpractice suit against a Toronto hospital heard in small claims court, but a judge has ruled the venue is inappropriate. (Photo by Tim Fraser, National Post Files)

On Monday, November 30th the National Post (a Canadian national newspaper) posted an update on their previous coverage of the Farlow court case. Those of you who are regular readers will recall that the Farlows have made serious allegations against Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. These allegations amount to the claim that doctors at Sick Kids deliberately killed their baby, Annie, in 2005 because she had a fatal genetic abnormality. The decision handed down from Judge Herman amounted to a claim that small claims court was no place for the kinds of charges that the Farlow’s were raising:

Going Underground and True Choice

[This is the twelfth post in a series highlighting a public dialogue held at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here; we’ll string together all posts in this series when we have most / all of them up, or you can search by the category “Modern Pursuit” to get those already posted.]

Here Anna Macquarrie from the CACL talks more openly about the history of eugenics and contemporary genetic testing. In Part 2, below the fold, there is some discussion of this, with Simo Vehmas resisting the linkage of eugenics with contemporary attitudes and practices, and some hearty discussion following from all–not everything can be heard here, but we’ve put what we could make out on the transcripts beneath the fold.

Is making the connection between past eugenic practices and contemporary practices, such as genetic testing for Down Syndrome, “playing the Nazi card”, as Simo suggests?

Going Underground and True Choice: Part 1

Note that there is no sound in the first 30-40 seconds of Part 1, which simply contains the title of the clip, the name of the speaker(s), and the location of the symposium, information that is provided in the beginning of this post.

Remembering…

Red Poppy, as used on November 11

Tomorrow, November 11, is Remembrance day in many Commonwealth countries and Veterans Day in the US. The day was originally chosen in 1919 to observe the armistice that brought an end to the first world war. Since the end of WWI the world has seen a second world war and many smaller skirmishes that have brought large amounts of devastation and destruction. November 11 now provides an opportunity to prompt discussion and thought about all war, not just the “war to end all wars” as it was originally intended. One way to frame the violent conflicts that we often engage in is as mechanisms for disabling people on a large scale–indeed without these events it is an open question whether we would have the social consciousness surrounding disability that we have today.

“Let’s Talk About It”: Contemporary Eugenics for Louisiana and the Problem of Intergenerational Welfare

Famous picture of The Kallikaks

Republican state representative  John Labruzzo has recently suggested a sterilization program in Louisiana to solve the problem of “intergenerational welfare”. Labruzzo’s proposal derived from a “brain-storming session” (which makes me kinda wonder what sort of brains were involved). Labruzzo represents himself as prepared to go–on the bold ideas for the 21st-century front–where no man has gone. Readers of this blog, however, will know that the idea is all too familiar in the history of eugenics. The core proposal was to pay (say) women who are deemed to be in a situation of “intergenerational welfare” $1000 to undergo tubal ligation.

I don’t know whether Labruzzo has also had the bold idea of making this compulsory, or working actively in ways to make the economic plight of such women even worse than it is now so that they would be more likely to accept such a “voluntary” program of sterilization. Both might be ideas that Representative Labruzzo’s brain-storming team missed, but both would be natural extensions of the eugenics program he is just kinda throwing out there for people to consider. The proposal derived, it seems, in part from Labruzzo’s reflections on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the more recent hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico.

I wish I were making this up (as can sometimes happen …). But I’m not.

What do New Orleans, or Louisianers, or Americans more generally, think of this, one wonders? Some vids and other links on this beneath the fold, where you can see Labruzzo in action defending the idea and a few ways in which it has been picked up in the media already.