Sterilize The Drug Fiends

In 1935, Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute in New York produced his book "Man the Unknown." In it, he wrote that

"enormous sums are now required to maintain prisons and insane asylums. . . . Why do we preserve these useless and harmful beings? This fact must be squarely faced. Why should society not dispose of the criminals and the insane in a more economical manner? . . . The community must be protected against troublesome and dangerous elements. . . . Perhaps prisons should be abolished. . . . The conditioning of the petty criminal with the whip, or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital, would probably suffice to insure order. [Criminals including those] who have . . . misled the public on important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gases. A similar treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts." (193)

Rockefeller's racist writers were a hit. By the early 1930's, thirty states had passed compulsory sterilization laws that gave panels of "experts" the power to sterilize individuals who fell into such undesirable social categories as "sexual perverts," "epileptics," "drunkards" and "drug fiends." (194) Hitler accredited eugenics in America as the most important factor influencing his policies on racial and hereditary science. (195)