The Life & Times of Allison Jane

Pencil sketch, text added in Photoshop

I was reading about eugenics last night, and made a little discovery. John Harvey Kellogg was apparently a big believer and proponent of this faulty science (he was also a believer in some other faulty "sciences," but is nothing compared to this). Eugenics is the idea that humans can control their own evolution through selective breeding. Generally, it's not a good idea to treat people like domesticated dogs. This dangerous, flawed idea led to such things as forced sterilization, laws prohibiting mixed race marriages, and immigration restrictions in America. In Germany, however, the Nazis took it to an extreme (as they were known to do). The influence of eugenics can be seen in most everything the Nazis did, but my interest really comes in where Hitler started. Institutionalized disabled children and adults were the first to be targeted by the Führer in a program called "Action T4." The mentally ill, developmentally disabled, and the physically handicapped were gassed, poisoned, or just left to starve. When families asked about their missing loved ones, they were told that they had died of natural causes and had already been cremated.

Okay, getting back to Kellogg... He was a pretty early supporter of eugenics. He started his Race Betterment Foundation in 1906, and held conferences on the subject at his famous sanitarium in 1914, 1915, and 1928. He had huge influence in his time, and I just wonder how much this seemingly benign eccentric contributed to the future evil done in the name of eugenics.