INSTITUTIONAL ABUSE OF MENTAL PATIENTS HAS SULLIED THE REPUTATION OF EUGENICS.

Radioactive Oatmeal at  Fernald State School for the Feeble-Minded.  The Fernald School, in Waltham, Massachusetts, held 2,500 children, mostly poor and uneducated.  The school was built in 1848 by the Massachuetts State Legislature to house "feeble-minded" children.  The purpose of the school was to separate the "genetically inferior" from the rest of society and promoted the idea that feeble-minded people should be sterlized. 

The boys were taught self-reliance by raising their own vegetables, sewing souls onto their shoes, and making the brooms they used to sweep the floors. 

Punishments were bizarre by today's standards.  One punishment was called "Red Cherry Day."  The boys would be sent to a room, sit in a circle, and one by one go to the middle of the circle where he was beaten with a switch until his butt was "cherry red." 

Money was always a problem, and the school allowed MIT to use his boys in an experiment funded by the National Institute of Health in 1949 for a fee.  The boys were studied by MIT scientists who told the boys they could belong to the Fernald Science Club in the last 1940's and early 1950's.  The truth was that the Atomic Energy Commission wanted to study the effects of radiation on human beings.  The boys were fed oatmeal which had been laced with radiation.  They believed that the radiated oatmeal they were fed was a special treat.  In 1994 the Senate conducted hearings which uncovered this experiment.  Four years later, Quaker Oats and MIT paid $1.85 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the boys which successfully claimed that they had been tricked into participating in the experiments.   

Shock Treatment as a Punishment in a California State Hospital.  Shocks were given to a kid who often escaped from the hospital and break the windows in cars on the street.  The door was electrified as a means of teaching the boy not to leave through that door.  Another boy used to break the screens.  The screen was electrified to stop the boy from breaking the screen.  Sometimes kids pound their heads against the floor.  Five people have to hold the boy in place to stop his self abuse and sometimes the boy is injured due to his struggles.  "Huffers" are people who breath gasoline or glue for fun.  One such "huffer" was restrained because he was hurting other patients.  He was restrained and his arm was broken when he fought against his restrainers who brought him down, attached wires to his body and shocked him. 

One doctor shocked the patients three times a day just for fun.  He would have everybody go to their dorms and lock them in and bring the gurney, grab the patients, tie them to the gurney, shock them, and put them in a chair out in the day hall.  The day hall was full of zombies.  The technicians considered this abusive.  There was another instance where a very strong man was brought in for beating his wife and the doctor shocked him five times a day.  The patient was drooling and crawling on the floor like an animal.  The technicians were very upset but they later came to believe that the doctor had saved the man's life because he was able to walk out of the hospital and continue on with his life.

It is used to bring a person to a level where you can get the patient into therapy with medication and is best used for suicidal because it is a miracle cure for depression.  Today it is contraindicated for schizophrenia although in the past it was used for schizophrenia.  Today a team of five doctors have to agree to administer shock whereas in the past one doctor had the right to administer ECT.  There have been cases where technicians were given the authority to administer shock without a doctor's prescription but this is not a common practice.

Lobotomies have been used but this procedure is recognized to destroy the creativity of the patient.

Sterilization was used to stop the reproduction of mentally deficient people in 1935, with different states having different laws surrounding the sterlization of the feeble-minded.

Sterlization was Used to Prevent Future Morons.