WEBVTT - Fitter Families 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:13.160 M any. Imagine you're at the Kansas State Fair in 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:18.880 the nineteen twenties. Much of what you would see there 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.960 would look familiar today. There's cooking competitions and kids running 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:26.560 around the fairgrounds, and when night comes, maybe a big 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:31.400 fireworks display. Farm families are arriving from all over the 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:34.320 place to ride on the rides, watch the races, and 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:38.800 of course to show off their livestole. But starting in 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:44.800 there's another ferrament, which in today's perspective really seems hard 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:48.839 to believe. Along with the pigs and cows competing for ribbons, 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:54.640 there are entire human families being judged. Urine is tested 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.640 ever broken, any bones, skulls are measured, how often do 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:04.240 you bathe? The jewel teeth are evaluated open please. Judges 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:08.440 ask questions about childhood diseases. Mothers are giving the judges 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:10.720 a list of the meals they give their kids every day. 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:15.840 Every family member is observed chewing food, and the judges 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:21.160 are there taking notes down on all of this. There's 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.880 a written i Q test for children and parents, and 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:28.080 for good measure, a syphilis test. Rounds out the experience. 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:34.160 This whole thing. It's called a Fitter Family Contest and 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:37.600 they have a really specific social purpose for the nine twenties. 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:40.960 They're designed to get across a message to the masses 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:44.480 that human genetics determines all that is good and evil 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:50.480 about modern American society. Put simply, some people shouldn't reproduce, 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:57.520 some people should never be born. And in this podcast, 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:00.360 we're gonna be talking about one family from Mrs Hippy 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:03.160 who if they had gone before those judges back in 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:07.800 that era, they would have been judged defective or low grade, 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.079 which were terms actually used in those days, and therefore 0:02:11.400 --> 0:02:15.080 they would have been deemed unworthy of breeding. That's because 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:17.640 they had a little boy named Donald who was exhibiting 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:24.440 certain unexpected and inexplicable behaviors. He was different. But the 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.640 determination of Donald's mom and dad to make sense of 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:32.000 his differences and their certainty that he deserved a place 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:35.920 in this world, well, it will change not only Donald's life, 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:41.720 but all of our lives. For I Heeart Podcasts, I'm 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:46.000 John don Van and I'm Karen Zucker. This is Autism's 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:50.320 first Child and I heart original podcast and this is 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:58.359 episode one Fitter Families. Twenty years ago, my journalism career 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:01.760 took an unexpected turn at the time, I was working 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:04.680 as a general assignment reporter at ABC News, and I 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:09.079 had spent years covering wars and famine and political upheaval. 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.480 ABC's John don Van begins our series with the analysis 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:15.840 what we saw in last night's presidential debate with John Donvan, 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.760 ABC eight point nine Magnitude Epicenter of fifteen miles below ground. 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:23.640 One of my colleagues, a producer I worked with a lot, 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:28.560 learned that her two year old son, Mickey, had autism. 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.320 Here's Karen, So. My son, Mickey was in the Special 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:35.680 Tiddler program at Barnard College, where kids from eighteen to 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:39.360 thirty six months went to school. The very first day 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:41.680 we went, my husband and I were sitting in this 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.040 two way mirror and there are twelve or thirteen kids, 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:47.440 you know, they're all playing, and all of a sudden, 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:49.680 the teachers said, everybody go sit down and get some 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:54.080 juice and crackers. So eleven of those kids went down 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:56.560 and sat at the table to get their juicing crackers, 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.720 and there was Mickey in the corner with his shoes 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:02.760 and off dancing to the music. As soon as you 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:07.560 saw him with other children, educators who knew autism could 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:10.600 tell that he was different. We thought he was different 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:13.400 because he was reading in one and a half and 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:16.040 we knew we went to a different drummer, but we 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:19.800 just sort of thought he was brilliant. We didn't know 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:23.440 how different he was, and they suggested he get evaluated, 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:28.080 and six weeks later he was diagnosed with autism. Mickey's 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:33.400 diagnosis turned Karen's life completely upside down. Before that, you know, 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:36.960 she was one of the networks up and coming producers, definitely, 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:38.800 and she was we thought bound to be one of 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:40.599 the people the rest of us would end up working 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:44.920 for it the network. Well not quite. But the very 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:47.320 first interview I ever did as a journalist was with 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:50.080 Rosa Parks. So in the early days, I thought I 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.000 was off to a good start. I covered politics, I 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.479 went overseas to help cover the go for the Barcelona Olympics. 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:59.159 It was a good run. So it was a shock 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:03.039 to everybody out of nowhere, this incredible journalist that you 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:05.680 were known to be. Karen, you know, just stepped off 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.039 the fast track. You went from working full time to 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.880 working part time. Yeah, my boss had offered me a 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:14.760 job share because he didn't want to lose me, and 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:18.000 he knew that I'd give a hundred. And I was 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:20.919 really really fortunate because I was able to keep my 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.520 hand in the news business. And I was even more 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:27.320 fortunate because I was able to use the skill of 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:30.040 journalism as a way to figure out what to do 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:33.760 for Mickey and to educate others about autism and share 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:37.200 it with the world, because at this time, when people 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.000 heard the word autism, everybody still thought one thing, and 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:44.200 that was rain Man. He's particular case. He's pretty well off. 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:47.600 He's very high functionate. Most autistics they can't speak and 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:53.120 they can't communicate, right, Yeah, do you know what autistic is? Yeah? 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:58.800 You know that were Yeah? Are you autistic? I don't 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:04.640 think so. No. Not getting a network to agree to 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.400 do a half an hour on a topic that honestly, 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:09.720 most people still have never heard of in the um 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:14.080 that took a lot of uh, let's say, push, and 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:18.520 Karen is a bulldog. She pushed and she convinced Nightline 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:21.440 to let us do it. We were the first team 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.440 in network news to make reporting about autism into an 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:28.680 actual beat. Those first autism stories that we did together 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:32.880 put me into a more intimate kind of connection with 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:34.880 the people I was reporting on that I was actually 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:38.880 used to. You know, you can do war reporting in 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:42.159 this kind of big picture way, and most of the 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:44.719 time that's how it happens. You're telling this story of 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.560 a whole city under siege or a whole army of soldiers. 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:53.360 But this reporting on autism was always very close up 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:59.120 and very intimate and focused on individuals and their families, 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:02.039 and it was very internal. It was about the feelings 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:06.359 of people on the spectrum and their parents who often 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.160 when their kids were first diagnosed, were confused and frightened 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:12.119 and having to adjust to this new normal for their kids. 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.280 I had some experience with autism, my brother in law 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.200 has autism, but it didn't prepare me for this kind 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:23.400 of reporting. That first story, Karen and I told we 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:26.200 did it very honestly and it had a big impact 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:29.600 in the autism community. And after that, Karen asked me 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:34.320 to do another story, and then another, and we created 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:40.400 this series called Still Unexplained Wave of Autism that began 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:42.520 in the US in the ninety nine with an estimated 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.640 five hundred thousand kids in the US with autism. Today, 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:50.520 there are we reported on girls with autism, adults with autism, siblings, 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:54.800 how kids with autism, or bully. So we've been covering 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:59.600 autism together for television for seven years, and now seven 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:02.120 years in we're hard at work on a book about 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:05.160 the history of the diagnosis, and the research for that 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:07.520 brought us into close contact with the work of a 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.080 doctor named Leo Connor, a child psychiatrist, and we're going 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:13.520 to get deeper into Connor's life in our next episode. 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:18.600 But in three Dr Connor published a landmark paper that 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.160 described a neurological disorder that, as he put it, had 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:26.480 not previously been described. He called it autistic disturbances of 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:30.800 effective contact. And in that article he defined what we 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:35.079 all today recognized as autism. And he included case studies 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.800 of eleven children, and here's how he described their symptoms. 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:43.200 The disinterest in people, the obsession with objects, the deep 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:47.880 need for sameness and routine, the detachment and inaccessibility to 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:52.240 other us. Connor also made observations at his clinic at 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:55.400 Johns Hopkins of these kids directly. But from the beginning, 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.760 Karen and I were drawn to the first case described 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:03.640 in this study, literally called case one, Donald, last name 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:08.800 initial T, Donald T. We started to wonder if he 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:13.679 was still alive. Meeting Donald would be meeting history. In 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:17.199 his case studying on Donald T, Connor mentions a birthdate 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:22.400 September eight. I turned up a speech that Connor gave 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.640 one where he mentions that Donald lives in a little 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:32.760 town in Mississippi called Forest. First name, last, initial birthday location. 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.920 That's more than enough to track a person down. So 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:40.200 we did some sleuthing and came up with what we 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:43.440 thought was going to be Donald's phone number, and Karen 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:47.319 is the one who dialed in an answering machine picked out. 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:50.439 Once I heard the message, I knew it was him. 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:53.000 I called John and said I found him. I found 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:58.240 Donald T. After the break will investigate a wildly popular 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:01.760 turn of the century scientific blue to breed better humans, 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:06.959 and how that science led to the institutionalization, sterilization, even 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:26.240 the euthanasia of scores of children like Donald. Our quest 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.720 to understand autisms case number one, and what his life 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:31.600 was like and what the world that he grew up 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:35.640 and was like it actually begins well before Donald T 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:37.960 is born. I don't think people are that familiar with 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.000 the fact that from really the early nineteen hundreds up 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:44.400 until the beginning of World War two, essentially jendaics was 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:47.040 really a big movement to the United States swept the country. 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:51.679 As here's Adam Cohen, eugenics historian, author of the book Imbeciles. 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:54.840 It was an euro of science and it was a 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:58.960 progressive Here also, humans emerged from this evolutionary process. What 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:01.240 if we tried to take a more active role in it. 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:04.040 What if he tried to focus on good genes and 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.000 do that to make better people, sort of like farmers 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:09.960 have been doing for millennia by trying to breed better cattle. 0:11:10.600 --> 0:11:13.679 Even before those Fitter Family contests started popping up at 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:17.480 state fairs, there was something called the Better Babies movement 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:20.120 that got a hold on American culture around the turn 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:25.679 of the twentieth century. Better Babies kicks off with the 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:31.920 contest at the Louisiana State Fair. In night. Tourists are 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.480 filing through an exhibition hall and watching as nurses and 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:39.200 white gowns and cardboard caps weigh and measure and inspect 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.520 these little, tiny babies, and the baby judged to be 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:46.600 the healthiest and the strongest and the most scientifically raised, 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:51.320 that baby is awarded a silver trophy. There was oddly 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:54.000 some very positive intent behind it, right. I mean, this 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.360 was the time when medical education wasn't widespread, particularly in 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:01.040 rural areas. People didn't have the information now have about 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.800 baby Herring. Doctor's Fox book hadn't been written yet, there 0:12:04.880 --> 0:12:07.640 wasn't Google to search you know, what to do when babies, 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.760 cology and things like that. So some of this is informational. 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:13.360 It's trying to help people with a difficult thing of 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:16.800 raising a child and a roll with information. But because 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.760 of the Women's Home Companion, which was a really popular magazine, 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:25.560 coops this whole idea and forms the Better Babies Bureau 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:29.000 and practically no time you can find a Better Baby event. 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:34.200 In forty states, thousands of bombs enter their children. There's 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:37.840 something really fun about it. It's like the ultimate soap 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:43.480 bucks derby. Winning comes with incredible bragging rights. In Iowa, 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:47.360 the contests are run by a woman named Mary T. Watts, 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.200 matronly present, snowy white hair pulled back in a bun 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:55.600 rigid posture. She's perpetually draped in these long pearls that 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:59.760 swing to her waist. Shortly after starting Better Babies i 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.319 a chapter Watch receives a postcard signed by a man 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:07.760 named Charles Davenport, who tells her she is missing one 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:12.320 important measurement. You should give fifty to hereditary before you 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.920 begin to score a baby. Watch doesn't know it just yet, 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:20.280 but in the field of eugenics, Davenport is a serious player. 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:23.960 Wats forgets all about the postcard until the following year, 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.319 when Davenport sends another note a prize winner at two, 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:32.920 maybe an epileptic at ten, And now Watch is convinced. 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:37.160 She decides to insert heredity tests into the contests forget 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:41.959 better babies. Now it's fitter Families. It takes six years 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.640 for Wats to get the fitter Famili's concept off the ground. 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:49.480 Experts doubt that any educated, self respecting adult will submit 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:53.960 willingly to physical exams at a county fair. Who on 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:57.800 earth would be open to the syphilis test. There was 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:02.000 really many attempts to bring the high flutent ideas of 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:06.040 eugenics to the people. Measure people's skulls to see like 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:08.400 how large they were and how big the brain would be. 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.760 So they're doing that kind of quote scientific work. The 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:15.760 first Fitter Families for Fireside Chats competition is held in 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:23.240 a Kansas agricultural fair. Twenty families compete. Early competitions are 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:26.520 such a success that Watts takes the show on the road. 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.520 The contests are always time to overlap with the main event, 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:35.440 the livestock contests. Farmers truck in their best looking cattle, 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:38.600 and there are most perfect pigs to compete for the 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:43.160 blue ribbons. Better bred animals, when crossed again and again, 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:46.080 lead to unending improvement in the stock of the breed. 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:50.600 Mrs Watts has the same goal for humans. While the 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:54.480 judges are testing the Holstein's jerseys and white faces, we 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.960 are testing the Joneses, Smith's and the Johnson's. When Mrs 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.400 Watts found a winner like the Kelly family of Isle 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:03.920 of Hope, Georgia, which she referred to as being of 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:07.480 the highest type, she meant that the Kelly's were the 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:13.720 sort of Americans who should be encouraged, exhorted even to reproduce. Meantime, 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.640 all the information that we collect on your family is 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:21.480 going to be stored at the Eugenics Record Office in 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:26.720 cold Spring Harbor. That's Dr Laura Lovett, historian, professor and author, 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:30.280 and it's going to allow for a kind of what 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:34.480 they imagined would be a control of the entire population 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:40.480 around genetic predispositions. This was actually quite widespread In the 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:44.080 nineteen tens and nine twenties, The New York Times ran 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:48.160 a favorable feature about the Eugenics Record Office and how 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:52.640 people could take eugenics into account in deciding who to marry. 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:55.400 Back at the state fair, a sign at the competition 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:59.840 booth carries an urgent warning every forty eight seconds of 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.120 person is born in the United States who will never 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:06.800 grow up mentally beyond that stage of a normal eight 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:11.040 year old boy or girl. A second sign adds perspective 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:13.840 every fifteen seconds, a hundred dollars if your money goes 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:16.280 for the care of persons with bad heredits, such as 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:20.240 the insane, a feeble mind, criminals, and other defectives. And 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.320 the third sign offers hope. Every seven and a half minutes, 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:29.880 a high grade person is born. Good heredity is falling 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:34.359 behind at an alarming rate. They warn small town newspaper 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:38.400 editors decide the fittest families make for great copy, and 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:41.560 they spread the word about eugenics. Now in the broader 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:45.160 eugenics movement, Mrs Watts is really just a bit player. 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:47.960 She's not a scientist, she's not an academic, she's not 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:52.640 a statesman. Her operation really is the extreme retail end 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:57.400 of eugenics, a scientific, political, and philosophical movement that dedicated 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.440 itself as one adherent put it to iron up the 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.280 springs that feed the torrent of defective and degenerate protoplasm. 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:08.760 But scientists, academics, and statesman are well represented in the 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:12.840 eugenics movement at Harvard and at Yale, in the pages 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:16.440 of Scientific American, and in the New York Times. Powerful 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:20.000 people like Alexander Graham Bell embraced this brand new so 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:23.879 called science, and John D. Rockefeller eugenic starts to creep 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:28.160 into public schools. President Teddy Roosevelt is a big fan 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:31.480 of this book, called the Passing of the Great Race, 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:34.879 a rigid system of selection through the elimination of those 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:38.160 who are a weak or unfit. In other words, social 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:42.000 failures would solve the whole question in one hundred years. 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:50.000 The book's author is a man named Madison Grant, who 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:53.320 is widely respected at the time. He's the founder of 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:56.840 the American Museum of Natural History. He's a really major 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.919 conservationist and a very high ranking member of polite New 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:03.600 York Society. He gets a lot of fan letters from 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:07.240 all over the place. One of them came from Austria, 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.479 from a young man who wrote to Grant that the 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:14.360 book is now his Bible. This young Austrian man's name 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:20.280 Half Help. And we know what the Nazis did with 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.720 these ideas. They set up the Rice Committee for the 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:29.399 Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses. It sounds 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:35.160 very bureaucratic, but it's basically a child killing organization. Under 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:39.000 this program, children three and under with any number of 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:51.400 congenital disorders are condemned to be euthanized. Years before the Nazis, 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.919 eugenics had crept into American society in some very dark ways. 0:18:56.680 --> 0:19:00.200 There are already institutions across the country where epileptic and 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:05.200 the intellectually disabled or kept separated from society. But now 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:09.520 more than half the states began to allow forced sterilization 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:15.480 of these individuals. Here's Dr Lovett. Often in those asylums 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:21.399 where sterilization, without any any information, any conversation takes place, 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:25.639 and those depend on the states. Indiana is one of 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:29.639 the first ones to introduce the sterilization law. Eight is 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:35.080 going to focus predominantly on mail inmates. California, for example, 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:36.960 and part of this has to do with that First 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:40.720 World War decides that, in fact, it's going to sterilize 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:44.000 as many women as men, and it sterilizes women who 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:50.000 wind up in what we're called feeble minded institutions. A 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.520 false assumption has now taken hold that there's a meaningful 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:57.800 relationship between somebody's i Q and that person's ability to 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:01.760 be a contributing and law abid fighting and moral member 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:07.040 of society. Lower i Q was thought to define an 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:12.000 undesirable sort of person, and so they imagine then that 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:18.879 the way to prevent further reproduction of lower i Q 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:23.840 or people minded individuals was to sterilize them. And so California, 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:27.080 for example, winds up sterilizing as many women as men 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:33.800 were as in Indiana. Partics predominant emails in Margaret Sanger 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.920 tells a Vasster College audience, this is the founder of 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:39.840 planned parenthood, right right, This is what she tells an 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:43.320 audience of young women. The American public is taxed, heavily 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:46.960 taxed to maintain an increasing race of morons, which threatens 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:52.160 the very foundations of our civilization. The very next year, 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:54.920 the United States Supreme Court, here's a case called Buck 0:20:55.040 --> 0:21:01.480 versus Bell addressing the constitutionality of Virginia's eugenical Sterilization Act. 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.280 Carrie Books story could be a podcast all its own. 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:08.920 The state decides to sterilize Carrie Buck, even though there's 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.160 nothing wrong with her. She doesn't suffer from any sort 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:15.960 of malady. She's just a poor teenage mother with a 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:20.440 sixth grade education. Eugenics depends heavily on i Q tests. 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:25.560 Carrie Buck is classified as quote middle grade moron, a 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:29.520 technical classification that they actually used based on the intelligence scale, 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:33.000 but still put her above the levels of idiot and imbecile, 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:37.320 which were also terms that they actually used. Morons again, 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:40.800 that's how Carrie was rated. Are considered dangerous people. They're 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:44.199 smart enough to pass undetected and even to breed with 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:48.120 their so called superiors. Carrie, who is an unmarried teenager, 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:51.840 has a child, which to the experts back then, indicated 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:56.679 heightened sexuality and fertility, both said to be common among 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:01.399 the so called mentally deficient. It was really a nightmare 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:07.320 tangle of measurements, classifications, assumptions, and prejudices. The Supreme Court 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:11.199 rules eight to one that the statute doesn't violate the 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:15.439 due process cause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision clears 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:20.800 the way for the forced sterilization of some seventy thousand Americans. 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:25.360 Some people want to go beyond for sterilizations. They want 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:31.920 to actually euthanize intellectually disabled children. That means kill them. 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:34.679 It's an idea that's actually proposed in the American Journal 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:39.000 of Psychiatry by a neurologist named Robert Foster Kennedy July. 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:45.639 Kennedy argues that death is sometimes the most appropriate prescription 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:50.440 for children he called nature's mistakes. This defective child has 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:53.159 no future nor hope of one, then it is a 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:56.439 merciful and kindly thing to relieve that defective often tortured 0:22:56.480 --> 0:23:00.480 and convulse, gro task and observed useless and fullish and 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:07.679 entirely undesirable of the agony of living. Basically execute them. 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:11.920 Shocking right, not to everybody. Back then the previous year, 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:15.560 in a poll of thousands of doctors in New York, 0:23:17.160 --> 0:23:22.160 of the respondents said they favored legalizing euthanasia for severely 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:26.439 disabled kids. And back in ninety three, this was the 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:32.400 world that Donald T was born into. When we returned 0:23:32.800 --> 0:23:36.840 Mary and Beamon triplet wrestle with the scientific communities insistence 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:40.320 that the best course of action is locking their baby 0:23:40.359 --> 0:23:50.679 boy away forever. H grandfather mccravy j R. McCravey was 0:23:50.760 --> 0:23:55.679 born in Titan County, Mississippi, in eighteen sixty six, and 0:23:56.440 --> 0:23:59.960 he grew up on a farm in really abject power, 0:24:00.359 --> 0:24:05.280 but had a mind for banking. That's Donald Triplet's brother Oliver. 0:24:05.880 --> 0:24:08.800 Their family founded and are still part owners of the 0:24:08.840 --> 0:24:12.399 Bank of Forest. Their mother, Mary had a college degree, 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:14.240 which was very rare for a woman in the middle 0:24:14.240 --> 0:24:18.120 of Mississippi in that time. She married the former mayor's son, 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:22.520 Oliver Beamon Triplet Jr. Known to most people as Mr Beamon. 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:26.200 Beamon had a degree from Yale Law School, also rare 0:24:26.240 --> 0:24:29.600 for the middle of Mississippi, and he practiced law and Forest. 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:36.440 My father was interested in law early on, and when 0:24:36.480 --> 0:24:40.119 he graduated from il SAPs in the early twenties, the 0:24:40.240 --> 0:24:44.719 state had lost its accreditation and he had a cousin 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:48.920 that lived in Valdosta, Georgia that had connections with the 0:24:49.040 --> 0:24:51.760 University of Florida. He got him and rolled down there 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:55.160 in the law school and he went for two years, 0:24:55.240 --> 0:24:58.000 but decided he wanted a more prestigious law degree and 0:24:58.040 --> 0:25:00.879 opted to go to Yale, and so he went to 0:25:00.960 --> 0:25:05.880 New Haven as a one year wonder and he told me, said, 0:25:06.040 --> 0:25:08.639 the professor's up there. You know. Su A resented the 0:25:08.680 --> 0:25:11.480 fact I was going up there, but he said I 0:25:11.520 --> 0:25:18.440 was very diligent and graduated with honors. So as as 0:25:18.520 --> 0:25:25.480 how at all came down. In three, Mary gave birth 0:25:25.560 --> 0:25:30.080 to Donald. When Donald was three, his parents brought him 0:25:30.119 --> 0:25:35.000 to Sanatorium, Mississippi, to a facility known as the preventorium. 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:40.560 But he wouldn't be making the return trip. Now that's 0:25:40.600 --> 0:25:43.840 kind of a strange word, preventorium, but there actually used 0:25:43.840 --> 0:25:46.080 to be a lot of them around the country. Children, 0:25:46.200 --> 0:25:49.640 especially poor children, were thought to be at high risk 0:25:49.680 --> 0:25:53.640 of tuberculosis, and doctors would send kids away to these 0:25:53.640 --> 0:25:56.720 places called preventoriums to keep them safe by keeping them 0:25:56.720 --> 0:26:01.240 out of society where the germs were. But Donald wasn't 0:26:01.359 --> 0:26:05.000 really at risk of catching TV. That's not why he 0:26:05.080 --> 0:26:08.679 was sent away. It was because he was different. And 0:26:08.720 --> 0:26:12.320 this was a thing that sometimes wealthy families dead. It 0:26:12.400 --> 0:26:16.439 was a way to institutionalize a child without having to 0:26:16.520 --> 0:26:19.960 connect it to any sort of mental condition. It was 0:26:19.960 --> 0:26:23.520 a way to dodge the stigma. And perhaps for that reason, 0:26:23.680 --> 0:26:25.400 or perhaps they just didn't know what else to do. 0:26:26.160 --> 0:26:30.640 That's what Donald's parents did in seven, and we wondered 0:26:31.600 --> 0:26:34.399 what would the separation have been like for Donald's parents 0:26:34.440 --> 0:26:38.280 to go through. Oh I, it was extremely difficult, John, 0:26:38.600 --> 0:26:41.480 you could imagine, I mean this, this was her firstborn child. 0:26:41.600 --> 0:26:44.200 Here's another member of the Triplet family. My name is 0:26:44.240 --> 0:26:49.119 Obe Triplet, and Don is my uncle. Maman Triplet was 0:26:49.200 --> 0:26:53.959 Don's father, and my granddad. He was a lawyer here 0:26:54.000 --> 0:26:57.280 in town and settled here and wound up Mary and 0:26:57.320 --> 0:27:01.520 my grandmother, her name was Mary mccrayev and Don was 0:27:01.560 --> 0:27:05.800 born and everything's good, and then things started, you know, changing. 0:27:06.160 --> 0:27:09.280 She realized that something wouldn't quite right. There's the way 0:27:09.560 --> 0:27:11.840 you know, a picture of this. Of course, the at 0:27:11.840 --> 0:27:15.080