COVID and normalization of neo eugenics

Let them die

eugenic philosophy is alive and well in the twenty-first century. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in our response to the current public health crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the viral nature of eugenic philosophy, which has continued to guide U.S. treatment of the captive and vulnerable for over 100 years. The long tail of eugenics informs our choices over those we institutionalize, detain, and sequester in long-term care and group homes.

Although we stopped formally espousing eugenics – a set of beliefs and practices focused on culling the “unfit” to improve humanity’s breeding stock – after its embrace by Nazi powers, its philosophy has continued to thrive. Despite the horrors of the Tuskegee Institute syphilis experiment, our medical community routinely conducts human medical experiments on those who are unable to fully consent, such as nursing home inhabitants, patients in mental institutions and disabled residents of long-term care homes. The recent allegations of sterilizing immigrant women at the border without their consent or knowledge is simply the latest example of American eugenics programs attempting to halt the reproductive abilities of the poor, the disabled and those convicted of crimes.

At the height of the spring COVID crisis, for example, New York State directed hospitals to release still contagious COVID-19 patients from hospitals into nursing homes in order to open hospital beds, thereby infecting vulnerable residents. In addition, both federal and state governments simply failed to provide proper PPE and sanitation supplies to nursing homes, long-term care homes and institutions for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, putting numerous high-risk individuals in jeopardy of contracting and becoming seriously ill with the coronavirus.

Moreover, a few states have experimented on patients by trying unproven COVID-19 treatments on nursing home residents without proper consent. A Pennsylvania veteran’s home prescribed hydroxychloroquine to residents, whether they tested positive for the virus or not. The veterans’ home neither obtained informed consent from the patients or even told their families. A Texas nursing home did likewise, proceeding without informed consent or proper safety protocols. Experimenting with unproven medical treatment on non-consenting patients violates every protocol on the ethical performance of medical experimentation.

It should be no surprise that our response to COVID-19 uses this familiar blueprint with predictable consequences for the captive and vulnerable who are pushed to the side, ignored or sacrificed for the “greater good.” We have largely abandoned those populations living in long-term care homes, disregarding or making worse the rising toll of illness and death in nursing homes and long-term care homes.  And we have almost entirely ignored the needs of the individuals in psychiatric institutions and the people living in facilities for IDD.