THE FIT AND THE UNFIT

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24981, 16 September 1946, Page 6

THE FIT AND THE UNFIT

Sir,—l think Dr. N. K. Cox is to be congratulated upon having- the courage to sign his name to his letter. I don t agree with him; it appears to me that you cannot pay too much attention to the sick. If you do otherwise people hide the sick and they become a source of danger to the whole community." During 50 years of practice it has appeared to me that we are presented with a magnificent crop of healthy babies every year. We make a hell of a mess of them; but that is our mismanagement. Alcoholism, boredom, defective dieting, defective, education, and general hygiene, syphilis and tuberculosis are all preventable; and there have been few rational attempts to prevent any of them. But, if prevented, I can’t help thinking that the residue of mental and physical defects would assume very manageable proportions.—Yours, etc., LBB September 11. 1946.

Sir,—Evidently some of your correspondents need a lesson in English. There is nothing in Dr. Cox’s letter about sterilisation or extermination. I suggest to them that they go back and read it again.—Yours, etc., BOX. September 13, 1946.

Sir, —The statement by Mrs Harvey that (presumably) sterilisation “is obviously a progressive step in promoting a higher standard of civilisation” will not of itself convince anyone.' I should like her proof. Perhaps it should be pointed out that the State or magistrates or any board has no direct power over the bodies of the people, and therefore cannot inflict punishment unless a crime has been committed. The integrity of the human body, except as punishment for a crime, may hot be tampered with for the cause of eugenics or any other cause. The logical conclusion to the case of the fanatical racialists would be their advocacy of human stud farms.—Yours, etc., September 13, 1946.

Sir, —The taproot of human pathology is psychic. Mankind becomes diseased because it thinks disease. Mankind becomes healthy when it thinks health. Sandow and Macfadden were both sickly weaklings as boys; yet these two established the greatest health teachings in the world. Euthanasia and sterilisation are not only brutal but useless, because they deal only with effects—disease. The only true way is to knock out the "bom in sin and iniquity” creed, thus allowing biology to fulfil its own conquest of unfitness.— Yours, etc., R. M. THOMSON. September 14, 1946.