It's very disturbing to look in the undusted crevices of society's mindset.
Two factors seem to be at work here.  First, the "survival of the fittest"
philosophy appears to have an invisible death grip on society's value system.
 Second, people are inherently resistant to change.  That's a ruthless
combination, and a massive, daily hurdle for disability rights advocates.

You are referring to the Nazi's T-4 program (Tiergarten 4 -- named after the
address of the German Chancellery).  According to an account that I read on
the internet -- I cannot recall the source -- the first disabled child killed
was a male infant who was blind and missing two limbs.  His father wrote to
Hitler asking permission for the infant to be killed.  Hitler sanctioned the
request and the T-4 program was born.

The ethnic cleansing (one hellova euphemism) of Jews has dominated media
storefronts ever since W.W.II.  The killing of Poles has been advertised as
well, albeit to a lessor degree.  The slaughter of disabled people under T-4
program directives however, seems never to have been a subject of common
knowledge or concern.

I keep asking why that is so.

They don't kill us anymore.  They warehouse us.  Either we are warehoused
outright, such as by institutionalization, or we are warehoused through
societal excusion, or silently at our places of employment.  Boy do we know
from glass ceilings!

But...they don't kill us anymore.

It costs a lot more to warehouse a disabled person than it does to meet his
adaptive needs, and let him have a good run at life.  The secondary loss is
incalculable.  I refer again to Stephen Hawking.  How much of a household
name would he be if his disability had been as severe from infancy as it
became in adulthood?  There would have been none of the Hawking scientific
contributions.  He would have been another abandoned sole made to suffer life
behind closed doors.  The man who offered such bold concepts as the unified
theory would have been silenced by an ignorant society.

The irony is that his intelligence level far surpasses those of the average
person on the street.  If we were to discuss "survival of the fittest" in
conjunction with current adaptive technology as a serious concept, we would
have to conclude that Hawking is one of the few people who could claim the
right to live.

Thus I say, it's not enough just not to kill us.

In a message dated 04/09/2000 11:23:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< You are right on with what you say.   That Supremacy runs in my family, and
 they don't realize what they are saying or doing.  My father is completely
 clueless about all his children.  My grandmother has become a spokesperson
 for assisted-suicied.  When I try to explain my views, she doesn't listen.

 I don't think the rest of society wants to understand us.  That would mean
 a whole shift in their thinking.  Didn't Hitler start off by killing the
 disabled?

 Becky (who has hours of work to do tonight)
  >>