Eugenics - It begins
Update: This is apparently a well prepared hoax, including a full website, voicemail and even some advertising on other sites. Opinion journal's Best of the Web has the details. My apologies to everyone involved. I had a reasonable look around to try and discount it, but apparently my investigative reporter skills are not yet up to scratch.

Barking Moonbat Early Warning System has a link to an article on Sterilizing the obese.

California is the first state in the Union to offer state-funded vasectomies to men who have been diagnosed as obese.

Currently, the offer is voluntary, but continue reading the article and you are going to find some scary comments.

A major challenge for physicians when dealing with quality-of-life measures in subjects is that many patients with serious and persistent disabilities (such as obesity) report that they experience a good or excellent quality-of-life, when to external observers these individuals seem to have a diminished quality of life. Two articles examining this disability paradox critique this paradox, and it has been established that often times, the physician involved must make a determination on their own as to the best interest of the subject.

So the patient's quality of life is no longer based on the patient's happiness or their own perception of their quality of life, but on the physicians 'determination'.

Big Flashing Red Warning signal! Can you see it now?
I am sorry Mr Doe, I know you feel happy and content, but I have determined your quality of life is not up to scratch so we have decided you need to be neutered/"re-educated"/euthanaised....

And in case you think I am being irrational, The article continues

Thus far, the program has been purely voluntary, which means that people who undergo the procedure are doing so of their own free will and thus emphatically understand that they have a low quality of life. If we are to make this procedure mandatory, we must clearly draw the lines where physician judgment is concerned.

And there you have it....welcome to forced sterilization.

So where does it end? Apparently people with certain genes get addicted more easily, so lets sterilize smokers, alcholics, drug addicts or the handicapped.

And hey, why not sterilize all people with fair skin too, as they are more likely to get skin cancer.

Reading further, the justifications continue

And what of societal concerns? The medical community at large have long established that obesity has surpassed the levels of simple concern and has become an epidemic. Children born of obese parents inherit genes predisposed to physiology which supports obesity - thus, eliminating such a gene line from the overall pool would greatly benefit society in the long run.

Yep. Eugenics. Plain and simple.

The article then goes on to look at ways people might still pass on their genes (Frozen sperm banks and reversing operations). Just to make sure....

The article finishes

So the question of whether or not sterility is valid and socially responsible solution to the obesity epidemic plaguing this country no longer remains. The physicians' job, as professor M. Sullivan from the University of Washington said, is "to focus on patients' lives rather than patients' bodies" [8]. It is paramount that the overall condition of life for people be improved to the point where poor genes do not hold one back from proper development of fitness and overall well-being. The State of California has established commitment to this way of thinking - and this researcher only hopes that the rest of the nation follows suit.

Read that again....."the question of whether or not sterility is valid and socially responsible solution...no longer remains"

Bad ideas never seem to go away. I'm just glad this crap has not reached Australia yet.

Update: I just wanted to add that using such selective techniques to reduce variability in a population is a very bad idea, genetically speaking. Even from a strictly scientific point of view I think this eugenics stuff is a very bad idea.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Wednesday, March 30, 2005