MENTAL DEFECTIVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 227, 25 September 1928, Page 6

MENTAL DEFECTIVES.

In view of the proposals of the Mental Defectives Bill now under consideration hr Parliament, a Press cable from Paris published a few days ago deserves more than passing notice. Views on sterilisation, an extreme "eugenic" measure which finds a place in the New Zealand Bill, are therein ascribed to Dr. Temulouse, a specialist in nervous diseases. According to them the proposals of the bill are most unlikely to succeed in advancing the professed objects of its supporters in the direction of race-improvement, and may well defeat them. Contrasting the case of mental defectives with that of drunkards, and opposing the projected Swiss law for the sterilisation of the former, he says that mental diseases are not necessarily hereditary. He goes <m to say that the children of persons mentally deficient are often exceptionally intelligent. Coming from a "psychiatrist," whose profession our eugenists are so fond of contrasting with the study of psychology and of biology to the disadvantage of both the latter, this view ought to carry some weight with the defenders of the bill. Only if they can demonstrate it to be false is there any justification for the enactment of their scheme. Under the bill the net is spread so wide to catch every imaginable case to which the label "mental defective" could possibly be attached that, in the event of its being'worked to the satisfactwe of Dr. Gray and his department, results the reverse of "eugenic" may confidently be anticipated. But the department are satisfied to base their case on vague phrases about people "propagating their kind" and the like, apparently well content to believe that the less m> tellectual exertion is required for them to understand a theory, the more likely it is to be true. Is this good enough for the people of New Zealand? W. AXDERSO3T. Auckland University College.