Riddick was one of thousands of people secretly sterilized by the state between 1929 and 1974.
From the early 1900s to the 1970s, some 65,000 men and women were sterilized in this country, many without their knowledge, as part of a government eugenics program to keep so-called undesirables from reproducing.
"The procedures that were done here were done to poor folks," said Steven Selden, professor at the University of Maryland. "They were thought to be poor because they had bad genes or bad inheritance, if you will. And so they would be the focus of the sterilization."
Sterilized Without Her Knowledge
Riddick was raped and became pregnant at the age of 13. Social workers labeled her promiscuous and too feeble-minded to ever be a responsible parent. So, after giving birth in 1968, Riddick was sterilized without being told.
She learned the truth years later, when she married and tried to have more children.
And then she gave birth to a little boy whom she named Richard B.
The government got so pissed about it that they tried to strangle little Richard with his umbilical cord.
SplishSplash wrote:And then she gave birth to a little boy whom she named Richard B.
The government got so pissed about it that they tried to strangle little Richard with his umbilical cord.
I hear he was last seen sitting in some huge ass chair?
Here's a brief synopsis:
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For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,”1 their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”
Here's a brief synopsis:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,”1 their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”
Wow that's pretty sick, especially for doctors to be doing it.
