Editing Euthanasia (section)

=== Nazi Euthanasia Program ===
{{main|Aktion T4|Child euthanasia in Nazi Germany}}
[[File:Alkoven Schloss Hartheim 2005-08-18 3589.jpg|thumb|[[Hartheim Euthanasia Centre]], where over 18,000 people were killed]]
A 24 July 1939 killing of a severely disabled infant in [[Nazi Germany]] was described in a [[BBC]] "Genocide Under the Nazis Timeline" as the first "state-sponsored euthanasia".<ref name="July24"/> Parties that consented to the killing included Hitler's office, the parents, and the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious and Congenitally Based Illnesses.<ref name="July24">[https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/nazi_genocide_timeline/index_embed.shtml Genocide Under the Nazis Timeline: 24 July 1939] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110805144040/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/nazi_genocide_timeline/index_embed.shtml |date=5 August 2011 }} ''[[BBC]]'' Accessed 23 July 2011. Quotation: "The first state-sanctioned euthanasia is carried out, after Hitler receives a petition from a child's parents, asking for the life of their severely disabled infant to be ended. This happens after the case has been considered by Hitler's office and by the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious and Congenitally Based Illnesses, whose 'experts' have laid down the basis for the removal of disabled children to special 'paediatric clinics'. Here they can be either starved to death or given lethal injections. At least 5,200 infants will eventually be killed through this programme".</ref> ''[[The Daily Telegraph|The Telegraph]]'' noted that the killing of the disabled infant—whose name was [[Gerhard Kretschmar]], born blind, with missing limbs, subject to convulsions, and reportedly "an idiot"— provided "the rationale for a secret Nazi decree that led to 'mercy killings' of almost 300,000 mentally and physically handicapped people".<ref name="casek1">{{Cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1443967/Named-the-baby-boy-who-was-Nazis-first-euthanasia-victim.html|title=Named: the baby boy who was Nazis' first euthanasia victim|author=Irene Zoech|website=Telegraph.co.uk|access-date=4 July 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170908201139/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1443967/Named-the-baby-boy-who-was-Nazis-first-euthanasia-victim.html|archive-date=8 September 2017|date=11 October 2003}}</ref> While Kretchmar's killing received parental consent, most of the 5,000 to 8,000 children killed afterwards were forcibly taken from their parents.<ref name="July24"/><ref name="casek1"/>

The "euthanasia campaign" of mass murder gathered momentum on 14 January 1940 when the "handicapped" were killed with gas vans and at killing centres, eventually leading to the deaths of 70,000 adult Germans.<ref name=January14>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/nazi_genocide_timeline/index_embed.shtml Genocide Under the Nazis Timeline: 14 January 1940] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110805144040/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/nazi_genocide_timeline/index_embed.shtml |date=5 August 2011 }} ''[[BBC]]'' Accessed 23 July 2011. Quotation: "The 'euthanasia campaign' gathers momentum in Germany, as six special killing centres and gas vans, under an organisation code-named T4, are used in the murder of 'handicapped' adults. Over 70,000 Germans will eventually be killed in this act of mass murder – it is the first time poison bas will be used for such a purpose".</ref> was a campaign of [[Homicide#By state actors|mass murder]] by [[involuntary euthanasia]] in [[Nazi Germany]]. Its code name [[Aktion T4]] is derived from {{lang|de|[[Tiergartenstraße]]}}&nbsp;4, a street address of the Chancellery department which recruited and paid personnel associated with the program.<ref name="casek1" /> Professor [[Robert Jay Lifton]], author of ''The Nazi Doctors'' and a leading authority on the T4 program, contrasts this program with what he considers to be a genuine euthanasia. He explains that the Nazi version of "euthanasia" was based on the work of [[Adolf Jost]], who published ''The Right to Death'' (Das Recht auf den Tod) in 1895. Lifton writes:

<blockquote>Jost argued that control over the death of the individual must ultimately belong to the social organism, the state. This concept is in direct opposition to the Anglo-American concept of euthanasia, which emphasizes the ''individual's'' 'right to die' or 'right to death' or 'right to his or her own death,' as the ultimate human claim. In contrast, Jost was pointing to the state's right to kill.&nbsp;... Ultimately the argument was biological: 'The rights to death [are] the key to the fitness of life.' The state must own death—must kill—in order to keep the social organism alive and healthy.<ref>Basic Books 1986, 46</ref></blockquote>

In modern terms, the use of "euthanasia" in the context of Aktion T4 is seen to be a [[wikt:euphemism|euphemism]] to disguise a program of [[genocide]], in which people were killed on the grounds of "disabilities, religious beliefs, and discordant individual values".<ref name="Michalsen2006">{{cite journal |vauthors=Michalsen A, Reinhart K |title="Euthanasia": A confusing term, abused under the Nazi regime and misused in present end-of-life debate |journal=Intensive Care Med |volume=32 |issue=9 |pages=1304–10 |date=September 2006 |pmid=16826394 |doi=10.1007/s00134-006-0256-9|s2cid=21032497 }}</ref> Compared to the discussions of euthanasia that emerged post-war, the Nazi program may have been worded in terms that appear similar to the modern use of "euthanasia", but there was no "mercy" and the patients were not necessarily terminally ill.<ref name="Michalsen2006" /> Despite these differences, historian and euthanasia opponent [[Ian Dowbiggin]] writes that "the origins of Nazi euthanasia, like those of the American euthanasia movement, predate the Third Reich and were intertwined with the history of eugenics and Social Darwinism, and with efforts to discredit traditional morality and ethics."<ref name="Dowbiggin"/>{{rp|65}}