Genetic cleansing and discrimination

[Rescuer7]

The German psychiatrist Hans Berger, who discovered electroencephalography (EEG) in 1924, was the first to show that epilepsy was associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Unfortunately, this did not help change people’s view of epilepsy to any appreciable extent.

 

 

In Germany in the 1920s it was assumed that 80  % of those who were living in the epilepsy colonies had a hereditary form of epilepsy (19). This era was marked by ideas of racial hygiene. Persons with hereditary diseases, including epilepsy, were to be barred from having children. Forced sterilisations and extermination of all disabled children under the age of three were initiated. In practice, all disabled people up to the age of seventeen were killed (19).

 

 

In the period 1907 – 1964, altogether 60 000 persons with epilepsy were sterilised, including 30 in Norway (20). In Norway until 1969, everybody was obligated to disclose his or her epilepsy before marriage. If such information was withheld, the marriage could be annulled (21).

The rectification of myths and misconceptions about epilepsy has been a slow process. To this day, many experience the prejudices as an additional burden which is as hard to cope with as the epilepsy itself.