Sometimes a campaign just feels wrong. That can be said about Project Prevention's attempt to sterilise drug misusers in the UK, using a £200 bribe.
A letter in Community Care today by social care trainer Stuart Sorensen compares the US-based operation's aims to the eugenics ideology that influenced the Nazis.
He writes: "The stated aim of Project Prevention is to prevent the birth of drug-exposed children."
The good news is that, thanks to the efforts of Sorensen, drug and alcohol treatment charity Addaction and a mobilisation on Facebook, Project Prevention has had to amend its unethical plans from permanent sterilisation to long-term contraception.
However, the group continues to practise in the US, where drug misusers can "earn" $300 to be sterilised. Not a hint from Project Prevention that it has any interest in addressing the drug addiction. Just a few hundred bucks for what? For the sterile recipient to spend on more drugs? Who knows?
Those who believe in deities might describe Project Prevention as "playing god". Fitting, then, that the organisation has on its board one reverend and one bishop, Henry L Johnson, who describes himself as the "anointed messenger of god".
As bad is the presence of San Diego's rabidly right-wing shock jock Rick Roberts. Last September he called on pupils to boycott classes on the day that President Obama was due to deliver a national address on the importance of education (even though most presidents have done exactly the same thing).
It is quite a motley crew, this Project Prevention. But, as Sorensen wrote on his blog, "it will still be important to watch these people". Indeed.
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