To the Editor:

The definition of yet another dubious diagnosis, the minimally conscious state (MCS),1 makes it apparent that a few members are hijacking the Academy to promote their own eugenic social agenda. The MCS diagnosis attempts to extend beyond the persistent vegetative state justification for terminating the brain-injured disabled.2–4⇓⇓ In the process, these social engineers are transforming neurologists into IQ police whose job it will be to interrogate their patients for the exact intelligence information required to avoid the death penalty. The warning of our fellow neurologist, Dr. Leo Alexander, who served on the staff of the Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes at Nuremberg, holds true now as ever. Writing about the Holocaust, he states, “Whatever proportions these crimes [the Nazi war crimes] finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. Gradually, the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged … but it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the nonrehabilitable sick.”5