The Life Extension Institute was an organization formed in the United States in 1913 with the philanthropic goal of prolonging human life through hygiene and disease prevention. [1] Its organizational officers included Many celebrity-philanthropists Such As William Howard Taft , Alexander Graham Bell , and Mabel Thorp Boardman goal aussi genuine medical experts Including William James Mayo , Russell Henry Chittenden , and JH Kellogg and a “Hygiene Reference Board” of Mazenick Porcher Ravenel and dozens of nationallyMajor General William Crawford Gorgas . [2]
A major project of the institute which fulfills its mission to disseminate knowledge of the book How to Live, Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science , now in the public domain .
The institute was a proponent of eugenics including sterilization of grossly “unfit” individuals:
| “ | They are now making their choices of marriage, the future of the future of the physical, the mental mental weaklings, or if they are going to be brave and hardy, mentally broad and profound, and morally sterling.To summarize: There are three main lines along which eugenic improvement of the race may be attained:
(1) Education of all people on the inheritability of traits; (2) segregation of defenses so that they may not mingle (3) sterilization of certain gross and hopeless defectives, to preclude the spread of their type. |
“ |
| – Irving Fisher and Eugene Lyman Fisk, How to Live, Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science | ||
See also
- Life extension
References
- Jump up^ “NATIONAL SOCIETY TO CONSERVE LIFE; Life Extension Institute Formed to Teach Hygiene and Disease Prevention. LARGE CAPITAL BEHIND IT Ex-President Taft, Chairman; Prof. Irving Fisher, EE Rittenhouse, and Others Direct It” . The New York Times . December 30, 1913.
- Jump up^ Fisher, Irving; Eugene Lyman Fisk (1916). How to Live, Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science, Prepared in collaboration with the Hygiene Reference Board of the Life Extenstion Institute, Inc. (8th ed.). New York; London: Funk & Wagnalls Company . ISBN 978-1-59605-035-8 . OCLC 146204564 .