ABSTRACT
In The New Genocide of Handicapped and Afflicted People Wolfensberger, introduces us to his deeply disturbing view that we live in a ‘death- making society’, one in which many people die as the result of human acts and actions carried out in the name of welfare and health. The death-making on which he focuses is accomplished by a number of means including killing, allowing to die, encouraging to die and failing to engage in life enhancing activities. Wolfensberger’s ideas about death-making represent a new and in his view more aggressive approach to societal problems that he had addressed earlier by developing the ‘Principles of Normalisation’. The idea that individuals are ‘as good as dead’ can lead to actual or physical death-making if those labelled ‘socially dead’ are killed, or their deaths achieved by others ‘allowing them to die’. Wolfensberger’s ideas about death-making are deeply shocking and upsetting.
