The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "eugenics" ...
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Against Their Will: North Carolina's Sterilization Program
The Winston-Salem Journal investigates the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, a state sterilization program that sterilized more than 7,600 residents from 1929 to 1974. The board "operated under the principle that some human suffering could be eliminated by allowing sterilization for three reasons -- epilepsy, sickness and feeblemindedness" -- but before it was officially disbanded, the board "veered far off it's original path with little public scrutiny and virtually no official oversight." The Winston-Salem Journal investigation found that "North Carolina continued -- and even expanded -- its sterilization program long after most other states backed away from the idea that mental illness, genetic defects and social ills could be eliminated by sterilizing the 'unfit.' ... In the later years, the program increasingly targeted unwed mothers, especially black women and girls. By the 1960s, more than 60 percent of those sterilized were black although the state's black population was 25 percent."
Tags: Eugenics Board of North Carolina; sterilization; epilepsy; sickness; feeblemindedness; 1920s; Hitler; unwed mothers; blacks; African Americans; oversight
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How N.J. auto test program failed
Records show managers downplayed or ignored warnings of problems with the state's new emissions project. Undertrained inspectors, software woes, staffing problems and breakdowns hurt the test.
Tags: auto-emissions test; Division of Motor Vehicles; DMV; N.J. DMV; emissions test; EPA
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A Kinder, Gentler Death
Time reports on "the growing movement to improve the way we die. These are the stories of people who have managed to die more comfortably, who have demanded better care from their doctors, who have talked about what's next with their families."
Tags: Death; Dying; Bill and Judith Moyers
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Crossing the Line
Milwaukee Magazine looks at why one local commentator is creating such a stir with his remarks about race and politics. "Columnist Eugene Kane has become a target for angry whites because of his frank observations. Does Kane play the race card, or is he just what segregated Milwaukee needs?"
Tags: Racism; Race; African Americans
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Hunt for the college town rapist
In 1995 investigators from Georgia and Florida collaborated in tracking down a serial rapist who had terrorized women at the University of Georgia and the University of Florida dating all the way back to 1977.
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Notes from the underground
"Three weeks before the WTO met, Eugene's (OR) chief of police...warned the Seattle police of the likelihood of violence by Eugene anarchists," Samuel writes. This story documents the increasing number of radicals that are moving to or living in the Whiteaker neighborhood in Eugene more than 30 years after the hippie movement, and why "a community of middle-class TV-literate individuals would subscribe to a world vision more commonly held by crypto-survivalist freaks."
Tags: radicals; protestors; social issues; environment
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The Client
The Eugene Weekly reports on how "top state officials changed Oregon law to save $170 million in tax breaks for a corporation (Hyundai) that lost a $15-million employment discrimination lawsuit."
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The Hunting of the Poacher King
Outside Magazine reports that "...The seeds of Ray Hillsman's downfall were sown by his mouth, which was big and which, for the life of him, he couldn't keep shut... Once he illustrated his tale by flashing a wad of $50 and $100 bills - profits, he claimed, from selling the gallbladders of his prey to an Asian businessman down in Eugene (Oregon.) Nobody knows for sure how many bears Hillsman and his poaching ring killed, but Oregon officials estimate that they wasted upward of 50 to 100 black bears a year for five to ten years...And for a while, nothing could stop him--not (veteran game warden Richard) Lane, not the cops, and certainly not his own conscience. Hillsman had become the poacher king."
Tags: Poacher; fish and wildlife; DNR; illegal trade; black market; Asian medicine
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Gene Therapy
This article tells the story of the Frohnmayers of Eugene, Oregon, whose two daughters died of a rare genetic disease called Fanconi anemia. Another daughter is also afflicted. The Frohnmayers have raised money to support gene therapy -- curing diseases at the most fundamental level by correcting the genetic errors responsible for it.
Tags: Health Care; Medical Research; Gene Therapy; Biotechnology
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Deadly Exposure
The Cincinnati Enquirer looks at Dr. Eugene L. Saenger and his research on the biological effects of radiation on human beings between 1960 and 1971. The Enquirer investigates 14 years' worth of Pentagon documents that reveal Saenger pitched his research as a way to measure human reactions to radiation, not as a cancer therapy even though his study involved at least 88 cancer patients. (March 13, 1994)