SONOMA CHILDREN

Sonoma State Home was first founded in 1884 with the intention of helping children with developmental disabilities, but soon turned into something much darker. Throughout the early 20th century, California’s Asexualization Acts that encouraged sterilization of those deemed racially inferior or feeble-minded soon made Sonoma State Hospital a popular location for sterilization procedures and medical experimentation on vulnerable populations. Experimentation on those admitted to the hospital resulted in grant money and a large supply of test subjects for the researchers. 

From 1955 to 1960, the hospital performed many procedures on around 1,100 children with disabilities, mainly cerebral palsy, without informed consent from their parents. One of the main operations performed on children here was an pneumoencephalogram, in which cerebrospinal fluid was drained and replaced with air for better imaging and analysis of the brain. Imaging techniques such as these are now obsolete due to its resulting symptoms of nausea, headaches, hypotension, seizures, radiation poisoning, and high mortality rates. 

After their continuous experimentation resulted in death, researchers separated many children’s brains from their bodies without consent and kept them at the hospital for collection and further research. Sonoma State Hospital often never notified families about their child’s cause of death or the whereabouts of their body.