More Than 400 People Castrated in Norway between 1934-69 in a crackdown against sexual crimes. However, those affected included psychiatric patients, epileptics and gays, said historian Per Haave after research in the Norwegian health archives. Sweden revealed in 1997 it had sterilized more than 60,000 people between 1935-75, many coercively, in a “campaign to improve racial purity.” Norway also carried out forced sterilizations. Reuters