Week4

my question this week is if the people that were going nude were organized together? they showed people naked doing everyday things. were they doing that to just show off the human perfection or were they just doing it to be naked? http://www.google.com/search?q=nudism&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

In Mawer’s Mendel’s Dwarf, Mendel has a conversation (62-65) with a man named Bratranek who asks Mendel if animal genetics behaved the same as his pea’s genetics. In class we have discussed this and it is apparent that even in mice the hair color is not merely black or white, there can be variations in between. But in the book, Mendel has mice who all have brown or albino hair, no in between. The section in the book ends with Mendel claiming, “It means nice are no different. It means animals are no different.” Did Mendel really do experiments on mice that came out to a nice clean ratio? Or, is this purely fictional?

My question for this week came to me when i read this during lecture. This quote was on the Black Stork poster.

"Should we just sit still and witness our civilization go into decay and fall to pieces without raising the cry of warning and apply the remedy?"

My question is with Darwin's theory of natural selection saying that the environment will lead to survival of the fittest and the fact that humans got to where they were because of natural selection, which made us smarter than other organisms, why is it that now eugenics is needed? Why do people no longer see natural selection as adequate for shaping for the future? Does anyone ever make this arguement to stop eugenics, and for them to allow a laissez-faire kind of policy with evolution, and just let it be.

The video we watched in class on Monday seemed to be packed with scientists who were supporting eugenics; and political figures championing national purity for a racially pure invincible Empire….

However, Alfred Russel Wallace is quoted in Controlling Human Heredity having said “segregation of the unfit is a mere excuse for establishing a medical tyranny. And we have enough of this kind of tyranny already… the world does not want the eugenist to set it straight… Eugenics is simply the meddlesome interference of an arrogant scientific priest craft.” Wallace is expressing his dissent for the negative eugenics that are being practiced and talked about in the world around him.

I am interested in knowing if there were any other men/women or groups that were protesting NEGATIVE EUGENICS or eugenics altogether as Wallace did?

What was the general attitude of racial minorities towards eugenics during its early 20th Century heyday? It seems the overwhelming majority of leaders and authority figures that endorsed eugenics at the time were white Europeans and their descendants abroad. Many eugenicists, racial hygienists especially, subscribed to an implicit superiority of whites over other races.

Did the minority intelligentsia reject eugenics as a whole at the time? Or did they tend to subscribe to those aspects of the movement that didn't demean them personally, e.g. barring criminals, paupers and the hereditarily disabled from reproducing?

My question for the week is about the movie we watched in class on Monday. I was wondering if there was actually a written set of rules that determined whether or not newborn children were put to death when they were born. It seemed like the parents also weren't really involved in what happened to their children, so was there ever a time when they did have a say as to whether or not their child got to live? Also did they ever keep some of the "unfit" babies to do experimenting on that they were actually able to collect any legit data from that would help them determine whether or not it was actually a serious enough case for the baby to deserve to die or not? --- In the film Homo-sapiens 1900 there was a section about eugenics in the 1960’s and a movie depicting a doctor who killed babies due to their deformations. It was also mentioned that the main character did this in reality as an actual doctor. I was pretty shocked by this (as it was the first time hearing it) and even more shocked this was done inside the U.S. This brings me to ask, how prevalent was the act of “mercy killings” of children deemed unfit for society at that time? []

I was wondering why the Eugenics movement died in so quickly in America. It seemed like it was going along with considerable public interest and support, and then suddenly public opinion abruptly shifted. Was there any major reason why this switch happened?

There were different theories about genetics in the movie and in Paul's book concerning Lamarckism, soft heredity, and Mendelism, hard heridity. As far as American's are concerned, it is interesting to consider the stances that each set of people would have taken. Most people should keep in mind what the founders of the country kept in mind. All men are supposedly created equal and should have the same opportunities as everyone else. There are issues of race with this that goes into a discussion of slavery and rights. Aside from that, what about the sterilization of the typical white male who might be feeble minded? How could this have ever been accepted in a country based on equality and rights given from a higher power? And what about the freedom of religion? Wouldn't it be against certain religions to waste the "seed" or was it okay as long as people could rationalize what they were doing? --- I am currently deep in the heart of Paul's, Controlling Human Heredity. An intriguing dilemma has stricken the nation as the idea of eugenics takes hold. The opening of chapter five introduces these conflicts. Questions like "Who should be encouraged and discouraged to breed?" and more importantly who should be the ones who make these decisions divides people. Solutions like making Birth Control more widely available, segregation on the feeble-minded into institutions, and even sterilization are discussed. The timing in America couldn't have been worse to answer these questions as the Progressive era swept the nation. The vast expansion on the power of the federal government. My question is brief but the book never really goes into the influence the church had on Americans' attitudes towards sterilization, the implications of birth control, and even of the feeble-minded in general? Did they propose a "cure" or see it as a problem at all? [] [] media type="youtube" key="PSxihhBzCjk?fs=1" height="390" width="640"