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This thread is party about history, and partly about medical practice/theory...
(so yes it belongs in Science and Enviroment)
It may (or may not) supprise people to know that when the Nazis where busy planing their master race in Germany, they did not have to look far for an example of how to go about it.
As early as the early 19th centery.. laws known as "Eugenics Laws" were proposed, and were implimented between 1910 - 1930's.
These laws were a social policy to "purify" humanity from undesirable traits.
So, people with epelepcy for example were required by law not to ever marry, and were steralized to ensure they do not pass on this trait.
This sort of thing is very similar to what a child who once used to post on che-lives proposed was the best solution for "taking care" of the retarted and mentally ill. In this way of thinking, the person considers it humaniterian to do such a thing... to "purify" the world.. or to rid it of the major genetic defects that are passed along... therefore making the next generation stronger, and more healthy than the previous.
About when this practice was going by the wayside in the United States, it was being adopted by Aldof Hitler who saw it as a perfect excuse for the mysery he would soon unleash on the world. Killing massive amounts of Jewish People, may seem awful now... Yet in the future there would only be true Aryans in Aryan lands.. and no influence by other racial groups such as Jews, Gypsies, etc.. who must be the root cause of Germanies problems.
Interesting that the theory was first thought of in the United States though isn't it.. :wacko:
In Solidarity,
RC
The mind boggles.
Eugenics sounds to me like a really lazy way of getting rid of impurities in the human gene pool.
Why not take a pro-active stance and correct the problems in the womb?
the mentally ill etc. could still reproduce, but their childrem will be healthy.
Sounds better?
The Human Progress Group
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains - Karl Marx
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller
The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Check out my speculative fiction project: NOVA MUNDI
where are these "Aryan" countries anyway? Theres no country on Earth, including Germany, that could ever truely be totally free of so called "undesirable" traits through murder, sterilisation and baseless beliefs such as Eugenics.
Wouldn't you agree though that mental retardation and physical deformities are 'undesirable traits'?
I agree with you on the countries part: for instance the UK is a melting pot for anglo-saxon, celtic, nordic, and more recently, African/Asian/Oriental/East European 'races'
The Human Progress Group
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains - Karl Marx
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller
The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Check out my speculative fiction project: NOVA MUNDI
Good grief RC.
Why do people persist on associating HGE with the fucking Nazi's? Jim Watson has to hear this constantly and for the most part it is absurd.
Do you consider Jim Watson a Nazi RC?
As soon as someone says that the genes that cause genetic disorders such as Cystic Fibrosis can be corrected using HGE, it's a "scientific breakthough that is in the interest of humanity" but once a person states that HGE can also correct the genetic disorders that cause mental retardation and Down's that person instantly becomes a monster following in the footsteps of the Nazi party in an attempt to "create the master race".
Clearly some of you have not thought this subject out clearly enough.
If someone states that they will not support HGE attempts at CURING GENETIC DISORDERS THAT MAKE A PERSON'S LIFE MUCH HARDER THAN HIS NEIGHBOUR because some crackpot in 1940 wanted to create a "master german race" then that person is not only irresponsible but also blind.
Get a grip people, modern HGE has NOTHING to do with the crimes of the Nazi's.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein
Comrade RAF...
I was not talking about Jim Watson or HGE... I Was talking about a law that was in place before the NAZIS were in power in Germany in the United States. I never tried to apply that theory to anything today.
The simple fact is.. that if you had some sort of defect years ago, the government had the legal right to make you sterile, and thereby perevent you from having children.
I don't know how much it was used, or ever... I just came across this fact when studying the anthropology of health and healthcare, for a class I'm taking.
In Solidarity,
RC
I can pick up what you're laying down brutha.
My apologies.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein
