Joined: 31 May 2005 {Posts: 66 } Location: South Carolina
Posted: Thu 20 Oct 2005 02:56 Post subject: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
Planned Parenthood
Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, figured prominently in the American eugenics movement. In Birth Control Review, which Sanger founded in 1917, she published such articles as "Birth Control and Positive Eugenics" in 1925 and "Birth Control: The True Eugenics" in 1928.
According to Robert G. Marshall and Chuck Donovan in their book Blessed are the Barren, Sanger is clearly shown to have been a proponent of the Nazi-like eugenics movement, which sought to improve the human race through selective breeding. This application of Social Darwinism justified the twisted idea of evolutionary superiority to promote sterilization and population control.
Sanger spoke of sterilizing those she designated as "unfit," a plan she said would be the "salvation of American civilization." Sanger also spoke of those who were "irresponsible and reckless," among whom she included those "whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers." Sanger decried the fact that "anyone, no matter how ignorant, how diseased mentally or physically, how lacking in all knowledge of children, seemed to consider he or she had the right to become a parent."
Not only was Sanger an advocate of eugenics, so were many of her colleagues. For example, at a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the "black" and "yellow" peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Sanger's American Birth Control League, which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood. Perhaps supporters of Planned Parenthood would be less enthusiastic if they knew of the beliefs of its founder, Margaret Sanger and her colleagues.
Posted: Thu 20 Oct 2005 12:42 Post subject: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
In all fairness, many people were attracted to eugenics at the turn of the last century, including (supposedly) W.E.B. DuBois.
Many eugenicists like Sanger were also socialists or progressives. They believed in human progress and that could only be acheived if certain "unfit" people were reduced in the population.
Interestingly, many people properly be called religious conservatives were opposed to eugenics.
Opposition to eugenics and forced sterilization came primarily from conservative Catholics, Jews and Catholics.
All too many books describing the history of eugenics are predictable in two ways. First, they spend little time on the close link between eugenics, which they now assume to have been bad, and the birth control movement, which they still assume to have been good. Second, they say little or nothing about the critics of eugenics and birth control, critics who were so effective that both groups were never able to achieve more than perhaps a third of what they had hoped to achieve in the political arena. In 1920, for instance, eugenic sterilization was legal in only 15 states, less than one-third the total.
It's actually quite easy to describe who the most active critics of eugenics and birth control were. They were the same groups that now oppose legalized abortion--predominately religious conservatives: Catholic, Jewish and Protestant. Supporters of the eugenic and birth control movements of some eighty-plus years ago are equally easy to describe. They're the same highly affluent, feminist, liberal and progressive people who are now the eager and vocal supporters of legalized abortion. There's no question about that political divide. As we saw in Topic 7, during the first half of the twentieth century, the left regarded its support for eugenics with pride, as yet more evidence that it was more enlightened and progressive than its 'reactionary' and religious opponents.
Chief among those reactionary opponents was G. K. Chesterton, a devout Catholic and a talented English writer who authored Eugenics and Other Evils, one of the few book-length criticisms of eugenics to be published during the heyday of that ideology. (The other evils in the book were the 'robber barons' of capitalism, socialism and meddlesome bureaucracies.) The first chapter in the download for this topic (Chapter XVIII in The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective) gives the more telling points that Chesterton made in his 1922 book. It and the third chapter in the download (Chapter XXVIII, "Little Angels in the Flesh") explain why Catholics opposed eugenics. "Little Angels in the Flesh" is about a clash in the New York Times between Margaret Sanger and New York City Archbishop Patrick Hayes at Christmas of 1921.
Evidence of Protestant opposition is more difficult to find. During the early decades of the twentieth century, Protestant churches were torn by the struggle between modernism and fundamentalism. Modernists, who typically supported eugenics, were in the process of taking over what were then the more prestigious denominations (such as Episcopal and Congregational), and found it quite easy to get their then-fashionable point of view in the press. In contrast, fundamentalism and the more theologically orthodox believers in the mainstream denominations were either caught up in doctrinal battles or, having broken with their denomination, were attempting to build a new church structure. In either case, they were fighting too many battles to be heavily involved in politics.
That said, there are hints that outside the regions where a large and well-organized Catholic population dominated the opposition (such as Massachusetts), conservative Protestants were able to hinder and even block the eugenic agenda. In 1920 eugenic sterilization had been legalized primarily in states where religion was weak (such as Oregon and Washington), or where liberal and progressive movements were strong (such as California, New York, and Wisconsin). No state in the South (heavily Baptist, Methodist and Pentecostal) had legalized it, and only a few states in the Midwestern "Bible Belt" had done so (only Indiana, Iowa and Kansas).
That distinction is where television documentaries on eugenics often get the story wrong. They assume, totally without evidence, that because the critical Supreme Court case on forced sterilization, Buck v. Bell (1927) involved a Virginia law, eugenics was held by the same sort of people who defended racial segregation. That was not the case. The Virginia law was brought to the Supreme Court because opponents of eugenics in the South had managed to block sterilization legislation by claiming it was unconstitutional. In Buck v. Bell the Supreme Court, opposed only by its most conservative member, said it was not.
One indication that a Protestant grassroots was active in opposing forced sterilization is hinted at in the middle chapter of this topic's download (Chapter XXIII, "The Religious Are Astir"), where the Justice who wrote Buck v. Bell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, remarked to a friend, a British socialist named Harold Laski, that "the religious are astir" (April 25, 1927) about what he was doing, that he wanted to "sterilize all the unfit, among whom I include all fundamentalists" (May 7, 1927), and that he had received a letter warning that he "was a monster and might expect the judgment of God" for the decision (July 23, 1927). He does not remark on receiving any critical letters from liberals, feminists or the American Civil Liberties Union, because each was happy with what he had done.
Finally, there is the Jewish point of view, which was covered in Topic 7, Chapter XX "Who Are the Unfit?" The author of that chapter was a Jewish physician named William J. Robinson, and Sanger's rather nasty remarks about him--typical of the upper-class anti-Semitism of the day--provide a context for discussing her views and that of her supporters toward Jewish religious opposition to her birth control movement. Note especially the remark of a supporter that birth control's "most powerful [opponents] were Jews, 200 of them, and each of them has set to work against you and B. Control at least 10,000 during the past 4 years, that is over 2 million." Those numbers were no doubt exaggerated, but they do indicated Jewish opposition. Other remarks, such as a November 1934 letter, hint that Jewish opposition was often religious.
Posted: Sun 23 Oct 2005 01:44 Post subject: Re: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
Margaret Quigley, The Roots of the I.Q. Debate, Eugenics and Social Control (March 1995), at Arcade Institute for the Study of Academic Racism seems to be a good backgrounder.
http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/OTHERSRV/ISAR/arcade/eugenics.htm
Quigley documents the progress of eugenics from its roots in mid-19th-Century "Scientific Racism" to 1936 when expert medical panels in England and the U.S. finally condemned compulsory sterilization. But Quigley's paper does not discuss the psudo-science's merits, or its lack of merit on religious or any grounds. I selected these highlights of Quigley's paper, starting with an interesting definition of "races":
Margaret Quigley wrote:
the roots of the eugenics movement can be traced to the 19th-century scientific racism movement. "Scientific racism" is a term capable of diverse definitions. For this discussion, I have adopted a slightly modified version of historian Barry Mehler's definition:
Quote:
"[Scientific racism is] the belief [often based on skin color, country of origin, or economic class] that the human species can be divided into superior and inferior genetic groups and that these groups can be satisfactorily identified so that social policies can be advanced to encourage the breeding of the superior groups and discourage the breeding of the inferior groups."
We can see in this definition the all-important inference of inherent "difference," unmistakably meaning "inequality."
Quigley wrote:
It has been the diversity of the eugenics movement--the wide range of followers it was able to encompass--that has proved most difficult to explain. The eugenics movement was not monolithic: conservatives, progressives, and sex radicals were all allied within a fundamentally messianic movement of national salvation that was predicated upon scientific notions of innate and ineradicable inequalities between racial, cultural, and economic groups.
These scientific notions tended to maintain the status quo by obscuring the racial and class basis of poverty and advancement in the United States. The middle- and upper-class professionals of Anglo-Saxon descent who were leaders in the eugenics movement acted in and out of their own interests.
Those interests led to the development of a political program in which an extreme economic conservatism was marked by a virulent anti-communism linked to an embrace of the untrammeled, unregulated capitalist state. Some eugenicist leaders rejected democracy in favor of the corporate state and, in the 1920s and 1930s, several leaders of the eugenics movement were active in the promotion of German
and Italian fascism.
The eugenics movement put forth a coherent, consistent social program in which eugenical sterilization, anti-immigrant advocacy, and anti-miscegenation activism all played crucial roles in the primary eugenicist goal of advancing social control by a small elite. Particularly now, when familiar eugenicist arguments echo within contemporary scientific and political circles, questions of motivation and intent are compelling.
For the most part, the eugenicists emphasized inheritance and trivialized the importance of environment.
Quigley wrote:
Eugenicists originally believed in the inheritability of virtually all human traits. Charles Davenport's work provided a typical list of hereditary traits: eye color, hair, skin, stature, weight, special ability in music, drawing, painting, literary composition, calculating, or memorizing, weakness of the mucous membranes, nomadism, general bodily energy, strength, mental ability, epilepsy, shiftlessness, insanity, pauperism, criminality, various forms of nervous disease, defects of speech, sight, hearing, cancer, tuberculosis, pneumonia, skeletal deformities, and other traits.
Davenport is reported to have hypothesized that thalassophilia, love of the sea, was a sex-linked recessive trait because he only encountered it in male naval officers.
"The US eugenics movement grew out of the American Breeders' Association (later the American Genetics Association), which was founded in 1903 to apply the new principles of inheritance to the scientific breeding of horses and other livestock," wrote Quigley. (My emphasis.)
Quigley wrote:
In 1906, at Davenport's urging, the ABA established a Eugenics Section (later the Committee on Eugenics). Stanford University president David Starr Jordan chaired the committee and Davenport was its secretary. These men and others active in the Committee on Eugenics (including the founders of the Nativist Immigration Restriction League, Robert DeCourcey Ward and Prescott F. Hall; Henry H. Goddard and Walter E. Fernald, who both joined a subcommittee on feeble-mindedness; Alexander Graham Bell; and Edward L. Thorndike) would form the core of the eugenics movement for the next 25 years.
The organized eugenics movement revolved around Davenport's Station for
Experimental Genetics, at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, New York, which itself came increasingly to focus on eugenical studies. In 1910, the Eugenics Record Office was established with Davenport as director and Henry H. Laughlin, key eugenicist and leader of the eugenical sterilization movement, as its superintendent.
The eugenics movement advocated both positive and negative eugenics, which referred to attempts to increase reproduction by fit stocks and to decrease reproduction by those who were constitutionally unfit.
Quigley wrote:
Positive eugenics included eugenic education and tax preferences and other financial support for eugenically fit large families. Eugenical segregation and, usually, sterilization (a few eugenicists opposed sterilization); restrictive marriage laws, including anti-miscegenation statutes; and restrictive immigration laws formed the three parts of the negative eugenics agenda.
Virtually all eugenicists supported compulsory sterilization for the unfit; some supported castration. By 1936, when expert medical panels in both England and the US finally condemned compulsory eugenical sterilization, more than 20,000 forced sterilizations had been performed, mostly on poor people (and disproportionately on black people) confined to state-run mental hospitals and residential facilities for the mentally retarded. Almost 500 men and women had died from the surgery. The American Eugenics Society had hoped, in time, to sterilize one-tenth of the US population, or millions of Americans. Based on the American eugenical sterilization experience, Hitler's sterilization program managed to sterilize 225,000 people in less than three years.
It has been argued that the Holocaust, Hitler's Nazi "Final Solution," was an exuberant protégé of the U.S. South's Jim Crow reign of terror on "coloreds," plus Anglo-American eugenics. Edwin Black, War Against the Weak Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (2003).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568582587/103-5716286-9715864
Quigley wrote:
19th-Century Scientific Racism
The scientific racism movement of the mid-nineteenth century provided a number of important legacies to the eugenics movement. American scientific racism was primarily preoccupied with the attempt to establish that blacks, Orientals, and other races were in fact entirely different species of "man," which the scientific racists claimed should be seen as a genus, rather than a species. The theory that the integrity of the human species derived from the creation of one Adam and one Eve was called monogenism or specific unity; monogenists believed that the races arose as a result of the degeneration of human beings since creation. The separate races were essentially the same human material, but different races had degenerated to different extents. Polygenists, by contrast, believed that the races were created separately in a series of different creations. The separate races were entirely different animals. The mid-century theory of polygenism, or specific diversity, was one of the first scientific theories largely developed in the US and was approvingly called "the American School of anthropology" by European scientists.
Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz, a prominent natural historian of the 19th-century,
was the most important promoter of polygenism. [¶] Agassiz was also passionately opposed to racial miscegenation. He believed that racial inter-mixture would result in the creation of "effeminate" offspring unable to maintain American democratic traditions. Agassiz wrote:
Quote:
"The production of half-breeds is as much a sin against nature, as incest in a civilized community is a sin against purity of character.... No efforts should be spared to check that which is abhorrent to our better nature, and to the progress of a higher civilization and a purer morality."
[Some original.]
In part because the classic definition of a species revolved around the ability to mate and produce children with each other but not with others, and in part because of a drive toward racial hierarchy, the questions of hybridization and fecundity were of great import to the early American scientific racists. For the eugenicists, these questions were also tremendously important. Much of the early scientific racist rhetoric on hybrids later reappeared in eugenicist writings where it came to form the basis of eugenicist arguments against racial miscegenation. The early concern with fecundity fueled later eugenicist claims that differential racial fecundity was leading to white racial suicide.
The eugenicist recapitulation of earlier scientific racist arguments was not cursory, but deep and enduring. In one of many examples, a 1925 bibliography on eugenics published by the American Eugenics Society recommended the book, Uncontrolled Breeding, Or Fecundity versus Civilization.
I feel that the above questioning "races" as "species" should seem incredible. And harder to believe, but true nonetheless, some of this "polygenism" lunacy spilled-over into our 20th-Century!
Quigley wrote:
In the first decade of the century, the men of the Immigration Restriction League became active members of the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders' Association and other eugenics organizations, focusing their attention primarily on immigration issues. The connection was so compatible that the Immigration Restriction League almost changed its name to the Eugenic Immigration League. ...
In 1918, Davenport and his fellow eugenicist, and virulent racist, and anti-immigration
activist Madison Grant (author of The Passing of the Great Race and The Alien in Our Midst) set up the Galton Society. The Society was established for "the promotion of study of racial anthropology"....
Quigley also observed that "Eugenical family studies were an important component in the movement's political development;"
Quigley wrote:
[F]amily studies functioned as an objective, scientific basis for the twin myths of a feeble-minded menace and an impending white race suicide. The invention of feeble-mindedness, typically used as a term of art to cover broader issues related to social control, allowed the eugenicists to claim that social (and racial) classes were biological and hence immutable.
The first important eugenicist works in the US were a series of studies of American families supposedly plagued by hereditary feeble-mindedness, beginning with Richard Dugdale's exposition of the Jukes family, published in 1877.
All of the family studies claimed to prove that a single feeble-minded ancestor could (and did) result in generations of poverty-stricken and degenerate offspring. The families in the studies were rural families, of Anglo-Saxon, Protestant descent, and for the most part, their lineage dated to the colonial settlers. The families were remarkably similar to the eugenicist activists in these traits; the main difference between the two was the poverty of the rural families. The equation by the eugenicists of poverty with degeneracy was quite explicit. Eugenicists believed that poverty was no more than a manifestation of inner degeneracy. ...
[¶]
The concept of the feeble-minded menace provided a way to make the rural families, who were neither institutionalized, foreign, nor "colored," into people who were "different" from the eugenicists. Underlying the family studies and the myth of the feeble-minded menace was the theory of Social Darwinism, which assumed the existence of a struggle between the individual and society, and of an adversarial relationship between the fit and unfit classes. Eugenical family studies and social Darwinism both involved a transmutation of nature into biology and the eugenics movement frequently acknowledged its debt to Social Darwinism.
The "race suicide" theory which developed during the first decade of the new century
claimed that the greatly lowered birthrate of the better classes, coupled with the burgeoning birthrates of immigrants and the native-born poor, endangered the survival of "the race."
Quigley wrote:
"The race" was clearly a term that referred to the white, Anglo-Saxon race and a deep racism permeated the racial suicide period from its beginning in 1900 to 1910. One classic racial suicide work is Robert Reid Rentoul's Race Culture; or, Race Suicide? (A Plea for the Unborn), published in New York and London in 1906. Rentoul speaks of the "terrible monstrosities" created by racial intermarriage and points out that the Americans are "poor patriots" for repealing their racial miscegenation statutes.
The eugenic misogyny that had sterilized Carrie Buck came through clearly as
Quigley wrote:
In the heightened tone that is common to writers in the family studies, one eugenicist wrote, "It is impossible to calculate what even one feeble-minded woman may cost the public, when her vast possibilities for evil as a producer of paupers and criminals, through an endless line of descendants is considered."
Ms. Quigley concluded asserting that the early 20th-century eugenics movement was no mere fad. "Rather it provided a coherent and consistent political program to enforce the racial, class, and sexual dominance which was perceived to be under attack in American society." Moreover Quigley made clear her "... fear that the basic principles of the eugenics debate, even its most discredited aspects, are resurfacing in the 1990s." "[¶] The continuing vigor of scientific racism in the United States is in part a testimony to its strong, deep roots." (We might historically note that Herrnstein & Murray's The Bell Curve (New York 1994), a book making claims about "races" and I.Q., was a new best-seller.) However, much of Quigley's concern was with immigration restrictions. She did not distinguish 1924 immigration restrictions imposed to preserve racial white supremacy any differently from today's measures hoped to maintain a stable America or for orderly immigrant assimilation into our society.
George
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sun 23 Oct 2005 15:36 Post subject: Re: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
winwinkel wrote:
G-Man, quoting from Wikipedia.com I think wrote:
Opposition to eugenics and forced sterilization came primarily from conservative Catholics, Jews and Catholics.
I am interested in secular objections to eugenics. Does anyone have any?
George
Hi,
This is a personal my personal oppinion and I do have complains about Eugenics that are not of a religious nature.
I am bassing by claims in the U.N. declaration of Human Rights, that is a secular document that has both the caracter of being universal and that is also a guide of ethics that human beings should follow. That document costed millions of lives to mankind, and required a lot of time to be conceived, but now it is here, and should be respected.
Quote:
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
So the society has no right of taking a life because of eugenic consideration. That includes the killing of convict criminals as a way to "clean" the society of its bad elements.
Quote:
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
We are all persons, regardless of our genetic load. Including the ugly, the poor, the foreigner, and the person with genetic diseases.
Quote:
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Everyone has the right to "found a family". Therefore to reproduce.
Actions such as esterilizing the poors or allowing massive abortion to the poors, in order to "improve" the society, are against this point in the U.N. declaration.
All of this lead to a single conclusion: Eugenics shouldn't be enforced by the state.
The only way Eugenics can be accepted is by the free-will of the parents. An example is the case of parents that carry genetic disease and that have had the opportunity to chose the right eggs. I believe that is the only way to apply Eugenics without affecting the human rights.
Posted: Sun 23 Oct 2005 20:21 Post subject: Re: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
oevega wrote:
winwinkel wrote:
G-Man, quoting from Wikipedia.com I think wrote:
Opposition to eugenics and forced sterilization came primarily from conservative Catholics, Jews and Catholics.
I am interested in secular objections to eugenics. Does anyone have any?
[Omission.]
This is a personal my personal oppinion and I do have complains about Eugenics that are not of a religious nature.
I am bassing by claims in the U.N. declaration of Human Rights, that is a secular document that has both the caracter of being universal and that is also a guide of ethics that human beings should follow. That document costed millions of lives to mankind, and required a lot of time to be conceived, but now it is here, and should be respected.
Quote:
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
So the society has no right of taking a life because of eugenic consideration. That includes the killing of convict criminals as a way to "clean" the society of its bad elements.
Quote:
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
We are all persons, regardless of our genetic load. Including the ugly, the poor, the foreigner, and the person with genetic diseases.
Quote:
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Everyone has the right to "found a family". Therefore to reproduce.
Actions such as esterilizing the poors or allowing massive abortion to the poors, in order to "improve" the society, are against this point in the U.N. declaration.
All of this lead to a single conclusion: Eugenics shouldn't be enforced by the state.
[Omissions.]
I think Mr. Oevega has voiced a due process, equal protection argument. The post-World War II U.N. declaration indeed seems to reflect public opinion turning against eugenics. However, this general language is less tightly drafted than either the 1791 Fifth U.S. constitutional Amendment whose Due Process clause was always construed to imply equal protection of the law, or the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment expressly guaranteeing equal protection, applicable to state governments. These expressly guaranteed rights did not stop eugenics or involuntary sterilizations in the U.S.A. which gave birth both to due process-equal protection and to eugenics. Thanks anyway, Mr. Oevega.
I asked for secular objections hoping to hear scientific-medical ones. As Margaret Quigley's paper
http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/OTHERSRV/ISAR/arcade/eugenics.htm
that I cited and quoted extensively from stated, the eugenicsts were intellectual, scientific, degree-holding people. Many were inventors (e.g., Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone), liberal social reformers (Margaret Sanger founder of Planned Parenthood; also Jane Adams of Hull House, I think; also Charles Lindbergh), scientists, and physicians. Their scientific-medical arguments prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court before the eminent Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. (Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=274&invol=200
Their reasoning was based on the science, then available to them -- of Darwin's insights into evolution (1859); of Gregor Mendel's breakthrough laws of inheritance (rediscovered 1900); and on their highly developed practical knowledge of animal husbandry, with animal breeding by artificial selection essentially accomplishing sped-up evolution. All the more, we still follow this same science today! As the Quigley paper indicates, some eugenicists meant to sterilize ten percent of America's whole population. Their program in some states ran long past World War II. Hitler's Holocaust was messy, untidy (brutal) they would say. But numerous American eugenicists would have agreed the "Final Solution" was correct in principle, it was left incomplete. After the War the public gradually turned against eugenics, and its supporters hushed their voices. (Some organizations changed names.)
What science do we know that they did not know?
Exactly how do we explain to them scientifically that they were wrong?
George
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Mon 24 Oct 2005 00:24 Post subject: Re: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
winwinkel wrote:
..Their reasoning was based on the science, then available to them -- of Darwin's insights into evolution (1859); of Gregor Mendel's breakthrough laws of inheritance (rediscovered 1900);
Yes. Adolph Hitler also used arguments comming from Darwin and Mendel. One can find them in his book "Race and destiny".
Quote:
and on their highly developed practical knowledge of animal husbandry, with animal breeding by artificial selection essentially accomplishing sped-up evolution. All the more, we still follow this same science today! As the Quigley paper indicates, some eugenicists meant to sterilize ten percent of America's whole population. Their program in some states ran long past World War II. Hitler's Holocaust was messy, untidy (brutal) they would say. But numerous American eugenicists would have agreed the "Final Solution" was correct in principle, it was left incomplete. After the War the public gradually turned against eugenics, and its supporters hushed their voices. (Some organizations changed names.)
Actually, these ideas are the same since the times of Sparta. Comparing human beings to cows and breeding them to improve the species is a long ideal in the fascist side of the human thinking. Hitler itself mentions Sparta as a source of inspiration.
Quote:
What science do we know that they did not know?
Exactly how do we explain to them scientifically that they were wrong?
George
However technology has advanced quite a lot, I believe science is at the same state that in the past:
(1) We know that mutations accumulate in the population.
(2) We know that today survive a lot of people with genetics illnesses that would not be alive without science.
(3) We know that most mutations lower the average "quality" of the genetic material rather than improving it.
(4) We know that in the long term a genetic "cleaning" would be necessary in order humans survive.
The problem is how that "cleaning" would be done.
The problem is in there like in the past. The solution has changed though.
After Hitler and the "American Eugenists" people is a lot more aware of the criminality in Science.
After the atomic bomb to be a scientist has become a matter of suspiction.
After the arm race to be a scientist has become a synonim of an inventor of weapons of massive destruction.
After the ecological movement to be a scientist has become a synonim of a burocrat that protect the interests of the big industry.
And after the final solution, to be a scientist has also become a synonim of an individual that can become a Dr. Menguele or a modern Dr. Frankestain.
Yes. After all that, science has not much to do with it. It is a matter that has to be decided by us, the common individual of the planet, regardless of how much ignorant we are.
After all, to be a learned man is not the same that to be a wise man.
Posted: Wed 26 Oct 2005 23:26 Post subject: Re: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
oevega wrote:
After Hitler and the "American Eugenists" people is a lot more aware of the criminality in Science.
After the atomic bomb to be a scientist has become a matter of suspiction.
After the arm race to be a scientist has become a synonim of an inventor of weapons of massive destruction.
After the ecological movement to be a scientist has become a synonim of a burocrat that protect the interests of the big industry.
And after the final solution, to be a scientist has also become a synonim of an individual that can become a Dr. Menguele or a modern Dr. Frankestain.
Is this a clue to the dulling of our former U.S. leading edge in science?
I grew up with the atomic bomb -- its original Trinity test detonated 471 miles west of where I was lurking in diapers at the time. This "suspiction" of scientists is new -- it arose long after our Apollo astronauts landed peaceably on the Moon.
oevega wrote:
Actually, these ideas are the same since the times of Sparta. Comparing human beings to cows and breeding them to improve the species is a long ideal in the fascist side of the human thinking. Hitler itself mentions Sparta as a source of inspiration.
winwinkel wrote:
What science do we know that they did not know? Exactly how do we explain to them scientifically that they were wrong?
However technology has advanced quite a lot, I believe science is at the same state that in the past:
(1) We know that mutations accumulate in the population.
(2) We know that today survive a lot of people with genetics illnesses that would not be alive without science.
(3) We know that most mutations lower the average "quality" of the genetic material rather than improving it.
(4) We know that in the long term a genetic "cleaning" would be necessary in order humans survive.
The problem is how that "cleaning" would be done.
Wow! Here I thought atomic science had become a matter of "suspiction."
Let me say I am quite convinced that "equal" is a scientific principle in just the same sense as Mr. Oevega always closes
oevega wrote:
All men are created equal in the sight of God.
But history shows this quipping "equal" was not enough by itself. Or else many scholarly, religious people said it lying. They did not really mean it.
I do not think they meant to lie. I am talking about generations of "white" pro-eugenic segregationists. I am talking about their American progeny today, both "white and black," who together preserve the endogamous "color-line," and the patent racial inequalities that mark it off.
I surmise there are clues in, for example, the Supreme Court opinions of
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 15 L.Ed. 691 (1857), and Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 41 L.Ed. 256, 16 S.Ct. 1138 (1896).
The "white" justices deciding these cases evidently did not recognize that "equal" as a fundamental principal applicable among themselves as "men" equally included the "negroes" before the Court. But why should this suprise anyone; after all the "races" idea means group "difference." The word's plural would be absurd any other way.
Does learned Mr. Oevega afford us a clue to why eugenic-segregationists saw such a "polygenic" world of "different races" of Man?
Doubtless it is true that modern medicine (a suspect science?) has people procreating, passing on "mutant" genes such as homophilia, Huntington's, and "imbecility." I believe the eugenic-segregationist-racist "white" mentality truly had a problem with accepting what they saw as "polluting their 'beautiful "white"' gene pool." They would perfectly have understood and agreed with Mr. Oevega's prediction of "a genetic cleaning" being "necessary" in order for humans to survive.
However, I question whether our common sense intuition might be wrong about this fear of "pollution" of "our gene pool"?
1. Has anyone ever observed natural-selection evolution reversing -- or "devolution"?
2. In Darwinian evolution by natural selection does the idea of a species suffering harm by gene-pool "pollution" (excluding inbreeding) even make sense?
3. For centuries an anti-"black" stigmatizing myth has warned that "atavistic" (throwback) children can be born to "white" parents with any "black" ancestor. Entertainer Carol Channing wrote recently in her book, recounting that her mother warned her to expect, "she might have a black baby." Researcher Lawrence R. Tenzer wrote at length about "atavism," which he traced back to Roman women. Faced with stoning to death for interracial adultery, Roman wives sometimes re-discovered their lost black grandparent.
http://www.multiracial.com/readers/tenzer2.html
4. Roughly 300 years of Anglo-American racism expresses fears of racial "amalgamation." The intuitive belief is that "white hybrid" progeny will inherit both the (a) "bell curve" mental "I.Q." and (b) black-skin ugliness (a & b both alleged) of the designated Negro race. The rediscovery of Mendel's laws of inheritance in 1900 seems to have aggravated this fear with visions of "dominant black" genes crushing "recessive white" genes in "race genocide." Hollywood films seem apt to depict glistening black Octoroons; all that sort of thing. However, most Octoroons look "white." And it happens the U.S. "black" population -- it's long been about 12˝ % -- seemingly would disappear in an Octoroon America. (1/8 = 12˝ %.)
The fears of "white" losses in the form of diminished ("bell curve") "I.Q." and non-"purebred" physiognomy express, I think, animal husbandry principals that do not apply to the naturally-selecting wild animal population being our human race. The 1924 Virginia Racial Integrity Act recited "racial pride," unmistakably in a challenging tone, as if a "racial destiny" would naturally result from "incipient species." Nonetheless, there is a "racial justice" logical argument, which I think has standing to challenge American white endogamy with its "unclean hands" in the matter of importing African slaves. People are not culpable for their ancestors' wrongs. Nonetheless, a tri-racial America was created by a people whose descendant's exclusive endogamy is hard to justify without propounding biological absurdities.
The absurdity that concerns me most is the civil rights community's failure to represent plain truth -- that resolution of racial inequality awaits the dissolution of the legally-suggested "difference," which will end when endogamy ends -- same trajectory as other immigrant groups assimilating "white" (or whatever).
George
as long and detailed as your post normally are why do you ALWAYS fail to mention how Blacks have "disappeared" into other Octoroon societies before and the consquences of it! (the so call "disapperances" are nothing short of genocide however because not only do Black identified people no longer exist, but everybody else always, always mysteriously come down with the case of the "racial amnesia". So the poor Black fools that actually bought into this proganda are always the forgotten souls of the country.)
Why don't you ever mention Cuba?! A country that everyone's "tainted" in and where Blacks face very heavy racism, color prejudice, discrimination (basically anything you can name).
Why not mention Brazil, and how god- awful it is to be considered "preto" and especially to look "preto". This is a country where everyone is "tainted".......
We also never mention countries like Puerto Rico where everyone is "blended" yet everyone is still "White". Blackness seems to be only appropiate as a very, very small "admixture" (but "tainto" and other blood is still preferred) but NEVER as your "racial identity"!
Also everybody else from Mexico to the Dominican Replubic to Chile/Peru simply don't want to mention "Blacks" in their country at all! Its always a "long time ago" or the "black were in small numbers" they always say............
I don't even want to start on Sudan or South Africa!
_________________________________
How many countries do we need as proof of what happens in "Octoroon societies"? In your post you imply that when Afro-Americans or "any Blacks" become "White Americans", it will end racial discrimination- or at least leads to the belief in "equality". Well this is NOT so! Ask any of the Blacks from Brazil, Cuba or Sudan if they feel "equal" in their "everybody's tainted OCTOROON" countries.
And if Octoroon societies are so damn lovely, why is Black blood in Argentina such a contraversy!? Why can't Argentinians admit Black ancestry (in their supposely flexible Latin American race system)? And how come Mexicans can trace back history hundreds of years before the Spaniards conquered the Aztecs in Mexico yet convinently forget about African slaves which came much later than the Aztec empire!?
--In short everyone in "Octoroon/tainted" societies have "racial amensia" and generally hate "blackness".-----
George, you seem confused as to why AA leaders won't stop whining and become "White". The answer to discrimination it seems is to " become just as White" as your turmentor! One of the very few things I'm proud of is this- that we have NOT allowed other people to force us to give up or identity (who we are, our history)!!! If anything, let the people who are claim to be concerned with equality assimliate into "Blacks". lol. Proving our equality by becoming "White". Do you think the White South Africans think "equality" in South Africa will come when everyone becomes Bantu Africans?
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 28 Oct 2005 01:29 Post subject: Re: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
Hi George
winwinkel wrote:
I am talking about generations of "white" pro-eugenic segregationists. I am talking about their American progeny today, both "white and black," who together preserve the endogamous "color-line," and the patent racial inequalities that mark it off.
Please, let me remember you, George, that the pseudo-science of eugenics in not necesarily directed to peoples of other "races". Actually the first victims are usually people of the same population but that carry a genetic disease, such as:
Mentally retarder people that are sterilized.
Criminals that are hung, shot, fried to death or poissoned in order to protect the so called society.
The unborn babies of poor single women that are kill to prevent criminals are born.
The ill that are killed when those eugenics practices derivate in eutanasia.
Actually, the first victims of the Third Reich "eugenic" program where all the people that carry some hereditary defect.
Eugenetist are not simple racist. They have a "greater" plan for mankind: converting us in a great "race" of milk cows.
Quote:
Does learned Mr. Oevega afford us a clue to why eugenic-segregationists saw such a "polygenic" world of "different races" of Man?
Thanks! I never though I had produced such a good impression.
I believe racism and eugenicism lead naturally to the notion each race has to improve its genetic material by its own. Mixing is considered something wrong for the purity of race.
Of course, being a hard-headed Latino, I consider that idea to be idiotic.
Quote:
Doubtless it is true that modern medicine (a suspect science?)
Some physicians are in my list of suspected people
Quote:
has people procreating, passing on "mutant" genes such as homophilia, Huntington's, and "imbecility." I believe the eugenic-segregationist-racist "white" mentality truly had a problem with accepting what they saw as "polluting their 'beautiful "white"' gene pool." They would perfectly have understood and agreed with Mr. Oevega's prediction of "a genetic cleaning" being "necessary" in order for humans to survive.
Perhaps they would agree with me. However, I don't find anything special in the so called "white" race.
Besides, not only "whites" have been fascinated with eugenics. Chineses are practising it in a very large scale right now.
Quote:
However, I question whether our common sense intuition might be wrong about this fear of "pollution" of "our gene pool"?
1. Has anyone ever observed natural-selection evolution reversing -- or "devolution"?
It sound funny but I got one ! It was pointed by Darwin himself more than a century ago: I got pointing ears It is a reversing to the pre-monkey model of ear (like wolves and other mammals) and there are some indivuals like me that carry it. Nobody is perfect, I guess
Quote:
2. In Darwinian evolution by natural selection does the idea of a species suffering harm by gene-pool "pollution" (excluding inbreeding) even make sense?
The point is Darwinian evolution is only possible in small groups that have a real high death rate; like in the wild. An escenario where only a few survive and reproduce and where the "law of the jungle" rules.
In moden societies the population is so large that Darwinian evolution has, for all practical term, stopped. We live by inertia right now. However, mutations still happened little by little.
A real impact of accumulated mutations will have to wait for hundred of thousands of year. So is not really something to be worry about right now.
Quote:
4. Roughly 300 years of Anglo-American racism expresses fears of racial "amalgamation." The intuitive belief is that "white hybrid" progeny will inherit both the (a) "bell curve" mental "I.Q." and (b) black-skin ugliness (a & b both alleged) of the designated Negro race. The rediscovery of Mendel's laws of inheritance in 1900 seems to have aggravated this fear with visions of "dominant black" genes crushing "recessive white" genes in "race genocide." Hollywood films seem apt to depict glistening black Octoroons; all that sort of thing. However, most Octoroons look "white." And it happens the U.S. "black" population -- it's long been about 12˝ % -- seemingly would disappear in an Octoroon America. (1/8 = 12˝ %.)
Racism is not very illustrated, actually.
Quote:
The absurdity that concerns me most is the civil rights community's failure to represent plain truth -- that resolution of racial inequality awaits the dissolution of the legally-suggested "difference," which will end when endogamy ends -- same trajectory as other immigrant groups assimilating "white" (or whatever).
I very much agree with you in that idea.
People is people and there is not such a difference based in genetics. Mixture is not only right but is also healthy in genetic terms.
People should start to think in terms of individuals instead of races. In term of cultures intead of races. In terms of love rather than miscegenation.
And genetic diseases should be treated like what they are: diseases. Something that in the future will have a cure that is human at the same time.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 28 Oct 2005 01:52 Post subject: Hit on target
Hi "Girlfromthenc"
As a Latino, and because it seems your complains are directed in this direction, I would like to answer your points.
girlfromthenc wrote:
George,
as long and detailed as your post normally are why do you ALWAYS fail to mention how Blacks have "disappeared" into other Octoroon societies before and the consquences of it! (the so call "disapperances" are nothing short of genocide however because not only do Black identified people no longer exist, but everybody else always, always mysteriously come down with the case of the "racial amnesia". So the poor Black fools that actually bought into this proganda are always the forgotten souls of the country.)
Latinos have not bad memory. The problem seem we know our history and all its details a lot better that outsiders. We are not a stereotype but real people with A LOT OF regional differences.
Genocide is to exterminate people by killing them. Making love with them, in particular when there is real love, is not genocide but a extreme form of racial relation.
Quote:
Why don't you ever mention Cuba?!
Cuba is proud of its African past. Don't you know it? They still follow the cult of Yemanya and the influence in Music and Literature is well know.
What are you talking about ?
Quote:
A country that everyone's "tainted" in and where Blacks face very heavy racism, color prejudice, discrimination (basically anything you can name).
Why not mention Brazil, and how god- awful it is to be considered "preto" and especially to look "preto". This is a country where everyone is "tainted".......
I believe you don't know neither Cuba nor Brazil.
Quote:
We also never mention countries like Puerto Rico where everyone is "blended" yet everyone is still "White". Blackness seems to be only appropiate as a very, very small "admixture" (but "tainto" and other blood is still preferred) but NEVER as your "racial identity"!
The "racial identity" of most Latin Americans is Latino. A person that is culturally european and that has mixtures with other races. A person that is mainly christian. A person that speak in the language of the Romans. A person that can trace its father lines back to Spain. A person that knows it lives in a very varied world, but that know our culture is european by large.
Quote:
Also everybody else from Mexico to the Dominican Replubic to Chile/Peru simply don't want to mention "Blacks" in their country at all! Its always a "long time ago" or the "black were in small numbers" they always say............
Mexico has little Black blood. They have an outstanding Native culture that is a lot more important to them and they are also the largest Spanish speaking country on the planet: a country that is very Spanish as well. So, if they remember the African past of one very very small minority that has to come in third place. That's common sense.
Dominica Republic is a Mulatto country in varying colors that goes from Black to White. They consider Blacks is a synonim of Haitian, a country that have being their enemies for centuries. To call a Dominican a Black is to say he is an Haitian.
4% of the Population of Peru is Black.
Chile is 75% white and 25% native american. Do I have to repeat it one more time?
Chile is 75% white and 25% native american.
Chile is 75% white and 25% native american.
....
Chile is 75% white and 25% native american.
Quote:
How many countries do we need as proof of what happens in "Octoroon societies"? In your post you imply that when Afro-Americans or "any Blacks" become "White Americans", it will end racial discrimination- or at least leads to the belief in "equality". Well this is NOT so! Ask any of the Blacks from Brazil, Cuba or Sudan if they feel "equal" in their "everybody's tainted OCTOROON" countries.
Brazil is also a country that mantains very well their African traditions.
Some of them still speak Yeruba.
Something no Black American does.
Quote:
And if Octoroon societies are so damn lovely, why is Black blood in Argentina such a contraversy!? Why can't Argentinians admit Black ancestry (in their supposely flexible Latin American race system)?
Because Argentineans ARE NOT Black. Don't be ridiculous, please.
Quote:
And how come Mexicans can trace back history hundreds of years before the Spaniards conquered the Aztecs in Mexico yet convinently forget about African slaves which came much later than the Aztec empire!?
Because Aztecs are a lot more important to Mexicans that the few slaves they once have. 99% of Mexicans have some drop of Aztec. Not many have drops of African in there.
Quote:
--In short everyone in "Octoroon/tainted" societies have "racial amensia" and generally hate "blackness".-----
There is not such thing. Only that credit is given where it is due.
Blacks have "disappeared" into other Octoroon societies before and the consquences of it! (the so call "disapperances" are nothing short of genocide however because not only do Black identified people no longer exist, but everybody else always, always mysteriously come down with the case of the "racial amnesia".
We know we can find "white" people railing about how Euro-white people are a world minority threatened with "race genocide." I can find Native-American identity activists arguing passionately to preserve their fractions of "blood" ancestry. They, too lament the "genocide" of their 13,000 year (at least) distinct, once purified, "red race." This does not exhaust the list. Other "human-husbandry" identity groups wail and agitate for census classification in "homo-breeds." They crave this power of involuntary draft. (E.g., native Hawaiians, Arab-Americans.) And here is Girlfromthenc arguing with engaging erudition the existence of "black" people who should maintain their genetically endowed, distinctive complexion by not intermarrying with "non-black" countrymen. By the way, the One-Drop (ODR) idea no longer seals-in "black" identity only. Native Hawaiian lawmakers are using the "any ancestry" concept. American Indians anchor their "race" on specific ancestors a century ago (and counting). Post-Clinton OMB multiple check-box counting applies "hypodescent" universally so as to define "white" as the only "pure race."
It should be apparent that the principal defining "different races" is marital endogamy. ODR-schemes deny "mixing," which happens. The Hapa Issues Forum (HIF) and My Shoes organizations (2 examples), exist to brainwash Eurasian and white multiracial children, respectively, to self-identify by hypodescent. (I.e., see themselves "of color" "minority.") It also should be apparent that the "races" notion since 1900 proselytizes the homo-reductionist thinking which would lower human race membership to mean a domesticated animal breed. George Orwell described similar human mental stupefying in his satirical novel 1984.
This balkanizing census identity politicizing (and it is very political) threatens to further aggravate "color" tribal violence.
girlfromthenc wrote:
George, you seem confused as to why AA leaders won't stop whining and become "White". The answer to discrimination it seems is to " become just as White" as your turmentor! One of the very few things I'm proud of is this- that we have NOT allowed other people to force us to give up or identity (who we are, our history)!!! If anything, let the people who are claim to be concerned with equality assimliate into "Blacks". lol. Proving our equality by becoming "White". Do you think the White South Africans think "equality" in South Africa will come when everyone becomes Bantu Africans?
Seems to me it might make sense for Africans to all celebrate their African identity. Does Afro-identity admit only of "black" skin-color?
Regarding AA leaders:
Firstly, will Girlfromthenc let me capitulate on behalf of the "white race" and all other "non-black" Americans? We are waving the white flag of surrender; conceding that we are really Africans -- that's where we all evolved from primate phenotype. Everyone knows it now. (We're outed!) We come in all colors (of course); but being Africans, we must be all racially "black" for Girlfromthenc and her AA "leaders."
Does this capitulation satisfy AA leaders? Why not? What more do they want? Is it not true that they themselves majorly influence definitions of "races" nowadays? If AA leaders campaigned for recognition of an All-Black Planet wouldn't they win it easily? It is that easy for everyone on Earth to say "Sure, I'm black!" Wouldn't that make Girlfromthenc and her AA leaders happy?
Of course, everyone in the world is "black." So, why keep saying it? Then, instead of checking government-classifying "race-boxes" we could all just forget the whole thing. After all, everyone knows we Afro-World "blacks" come in all colors.
Finally, Girlfromthenc protested against the cruel discrimination suffered by "blacks" in other societies due to what we call "colorism." But don't we have "colorism," too, in U.S. "just black" society?
girlfromthenc wrote:
--In short everyone in "Octoroon/tainted" societies have "racial amensia" and generally hate "blackness".--
These "racial amnesia" societies are riddled with Old Europe class-prejudice, too. I think we can make it work in the U.S.A. And "colorism" basically is racism, I think.
I think the classificatory emphasis on "black" for organizing for collective group-rights in the paradoxical sense of "different-but-equal" makes colorism (etc.) worse. The problem is not that "different races" really exist --"subspecies" -- necessitating their political power to be ramped up. "Different" is the root of the problem. I believe in a movement to dissolve the delusional "difference." (So what if we humans come in all colors?) This was MLK's movement for racial integration. It died, with him, nearly 40 years ago.
George
Posted: Fri 28 Oct 2005 09:38 Post subject: Re: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
oevega wrote:
winwinkel wrote:
2. In Darwinian evolution by natural selection does the idea of a species suffering harm by gene-pool "pollution" (excluding inbreeding) even make sense?
The point is Darwinian evolution is only possible in small groups that have a real high death rate; like in the wild. An escenario where only a few survive and reproduce and where the "law of the jungle" rules.
In moden societies the population is so large that Darwinian evolution has, for all practical term, stopped. We live by inertia right now. However, mutations still happened little by little.
A real impact of accumulated mutations will have to wait for hundred of thousands of year. So is not really something to be worry about right now.
[Omissions.]
I cannot agree with Mr. Oevega's evolution theories. It seems clear to me that a diverse (large) gene-pool facilitates better, more inventive evolution, by giving a population more adaptive range. Several mechanisms drive adaptive radiation. But the genes must be present to begin the filling-in available niches. How many species have gone extinct waiting for a beneficial mutation to come bail them out of a tight spot?
George
I have a problem with how natural selection is expressed. Most people seem to think of reproductive success in terms of individuals: that some people have more grandchildren than others. In fact, natural selection refers to the differential reproductive success of different alleles of the same gene. In an immediate-cause sense, the organisms containing the genes are irrelevant. To a gene, a person is simply a means of reproducing another copy of the gene.
I am not an evolutionary biologist, but in the one area that I have studied, the evolution of skin tone, inter-organism competition is unimportant. Native Sri Lankans are not dark because they were more successful than others of the same ancestry who were light. And Swedes are not light because their light-skinned ancestors out-competed dark ones around the Baltic in early Neolithic times.
At least in the field of skin tone, differential reproductive success of competing alleles expresses itself prenataly, not in competition between adult organisms. If a pregnant mother's skin absorbs too much UV, her embryo will miscarry due UV interference with its folic acid synthesis (necessary to build a nervous system). If her skin absorbs too little UV, she herself will produce insufficient calciferol (vitamin D) to enable the embryo grow a skeleton and, again, it will miscarry. Such miscarriages can happen very early in pregnancy (sometimes even before the mother knows that she is pregnant).
Ultimately, a woman of intermediate skin tone may have as many children as women who are darker of lighter, but her children will carry the correct allele for their lattitude. Those embryos whose mother had a skin-tone allele that was "right" for her lattitude have a higher chance of being born.
At the level of competing prenatal alleles, natural selection continues today as vigorously as it always has. Perhaps our distant descendants will thrive on air pollution.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sat 29 Oct 2005 22:31 Post subject: Re: Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
Hi George:
winwinkel wrote:
I cannot agree with Mr. Oevega's evolution theories. It seems clear to me that a diverse (large) gene-pool facilitates better, more inventive evolution, by giving a population more adaptive range. Several mechanisms drive adaptive radiation. But the genes must be present to begin the filling-in available niches. How many species have gone extinct waiting for a beneficial mutation to come bail them out of a tight spot?
George
It is not a theory of mine, otherwise I would have published a paper
No. Seriously. It is part of certain studies of genetics of population that by chance I read years ago. Don't ask me for refferences please.
The idea behind is very simple. If a mutation appear in a group of people and it have something positive on it, then the time it takes to spread to the whole population in very fast if groups are small. However, if the groups are large it would take much more time to produce the same effect.
Imagine the small tribes of 50.000 years ago, compossed at much by 200 or 300 individuals. If someone get, let say, a mutation to run faster or whatever, that gaves him/her an evolutive advantage, to spread it to the whole population could take 3 or 4 generations and nothing more, perhaps less. So in 100 years that mutation would have become the standard in that group.
If the population were not 300 individuals but 6.000.000.000, it would take 4.000, 40.000 or more generations to produce the same impact (it is not so easy to calculate it because it does depends if it spread in arithmetic or geometric proportion, the number of children per couple, and a lot of other factors). So in the best scenario we are talking of 100.000 years to produce the same effect.
So, the evolution in ancient prehistoric times was at least 1.000 times as fast as today. That's why people could change so much its phenotype in the only 80.000 years since they left Africa. And also changed once again since Mongolians colonized the Americas 20.000 years ago. And it also explain why in the last 6.000 years since large scale agriculture and civilizations evolution seems to have stopped.
I believe the terms the geneticist use is "genetic inertia". In practical terms, today genetic evolution has stopped. Selection has also gotten mild thanks to technology and modern medicine. The only things that persist constant is mutation, so the accumulated ones increase slowly with time.
In short, the existence of "natural" evolution is over. In the future the only chance to "improve the stock" of our "domestic" specie is by "artificial" eugenics. Perhaps using genetic engineering.
People should realize that that intervention is a very dangerous game, though. But one should not be blind those practises will be common in the future.
'
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Thanks! I never though I had produced such a good impression.
