eu·gen·ics

 

 

Would you like your baby to have blonde hair and blue eyes? Would you like to be taller? Would you like to run faster or jump higher? Would you like to look like those people in the magazines?

 

Eugenics is a movement that is aimed at improving the genetic composition of the human race. Historically, eugenicists advocated selective breeding to achieve these goals. Today we have technologies that make it possible to more directly alter the genetic composition of an individual.

It is a “given” in discussions of genetic engineering that no sensible person can be in favour of eugenics. The main reason for this presumption is that so much horror, misery, and mayhem have been carried out in the name of eugenics in the 20th century that no person with any moral sense could think otherwise.

Positive eugenics is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the genetically advantaged; for example, the reproduction of the intelligent, the healthy, and the successful. Possible approaches include financial and political stimuli, targeted demographic analyses, in vitro fertilization, egg transplants, and cloning.

Recent advances in genetics and reproductive technology have opened the door to a new form of eugenics, termed “modern eugenics,” or “human genetic engineering,” that is focused on repairing faulty genes associated with disease or other health conditions.

Even though a state does not specifically authorize eugenic sterilization, it does not mean that such a procedure cannot be done legally. However, fewer and fewer eugenic sterilizations are being performed. Medical men more often than by judges make decisions relating to sterilization.

Eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population, played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States during the Progressive Era, from the late 19th century until US involvement in World War II.

While ostensibly about improving genetic quality, it has been argued that eugenics was more about preserving the position of the dominant groups in the population. Scholarly research has determined that people who found themselves targets of the eugenics movement were those who were seen as unfit for society—the poor, the disabled, the mentally ill, and specific communities of color—and a disproportionate number of those who fell victim to eugenicists' sterilization initiatives were women who identified as African American, Hispanic, or Native American.

As a result, the United States' Progressive-era eugenics movement is now generally associated with racist and nativist elements, as the movement was to some extent a reaction to demographic and population changes, as well as concerns over the economy and social well-being, rather than scientific genetics.

Among other things, eugenics called for restricting the reproduction of those deemed unfit. In practice, forced sterilization efforts largely targeted the least-powerful people: minority women, immigrants, the physically and mentally ill, and the poor.

One of the most notorious decisions of the Supreme Court was its 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, in which Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld the involuntary sterilization of a woman deemed “feeble-minded” with the chilling justification that “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” With only one dissent (Mr. Justice Butler), the Supreme Court rejected Carrie Bell’s arguments that this practice violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. (The Eighth Amendment protects U.S. citizens from “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from denying “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.”) Although Buck v. Bell has never been overturned, state statutes such as the one upheld in Buck v. Bell have been repealed, and its reasoning has been undermined by a subsequent Supreme Court decision striking down a law providing for involuntary sterilization of criminals.

 

 

Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra), also called the CIA mind control program, is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, some of which were illegal. Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through mind control. The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. Other code names for drug-related experiments were Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke.

The operation was officially sanctioned in 1953, reduced in scope in 1964 and further curtailed in 1967. It was officially halted in 1973. The program also engaged in illegal activities, including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as its unwitting test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects’ mental states and brain functions. Techniques included the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as other forms of torture.

The scope of Project MKUltra was broad, with research undertaken at more than 80 institutions, including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA operated using front organizations, although sometimes top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA’s involvement.

Project MKUltra was first brought to public attention in 1975 by the Church Committee of the United States Congress and Gerald Ford's United States President’s Commission on CIA activities within the United States (also known as the Rockefeller Commission).

Investigative efforts were hampered by CIA Director Richard Helms’s order that all MKUltra files be destroyed in 1973; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms’s destruction order. In 1977, a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to project MKUltra that led to Senate hearings later that year. Some surviving information regarding MKUltra was declassified in July 2001. In December 2018, declassified documents included a letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs made to run, turn and stop via remote control and brain implants.

 

 

 

CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. These sequences are derived from DNA fragments of bacteriophages that had previously infected the prokaryote. They are used to detect and destroy DNA from similar bacteriophages during subsequent infections. Hence these sequences play a key role in the antiviral (i.e. anti-phage) defense system of prokaryotes.

Diagram of the CRISPR prokaryotic antiviral defense mechanism

The CRISPR-Cas system is a prokaryotic immune system that confers resistance to foreign genetic elements such as those present within plasmids and phages and provides a form of acquired immunity. RNA harboring the spacer sequence helps Cas (CRISPR-associated) proteins recognize and cut foreign pathogenic DNA. Other RNA-guided Cas proteins cut foreign RNA. CRISPR are found in approximately 50% of sequenced bacterial genomes and nearly 90% of sequenced archaea.

These systems have created CRISPR gene editing that commonly utilizes the cas9 gene. This editing process has a wide variety of applications including basic biological research, development of biotechnology products, and treatment of diseases. The CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technique was a significant contributor to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 being awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna.

 

When you go to the doctor, how will you come out? What are they writing on your hospital chart? What happens after you are anesthetized? What is in that pill?

 

What is in your coffee?

 

eu·gen·ics

The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.