ConCen

Lately I've noticed a fair few articles being reported in the mainstream media on the topic of eugenics. It seems to be an example of pushing through certain agendas while most (who follow the news) are distracted by the goings on in the middle-east, which is also overshadowing the disaster in Japan and covering up the radiation issues. Briefly the articles in question are:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesd...-eugenics/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/a...government

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scien...e-sex.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environ...23a225%2C0

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12537912

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...114859.htm

Quickly covering the above, we are seeing greater calls for genetic screening, climate change and environmental groups calling for reduction in birth-rates, studies showing links between behaviour and television 'role-models' at the same time period as increases in pre-18 year old pregnancies, which incidentally have finally begun to decline.

From these then we'll take a closer look at eugenics itself to see what the ambition is of those who'd benefit from it. This will be a more pessimistic look at eugenics for if history has taught us anything, it is that eugenics would undoubtedly become enforced through a central body linked to government who will factor in their own requirements before taking into account any issues raised by the public. Governments, especially those who are more sympathetic to the centrally planned approach, would most likely use eugenic concepts as a way of bringing about a more efficient labour force from the general population. Besides it would not make sense for a government to create an army of superhumans because the inevitable insurrections would mean an overthrow of those already in power. We can thus say confidently that any state enforced eugenics will not have the publics best interests in mind which is also the case with any other attempts at 'improving the species' such as transhumanism. There will always remain an aspect which requires control, if simply to keep the peace if nothing else. This does not however apply to those forces behind government, who have in fact practiced eugenics in various forms throughout their histories which we'll cover at some point in this thread.

Eugenics, it seems, is deeply rooted in the transition between hunter-gatherer society and agricultural society, alongside division of labour and increased specialisation. This is simple enough to grasp, afterall eugenics, the alleged science of improving a species, is routinely used by farmers to improve yields from both animal and plant life. From this we can say that eugenics has, at its core, the desire to improve work related efficiency especially in light of a state mandated system employed on the public. Human history from that transition point has always been workers against managers in various ways, most revolutions and rebellions down through history have been about this, in short slaves demanding some rights from
whoever is giving them orders. This must always be kept in mind. Societal managers will always want maximum productivity with minimum expenditure and it is not always for profit either. Eugenics is generally promoted as a way of eliminating genetic disorders which impact upon ones life, but if we analyse that, the impacts are more on ability to enter the workforce and to not be a burden on tax payer money and other resources through healthcare - it again links back to productivity, for
these defects are eliminated, what then? Society will expect you to enter the workforce for that is how the system is setup. You are a human resource afterall and resources are expected to be used to create something more useful to the managerial class. Coupled with that is the reminder of the enormous number of intelligent people who have been shunned by their own societies over the centuries suggesting that brain or intelligence improvements are not exactly at the top of the agenda and
perhaps the opposite is true - further promotion of mass stupidity. Lets have a look then at the proposed future fantasies of those who have advocated large scale eugenics: (I also strongly encourage anyone else to contribute to the thread with some quotes or research articles about this subject and its proposed use by the new world order).

Lets take a look at Dr. Roderic Gorney's 'The Human Agenda' (1979 edition) which also contains a foreword by Alvin Toffler.



He devotes a few pages to eugenics starting with a discussion on negative eugenics (elimination of undesirable traits) moving swiftly to positive eugenics (promotion of desired traits) by quoting the late Herman Muller:

'For any group of people who have a rational
attitude toward matters of reproduction, and
who also have a genuine sense of of their own
responsibility to the next and subsequent
generations, the means exist right now of
achieving a much greater, speedier, and more
significant genetic improvement of the
population, by the use of selection, than
could be effected by the most sophisticated
methods of treatment of the genetic material
that might be available in the 21st century.' P.215

Continuing, Gorney adds:

'He proposes by selective breeding not only
to eliminate the defects we encounter now by
reducing the present genetic load, but also
to increase the number of people with 'superior'
qualities. One way to accomplish this would
be to establish sperm (and eventually egg)
banks in which the reproductive cells of
individuals with exceptional health, intelligence
or special talent could be preserved. These
could then be used by people who want to produce
children with better endowment than would result
from their own genes.' P.215

Gorney goes on to say that some objections have been made by others who suggest that people would on the whole be unwilling to go through this. He again quotes Muller who basically says that if the public were given this opportunity, they would gradually accept it especially once the positive results become evident, 'nothing succeeds like success' he says which will create further adherents. Interestingly a similar thing did in fact occur, as documented in David Plotz's book 'The Genius Factory: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank' (2005).



The book tells the story of Robert Grahams' attempt to create a sperm bank full of nobel prize winning donors, many of them remained anonymous. Here's a quick quote:

'Graham said he was trying to save mankind from
genetic catastrophe. In modern America, the
millionaire complained, cradle to grave social
welfare programs paid incompetents and imbeciles
to reproduce. As a result 'retrograde humans' were
swamping the intelligent minority. This 'dysgenic'
crisis would soon cause the evolutionary regression
of mankind, as well as global communism. How could
we save ourselves? Graham had the answer. Our best
specimens - and 'specimens' is just the kind of word
Graham would use to describe people - must have more
children.' P.4

Which is apparently UFC commentator Joe Rogans' hypotheses of ancient Egypt (dullards outbreeding the elites), which is briefly discussed here (along with video of the remarks):

http://concen.org/forum/showthread.php?t...#pid215358

Continuing with Gorneys' book, he goes on to talk about the program of positive eugenics:

'But naturally, such a program poses a potential
threat to our values more fundamentally than
negative eugenics. It opens the door to the
frightening abuses of compulsion outlined in
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, such as the
creation of special classes best fitted to be
servants to others who are rulers. With good
reason we might fear the consequences of such
a system conducted according to the mad
assumption of racists. And there isthe serious
problem of determining which human qualities
are desirable, especially for future
generations who will live in profoundly
different circumstances. But these sobering
considerations will not prevent the introduction
of both negative and positive eugenic measures
as both knowledge of techniques and general
demand for genetic improvement increase. In fact,
at least in regard to negative eugenics, the
process is already underway.' P.215-216

Amusingly he quotes Walter Landauers' article in Science called 'Aristogenics' during a subsequent discussion on implementing various eugenics efforts:

'The members of the House of Lords would under
this scheme be allowed polygamous marriages,
while knights would be asked to provide semen
to a bank of superior genotypes. Women (married
women for the time being) will presumably be
urged to use the bank by drawing freely on the
account of their choice.' P. 216

If nothing else, it highlights occupational considerations in the decision making of desirable traits which is of greater importance to a centrally planned state and in fact seems largely to be the intention of reverting back to pre-industrial revolution social order combined with modern scientific knowledge. There are obvious parrallels between social order, occupation and dictatorial type society in a study of the Hindu caste system which we'll cover later.

Getting back to Gorney, he discusses future applications of eugenics, primarily the elimination of 'all genetic defects' and mentions a meeting between scientists (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) discussing serious proposals of seeding 'the planet Mars with artificially created lifeforms' which I suppose is nothing out of the ordinary for Sitchinites! Of interest to deeper researchers, Gorney briefly discusses hermaphroditism and the psychological changes in society that would occur, even joking (via a hint) that it would bring new meaning to the term 'motherfucker' in context of hermaphroditic self-reproduction which then leads him to mention the possibility of alterations in humans where, for example, fish-like gills could be developed at the embryonic stage, where structures exist that could be used to create a human subspecies better adapted for underwater work. Going further, he then mentions cloning as a possibility for the continued use of unique individuals and discusses it in a way which reminds me of the movie 'The Boys From Brazil'. Clones could also be used as a spare-parts factory.

These remarks are interesting because they are mentioned in the book 'Futureman: Brave New World or Genetic Nightmare' (1984) by Brian Stableford.



Within the book are numerous pictures of artist conceptions of modified, genetically engineered humans such as the underwater type mentioned by Gorney. The book also has a foreword written by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, some of his novels have been turned into Hollywood movies such as 'Bicentennial Man' and 'I Robot'. With these ideas of cloning and self-reproduction in mind, lets see what former advisor to French President Francois Mitterrand and first President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has to say in his book 'A Brief History of the Future' (2009 English language edition):



Speaking of what Attali calls the first planetary empire (the first attempt at world government) which will come after the collapse of the American empire, Attali predicts:

'Sexuality will be the kingdom of pleasure,
reproduction that of machines.
Hypersurveillance, self-surveillance and then
self-repair will provide what is needed for
it. After repairing diseased organs they will
want to produce them, then create replacement
bodies. First they will produce lineages of
stem cells without destroying the embryo,
which will make genetic therapy ethically
acceptable, and then reproductive cloning.
Finally, they will manufacture the human
being like a made-to-measure artifact, in an
artificial uterus, which will allow the brain
to further develop with charateristics chosen
in advance. The human being will thus have
become a commercial object'. P.208-209

This proposal will lead to a war of resistance and will not be fulfilled until the second attempt at world government or as Attali calls it 'Planetary Democracy'. Finishing off, Bertrand Russell in 'The Scientific Outlook' (2009 reprint of the 1949 second edition) speculates on this proposed future:



'The world of the future will contain a
governing class, probably not hereditary, but
more analogous to the Catholic Church. And this
governing class, as it a acquires increasing
knowledge and confidence, will interfere more
and more with the life of the individual, and
will learn more and more the technique of
causing this interference to be tolerated.....
an oligarchy is unlikely to consider the true
interests of its slaves.' P.167

The Church for most of its history only picked its governers from prominent families, so in point of fact, it would likely be hereditary, although probably selecting from a larger group of families as opposed to a few, but they'll likely practice the eugenic methods discussed previously. On the future world government:

'The society of experts will control
propaganda and education. It will teach
loyalty to the world government, and make
nationalism high treason. The government,
being an oligarchy, will instil submissiveness
into the great bulk of the population,
confining initiative and the habit of command
to its own members. It is possible that it
may invent ingenious ways of concealing its
own power, leaving the forms of democracy
intact, and allowing the plutocrats and
politicians to imagine they are cleverly
controlling these forms.' P.175

In my opinion, such a hidden group has been around for a longtime, even in Russells' day.

'Education in a scientific society may, I think,
be best conceived after the analogy of the
education provided by the Jesuits. The Jesuits
provided one sort of education for the boys who
were to become ordinary men of the world, and
another for for those who were to become members
of the Society of Jesus'. P.181

Considering the power the Jesuits had over governments in the past, we must ask how did they decide who was to be given each type of education? This is fundamental to ask for it gives a clue as to the eugenic selections of such groups and the future world government. It is more likely that instead of 'legitimate genetic superiority' as criteria, these selections where used to legitimise the ruling groups' existing prejudices, thus allowing power to remain amongst a 'controllable' segment. After discussing the various educational methds for the ruled and the rulers, Russell says:

'I think it may be assumed, however, that there
would be a very strong tendency for the
governing class to become hereditary, and that
after a few generations not many children would
be moved from either class into the other. This
is especially likely to be the case if
embryological methods of improving the breed
are applied to the governing class, but not
to the others. In this way the gulf between
the two classes as regards the native
intelligence may become continually wider and
wider'. P.186

Perhaps to speed up this process, methods would also be formulated to weaken the general public but we'll discuss that later, although a good place to start would be F. William Engdahl's 'Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation' (2007).



Continuing with Russell, he basically says that in time, the rulers and the ruled will become 'almost seperate species' (P.188) which reminds me of H.G. Wells' 'The Time Machine' with the morlocks and eloi, troglodytic civilisation, prior technology and.....getting a bit too ahead of myself. Our final quote is again from Russell:

'Perhaps by means of injections and drugs and
chemicals the population could be induced to
bear whatever its scientific masters may decide
to be for its good. New forms ofdrunkenness
involving no subsequent headache may be
discovered, and new forms of intoxication may
be invented so delicious that for their sakes men
are willing to pass their sober hours in misery.
All these are possibilities in a world governed
by knowledge without love, and power without
delight. The man drunk with power is destitute
of wisdom, and so long as he rules the world, the
world will be a place devoid of beauty and of joy'. P.193-194

To be continued.....

Messages sound similar to those on the Georgia Guidestones...


1.Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2.Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.
3.Unite humanity with a living new language.
4.Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.
5.Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6.Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7.Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8.Balance personal rights with social duties.
9.Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.
10.Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature.

Quote:Messages sound similar to those on the Georgia Guidestones
1.Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2.Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.

I was speaking to someone once who didn't work in the most prestigious of jobs. He spent a lot of time listening to radio and reading newspapers, and was somewhat informed although not in terms of alternate ideas, very much mainstream and in the left-right paradigm. He was adamant that some kind of depopulation was necessary. I told him if depopulation did occur would he survive it or be part of the mass culling. I don't think he'd ever thought of that, he just assumed that as a law abiding citizen he would be spared. I told him that due to the nature of his job if the kinds of people he wanted to get rid of were gone, he'd have to find alternative employment and he may not have the skills and could eventually resort to the methods he derided when telling me why certain people should be eliminated. If he didn't fit into the new order, whats to stop the same laws being turned on him?

Thats the thing with depopulation agendas, at some point eugenic type ideas would be considered to test if people are 'fit' to continue, (as was shown in the 2012 movie when the world elites board the 'ark'). Once it is accepted policy it is subject to reform and modification to 'adapt' to the times. I'll try later in the week to review some Rosicrucian literature discussing similar themes of eugenics and the 'utopia'. Bertrand Russell also mentioned a world language to be formulated along the lines of esperanto and of course the Bahai faith advocate this the most. The Bahais are interesting to study because of the characters involved in its startup, its philosophical ideas, its stated goals which conform with the new world order, their links to the United Nations and their headquarters in Israel.

We'll keep it to eugenics in this thread though, and as you mentioned the guidestones, you are aware they are 'signed' by R.C. Christian, suggesting a link to Rosicrucianism and thus the nWo.

It is getting increasingly more difficult to find the time to write up posts like the original in this thread, so the Rosicrucian/occult theme will have to wait unfortunately. Until then, I'll just keep adding eugenic related articles to this thread as and when I find them.

Quote:Welcome to the ESRC Research Centre for Population Change

The ESRC Centre for Population Change was established in January 2009, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council it is the UKs first research centre on population change. Based jointly at the University of Southampton and the National Records of Scotland, the ESRC Centre for Population Change brings together expertise from the Universities of Southampton, St. Andrews, Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Stirling and Dundee as well as the National Records of Scotland and The Office for National Statistics.

The centre undertakes research based around four themes:

Dynamics of fertility and family formation past, present and future
Household dynamics and living arrangements across the life course
The demographic and socio-economic implications of national and transnational migration
Modelling population growth and enhancing the evidence base for policy

The Centre is multi-disciplinary, bringing together over 30 academics and associates drawn from Anthropology, Demography, Economics, Geography, Gerontology, Sociology, Social Policy and Social Statistics. The Centre is directed by Professor Jane Falkingham (Demography) with co-investigators Professor Maria Evandrou (Gerontology) and Dr Elspeth Graham (Geography).

http://www.cpc.ac.uk/

Quote:PIC Population Investigation Committee

The Population Investigation Committee, a small independent research group, was founded in 1936 and since World War II has been housed at LSE.

Apart from publishing a journal, Population Studies, it also offers scholarships to students following a one year masters course with a high demographic content.

In 2011, the PIC will celebrate its 75th anniversary, having held its inaugural meeting on June 15 1936.

February 2011 marks the completion of the PIC archiving project, when the historical records of the PIC will be available at the Wellcome Library. The PIC is very grateful to the Nuffield Foundation, whose generous grant made the archiving project possible.

To mark the completion of the project, the PIC held a half-day Symposium at the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre on the afternoon of Friday 18 February. Abstracts of the presentations may be accessed from the link on the right in the Contents listing. Recordings of these presentations will be available shortly at this site.

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/socialPolicy/resea.../Home.aspx

Quote:The Population Investigation Committee: its history and influence over the last 75 years

The Population Investigation Committee, a small independent research group, was founded in 1936 and since World War II has been housed at the London School of Economics. Prof. Sir Tony Wrigley, Chairman of the Population Investigation Committee 1984-1991 chaired an afternoon symposium to celebrate the launch of the historical archives of the PIC at the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre on Friday 18 February 2011. Abstracts and recordings of the presentations can be found below;


Dr Edmund Ramsden, Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter
From eugenics to political arithmetic: The early history of the PIC

The Population Investigation Committee (PIC) was founded amid considerable controversy surrounding eugenics, birth control, and even the study of population itself. Through the study of demography, its founders, A. M. Carr-Saunders and C. P. Blacker, sought to realise a means of improving the human race that was more consistent with contemporary scientific, social and political values. In their appointment of David Glass, however, the work of the PIC would also reflect the 'political arithmetic' of the great critic of eugenics, Lancelot Hogben. In this paper I will explore this tension between the ideals of social justice, efficiency and improvement as reflected in the demographic surveys of the PIC.


Christopher Langford, London School of Economics and Political Science
David Glass and the PIC

David Glass' early life and work. His political and scientific viewpoint. His work for the Positive Eugenics Committee and the early PIC. The Royal Commission on Population, and later research. The journal Population Studies. The IPU and the IUSSP. His undergraduate and graduate teaching; the MSc. in Demography.


Prof. Michael Wadsworth, Honorary Senior Scientist, MRC Unit for Life Long Health and Ageing
Setting up the 1946 national Birth Cohort Study

The Population Investigation Committee (PIC) was influential in establishing the Royal Commission on Population, and having piloted a study of maternity in the late 1930s, the PIC undertook a national study in 1946. The PIC appointed Dr JWB Douglas to direct the study, and in 1948 they jointly published their influential findings in Maternity in Great Britain (Oxford University Press). Douglas began a follow-up of the babies born in 1946, and the sample selected for that purpose became the first national birth cohort study. The interests of both its director James Douglas and of the PIC's chairman, David Glass, are evident in the study's concern with development in terms of health, growth, cognition and educational attainment. Data from those early years have continued to be of great value in understanding the subsequent life of the sample, in particular health and the processes of ageing, currently being measured at ages 60 to 65 years in over 80 percent of the sample members who are alive and resident in Britain.


Prof. Ian Deary, University of Edinburgh
The Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947

The origins (rationales and aims) of the Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947 are described. The resulting data and findings are summarised. Relationships with the Population Investigation Committee are discussed. The subsequent, including present-day, uses of the Scottish Mental Surveys are described. The latter include work on cognitive ageing and cognitive epidemiology. Surviving members of both Surveys are still being followed up in the Lothian and Aberdeen Birth Cohorts of 1921 and 1936, and some findings from these programmes are presented.


Prof. Richard Smith, University of Cambridge
Revisiting the Demography of the British Peerage

Tom Hollingsworth published his famous demographic study of the British Peerage as a supplement to Population Studies in 1964. The data set which was created in the late 1950s and early 1960s was a particularly early case of computerisation of an historical data set. Since this work was done a half-century ago there have been formidable advances in computing power and techniques for the measurement of mortality from incomplete data have emerged. This paper will report on some of the work done at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population that has enabled significant revisions to Tom Hollingsworth's earlier demographic findings to be made.


Dr Lesley Hall, Wellcome Library
Placing the PIC in the context of the archival record

The PIC archive is not just an important collection in itself, it has strong ties with other archival collections in the Wellcome Library and elsewhere, revealing wide-reaching personal and institutional connections. Its synergistic relationships with these other collections will be explored.

http://www.cpc.ac.uk/latest_news/?action=story&id=70

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Quote:Researchers Say They Proved Abortion Clinics Target Blacks, Hispanics

Monday, 29 August 2011

A new report claims that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry target black and Hispanics by placing abortion facilities in disadvantaged communities.

The report by the anti-abortion group Life Dynamics is titled, Racial Targeting and Population Control, and claims to have validated assertions pro-lifers have made for years — that abortion advocates have purposefully placed abortion centers in urban areas with high percentages of black and Hispanic residents.

Researchers say in their 24-page report that the location of abortion clinics is the modern equivalent of the population control policies against minorities, especially African-Americans.

"The initial response from people defending [pro-abortion] organizations was to claim that they focus their facilities on minority neighborhoods because that is where the need is," the researchers wrote. "Almost immediately, however, they saw that this argument was creating a problem for them. Simply put, it is incompatible with one of their other arguments."

While abortion advocates have claimed that the objective has been to reduce unintended pregnancies, they have also insisted that their focus wasn't promoting abortions to blacks and Hispanics -- but to help in the reduction of unplanned pregnancies by promoting birth control and contraception.

"If that is true, in light of their concession that they have focused these things on the minority community, the obvious result should be that black women have the lowest pregnancy and abortion rates in the country," the researchers further revealed.

To the contrary, a new report by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, a former Planned Parenthood research affiliate, shows that birth control fails to reduce abortions and unplanned pregnancies, especially in lower income minority areas.

"In contemporary America, the rate of pregnancy among black women is almost three times as high as it is for white women and, though they make up less than 13 percent of the female population, black women have about 37 percent of the abortions," according to the researchers.

"In the end, this data speaks for itself and does not require a lot of analysis. The numbers make it clear that the African-American and Hispanic communities have been targeted and logic makes it clear that this did not happen coincidentally or unintentionally," the researchers concluded.

http://www.washingtoninformer.com/index....Itemid=219

http://www.lifenews.com/wp-content/uploa...Report.pdf

Quote:Poverty leaves its mark on DNA, researchers find

CBC News
Posted: Oct 28, 2011

Adults who grew up in poverty show changes in the "programming" of their DNA that may be linked to health problems such as obesity and autoimmune diseases, Canadian and British researchers have found.

Researchers had previously known that DNA is "programmed" in the womb to turn certain genes up or down, and more recently have shown that some programming can continue into childhood and adulthood.

But the study published online this week in the International Journal of Epidemiology is the first to show an actual link between a person's early economic circumstances and the biochemistry of that person's DNA, said Moshe Szyf, a professor of pharmacology at McGill University, who co-authored the study with colleagues at the University of British Columbia and the UCL Institute of Child Health in London.

The researchers examined the DNA in the blood of a group of 40 45-year-old Brits who had been part of an ongoing study since birth. Because of that, the researchers knew whether they grew up in rich or poor families as well as other information about them.

The researchers were looking for a chemical marker called a methyl group that is added to the DNA in certain places through a process known as methylation. That turns genes up or down, meaning they become more or less activated, a phenomenon known as epigenetics.
Adaptation to changing world

"Our DNA is old and it doesn't always fit to the kind of world we're going to live in," Szyf told CBC's Quirks & Quarks in an interview Saturday.

Scientists think a child's DNA methylation respond to signals both before and after birth about what kind of gene function it will need. For example, a child born into a world with plentiful food will not need the ability to store as much food as fat as a child born into a world of famine, Syzf said.

In the study group, those participants who were raised in difficult economic circumstances showed DNA patterns in which groups of genes changed in ways that would have traditionally helped humans adapt to impoverished environments.

For example, there were changes that could boost activity in immunity genes, which did not surprise researchers, because traditionally people who lived in poverty were exposed to lots of disease.

"They see the signal from the mother as being 'it's going to be a harsh world, there's going to be a lot of bacteria around, prepare yourself,'" Syzf said.

He added that the impact of poverty during childhood on the DNA methylation was found to be much greater than the impact of a person's economic circumstances as an adult, or other factors such as whether the mother smoked while pregnant.

Some health problems, such as autoimmune diseases (where a person's immune system attacks their own body), may be common among poor people now because they live differently than poor people in the past, Syzf suggested. For example, today's less well off exist in a much cleaner environment, at least in most Western societies.

"Essentially, you have an immune system that's programmed to deal with something that was anticipated but never happens. And now that immune system starts working against itself."

Syzf said the hope is that early intervention to help poor families could protect children from the response that marks their DNA for life.

He added that researchers now have the tools to test whether such intervention has, in fact, worked.

As well, he said, most drug companies are already working on drugs that can affect methylation, which is chemically reversible.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/...verty.html

---

Quote:Is Alarm About Seven Billion People Just Modern-day Eugenics?

By Russ Wellen, November 3, 2011

On the occasion of the world's population reaching seven billion, William Ryerson, founder and president of Population Media Center and chairman of the Population Institute, told Alanna Shaikh at UN Dispatch:


The first earth day was largely about population growth, then it became taboo. Part of why it become taboo was human rights violations committed by India and China [in the name of population control presumably -- Ed.], and partly was because of Ronald Reagan, who said that population growth was a good thing. He was influenced by Julian Simon, who said [in his book The Ultimate Resource and elsewhere -- Ed.] there was no limit to how many people the planet could support.

Furthermore

There are economists that believe that endless population growth is necessary for economic growth. This is a Ponzi scheme form of economics. It will not last. … Some biologists feel that after oil and fossil fuels are gone, the planet could sustain 2 billion people in a Western European lifestyle. At the Ethiopian lifestyle, we could maybe sustain 10 billion people.

Those of the belief that economic growth requires open-ended population growth would be advised that living Ethiopian-style (or lack thereof) makes for poor consumers. Meanwhile, Ryerson refrains from mentioning those who believe the exploding world population -- the planet's "carrying capacity" -- is an excuse for "global elites" to institute the Great Die-off. According to this world view, by means ranging from neglect to sterilization to dosing with infectious diseases the super-rich hope to re-design the world with a minimal look, population-wise. Since it focuses on no particular group, it's not genocide, just mass murder to the tenth power. An example of this outlook is provided by Webster Tarpley back when he was with Lyndon LaRouche. (His work is often valuable today.)

During their preparations for the United Nations' so-called International Conference on Population and Development, scheduled to be held in Cairo in September of this year [1994], the genocidal bureaucrats of the U.N. are seeking to condition governments and public opinion worldwide to accept the notion of a "carrying capacity" for our planet. In other words, the U.N. butchers would like to establish scientific credibility for the idea that there is an absolute theoretical maximum number of persons the earth can support. Some preliminary documents for the Cairo conference set a world population level of 7.27 billion to be imposed for the year 2050, using compulsory abortion, sterilization, euthanasia and other grisly means.

Note how much sooner we're reaching the number that will trigger these events than was anticipated at the time. Those who believe this cite Malthus at his worst (however imaginative).

All the children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to this level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons … we should facilitate … the operations of nature in producing this mortality. … Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.

Or as James Corbett, whose website The Corbett Report is a media center for open-source intelligence news, claims:

Overpopulation, like the global warming fraud, is a false front for the eugenics program.

Here's an example of quotes that those who subscribe to this line of thinking cite as proof.

“A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Ted Turner

“We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”
Mikhail Gorbachev

“World population needs to be decreased by 50%.”
Henry Kissinger

“Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.”
David Brower, the Sierra Club

Looks like, when it comes to percentages, loose lips sink not only ships but populations. In fact, there may be some truth to the murderous aspirations attributed to the super-rich. It doesn't, however, detract from the need to slow population growth. In fact, we're close to a tipping point, or, pivoting to another cliché, a perfect storm, as Ryerson says.

The combination of rising oil prices and declining water could lead to a perfect storm where suddenly all these things lead to human catastrophe around the planet. … Right now [the World Food Program] responds to famines in Sahel [the North African coast-to-coast zone just below the Sahara] or East Africa but they have never dealt with a billion people starving all at once [with] chaos all over the world as a billion people rampage for food. … There would simply be no ability of the donor countries to respond to a situation of this magnitude. It could happen between 2012 and 2015, according to an estimate by the U.S. military.

Those who dismiss concerns about overpopulation parallel and, as well, are enmeshed with those who deny climate change. Since the price we'll be paying if they're wrong is non-refundable, it's better to be safe than sorry ­ -- to trot out another cliché -- and at least act as if overpopulation and climate change true.

Even small measures, accumulated, can help turn the tide. At the Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders writes about a variation on family planning.

The solution is outlandishly simple. Mexico … did it successfully in less than a decade: You send out teams to villages who explain not how to cut family sizes (an abstract concept) but how to widen the space between children – a concrete act that both parents and children appreciate. Four years between kids, rather than four months, opens up a new world. “… It's the moment when poor families notice they can do better for their children if they have fewer children.”

We'll give Ryerson the last word.

We must persuade governments to celebrate low fertility rates and declining populations.

It might help if religions bought into this too.

http://www.fpif.org/blog/is_alarm_about_...News%29%29

Quote:Scientist Predicts Eugenic Society in 5 Years: Gene Tests to Determine Lover's Compatibility

By Christine Hsu | July 13, 2012

It seems we may be heading into a new era of eugenics, and in the future, instead of choosing to settle with partners we love, we may be choosing them based on the compatibility of our genes, a leading scientist has warned.

Professor Armand Leroi, of Imperial College London, predicts that the ever declining cost of DNA testing means that we may be heading toward a society that is based on genetic superiority.

Leroi told the Euroscience Open Forum 2012, in Dublin, that he expects that in five to 10 years, it will become standard practice for young people to pay to access their entire genetic code, according to The Telegraph.

Naturally, the future generation's desire to have a healthy baby will then lead them to request access to view the genetic blueprint of any prospective long-term partner.

He told researchers attending the major science conference in Dublin that with the information, future couples could then use IVF to weed out offspring with incurable disease.

However, he added that it is unlikely that people will have the "luxury" of using the technology to design babies by intellect or eye color, but will instead focus on stopping genetic diseases.

Speaking in a session titled “I human: are new scientific discoveries challenging our identity as a species”, Leroi said the cost of genetic sequencing has been falling so quickly that “it is going to become very, very accessible, very, very soon”.

As an example, he said that the cost of genetically sequencing a person has fallen from $1 billion more than a decade ago to about $4,000.

He noted that in some ways eugenics are already here, with tens of thousands of babies with Down’s syndrome and other illnesses being aborted every year.

"These processes are very well established in most European countries," he told the conference on Thursday. "Many of the ethical problems that people raise when they speak of neoeugenics are nought once you offer gene selection or mate selection as a eugenic tool. We are actually beginning to identify the genes that make a human.”

"The search for an essence is a 2,000-year-old myth. What we are left with is a sense of capacity and the role of genes in the way they give us these things," he added. “I am certain genome sequencing will be available on the NHS (UK health service) within our lifetimes. It is going to be very, very accessible very, very soon.”

Danish neurobiologist Lone Frank predicts that some countries will embrace the idea.

"Some cultures will say, 'Let’s get a lot of genomes out on the table and see who’s got the best one'," she said, according to the Daily Mail. However, she added that others will see it as an attempt to play God.

Philippa Taylor, of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said that society must "recognize and resist the eugenic mind set," the Daily Mail reported.

"Our society’s increasing obsession with celebrity status, physical perfection and high intelligence fuels the view that the lives of people with disabilities or genetic diseases are somehow less worth living," Taylor said to the UK-based paper.

"We must recognize and resist the eugenic mind set. Our priorities should be to develop treatments and supportive measures for those with genetic disease; not to search them out and destroy them before birth," she added.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/2012071...nfants.htm

Quote:Nikola Tesla the Eugenicist: Eliminating Undesirables by 2100

November 16, 2012

Interest in the life of legendary inventor Nikola Tesla has seen a tremendous resurgence in the past two decades. And with good reason. The man was a genius who was able to take so many of the ideas swirling around in the 19th century ether and turn them into fantastic new inventions — both real and imagined. Tesla’s wondrous imagination made him quite the futurist and here at the Paleofuture blog we’ve looked at some of his remarkably prescient predictions over the past few years.

But the 21st century’s rather fashionable interest in Tesla has had some disturbing side effects. Specifically, people want to canonize the man (sometimes literally) and turn his personal and professional struggles into a sort of morality tale involving clearly delineated characters: some ostensibly good and others ostensibly evil.

Tesla boosters of the 21st century will tell you that Tesla was the embodiment of all that is good in the world — Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal did just that in one of his more recent comics, “Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived.” They’ll tell you that Tesla’s struggles against professional adversaries like Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse (both of whom Tesla worked for at various points in his life) were the most pure examples of good versus evil. This past year, people have been crowdfunding museums and films and any number of other events in an attempt to raise Tesla’s profile and are constantly couching his work in moralistic terms. But I hope that with this renewed excitement for the life’s work of a great inventor people don’t lose sight of one thing: he was a brilliant man, but he was just a man.

Like any man, Tesla was far from perfect and sometimes had very warped ideas about how the world should operate. One of Tesla’s most disturbing ideas was his belief in using eugenics to purify the human race. In the 1930s, Tesla expressed his belief that the forced sterilization of criminals and the mentally ill — which was occurring in some European countries (most disturbingly Nazi Germany) and in many states in the U.S. — wasn’t going far enough. He believed that by the year 2100 eugenics would be “universally established” as a system of weeding out undesirable people from the population.

The February 9, 1935 issue of Liberty magazine includes many other fascinating predictions by Tesla for the future of humanity, which we’ll no doubt look at in the weeks ahead. But for the time being I’ve transcribed only the eugenics portion of Tesla’s predictions below, to remind us that we should be cautious when making gods of men:

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct. Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.

The ideas behind eugenics would become substantially less popular after World War II, for obvious reasons. I doubt that Tesla understood the scope of the atrocities that were being committed in Europe (and at the hands of the California eugenics movement) at the time. But again, his ideas were clear: the world should be rid of so-called undesirables. However unpleasant the idea of eugenics is to reasonable people on its surface, this notion seems particularly strange coming from a man like Tesla, whose own mental illnesses would have likely put him in the “undesirable” category under any authoritarian regime.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofut...s-by-2100/

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Quote:Dorries: Left's pro-choice stance inspired by 'eugenics'

Friday, 26 October 2012 8:00 AM

By Charles Maggs

The left's support for abortion rights stems from its historic relationship with the "eugenics movement", controversial Tory MP Nadine Dorries has said.

The outburst will cause anger on the left due to the movement's close association with theories of racial superiority and the Nazi party.

Asked why the left tends to be more sympathetic to abortion rights, Dorries told politics.co.uk: "I think it goes back to a time when the left was linked very closely to the eugenics movement and people like Marie Stopes, who didn't even attend her own daughter's wedding because she was marrying a man who was wearing glasses.

"That's where I think the left's historic position of abortion stems from."

Eugenics is a biological and social movement which aims to improve the genetic composition of human populations. It was popular in the early Twentieth Century but fell dramatically out of favour after Nazi scientists used it to try and prove theories of racial supremacy.

Dorries argued the left continues to support pro-choice groups, such as AbortionRights, through the trade union movement.

The Mid Bedfordshire MP is currently trying to lower the legal limit on abortions to 20 weeks, from its current limit of 24.

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2012/10/2...y-eugenics

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Quote:The Eugenic Impulse

By Nathaniel Comfort

November 12, 2012

"The ultimate ideal sought," wrote Harvey Ernest Jordan in 1912, "is a perfect society constituted of perfect individuals." Jordan, who would later be dean of medicine at the University of Virginia, was speaking to the importance of eugenics in medicine—­a subject that might seem tasteless and obsolete today. Yet nearly a century later, in 2008, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the biomedical research institute on Long Island's north shore, published a book titled Davenport's Dream, which shows that eugenic visions persist. Charles Davenport, ­a colleague and friend of Jordan's, ­had directed Cold Spring Harbor for the first third of the 20th century, turning it from a sleepy, summertime marine-biology laboratory into a center for genetics research­—and the epicenter of American eugenics.

Davenport's Dream is a facsimile of Davenport's major work, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911), prefaced by nearly 200 pages of commentary by scientists, historians, and legal experts­ celebrating Davenport and expanding on questions of genetics and eugenics in biomedicine. In the volume, the genome guru Maynard V. Olson writes that dbSNP, the database of small genetic variations, makes possible the fulfillment of Davenport's dream. "Here," he writes, "is the raw material for a real science of human genetic perfection."

Davenport thought he had the raw material for a real science of human perfection. The original conception of eugenics, described by the British polymath Sir Francis Galton in the late 19th century, was based on the breeder's subjective, holistic understanding of heredity. The rediscovery of Mendel's rules of heredity in 1900 seemed to place eugenics on an empirical, quantitative, scientific footing. And so it did, ­relative to Sir Francis.

Davenport and his cronies used genetic arguments to promote the betterment of the human race through marriage, immigration, and sterilization laws, as well as through propaganda and research. But eventually, Progressive-era human genetics and eugenics came to seem out of date. Through the second half of the 20th century, Davenport was geneticist non grata, an embarrassing black mark on the pedigree of human genetics, like a Nazi grandfather you'd rather not bring up in conversation. Since the 1970s "eugenics" has been a dirty word. But in Davenport's Dream, the geneticist and historian Elof Carlson insists that eugenics still has a role in our time, and Matt Ridley wrote that "Charles Davenport had the best of intentions"; it's just that his idealism got ahead of his knowledge and of the available technology. What changed? And what didn't?

Davenport dreamed of biologically engineering society. But the mechanisms available to him were primitive and heavy handed. Progressive-era eugenics sought to eliminate undesirable traits (negative eugenics) and cultivate desirable ones (positive eugenics) by population control, mostly through regulating immigration and sex. Eugenicists were interested in the genetics of disease, personality, intelligence, and race—just as we are today. Birth control, marriage restrictions, and sexual sterilization of "defectives" (a medical term still in use as late as the 1970s) were among their means of effecting genetic change. They hoped people would voluntarily do the right thing for the greater good—but if they didn't, the state had a responsibility to do it for (i.e., to) them.

Davenport and others allowed their prejudices to guide their research, leading to simplistic theories and egregious laws. Historians have documented how eugenics was used to discriminate against blacks as well as Southern and Eastern European immigrants; and of course, there is the matter of the "model sterilization law," written by Davenport's superintendent Harry Laughlin, which the Nazis took as the basis for their eugenic sterilization law of 1933. The authors of Davenport's Dream evidently felt that enough time had passed to allow us to bury the scalpel and focus on some of the more positive commonalities between modern genetic medicine and eugenics.

There was indeed a medical side to Progressive-era eugenics that has gotten lost among the more sensational and horrific tales of punitive sterilization and race psychology. This medically oriented eugenics was seen as a kind of long-term public health. It concerned the hereditary component of complex diseases like obesity, mental illness, and predisposition to infectious disease. To these problems, eugenically minded scientists, doctors, and public-health workers applied both the science and the prejudices of the day. They saw negative eugenics as an essential component of any systematic effort to eliminate disease. They meant infectious diseases, like tuberculosis, and various forms of mental retardation, like "amaurotic idiocy," which includes what we call Tay-Sachs disease. They perhaps overestimated the role of the genes—but perhaps so do we.

Medical genetics in the Progressive era, then, was a form of preventive medicine. It still is, by and large. Jordan, in the article already cited, also wrote, "Modern medicine, yielding to the demands of real progress, is becoming less a curative and more a preventive science." Ninety-nine years later, Leroy Hood, one of the pioneers of DNA sequencing, wrote that thanks to genome science, "medicine will move from a reactive mode (curing patients already sick) to a preventive mode (keeping people well)." Modern technology has made preventive medical genetics much simpler and much less authoritarian than in Davenport's day. It is now possible to select individual embryos, and increasingly individual genes, rather than controlling who gets to marry or reproduce. Just as importantly, genetic counselors and other medical professionals give individuals choices over their own reproduction. The social context, then, has changed dramatically, but the promises of genetic medicine have remained constant.

Traditionally, medical genetics has been associated with the elimination of negative clinical traits—disease and mental retardation—rather than the enhancement of positive ones. Indeed, as genetics developed into a mainstream medical specialty, genetic enhancement came to be seen as immoral. In 1989, the pioneering gene therapist W. French Anderson wrote, "Once we step over the line that delineates treatment from enhancement, a Pandora's box would open. On medical and ethical grounds a line should be drawn excluding any form of enhancement engineering."

Since then, molecular genetics has significantly changed what counts as disease. For centuries, diseases have been defined by their symptoms. Increasingly, they are being defined by their mechanisms—by the presence of a malformed enzyme, or even a variation in the DNA. One can now, therefore, have a disease without being sick. Presymptomatic disease is often called "latent" disease. Doctors are increasingly moving from treating disease to treating risk.

This new disease concept can reduce patient suffering by enabling doctors to detect and treat disease before it starts. It is also big business, because it expands the medical clientele to include the entire population. David Nichols, vice dean for education at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, likes to stress biomedicine's growing emphasis on prevention and detection of disease in its "latent phase." When I asked Nichols who, then, counted as a patient, he said, "We are all patients now."

The moral clarity of French Anderson—once the consummate gene cowboy—now seems naïve. How can we distinguish between preventing heart disease and minimizing the consequences of a poor diet? Would reducing the chances of alcohol abuse count as therapy or enhancement? One can upregulate growth hormone just as easily in a dwarf, a person of short stature within the normal range, or someone of average height who simply wishes to be tall. In the end, no logical friction can slow the slide from prevention to enhancement.

Nor is there a defensible line between preventing suffering in individuals and preventing it in the wider population. Ridley and others write of a benign "individual" eugenics. "There is every difference between the goal of individual eugenics and Davenport's goal," writes Ridley in his introduction to Davenport's Dream. "One aims for individual happiness with no thought to the future of the human race; the other aims to improve the race at the expense of individual happiness." The shift from communalism to individual choice has indeed moderated some of the worst abuses of eugenics. Today, reproductive-genetic decisions are made by patients and their families, not by the state. This is a very real and welcome change from a century ago.

But today's self-styled eugenicists by no means ignore the future of the race. Davenport's Dream was only the most sober of a raft of pro-eugenics books published around the turn of the 21st century. This literature has a millennial feel, with titles like Redesigning Humans, Radical Evolution, Enhancing Evolution, More Than Human, and The Price of Perfection. Twenty-first-century eugenicists, while grounded in selfish individualism, cannot resist the allure of taking control of our own evolution, of engineering our future. They gleefully transgress the last sacred moral genetic boundary, solemnly etched by French Anderson. Why not, they ask, design children according to our whims and tastes? Genetic medicine, they tell us, is increasingly enabling us to choose our traits, pick our predispositions, prevent disease and weakness.

The perfect society composed of perfect individuals will be engineered in our biomedical laboratories. The standards of perfection are selected more democratically now, but they are conditioned by the perversities of market pressures and fashion.

"Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution," proclaimed the poster for the 1921 International Eugenics Congress. It is this sense of eugenics that Maynard Olson, Matt Ridley, and others are invoking. For example, in Enhancing Evolution, John Harris proposes "both the wisdom and the necessity of intervening in what has been called the natural lottery of life, to improve things by taking control of evolution and our future development to the point, and indeed beyond the point, where we humans will have changed, perhaps into a new and certainly into a better species altogether."

The goal of all experimental science is to control and ultimately engineer the system at hand. That goal is independent of state control, of sterilization laws, and of Nazi grandfathers. The notion that our gene pool is our most important natural resource and that it must be managed is, if anything, more true today than in the Progressive era.

Eugenics is still a dirty word for many, but if the scientists are using it we have to pay attention. This is not, however, your grandfather's eugenics. Actually, it is closer to your great-great-grandfather's. Sir Francis Galton defined eugenics as the forces under social control that improve "the race"—in his case, alternately the British and humanity at large—"under existing conditions of law and sentiment." Sir Francis sought "not only the restoration of the average worth" of the human race, debased as he saw it by disease and mental degeneration, "but to raise it higher still."

That "restoration" included the elimination of hereditary disease and disability, both physical and mental, and the strengthening of the constitution against infectious disease. Raising it higher still meant improving humankind physically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Sir Francis understood eugenics to be something that everyone capable of rational thought and possessed of a humanitarian, communitarian spirit would enjoin willingly. Today we live under different conditions of laws and sentiment. But as society evolves a eugenic impulse remains.

The eugenic impulse drives us to eliminate disease, to live longer and healthier, with greater intelligence and a better adjustment to the conditions of society. It arises whenever the humanitarian desire for happiness and social betterment combines with an emphasis on heredity as the essence of human nature. It is the aim of control, the denial of fatalism, the rejection of chance. The dream of engineering ourselves, of reducing suffering now and forever.

The question is not one of whether there ought to be such an impulse, whether it should be called eugenics, or even whether biomedicine ought to focus so much on genetics. These things just are. And besides, the health benefits, the intellectual thrill, and the profits of genetic biomedicine are too great for us to do otherwise. Resistance would be ill-advised and futile.

The important questions, rather, concern how to proceed: How do we ensure that appropriate weight is given to the environmental causes of illness? How do we minimize profiteering and racism in this age of selfishness? And above all, how do we know when we know enough to control our own evolution?

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Eugenic...se/135612/

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Quote:

Birth Control

April, 1935, Vol. V. No. 5.
H. Spencer Lewis, Imperator

Our good Frater Albersheim of New York now rises before the Forum to present his important question. You will note that he has introduced the subject of birth control but from a slightly new angle. He has just said that early in the beginning of this year a meeting was held in the East composed of physicians associated with the Roman Catholic Church and that they adopted a resolution strongly condemning birth control as contrary to religion and morals.

He wonders whether we as Rosicrucians would take a more generous position in this matter. He argues in the first place that Rosicrucians do not regard reproductive processes as sinful and that we have a different point of view in regard to the entering of the soul into the unborn child.

Now I do not think that the Rosicrucian Order should take any definite stand one way or the other in regard to birth control except upon purely ethical grounds. I think that I have touched upon this subject heretofore, but will say again that we agree with the view of Mr. Hitler, for instance, in Germany, who is expressing only the view-point that the ancient Greeks had and which all students of present-day social problems agree upon and which scientists have indorsed; namely, that there is too little restriction being placed upon who should marry and who should propagate the future generations of mankind.

In other words, I believe that the doctrine of eugenics should be made universal and enforced if possible and that in addition to the securing of a legal license for marriage in order that there may be no violation of legal laws in connection with marriage, there should be no violation of natural laws either. If we find it necessary to inquire into the past legal history of a man or woman to determine whether he or she is free to marry and are doing no legal injustice to anyone by getting married, we certainly should see to it that they are mentally and physically qualified to marry and that they are doing no physical injustice to the future race.

From the social point of view it is beyond questioning that something must be done to prevent the rapid increase of birth or the unnecessary increase of birth among the poor and unqualified. This alone would argue in favor of some method of birth control. Whether that control should begin with a proper examination of the individuals before marriage or thereafter, is a matter to be determined by those who make the closest study of the subject and not something to be determined by us through passing some impotent resolution. Certainly the resolution passed by the physicians in their assembly will have little or no effect upon the matter.

The individuals concerned will probably determine whether the physicians are right or wrong. The tendency today seems to be toward some method of birth control that is rational and reasonable and when a large majority of the human race decides upon something and has the support of scientific investigations and social experts, the chances are that the majority will follow its inclination despite the dictates of either the physicians or the church they represent.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociop...nforum.htm

On the important difference between voluntary eugenics and forced or bamboozled-from-behind-the-scenes dysgenics:

http://concen.org/forum/thread-42792.html

I look into Eugenics too through videos! Look into these areas: Health Hazards, Population Reduction, and Chemtrails off my site. I'm just an average researcher, but I belong with a group of people researching online. http://www.theteapartytruther.com

No problem with 'voluntary'. The point is it isn't and it won't be. When it becomes enforced by the state, that's when the atrocities will occur. The elites didn't get their way back in the 20th century so they are dysgenically altering people so that the public will demand the state sponsored variety of eugenics.

Just like state sponsored health, news, history etc it will be of benefit to the state first and foremost which means genetically altering people to be of benefit to the state - by then it will probably be the world government and a worldwide caste system.

Its problem - reaction - solution all over again.

What R.R said.

An interesting thread documenting similar themes:

Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People

Quote:Gattaca Alert? Or Should We Welcome the New Age of Eugenics?

Jon Entine,
11/26/2012 @ 7:44PM

Dramatic developments in genetics, including the ability to tinker with our inheritance, has thrust the issue of eugenics back into the headlines. Details from Sarah Fecht and Jon Entine at the Genetic Literacy Project—Where Science Trumps Ideology.

The latest person to take up the cause of the once-discredited movement of eugenics is Nathaniel Comfort, professor at the Institute of the History of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University, whose book, The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine, was recently published.

“The eugenic impulse drives us to eliminate disease, to live longer and healthier, with greater intelligence and a better adjustment to the conditions of society,” he argues in a thought-provoking summary of the arguments in his book in The Chronicle of Higher Education. He claims, provocatively, that eugenics is an irrevocable impulse to improve our selves, and this impulse is playing out in new ways now that society has access to an expanding set of genetic tools.

These are controversial grounds to re-plow. Although often portrayed as offensive by today’s standards, classical eugenics—which means “good genes”—has its roots in the progressive era at the turn of the twentieth century. Social Darwinists propagated the belief that social progress could only be attained by phasing out “undesirable genes.” The scientists who formulated these ideas were, by and large, very much mainstream, and their speculation sounded reasonable to an establishment convinced that it was threatened by an “invasion” of immigrants from Southeastern Europe.

Scientists offered what they considered to be a progressive solution: “positive eugenics,” which would encourage society’s healthiest citizens to have more children—the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was an eager proponent of eugenics—and more tentatively, “negative eugenics.”

The “negative” wing of eugenics prevailed, however, which for the most part meant restricting the mentally ill, poor, immigrants and non-whites from propagating. It served as an inspiration and justification for Nazism and the “Final Solution,” which led to the discrediting of the entire movement.

Now, eugenics is back in vogue with a clear focus on the positive role that genetics can and is playing in medicine and health. As Comfort argues:

“The eugenic impulse drives us to eliminate disease, to live longer and healthier, with greater intelligence and a better adjustment to the conditions of society. It arises whenever the humanitarian desire for happiness and social betterment combines with an emphasis on heredity as the essence of human nature. It is the aim of control, the denial of fatalism, the rejection of chance. The dream of engineering ourselves, of reducing suffering now and forever.”

We are in the “second age of eugenics” as Discover blogger Razib Khan notes. For example, we regularly abort fetuses that test positive for Down syndrome. And because of advances in genetic screening, we are in a position to reduce the frequency of many Mendelian diseases with large effect and high penetration. Genetics companies have sprung up to circumvent some of the ethical concerns by, for example, helping to identify mutation carriers before conception so potentially diseased embryos can be identified in pre-implantation procedures.

These potentially invasive aspects of modern genetics have put both the far left and right on edge. They share what amounts to a religious-like belief that nature and life should be considered inalterable. Pro-life groups and activist groups on the left that argue for the dignity of people with disabilities often campaign vigorously against aborting fetuses known to carry debilitating diseases.

Their case is taken up by activist writer Alex Knapp at Forbes who holds that no one is “eugenically unfit” and society has advanced too far scientifically and morally to allow such practices. He focuses solely on negative eugenics and not the positive impact that family planning and genetic screening have already had on society.

The Center for Genetics and Society, which considers itself a progressive advocacy group, conflates gene therapy with eugenics, arguing that it is socially and ethically reprehensible to alter the genes that we pass on to our children. It’s an odd and somewhat simplistic argument since CGS supports planned parenting which attempts to achieve the same goal, but with far less precision and with the certainty of more unintended consequences. Perhaps CGS is fearful of advanced technology when harnessed for the individual and public good.

Scientist and blogger Gerhard Adams, writing at Science 2.0, raises more sophisticated concerns about the potential for germline manipulation. The eugenics concept itself is flawed, he maintains, because there is no way to determine whether what appears to be a negative trait may also contain benefits, much like the sickle cell trait protects people from contracting malaria. Eliminating the trait could have mixed and potentially dicey consequences.

“Some may argue that we have plenty of evidence from our experiences in animal domestication,” he writes, “yet who would claim that these results are an improvement of the original species? The modifications have made these animals more compliant with human demands, but improved the original species?” He continues that, if given a choice, humans will converge toward genetic homogeneity, which is also bad for the species.

One key problem with Adams’s line of reasoning is that eugenic abortions would not necessarily remove the trait. Eugenics-inspired screening in the Jewish community has but ended Tay Sachs among Orthodox Jews, but the frequency of the allele has not changed. Down syndrome is a spontaneous, and not an inherited trait, so screening and abortions would not impact the germline.

Moreover, modern eugenics aspirations aren’t about top-down measures promoted by the Nazis or the forced sterilizations of the past, as Comfort points out. Instead of being driven by a desire to improve the species, new eugenics is being driven largely by the individual’s personal desire to be as healthy, intelligent and attractive as possible—and for our children to be so.

The main concern is the slippery slope Gattaca argument—that as more people adopt genetic screening, those choices could become less voluntary, or at least hard to turn down. Science 2.0 founder and editor Hank Campbell argues that once it becomes possible to engineer “superior” qualities in human beings, then a parent’s only moral choice will be to have genetically “improved” children.

That may sounds like a real argument but it’s sci-fi in the extreme, and far more “fi” than “sci”. Knapp, CGS and Campbell may appear to be warning against Big Brother but their response to advances in genetic screening would lead to Big Brother-like restrictions. Isn’t this just another iteration of the anti-abortionist (and far left) belief that life is “sacred” and “inviolable”?

Should we limit personal choice in genetic enhancement? In a post about prenatal sex selection and reproductive rights, science blogger Cameron English strikes a sensible balance. “There’s no doubt that we need to consider the difficult ethical questions that arise as our ability to manipulate nature improves,” he writes. “But making ominous predictions and restricting personal choice shouldn’t be a part of that discussion, at least not without evidence.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/20...-eugenics/

Quote:Human enhancement and the future of work - Workshop report

07 November 2012

The Human enhancement and the future of work project explored potential enhancements arising from advances in science and engineering that are likely to impact on the future of work.

Key messages identified by participants at a workshop in March 2012 included:

Enhancement technologies could change how people work. Work will evolve over the next decade, with enhancement technologies potentially making a significant contribution. Widespread use of enhancements might influence an individual’s ability to learn or perform tasks and perhaps even to enter a profession; influence motivation; enable people to work in more extreme conditions or into old age, reduce work-related illness; or facilitate earlier return to work after illness.

Empirical data are needed to guide policy. ‘Known unknowns’ need to be addressed by studies on short- and longterm impacts (both positive and negative) of enhancements on individuals with detailed consideration of social and ethical impacts using deliberative dialogue with users, potential users and wider society and the development of a market map to guide commercialisation. Continuous monitoring to inform the re-assessment of any policy or regulatory decisions is vital but will also require these underpinning data.

Policy must be informed by open dialogue. We must engage publics in open dialogue about the prospects of enhancement technologies and how they might be used at work, particularly given that use at work would affect the entire population, both those employed and not employed. Sources of input should include users of enhancements, older populations, trade unions, as well as those with expertise with novel innovations and technologies. Policy-makers and publics must be equipped to recognize circumstances in which, for example, claims around the benefits of new technologies are inflated.

The cost of technologies will be crucial. Cost and cost–benefit analysis are clearly key factors in determining who funds provision, which in turn will impact on equality and justice. Cost also drives investment decisions and will therefore be important in determining commercialization opportunities.

The availability of enhancements will be influential. Although the cost of some enhancement technologies will render them inaccessible to all but the very few, raising questions of equality and justice, other technologies such as pharmacological cognition enhancers, are already readily available through the internet—posing imminent challenges for effective regulation. Likewise, digital devices and services with the potential to influence cognition are emerging continuously with little research into the risks and benefits.

Interdisciplinary approaches will be key to moving forward. In developing new technologies, whether they are cognitive training or bionic limbs, interdisciplinary approaches will facilitate better understanding of how best to proceed. This also applies to implementation: if any enhancement is seen as valuable, scientists need to work together with social scientists, philosophers, ethicists, policy-makers and the public to discuss the ethical and moral consequences of enhancement, and thus to harness maximum benefit with minimal harm.

The report of the workshop is a record of the discussion that took place at the event, and does not necessarily reflect the policy of the academies.

http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/...op-report/

Quote:Eugenics: the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left's closet

Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian, Friday 17 February 2012

Does the past matter? When confronted by facts that are uncomfortable, but which relate to people long dead, should we put them aside and, to use a phrase very much of our time, move on? And there's a separate, but related, question: how should we treat the otherwise admirable thought or writings of people when we discover that those same people also held views we find repugnant?

Those questions are triggered in part by the early responses to Pantheon, my new novel published this week under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. The book is a thriller, set in the Oxford and Yale of 1940, but it rests on several true stories. Among those is one of the grisliest skeletons in the cupboard of the British intellectual elite, a skeleton that rattles especially loudly inside the closet of the left.

It is eugenics, the belief that society's fate rested on its ability to breed more of the strong and fewer of the weak. So-called positive eugenics meant encouraging those of greater intellectual ability and "moral worth" to have more children, while negative eugenics sought to urge, or even force, those deemed inferior to reproduce less often or not at all. The aim was to increase the overall quality of the national herd, multiplying the thoroughbreds and weeding out the runts.

Such talk repels us now, but in the prewar era it was the common sense of the age. Most alarming, many of its leading advocates were found among the luminaries of the Fabian and socialist left, men and women revered to this day. Thus George Bernard Shaw could insist that "the only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man", even suggesting, in a phrase that chills the blood, that defectives be dealt with by means of a "lethal chamber".

Such thinking was not alien to the great Liberal titan and mastermind of the welfare state, William Beveridge, who argued that those with "general defects" should be denied not only the vote, but "civil freedom and fatherhood". Indeed, a desire to limit the numbers of the inferior was written into modern notions of birth control from the start. That great pioneer of contraception, Marie Stopes – honoured with a postage stamp in 2008 – was a hardline eugenicist, determined that the "hordes of defectives" be reduced in number, thereby placing less of a burden on "the fit". Stopes later disinherited her son because he had married a short-sighted woman, thereby risking a less-than-perfect grandchild.

Yet what looks kooky or sinister in 2012 struck the prewar British left as solid and sensible. Harold Laski, stellar LSE professor, co-founder of the Left Book Club and one-time chairman of the Labour party, cautioned that: "The time is surely coming … when society will look upon the production of a weakling as a crime against itself." Meanwhile, JBS Haldane, admired scientist and socialist, warned that: "Civilisation stands in real danger from over-production of 'undermen'." That's Untermenschen in German.

I'm afraid even the Manchester Guardian was not immune. When a parliamentary report in 1934 backed voluntary sterilisation of the unfit, a Guardian editorial offered warm support, endorsing the sterilisation campaign "the eugenists soundly urge". If it's any comfort, the New Statesman was in the same camp.

According to Dennis Sewell, whose book The Political Gene charts the impact of Darwinian ideas on politics, the eugenics movement's definition of "unfit" was not limited to the physically or mentally impaired. It held, he writes, "that most of the behavioural traits that led to poverty were inherited. In short, that the poor were genetically inferior to the educated middle class." It was not poverty that had to be reduced or even eliminated: it was the poor.

Hence the enthusiasm of John Maynard Keynes, director of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944, for contraception, essential because the working class was too "drunken and ignorant" to keep its numbers down.

We could respond to all this the way we react when reading of Churchill's dismissal of Gandhi as a "half-naked fakir" or indeed of his own attraction to eugenics, by saying it was all a long time ago, when different norms applied. That is a common response when today's left-liberals are confronted by the eugenicist record of their forebears, reacting as if it were all an accident of time, a slip-up by creatures of their era who should not be judged by today's standards.

Except this was no accident. The Fabians, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and their ilk were not attracted to eugenics because they briefly forgot their leftwing principles. The harder truth is that they were drawn to eugenics for what were then good, leftwing reasons.

They believed in science and progress, and nothing was more cutting edge and modern than social Darwinism. Man now had the ability to intervene in his own evolution. Instead of natural selection and the law of the jungle, there would be planned selection. And what could be more socialist than planning, the Fabian faith that the gentlemen in Whitehall really did know best? If the state was going to plan the production of motor cars in the national interest, why should it not do the same for the production of babies? The aim was to do what was best for society, and society would clearly be better off if there were more of the strong to carry fewer of the weak.

What was missing was any value placed on individual freedom, even the most basic freedom of a human being to have a child. The middle class and privileged felt quite ready to remove that right from those they deemed unworthy of it.

Eugenics went into steep decline after 1945. Most recoiled from it once they saw where it led – to the gates of Auschwitz. The infatuation with an idea horribly close to nazism was steadily forgotten. But we need a reckoning with this shaming past. Such a reckoning would focus less on today's advances in selective embryology, and the ability to screen out genetic diseases, than on the kind of loose talk about the "underclass" that recently enabled the prime minister to speak of "neighbours from hell" and the poor as if the two groups were synonymous.

Progressives face a particular challenge, to cast off a mentality that can too easily regard people as means rather than ends. For in this respect a movement is just like a person: it never entirely escapes its roots.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...loset-left