Category Archives: Eugenics

Farm swaps cows for goats amid changing industry

Fluctuating milk prices and rising costs have driven some small family farms to either go big or leave the industry. Two brothers operating their familys dairy farm in Vermont made the drastic decision to give up hundreds of cows for goats. (July 20)

AP

BURLINGTON, Vt. Out of the nearly 7,000 farms in Vermont, only 17 are Black-owned, according to the 2017 U.S. agriculture census. A $2 million fundis seeking to expand access to farm land ownership in Vermont for people who have been historically denied land based on their race.

The design and governance of this "land sovereignty" fund will bedetermined byBlack, Indigenous, and other people of color. Itis part of a broader$6 million initiative by theHigh Meadows Fund, Vermont Community Foundation, and Vermont Land Trust to promote the economic viability, sustainability, and diversity of farming in Vermont.

"The historic Clemmons farm is one of the few Black-owned farms remaining in the state and nation.We look forward to joining hands with others to support the important work ahead," said Lydia Clemmons,executive director of the Clemmons Family Farm in Charlotte.

The Vermont Land Trust permanently restricts development of land using a legal tool called conservation easement. Since 1977, they have conserved 11% of the state's land, over 590,000 acres, most of which is actively farmed or managed for timber by private owners.

Nationally, Black land ownership has declined by nearly 90% over the last century, resulting in a total loss of36.7 million acres,according to Census of Agriculture data. Investigations by Mother Jones and The Atlantic attribute this decline toracist government policies,discriminatory lendingpractices, white vigilantism, and police violence.

Indigenous people have lost 1.5 billion acres of land since the founding of the U.S., according toUniversity of Georgia historian Claudio Saunt.

"Indigenous communities, once the sole stewards of Vermonts land, have been diminished and marginalized by centuries of displacement and discrimination, including the eugenics movement in Vermont in the early 20th century," the High Meadows Fund wrotein a press release about the new grant.

Contact April Fisher at amfisher@freepressmedia.com. Followher on Twitter: @AMFisherMedia

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In Vermont, just 17 of the 7,000 farms are Black-owned. A new grant seeks to expand access. - USA TODAY

SPRINGFIELD, Vt.

At This Place in History were in Springfield, Vt. with Executive Director of the Vermont Historical Society Steve Perkins.

We are going to be talking about Helen Hartness Flanders, who was born here in Springfield, the daughter of James Hartness, who served as governor of the state when she was an adult. But, what shes really known for is as this great folklorist, a person who studied the ballads and songs of New England. She focused mostly on the English tradition, but also moved somewhat into the French Canadian tradition as well, explained Perkins.

She was educated here in Springfield and performed in the choirs. I think she had a real affinity for song and how song could tell a story of our past. Often, if you think about folks who couldnt write their histories down, they could pass it down orally. Thats something that she really looked into.

She left her collection to Middlebury College in the 1940s and most of it is digitized and online. And, its a vast collection. She started working on this in 1930 when she was commissioned by the Vermont Commission on Country Life, which is fraught because that commission is also what gave rise to the Eugenics Survey. I just wanted to note that.

But, her work was on ballads and folklore of the area. And, she continued with that work almost up until her death in 1972. She started off her career recording out in the field on wax cylinders. Then, later she moved onto aluminum discs and acetate disks and then later reel to reel, said Perkins.

She worked with a number [of big names] but I think the biggest name that most people know about is Alan Lomax. Alan Lomax created the American Folklife Collection at the Library of Congress. All of her recordings that she did when she was doing field research with Lomax are housed there, as well, concluded Perkins.

For more from our This Place in History series, click here.

To view a map of Vermonts roadside historic site markers, click here.

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This Place in History: Helen Hartness Flanders - Local 22/44 News

PBS premieres for a national audience the documentary film Cured on Monday, October 11.

This film by Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer profiles the development, expansion, and eventual victory of activists both outside and inside the ranks of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its manual of mental illnesses, its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and the often-contentious debate surrounding the change.

Related: Drag queens stormed a psychiatric convention to demand they stop saying gays are sick. I was there.

The film begins from a context in which conservative religious denominations defined homosexuals as sinful, government prosecuted homosexuals as criminal, and the psychiatric profession judged them as sick.

Interviewing key eyewitnesses, including Charles Silverstein, Rev. Magora Kennedy, Kay Lahusen, and Frank Kameny, combined with rare archival footage, this important film unearthed the history of how a relatively small group of committed and fervent activists stood up to demand one of the central tenets of liberation: the freedom to define themselves.

The histories of homosexuality, bisexuality, and gender diversity are filled with incredible pain and enormous pride. Medical and psychological professions have often proposed and addressed, in starkly medical terms, the alleged deficiencies and mental diseases of LGBTQ people.

During what has come to be known as the Eugenics Movement in science, some scientists viewed people attracted to their own sex as constituting a distinct biological or racial type those who could be distinguished from heterosexual people through anatomical markers.

For example, Dr. G. Frank Lydston, U. S. urologist, surgeon, and professor from Chicago, in 1889 delivered a lecture at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago in which he referred to homosexuals as sexual perverts who are physically abnormal.

the unfortunate class of individuals who are characterized by perverted sexuality have been viewed in the light of their moral responsibility rather than as the victims of a physical and incidentally of a mental defect. Even to the moralist there should be much satisfaction in the thought that a large class of sexual perverts are physically abnormal rather than morally leprous.

Also the American doctor Allan McLane Hamilton wrote in 1896 that the [female homosexual] is usually of a masculine type, or if she presented none of the characteristics of the male, was a subject of pelvic disorder, with scanty menstruation, and was more or less hysterical and insane.

Physician Perry M. Lichtenstein wrote in 1921 that: A physical examination of [female homosexuals] will in practically every instance disclose an abnormally prominent clitoris.

And in 1857 in France, Ambroise Tardieu wrote: This degeneracy is evidenced in men who engage in same-sex eroticism by their underdeveloped, tapered penis resembling that of a dog, and a naturally smooth anus lacking in radial folds.

Rather than considering homosexuality, bisexuality, and gender diversity as differences along a broad spectrum of human potential, some sectors of the medical and psychological communities forced pathologizing language onto queer and trans people.

Dr. Sigmund Freud, for example, saw homosexuality as a developmental disorder, a fixation at one of the intermediate pregenital stages. He believed this was caused, at least in part, by an incomplete resolution in males of the Oedipal complex.

Freud wrote in a 1935 letter to a mother who had asked him to treat her sons homosexuality:

Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development.

The Swiss physician August Forel wrote in 1905:

The [sexual] excesses of female inverts exceed those of the male, and this is their one thought night and day, almost without interruption. [Male inverts] feel the need for passive submission and occupy themselves with feminine pursuits. Nearly all [female and male] inverts are in a more or less marked degree psychopaths or neurotics.

Educational opportunities for primarily middle-class white women improved somewhat during mid-19th century in the U.S. Often locked out of most institutions of higher learning, several womens colleges were founded, such as Mt. Holyoke College, Vassar, Smith College, Wellesley College, and Bryn Mawr.

There were, however, many conservative critics who attacked this new trend warning that educated women would be unfit to fill traditional roles in society. Others, like Dr. Edward Clarke, in 1873 said that study would interfere with womens fertility, causing them chronic uterine disease.

Dr. Havelock Ellis concluded that:

Womens colleges are the great breeding ground of lesbianism. When young women are thrown together, they manifest an increasing affection by the usual tokens. They kiss each other fondly on every occasion They learn the pleasure of direct contact and after this, the normal sex act fails to satisfy them.

Ellis posited that female homosexuality was increasing because of the rise of feminism, which taught women to be independent of men.

All of this has resulted in members of the medical professions committing LGBTQ people to hospitals, mental institutions, and jails, and forced pre-frontal lobotomies, electroshock, castration, and sterilization. We have been made to endure aversion therapy, reparative therapy, Christian counseling, hormonal castration, and genetic counseling.

One of the antagonists in Cured is physician Irving Bieber who co-authored a study in 1962, Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals sponsored by the New York Society of Psychoanalysts, in which he concluded that homosexuality constituted a psychopathology that could be cured or prevented with psychoanalysis.

Bieber later was quoted in 1973 saying: A homosexual is a person whose heterosexual function is crippled, like the legs of a polio victim.

In addition, the psychiatrist Charles Socarides, founder of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), argued that homosexuality is an illness, a neurosis, possibly caused by an over-attachment to the mother, which he said could be treated. Bieber and Socrarides became the authoritative and often-referenced researchers in the area of causation and treatment of homosexuality.

Cured profiles the street activism, including when I and my compatriots of the Gay Liberation Front and Gay May Day collective, friends from the Mattachine Society, and members of the newly formed Gay Activists Alliance stormed the APA convention in May 1971 at the Shorham Hotel in Washington as Franklin Kameny of Mattachine D.C. leapt upon the stage and declared war on the psychiatric profession.

The year following, APA held its next annual conference in Dallas. Barbara Gittings and Franklin Kameny again presented their views and facilitated a workshop discussion, this time joined by Dr. H. Anonymous (a.k.a. psychiatrist Dr. John E. Fryer) wearing a costume mask to hide his identity who discussed his experiences as a gay psychiatrist and member of the APA.

By 1973, the APA had finally changed its designation of homosexuality for those comfortable with their sexual orientation, now asserting that it does not constitute a disorder: [H]omosexuality per seimplies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities.

Two years later, in 1975, the American Psychological Association followed suit and urged mental health professionals to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with homosexual orientations.

The APA announced in its 2013 DSM-V that the diagnosis of gender identity disorder, which the manual has imposed upon transgender people since it published DSM-III in 1980, underwent what the APA subcommittee deciding on the change considered as a more neutral designation, gender dysphoria, which they saw as descriptive rather than diagnostic and pathologizing.

Curedmakes clear the truth in Margaret Mead, the American cultural anthropologists statement: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, its the only thing that ever has.

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PBS's new film Cured tells the story of how LGBTQ people stopped being sick - LGBTQ Nation

NEW YORK The lack of diversity within the genetics and genomics workforce not only means that it does not reflect the population it servesbut could also undermine patient care, according to a roundtable discussion organized by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

This lack of diversity is particularly stark among genetic counselors where 90 percent of the workforce is white. Having the workforce better reflect the population it aims to serve the most recent US Census has found that an increasing proportion of the US population identifies as belonging to a minority group will also lead to better patient access and care.

"Having a diverse workforce is not just a nice thing to do," Sylvia Mann, the genomics section supervisor at the Hawaii State Department of Health, said during the roundtable presentations. "There is evidence that having a diverse workforce and student body is really supportive of services to underserved communities."

But there are a number of barriers to increased diversity, including a lack of exposure to the field, few role models, and a lack of support, according to the NASEM roundtable held this week. There are, though, ways to address some of those issues, such as through pathway programs, mentorship, and better reimbursement and pay for genetics professionals.

"Representation matters, and we have to invest in changing the professional profile of those involved in the genomics workforce," Altovise Ewing, a senior science leader at Genentech, added during the roundtable.

The past year has led to an increased focus on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice across society following the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests. This has prompted organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science to look into how to make both itself and the sciences more diverse. Similarly, the US National Human Genome Research Instituterecently announced an initiative to "adopt diversity as an ethos," especially in light of the field's past ties to eugenics.

However, the field has also had to grapple with current signs of overt racism, including incidents that led to the resignation of the outgoing president of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomicsand theeditor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The lack of diversity also has effects on patients, according to Ewing, limiting the reach of the benefits gained from genetics and genomics.

Because the workforce is predominately white, most genetic and genomic research has focused on a white, European-ancestry population and on research questions of concern to that population. Recent studies, for instance, have estimated that nearly 80 percent of individualsin genome-wide association studies have been of European ancestry. Such studies, when brought into the clinic, lead to unequal treatment of patients because less is then known about disease-associated variants that may be more common among other ancestry populations, which then affects professional and practice guidelines.

"This translates into inequities in opportunities for patients and families to engage in precision care, preventative screening, and innovative research options that will potentially stop diseases such as cancer in its tracks," Ewing said.

A more diverse workforce may identify research questions of interest and importance to different communities as well as lead to better communication with a diverse patient population through shared experiences and culture.

Addressing barriers

There are many known barriers to healthcare careers, Mann noted, including, for instance, a lack of exposure to fields like genetic counseling, a lack of role models or poor advising, and financial constraints, among others. Admission requirements like shadowing a genetic counselor or great reliance on MCAT scorescan also be a hindrance.

There are, though, ongoing programs aimed at addressing some of these barriers.

Omar Abdul-Rahman, the director of genetic medicine at the Munroe-Meyer Institute at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, for instance, is reaching out to high school students with the UNMC High School Alliance program.

Through the program, about 50 students a year spend about two hours a day on campus where they take classes taught by faculty and also spend about one afternoon a week learning about different career paths. The Omaha public schools are about 36 percent white, 25 percent Black, 26 percent Asian, and 6.5 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to Abdul-Rahman.

"We really need to think about getting that early exposure and going as early as possible because the effects of structural racism really start very, very early in the elementary and high school years," Abdul-Rahman said.

At the same time, Barbara Harrison, a genetic counselor at Howard University College of Medicine, added that pipeline programs linking, for instance, graduate programs in genetic counseling to historically Black colleges and universities or other undergraduate institutions serving underrepresented groups could help reach qualified applicants. She noted that though HBCUs represent 3percent of degree-granting institutions in the US, in 2013 they represented 17 percent of the colleges that supplied the most African American applicants to medical school.

Mentorship programs, Harrison noted, can also help interested college students who are not as familiar with the academic system to navigate the application process and its associated costs.

She added that the Genetics Opportunity Learning Development & Empowerment Networkis focused on increasing the number of Black genetic counselors by both raising awareness about the field and mentoring prospective applicants.

Hawaii's Mann added that programs should also try to ensure they are a safe space for minority students once they do arrive. "We get horrific stories about training programs and experiences in clinical rotations, and things like that are just bad for our minority students," she said.

Part of creating a safe space is to have institutional policies on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. This, Mann noted, is more than having an online training module about diversity but involves committing to open communication so students can discuss problems as well as having clear and transparent responses to any issues.

Having diverse faculty also helps to create a safe space, she added, noting that these faculty members can then be the next training program leaders. The Western States Regional Genetics Network, for which Mann serves as the project director, has a Minority Genetic Professionals Network for students, trainees, and professionals. In addition to its mentoring program, it also offers leadership training.

Overall, according to the American Society for Human Genetics' Chazeman Jackson, a roundtable moderator, there is a "societal imperative to bring diversity into genetics and genomics services, [and] the workforce must reflect the world we aim to serve and empower patients with agency. And if that doesn't happen, then we reduce our reach, we stifle our advancements, and we impede inclusion."

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Barriers Prevent Diversity Within Genetics Workforce, But Some Programs Aim to Bolster Representation - GenomeWeb

Jeffrey E. Epstein, the wealthy financier who is accused of sex trafficking, had an unusual dream: He hoped to seed the human race with his DNA by impregnating women at his vast New Mexico ranch.

Mr. Epstein over the years confided to scientists and others about his scheme, according to four people familiar with his thinking, although there is no evidence that it ever came to fruition.

Mr. Epsteins vision reflected his longstanding fascination with what has become known as transhumanism: the science of improving the human population through technologies like genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. Critics have likened transhumanism to a modern-day version of eugenics, the discredited field of improving the human race through controlled breeding.

Mr. Epstein, who was charged in July with the sexual trafficking of girls as young as 14, was a serial illusionist: He lied about the identities of his clients, his wealth, his financial prowess, his personal achievements. But he managed to use connections and charisma to cultivate valuable relationships with business and political leaders.

Interviews with more than a dozen of his acquaintances, as well as public documents, show that he used the same tactics to insinuate himself into an elite scientific community, thus allowing him to pursue his interests in eugenics and other fringe fields like cryonics.

Lawyers for Mr. Epstein, who has pleaded not guilty to the sex-trafficking charges, did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Epstein attracted a glittering array of prominent scientists. They included the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered the quark; the theoretical physicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking; the paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould; Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and best-selling author; George M. Church, a molecular engineer who has worked to identify genes that could be altered to create superior humans; and the M.I.T. theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, a Nobel laureate.

The lure for some of the scientists was Mr. Epsteins money. He dangled financing for their pet projects. Some of the scientists said that the prospect of financing blinded them to the seriousness of his sexual transgressions, and even led them to give credence to some of Mr. Epsteins half-baked scientific musings.

Scientists gathered at dinner parties at Mr. Epsteins Manhattan mansion, where Dom Prignon and expensive wines flowed freely, even though Mr. Epstein did not drink. He hosted buffet lunches at Harvards Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which he had helped start with a $6.5 million donation.

Others flew to conferences sponsored by Mr. Epstein in the United States Virgin Islands and were feted on his private island there. Once, the scientists including Mr. Hawking crowded on board a submarine that Mr. Epstein had chartered.

The Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker said he was invited by colleagues including Martin Nowak, a Harvard professor of mathematics and biology, and the theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss to salons and coffee klatsches at which Mr. Epstein would hold court.

While some of Mr. Pinkers peers hailed Mr. Epstein as brilliant, Mr. Pinker described him as an intellectual impostor.

He would abruptly change the subject, A.D.D.-style, dismiss an observation with an adolescent wisecrack, Mr. Pinker said.

Another scientist cultivated by Mr. Epstein, Jaron Lanier, a prolific author who is a founder of virtual reality, said that Mr. Epsteins ideas did not amount to science, in that they did not lend themselves to rigorous proof. Mr. Lanier said Mr. Epstein had once hypothesized that atoms behaved like investors in a marketplace.

Mr. Lanier said he had declined any funding from Mr. Epstein and that he had met with him only once after Mr. Epstein in 2008 pleaded guilty to charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Mr. Epstein was willing to finance research that others viewed as bizarre. He told one scientist that he was bankrolling efforts to identify a mysterious particle that might trigger the feeling that someone is watching you.

At one session at Harvard, Mr. Epstein criticized efforts to reduce starvation and provide health care to the poor because doing so increased the risk of overpopulation, said Mr. Pinker, who was there. Mr. Pinker said he had rebutted the argument, citing research showing that high rates of infant mortality simply caused people to have more children. Mr. Epstein seemed annoyed, and a Harvard colleague later told Mr. Pinker that he had been voted off the island and was no longer welcome at Mr. Epsteins gatherings.

Oct. 6, 2021, 6:32 p.m. ET

Then there was Mr. Epsteins interest in eugenics.

On multiple occasions starting in the early 2000s, Mr. Epstein told scientists and businessmen about his ambitions to use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies, according to two award-winning scientists and an adviser to large companies and wealthy individuals, all of whom Mr. Epstein told about it.

It was not a secret. The adviser, for example, said he was told about the plans not only by Mr. Epstein, at a gathering at his Manhattan townhouse, but also by at least one prominent member of the business community. One of the scientists said Mr. Epstein divulged his idea in 2001 at a dinner at the same townhouse; the other recalled Mr. Epstein discussing it with him at a 2006 conference that he hosted in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.

The idea struck all three as far-fetched and disturbing. There is no indication that it would have been against the law.

Once, at a dinner at Mr. Epsteins mansion on Manhattans Upper East Side, Mr. Lanier said he talked to a scientist who told him that Mr. Epsteins goal was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in a tiny town outside Santa Fe. Mr. Lanier said the scientist identified herself as working at NASA, but he did not remember her name.

According to Mr. Lanier, the NASA scientist said Mr. Epstein had based his idea for a baby ranch on accounts of the Repository for Germinal Choice, which was to be stocked with the sperm of Nobel laureates who wanted to strengthen the human gene pool. (Only one Nobel Prize winner has acknowledged contributing sperm to it. The repository discontinued operations in 1999.)

Mr. Lanier, the virtual-reality creator and author, said he had the impression that Mr. Epstein was using the dinner parties where some guests were attractive women with impressive academic credentials to screen candidates to bear Mr. Epsteins children.

Mr. Epstein did not hide his interest in tinkering with genes and in perpetuating his own DNA.

One adherent of transhumanism said that he and Mr. Epstein discussed the financiers interest in cryonics, an unproven science in which peoples bodies are frozen to be brought back to life in the future. Mr. Epstein told this person that he wanted his head and penis to be frozen.

Southern Trust Company, Mr. Epsteins Virgin Island-incorporated business, disclosed in a local filing that it was engaged in DNA analysis. Calls to Southern Trust, which sponsored a science and math fair for school children in the Virgin Islands in 2014, were not returned.

In 2011, a charity established by Mr. Epstein gave $20,000 to the World Transhumanist Association, which now operates under the name Humanity Plus. The groups website says that its goal is to deeply influence a new generation of thinkers who dare to envision humanitys next steps.

Mr. Epsteins foundation, which is now defunct, also gave $100,000 to pay the salary of Ben Goertzel, vice chairman of Humanity Plus, according to Mr. Goertzels rsum.

I have no desire to talk about Epstein right now, Mr. Goertzel said in an email to The New York Times. The stuff Im reading about him in the papers is pretty disturbing and goes way beyond what I thought his misdoings and kinks were. Yecch.

Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor emeritus of law at Harvard, recalled that at a lunch Mr. Epstein hosted in Cambridge, Mass., he steered the conversation toward the question of how humans could be improved genetically. Mr. Dershowitz said he was appalled, given the Nazis use of eugenics to justify their genocidal effort to purify the Aryan race.

Yet the lunches persisted.

Everyone speculated about whether these scientists were more interested in his views or more interested in his money, said Mr. Dershowitz, who was one of Mr. Epsteins defense lawyers in the 2008 case.

Luminaries at Mr. Epsteins St. Thomas conference in 2006 included Mr. Hawking and the Caltech theoretical physicist Kip S. Thorne. One participant at that conference, which was ostensibly on the subject of gravity, recalled that Mr. Epstein wanted to talk about perfecting the human genome. Mr. Epstein said he was fascinated with how certain traits were passed on, and how that could result in superior humans.

Mr. Epstein appears to have gained entree into the scientific community through John Brockman, a literary agent whose best-selling science writers include Richard Dawkins, Daniel Goleman and Jared Diamond. Mr. Brockman did not respond to requests for comment.

For two decades, Mr. Brockman presided over a series of salons that matched his scientist-authors with potential benefactors. (The so-called billionaires dinners apparently became a model for the gatherings at Mr. Epsteins East 71st Street townhouse, which included some of the same guests.)

In 2004, Mr. Brockman hosted a dinner at the Indian Summer restaurant in Monterey, Calif., where Mr. Epstein was introduced to scientists, including Seth Lloyd, the M.I.T. physicist. Mr. Lloyd said that he found Mr. Epstein to be charming and to have interesting ideas, although they turned out to be quite vague.

Also at the Indian Summer dinner, according to an account on the website of Mr. Brockmans Edge Foundation, were the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Jeff Bezos, who was accompanied by his mother.

All the good-looking women were sitting with the physicists table, Daniel Dubno, who was a CBS producer at the time and attended the dinner, was quoted as saying. Mr. Dubno told The Times that he did not recall the dinner or having said those words.

Mr. Brockman was Mr. Gell-Manns agent, and Mr. Gell-Mann, in the acknowledgments section of his 1995 book The Quark and the Jaguar, thanked Mr. Epstein for his financial support.

However impressive his roster of scientific contacts, Mr. Epstein could not resist embellishing it. He claimed on one of his websites to have had the privilege of sponsoring many prominent scientists, including Mr. Pinker, Mr. Thorne and the M.I.T. mathematician and geneticist Eric S. Lander.

Mr. Pinker said he had never taken any financial or other support from Mr. Epstein. Needless to say, I find Epsteins behavior reprehensible, he said.

Mr. Thorne, who recently won a Nobel Prize, said he attended Mr. Epsteins 2006 conference, believing it to be co-sponsored by a reputable research center. Other than that, I have had no contact with, relationship with, affiliation with or funding from Epstein, he said. I unequivocally condemn his abhorrent actions involving minors.

Lee McGuire, a spokesman for Mr. Lander, said he has had no relationship with Mr. Epstein. Mr. Epstein appears to have made up lots of things, Mr. McGuire said, and this seems to be among them.

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Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA ...

Francis Galton was an English explorer and anthropologist best known for his research in eugenics and human intelligence. He was the first to study the effects of human selective mating.

Francis Galton was an explorer and anthropologist known for his studies in eugenics and human intelligence. As a child, Galton rejected conventional methods of teaching, and he began studying medicine in his teens. He soon embraced a passion for travel with the help from a sufficient fortune left to him from his father. A cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton researched the implications of Darwins theory of evolution, focusing on human genius and selective mating.

Francis Galton spent much of his life dedicated to research and critical inquiries into several different subject areas, from exploration to eugenics to weather to fingerprints. He was born on February 16, 1822, and grew up in a wealthy family near Birmingham, England. At an early age, he began to show great intellectual promise.

At first, Galton planned to become a doctor. He studied medicine at Birmingham's General Hospital and at King's College in London in the late 1830s. But he abandoned this idea and went on to study mathematics at Cambridge University. After his father's death in 1844, Galton received a substantial inheritance. This inheritance enabled him to pursue whatever topic piqued his curiosity. And he soon decided that it was time to explore more distant shores.

In the mid-1840s, Galton made his first trip to the Middle East and Africa. He went to Egypt and traveled down the Nile River to the Sudan, among other destinations in the area. His travels inspired him to undertake an exploration of southern Africa. In 1850, Galton joined the Royal Geographical Society and soon set off on his journey, with the society's approval. He initially planned to travel from an area known as Damaraland to Lake Ngami, but he ended up traveling through a Southwestern section called Ovamboland.

Galton's maps and observations and descriptions of the native peoples of these regions brought him great acclaim, including a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society. He published on a book on his exploration, entitled Tropical South Africa (1853). Two years later, Galton offered his advice for other would-be explorers in The Art of Travel: Or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries (1855).

Married in 1853 to Louisa Jane Butler, Galton ended his explorations for other scientific pursuits. He became interested in weather and created the first weather map, showing different climate conditions across a geographical area. In 1863, he published a book on the subject, called Meteorgraphica, or Methods of Mapping the Weather.

Strongly influenced by Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859), Galton developed his own theories on inherited traits. He studied identical twins and worked on the first intelligence test in his exploration of the roles of "nature and nurture" a phrase created by Galton in human attributes. According to some sources, Galton also coined the term "eugenics," a controversial field of study about selective breeding in humans to produce preferred traits.

Galton spent much of his life studying heredity and eugenics, and he later thought that a person's fingerprints might be a part of human genetic puzzle. He thought that these prints might provide information on differences between people, from race to moral character to intelligence. While he never made any discoveries in this area, Galton established a fingerprint classification system that is still in use today.

In 1908, Galton published his autobiography. He received a knighthood from King Edward the following year. Galton died on January 17, 1911, in Haslemere, England, at the age of 88. In his will, he donated funds for a professorship in eugenics to University College London.

Link:

Francis Galton - Forensics, Eugenics & Career - Biography

Margaret Sanger was an early feminist and women's rights activist who coined the term "birth control" and worked towards its legalization.

In 1910, activist and social reformer Margaret Sangermoved to Greenwich Village and started a publication promoting a woman's right to birth control (a term that she coined). Obscenity laws forced her to flee the country until 1915. In 1916, she opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. Sanger fought for women's rights for her entire life. She died in 1966.

Sanger was born Margaret Higgins on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. She was one of 11 children born into a Roman Catholic working-class Irish American family. Her mother, Anne, had several miscarriages, and Sanger believed that all of these pregnancies took a toll on her mother's health and contributed to her early death at the age of 40 (some reports say 50). The family lived in poverty as her father, Michael, an Irish stonemason, preferred to drink and talk politics than earn a steady wage.

Seeking a better life, Sanger attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute in 1896. She went on to study nursing at White Plains Hospital four years later. In 1902, she married William Sanger, an architect. The couple eventually had three children together.

In 1910, the Sangers moved to New York City, settling in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village. The area was a bohemian enclave known for its radical politics at the time, and the couple became immersed in that world. They socialized with the likes of writer Upton Sinclair and anarchist Emma Goldman. Sanger joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist Party and the Liberal Club. A supporter of the Industrial Workers of the World union, she participated in a number of strikes.

Sanger started her campaign to educate women about sex in 1912 by writing a newspaper column called "What Every Girl Should Know." She also worked as a nurse on the Lower East Side, at the time a predominantly poor immigrant neighborhood. Through her work, Sanger treated a number of women who had undergone back-alley abortions or tried to self-terminate their pregnancies. Sanger objected to the unnecessary suffering endured by these women, and she fought to make birth control information and contraceptives available. She also began dreaming of a "magic pill" to be used to control pregnancy. "No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother," Sanger said.

In 1914, Sanger started a feminist publication called The Woman Rebel, which promoted a woman's right to have birth control. The monthly magazine landed her in trouble, as it was illegal to send out information on contraception through the mail. The Comstock Act of 1873 prohibited the trade in and circulation of "obscene and immoral materials." Championed by Anthony Comstock, the act included publications, devices and medications related to contraception and abortion in its definition of obscene materials. It also made mailing and importing anything related to these topics a crime.

Rather than face a possible five-year jail sentence, Sanger fled to England. While there, she worked in the women's movement and researched other forms of birth control, including diaphragms, which she later smuggled back into the United States. She had separated from her husband by this time, and the two later divorced. Embracing the idea of free love, Sanger had affairs with psychologist Havelock Ellis and writer H. G. Wells.

Sanger returned to the United States in October 1915, after the charges against her had been dropped. She began touring to promote birth control, a term that she coined. In 1916, she opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. Sanger and her staff, including her sister Ethel, were arrested during a raid of the Brooklyn clinic nine days after it opened. They were charged with providing information on contraception and fitting women for diaphragms. Sanger and her sister spent 30 days in jail for breaking the Comstock law. Later appealing her conviction, she scored a victory for the birth control movement. The court wouldn't overturn the earlier verdict, but it made an exception in the existing law to allow doctors to prescribe contraception to their female patients for medical reasons. Around this time, Sanger also published her first issue of The Birth Control Review.

In 1921, Sanger established the American Birth Control League, a precursor to today's Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She served as its president until 1928. In 1923, while with the league, she opened the first legal birth control clinic in the United States. The clinic was named the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau. Also around this time, Sanger married for her second husband, oil businessman J. Noah H. Slee. He provided much of the funding for her efforts for social reform.

Wanting to advance her cause through legal channels, Sanger started the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control in 1929. The committee sought to make it legal for doctors to freely distribute birth control. One legal hurdle was overcome in 1936, when the U.S. Court of Appeals allowed for birth control devices and related materials to be imported into the country.

For all of her advocacy work, Sanger was not without controversy. She has been criticized for her association with eugenics, a branch of science that seeks to improve the human species through selective mating. As grandson Alexander Sanger, chair of the International Planned Parenthood Council, explained, "She believed that women wanted their children to be free of poverty and disease, that women were natural eugenicists, and that birth control, which could limit the number of children and improve their quality of life, was the panacea to accomplish this." Still, Sanger held some views that were common at the time, but now seem abhorrent, including support of sterilization for the mentally ill and mentally impaired. Despite her controversial comments, Sanger focused her work on one basic principle: "Every child should be a wanted child."

Sanger stepped out of the spotlight for a time, choosing to live in Tucson, Arizona. Her retirement did not last long, however. She worked on the birth control issue in other countries in Europe and Asia, and she established the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952. Still seeking a "magic pill," Sanger recruited Gregory Pincus, a human reproduction expert, to work on the problem in the early 1950s. She found the necessary financial support for the project from Katharine McCormick, the International Harvester heiress. This research project would yield the first oral contraceptive, Enovid, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960.

Sanger lived to see another important reproductive rights milestone in 1965, when the Supreme Court made birth control legal for married couples in its decision on Griswold v. Connecticut. She died a year later on September 6, 1966, in a nursing home in Tucson, Arizona. Across the nation, there are numerous women's health clinics that carry the Sanger name in remembrance of her efforts to advance women's rights and the birth control movement.

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Margaret Sanger - Women's Rights, Birth Control ...

Tis the season to be spooky.

And if youre looking to be spooky, a website has listed the 150 spookiest places in the U.S. for you to pay a visit (if you dare). Fortunately, three of them are already here in Pennsylvania.

Moving experts Pro Mover Reviews decided to focus on the not-as-well-known frightening places across the land, the ones who arent up there with the Eastern State Penitentiary but are just as creepy in their own right.

Halloween is a time when we enjoy being scared and telling ghost stories, but many places around the U.S dont even need a holiday to spook us, explains the website. From weird noises coming from abandoned hospitals [and] unexplained paranormal activity to mysterious figures appearing close enough to touch you, these spooky destinations are places you wish were only just another ghost tale.

When it comes to Pennsylvania specifically, the website lists the three following locations as inspiring the most chills in bones: Pennhurst State School in Spring City; the town of Centralia; and Hill View Manor in New Castle.

Why these three? Well, for Pennhurst its all about the bad juju: The building was shut down due to the abhorrent way it treated its patients, because even though it was deemed a state school it was actually, as they put it, an Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic. In other words, it was an asylum, and got busted back in the 1980s for practicing eugenics on patients (among other things).

Centralias creepy vibes stem more from the supernatural: According to UncoveringPA.com, what draws visitors to the town is that it is (literally) a ghost town, as in, barely anyone lives there anymore. This is all because a fire broke out in the town dump that ended up making the area unlivable, heating the ground up to the point where sinkhole unsuspectingly opened up below a 12-year-old boy at some point.

Lastly, theres Hill View Manor, which opened its doors as the Lawrence County Home for the Aged in 1926. The building served as a place of residence for older people without families; the poor; and the mentally ill. It closed back in 2004 due to financial issues, although many of those who formerly lived there are said to still walk its halls.

Enter at your own risk.

Original post:

These are 150 of the spookiest places in the U.S. See which ones are in Pa. - pennlive.com

As the number and variety of immigrants grew, so did the modern restrictionist movement. John Tanton, an ophthalmologist from Michigan, pioneered this rise, using environmental concerns about population growth, trendy in the 1970s, to argue for stopping immigration. Tanton, who was interested in eugenics, left a legacy in Washington, D.C.: He founded a number of organizations to lobby elected officials that are still operational today, as the historian Carly Goodman notes in the forthcoming collection A Field Guide to White Supremacy. These organizations were successful at shaping policy, especially under Trump. But even during less sympathetic administrations, they have been hugely influential, routinely testifying on immigration legislation in Congress. Its not a surprise that no major immigration bill has passed since the 1990s.

The restrictionists success stems from their messaging strategy, which, as Goodman explains, is focused on deriving legitimacy from data. Roger Connor, the first executive director of the anti-immigrant organization Federation of American Immigration Reform, put it this way: The issue for the modern immigration debate is not race or ethnicity, its numbers.

Thanks to FAIR and others, Americans today do think about immigration in numbers, but they are often wrong: Polls find Americans tend to overestimate the share of immigrants in the population andgrossly overestimate the proportion of undocumented among the U.S. Latino population. American views on whether immigration is good for the country remain deeply split by party affiliation and yet also show some contradictions. A majority of voters, for example, support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people as well as an increase in border security, apparently not realizing that the two measures are related: that, as some researchers have argued, tougher border enforcement may have actually contributed to the rise in the U.S. undocumented population.

In April, the Migration Policy Institute reviewed Biden administrations progress on immigration in his first 100 days in office and found, among other things, that the government has been slow to scale up its capacity to address the increasing [border] numbers, while also giving mixed messages about who will be allowed into the country.

More here:

The Ugly Bipartisan Obsession with the Right Number of Immigrants - The New Republic

Vermont reporters provide a roundup of top news takeaways about the coronavirus, a push to add to the state's Threatened and Endangered Species List and more for Thursday, Oct. 7.

Want VPR's daily news in podcast form? Get up to speed in under 15 minutes with The Frequency every weekday morning. How about an email newsletter? Add our daily email briefing to your morning routine.

While Vermont's pandemic state of emergency has ended, the delta variant is now circulating around the state. Click here for the latest on new cases, and find the latest vaccination data online any time.

Vermont health officials reported 287 new COVID-19 infections Thursday.

It's the state's second-highest number of new cases in a single day so far in the pandemic, eclipsed only by the 330 cases reported three weeks ago on Sept. 15.

There were 48 cases each in Chittenden, Orleans, and Washington counties.

The health department also says one more Vermonter has died from the virus, the 328th coronavirus fatality in the state so far.

Hospitalizations number 35, including eight people in intensive care.

To date, 88.4% of eligible Vermonters are at least partially vaccinated, while 79% are fully vaccinated.

Matthew Smith

Just about anyone who received a Pfizer COVID019 vaccine more than six months ago is eligible for a booster

The state of Vermont is encouraging people who are eligible for a vaccine booster shot for protection against COVID-19 to get one.

Human Services Secretary Mike Smith says he'd like to see more Vermonters get the booster shot. Currently, the booster is available to people who received the Pfizer vaccine more than six months ago.

There's a broad list of who is eligible for the booster, including those 65 andolder, people over the age of 18 who have certain health conditions, members of minority groups, and people who could be exposed to the virus through their work.

Smith says the definition of who is eligible includes "just about anybody that's over 18."

Brittany Patterson

Cases drop among college students

The number of college students testing positive for COVID-19 has fallen to its lowest level yet this semester.

Mike Pieciak is commissioner of the state's Department of Financial Regulation, which analyzes the bulk of Vermont's COVID-19 data.

He says 95% of Vermont's nearly 30,000 college students are fully vaccinated.

In the past week, only 19 students tested positive.

"Again, just a good indication that when you have a 95% vaccinated population you see the cases stay very low even when cases are more elevated in the communities in which those colleges are located," Pieciak said.

But while college students have a high level of vaccination, Pieciak says only about 55% of Vermonters between the ages of 18 and 29 are fully vaccinated.

Bob Kinzel

New York state's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers goes into effect Thursday

New York state's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all health care workers means hospice and home health care workers in the state have to get at least one dose of a vaccine by Thursday, or face the prospect of losing their job.

North Country Public Radio reports the mandate extends to workers at mental health facilities in November.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said those without at least one dose of the vaccine could be terminated.

A vaccine mandate for other healthcare workers took effect last week, and so far, more than 92-percent of workers having gotten vaccinated.

Matthew Smith

N.H. governor calls for removal of state representative from legislative fiscal committee over spread of misinformation

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu is calling for the removal of GOP state Representative Ken Weyler from his position as head of the legislative fiscal committee because of misinformation he is sharing about COVID-19.

A Democratic committee member released a statement Monday saying Weyler claims that live creatures with tentacles are entering people's bodies through the vaccine and that technology is placed in it to control people's thoughts.

Sununu said Monday he has "repeatedly expressed" to House Speaker Sherman Packard the need to remove Weyler from his leadership position.

Weyler did not comment. Packard didn't immediately respond to an email.

The Associated Press

Some Vermont superintendents are voicing concern over a new COVID-19 testing program.

The Scott administration recently announced the plan, called "Test to Stay," which would allow students who are close contacts of a COVID-19 case to take an antigen test to avoid quarantine.

But administering the program on top of other responsibilities seems like a logistical challenge to Julie Regimbal, superintendent of the Missisqoui Valley School District.

"We don't have anyone in any of our schools where we don't have people substituting for everything," Regimbal said. "The principals are subbing, all the teachers are subbing for each other there's a staffing crisis."

Secretary of Education Dan French said this week that his agency lacks the personnel to help districts.

Regimbal says she's waiting for more details on the plan to come from the state, expected next week.

Anna Van Dine

A program that provides nearly 20,000 meals each week for Vermont families will continue through the end of the year.

The Everyone Eats program pays local restaurants to prepare meals for Vermonters facing food insecurity.

It was originally scheduled to end in September, says Jean Hamilton, the statewide coordinator.

"We realized both that the pandemic is not going to go away that quickly the economic impacts will be here for longer than we imagined," Hamilton said. "But also, we just didnt anticipate the impact of delta and the numbers would go back up."

Hamilton says funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency enabled the partnership between restaurants and meal distribution sites to keep going.

She anticipates increased need for meals this winter.

Lexi Krupp

The leaders of both chambers of Vermont's Legislature will hold a press conference on Oct. 16, to apologize for the state's role in the eugenics movement.

In the first half of the 20th century, state-sponsored programs tried to change the gene pool in Vermont through sterilizing and institutionalizing Indigenous people, French-Canadians, and people who were mixed-race, poor or disabled.

Don Stevens is chief of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk -Abenaki Nation.

Speaking Wednesday on Vermont Edition, he said the apology is a good first step. But he also wants to see more policies that actively improve the lives of Abenaki Vermonters.

"We're still Vermonters, right? We're still incorporated in the community. So how are they actually focusing on our needs?"

The public apology will take place on the State House steps in Montpelier.

Listen to the full episode.

Mikaela Lefrak

Sen. Bernie Sanders is calling on his West Virginia colleague, Joe Manchin, to specifically outline what programs should be cut in order to reduce the size of the so called 3.5 trillion dollar "social" budget bill.

The bill, which includes new money for child care, paid family leave, climate change, affordable housing, and Medicare, is tied up in the Senate because Manchin and Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema say it's too expensive.

At a D.C. press conference Wednesday, Sanders said it's time for Manchin to get specific.

"So Sen. Manchin has a right to fight for his point of view he has not only a right to be heard, he has a right to get some compromises he's a member of the Senate," Sanders said. "But two people do not have the right to sabotage what 48 want and what the president of the United States wants. That, to me, is wrong."

Senate Democratic leaders are hoping to resolve this issue in the next few weeks.

Bob Kinzel

Congressman Peter Welch says federal regulators need to hold Facebook accountable for the authenticity of information on their web site.

This week, a former employee and whistle blower told Congress she is aware of efforts by Facebook to develop algorithms that encourage political conflict and promote information that's harmful to young people.

Facebook has denied the charges.

Welch says one way to make Facebook more transparent is to make the company responsible for information that they post.

"Right now, Facebook can publish anything it wants. They're not considered a publisher. Whereas, if that was in the local newspaper, that paper could be sued for libel and that's one possible way to go, so that there would be some self monitoring by the Facebooks of the world," Welch said.

Welch says he supports efforts to create a new federal regulatory agency to provide oversight.

Bob Kinzel

The Eastern Meadowlark has been recommended for Threatened status, under Vermont's Threatened and endangered Species Rule.

The listing would give the yellow-breasted grassland bird special protections.

The most recent published data show its distribution in Vermont shrank by 55% over the last quarter century.

But Kevin Tolan, a staff biologist with the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, says the picture may be more dire. He oversaw a more recent survey, to count Eastern Meadowlarks this past summer.

Tolan says preliminary data show about 90 breeding pairs remain in Vermont.

"And combine that with how rapidly they're declining ... The difference between going from 100 birds to 25 birds could be five years, or it could be 20 years, depending on the population size we're estimating now," Tolan said.

Members of the public can email comments to the Agency of Natural Resources until Oct. 13.

Abagael Giles

Abagael Giles compiled and edited this post.

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News roundup: Vermont Dept. of Health logs second highest one-day COVID-19 case count since the start of the pandemic - Vermont Public Radio