Category Archives: Eugenics

On Jan. 22, 1916, Ray Lyman Wilbur became the third president of Stanford University. In his inaugural speech, Wilbur promised that Stanford would aim for control of those unnecessary diseases that devour the very marrow of the [human] race and would lead in the fight against oppression, evil, ignorance, filth. These words would have perhaps been less ominous if Wilbur was not a eugenicist.

Between 1916 and 1929 and between 1933 and 1943, Ray Lyman Wilbur served as Stanfords president, leading the same university where he received his bachelors and masters degrees. A physician by training, Wilbur was influential in the development of Stanfords School of Medicine, first as dean then as university president. Wilburs key academic focus was public health: studying the health of America and methods of bettering it. This interest showed clearly in both his work at Stanford and in the Hoover Administration, where he served as Secretary of the Interior.

Wilburs interest in public health, however, also inspired his support of eugenics, the science of human improvement through selective breeding. As historian Martin S. Pernick has argued, public health and eugenics often historically went hand-in-hand what better way could there be of creating an ideal population than controlling who could reproduce and who could be born? Besides being a member of many health associations, Wilbur was also a prominent figure in eugenic organizations, such as the American Eugenics Society and the Eugenics Research Association, and often combined these two pursuits. As he put it in his 1937 article on the health of Black people, a pair of healthy grandfathers and of healthy grandmothers is the greatest personal asset a human being can have. In the name of public health, eugenic policies were therefore a necessity to Wilbur: We would not dream of treating a strain of race horses, he argued before Stanford alumni in 1935, the way we treat ourselves.

This emphasis on eugenics as a form of public health advocacy manifested in Wilburs work in the Hoover Administration as well. As historian Wendy Klein recounts, Wilbur served as conference chair at the 1930 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, a massive convention attended by thousands of experts on child health, development and education. In his opening speech, Wilbur used eugenic language to emphasize the importance of fit future citizenry, encouraging the United States to become a fitter country in which to bring up children. Wilbur was not just supporting the health of children; he was supporting the goal of breeding eugenically fit children. As he put it in a 1913 speech, Wilbur believed that the products of the marriage of the weak and the unfit, of the criminal, of the syphilis and of the alcohol that fill many of our most splendid governmental buildings must largely disappear.

One of Wilburs greatest contributions to Stanford University as president was the development of the Stanford University School of Medicine, turning it into an organization at the forefront of medical education as well as eugenic education. Wilbur believed that all medical students should be taught the science of eugenics. He encouraged medical universities to study both the health and economic impact of the physically and mentally handicapped, promoting extensive research on eugenics. He presented before the Medical Society of the State of California in 1922, and argued that physicians must be educated to understand the importance of eugenically fit genetic material, for if it deteriorates a family or a race soon dies out. This genetic material must therefore be protected through eugenic means such as the sterilization or segregation of the unfit. With his development of the medical school, Wilbur aimed to emphasize the necessity of racial health in the name of eugenics.

Wilbur was also deeply concerned with race relations and the role of the United States in international affairs. In a 1926 speech, he expressed fear that white women were degenerating and becoming incapable of producing breast milk due to a reliance on dairy milk when nursing. For Wilbur, this was exceptionally frightening as the Chinese, who were immigrating to the American West (to the displeasure of many eugenicists) continued to use breast milk with their babies. Wilbur saw this as a eugenic threat to white dominance. If dairy production were to be halted, Chinese populations would overtake white populations a eugenicists nightmare.

Wilburs concerns with Chinese immigration led him to chair a 1923 survey looking into the potential dangers of Asian immigration into the American West. This Survey of Race Relations, as it was called, was led by many Stanford affiliates, and its findings were presented at a conference on Stanfords campus. Looking at both Chinese and Japanese immigration, this study chaired by Wilbur sought to objectively determine the value of allowing Asian immigrants to travel, stay, and reproduce in the United States. In the end, the survey concluded that Asian immigration was, for the time being, acceptable due to the cheap labor immigrants provided, but interracial marriages and reproduction were deeply discouraged. These attempts to objectively determine the value of immigrants to society was emblematic of a larger eugenic trend to quantify the value of human existence.

Wilburs belief in public health and the objective research of racial health inspired his promotion of eugenic thought. His legacy shows clearly the interconnections of medicine, public health and eugenic thought, and how many projects in the name of human health with noble intent were shaped by racist and ableist assumptions. Though he was less explicitly racist than some of his peers at Stanford, Wilbur still promoted the sterilization of unwanted people and still studied the potential dangers of non-white immigration. Today, Wilbur Hall bears his name, honoring his presidency and contributions to the University. I cannot help but wonder how many residents of that hall would be deemed unwelcome by its namesake.

Contact Ben Maldonado at bmaldona at stanford.edu.

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Eugenics on the Farm: Ray Lyman Wilbur - The Stanford Daily

Modern parenting advice is linked to anxiety that has become the norm for many parents concerned with giving their children the best start in life. But there was a time when the best parenting practices were much more subjective than they are now, reliant on cultural norms rather than expert guidance. Unfortunately, along with that lack of pressure came poor health outcomes. Babies today have a far better chance of living to adulthood than they did 100 years ago, but the trade-off appears to be an increase in parental stress. What tipped the balance? White supremacy and the eugenics in America.

Thats the argument historian Bethany Johnson and University of North Carolina Communications Studies professor Dr. Margaret Quinlan put forth in their newbook,Youre Doing it Wrong: Mothering, Media, and Medical Expertise. It all beganin the early 20th Century with Better Baby Contests. The explicit aim of the contests, held across the U.S., was to publicly promote healthy babies and baby-rearing practices through a public competition. But in doing so, they held up a mirror to progressive values that were inextricably linked to white supremacy via eugenicist theory.

What did a Better Baby Contest look like?

Once babies got in the room the child would be stripped down to standardized clothing to create an objective landscape for the judges. There might be a psychological exam, an eye exam, whole-body measurements. There might be a dentist or a 400 point exam that measured the texture and sheen of their hair to the strength of their teeth to a deep examination of the quality of their fingernails. There were scales and paperwork for all of this.

So not dissimilar to a modern pediatrics visit?

This set the groundwork for pediatrics to develop because the state and local public health agencies encouraged parents to continue certain types of parenting behavior from feeding to sleeping to bathing. A lot of these campaigns were very successful in reducing infant mortality. They constantly counseled parents to take their baby to a doctor which was a new message. And parents because they now had this score, wanted to know how their child could get a better score the next year. The response was Get them to a doctor and follow the advice in these pamphlets and maybe they can win.

Does your sleep deprivation get in the way of your performance at work?

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But your book suggests theres a dark side to all this.

When pediatrics emerged in the 1930s those doctors would have grown up in a world very friendly to eugenics principles.Eugenics came out of the study of genetic parentage. It is the science of improving the human condition by encouraging some behaviors and discouraging others. The reason it fit so well in the progressive era is that progressive activists had a goal of improving society through social control. They didnt want child labor orkids dying before 5,but they also thought you could reproduce in such a way that there could be no blindness.They didnt want people breathing in coal dust all day but they did feel like poor people might be poor because they had some moral failings. When you believe those things at the same time, its a perfect opening for eugenics.So the conversation that was changing was, lets step in and give a chance to improve and by doing that well improve the entire race.

And pediatricians bought into this?

Pediatricians in the 1930s were culturally primed to accept these ideas. These are people who were trained by those who put together better baby material and saw the measurement of children as a way to produce the healthiest children by marking what we were going towards and outlining normal around that goal.

The Better Baby Contest itself was very ableist, very racist, very classist. At state fairs in places like Indiana they actually built buildings that would be used yearly for these Better Baby Contests. The day of the contest which might last up to two days, there would be a bunch of nurses and local doctors who worked for the state public health system or volunteer private practitioners. Parents would line up with children and read materials in a eugenics exhibit while they waited, reading about how parents could eradicate idiocy, blindness, disability, through a good marriage. It was considered scientific at the time.

How does that legacy affect modern childcare and pediatrics, exactly?

You know when you go to a doctors appointment or a well-child visit and theres a checklist of stuff? Some of that seems odd. Like asking if a baby can hold a pencil and drawing a straight line. Well, that a better babies contest activity. Some of these have stayed. Some of these have changed. Some are now research-backed. Whats fallen off though are questions like, What is your grandparents race.

But a lot of this sounds like milestones. Theres still a checklist asking about what babies can do at certain ages.

Milestones grew out of better baby contests. The creator of milestones was Arnold Gesell. He actually said in his own writing that this material would cause parents anxiety and we needed to be careful with how we used it. Apparently, nobody listened.

Milestones are so pervasive though.

Well, the thing that is so provocative and dangerous is that in a society where people live a long way from family and record their childrens early lives on social media, the only way you can show that your excelling as a parent is if youre reaching milestones early. But that actually means nothing. The real impact of eugenics was the shift between what is desired and what is normal and what is desired became what is normal and that changed the expectations we had for our children.

This isnt to shame parents who are trying, though. I think thats important. And it would be counter to the point of your book.

What we tell parents a lot is that the way science works, we will come to new conclusions all the time. But that doesnt mean that what you were doing previously was wrong. You do the best you can at the moment youre in. And what works for you might not work for others, and thats okay. Theres a lot of things under the heading of What feels right for me and my kid that are healthy.

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Eugenics Theory, Better Baby Contests, and the Formation of Modern Parenting Advice - Fatherly

The 1950s were the first sign that with a booming economy, progressive busy-bodies were going to once again turn their sights on controlling behavior. Though Prohibition had ended the Puritan Piety attack on alcohol, and Hitler had put a halt to progressive dreams of eugenics, the war on inferiors continued by well-meaning elites unabated after the soldiers came home.

They just attacked on a new front. Comic books, for example, were ruining children, according to psychiatrist Fred Wertham, who wrote a book making his case called "Seduction of the Innocent." Though Captain America had punched Hitler in the face six months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, now they were the enemy of decency. The Senate took up the case in 1954 but states were already reacting. Ohio Governor Frank Lausche was all for censorship, for example, and supported Akron in its efforts to ban them. Only Akron Councilman Howard Walker, a Ward 8 Republican and chairman of the public welfare and safety committee, resisted the call for bans. Who is qualified to say which books are good and which are bad?

Though conservatives get the bad press in corporate media, it's often social authoritarian progressives out to control behavior. You don't see writers at Reason arguing for censorship but plenty of California politicians want to ban Happy Meals and golf. It was Tipper Gore who declared war on music, supported by her husband Al. And it is Democrats who want vaping banned today. Credit: Pessimists Archive

Once comic books were censored, busybodies found that children still weren't docile automatons, any more than after their efforts to ban radios, books, and "idle minds" so they then turned on pinball machines, rock music, marijuana, TV, birth control, Dungeons & Dragons, rap music, video games, cell phones, and now ... vaping.

If you watch the array of anti-vaping ads appearing on televisions (what used to be corrupting children, according to busybodies) and the Internet (ditto), kids are throwing their video game(ditto) controllers through computers (ditto) because of that demon nicotine; a product that they can't legally buy but some greedy merchant on the internet is still selling so they shout it all needs to be banned.

It's Reefer Madness all over again, which took 60 years to undo. Yet now the same social authoritarian progressives(1) who got marijuana banned and comic books censored have adopted a similar mantra about vaping.

I am not pro-vaping, I don't smoke and never have, nor do I vape, we get no donations from any vaping or tobacco company or trade group, I am simply anti-smoking. It kills, but it is not the nicotine that is harmful, it is the smoke. Vaping needs to be an option for smokers because it simply works better than gums or patches or abstinence only posturing.

Just like Baby Boomers still read comic books in the 1950s - censorship crippled the industry, but it didn't eliminate kids reading comics - they need to realize that kids today are going to do something rebellious or even risky. Some will drink alcohol, some will race cars on streets, some will get addicted to caffeine. But we don't ban beer, automobiles, or Red Bull due to those things, we enforce laws that exist.

That should be the approach we take to vaping. The Trump administration is right to want second opinions instead of listening to what have become increasingly social authoritarian organizations like American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics. They represent only a fraction of doctors and the people forcing through fundamentalist beliefs about nicotine are only a tiny fraction of the members in those organizations. More doctors don't stand up to hysteria because they don't want to look like they are for JUUL. Nor do I, I have blasted the company too many times to count. But just like I defend GMOs even though I didn't like Monsanto as a company, doctors should be going with the evidence and not engaging in culture wars rather than being too timid to stand up to the "cool kids" in their tribes.

FDA, EPA, etc. didn't issue a call to ban GMOs because NRDC, Greenpeace, et al. hate science, even though those groups have gotten plenty of fifth columnists placed inside those government agencies. Nor did academic biologists even though they are 94 percent on the left. Doctors should show as much backbone as scientists and tell government to enforce laws to keep kids from using products, not wrap themselves in the flag of Seduction Of The Internet rhetoric.

NOTE:

(1) Progressives were not alone in using government to force their social authoritarian agenda. Also in 1954, Senator Eugene McCarthy became convinced that the U.S. Army was "soft" on communists. Unlike comic books and other efforts by the left, McCarthy's effort ended in a spectacular failure. Then the left got their revenge on him in history. Though only 7 people in Hollywood were actually Blacklisted - and they were actually communists trying to overthrow the government - you can't find anyone old in that town today who doesn't attribute any career setbacks they may have had to being on the blacklist. It became a badge of honor.

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Reefer Madness And Seduction Of The Innocent Are Now The Anti-Vaping M.O. - Science 2.0

Pennsylvania's Democratic governor has vetoed a bill that was created to protect babies from abortion after they've been diagnosed in the womb with Down syndrome.

Gov. Tom Wolf had said he would reject the bill if it made it to his desk, and that's just what he did.

Pennsylvania state law allows for abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy for any reason, except in cases where it is used for gender selection. In other words, a mother can't abort her baby just because he's a boy when she really wanted a girl.

This new bill would have also prevented the eugenic targeting of a specific population of people, protecting individuals with Down syndrome from selective elimination. Republicans who control the state Senate said it would've protected a "vulnerable population whose lives are productive."

Supporters of the measure believe it's essential because other countries have expressly targeted people with Down syndrome for elimination. For example, in Iceland, nearly 100% of babies with the syndrome are aborted, and in Denmark, that figure stands at roughly 98%. In the US, an estimated 67% of children with the condition are aborted.

The Pennsylvania Family Council stated, "Children are being targeted for abortion simply because they may have Down syndrome. Medical professionals are pressuring women and families to have an abortion upon a diagnosis of Down syndrome. And tragically, the vast majority of babies that are diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted after the diagnosis. A diagnosis of Down syndrome should never be a reason to terminate a child. Down syndrome is a life worth living."

Earlier this year, President Trump summed up what's at stake in the battle to protect the lives of unborn children with this condition.

"Sadly, there remain too many people both in the United States and throughout the world that still see Down syndrome as an excuse to ignore or discard human life. This sentiment is and will always be tragically misguided," he wrote. "We must always be vigilant in defending and promoting the unique and special gifts of all citizens in need. We should not tolerate any discrimination against them, as all people have inherent dignity."

The Pennsylvania Family Council has created a powerful photo series that gives nearly 30 examples of Pennsylvania residents with Down syndrome who are enjoying life and contributing in many ways to our world. Click here to see their smiling faces.

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'Targeted for Abortion Simply Because They May Have Down Syndrome': PA Gov. Blocks Anti-Eugenics Bill - CBN News

Correction (11/18/19): This article has been updated to reflect that Fox News mentioned Stephen Millers emails once.

Fox News and CNN have barely covered leaked emails from White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller that highlighted his affinity for racist rhetoric and white nationalist conspiracy theories, according to a Media Matters review. Fox has reported on Millers emails for only 42 seconds, while CNN has devoted just seven minutes of coverage to it since November 12, when the emails were revealed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

According to SPLCs Hatewatch, a blog that monitors hate speech and activities from the far right, Miller sent more than 900 emails to editors at the conservative website Breitbart between March 4, 2015, and June 27, 2016. More than 80% of the leaked emails appeared in threads about race or immigration in which Miller made references to white nationalist websites VDare and American Renaissance and shared obsessions with white genocide, xenophobic conspiracy theories, and eugenics-era immigration policies once supported by Adolf Hitler.

Miller has been at the center of the Trump administrations immigration policy, which includes an executive order banning migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, the policy of family separation at the southern border, and arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants.

Media Matters reviewed cable news transcripts for discussion of the leaked emails and found that since November 12, Fox News has covered the story just once on The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton, for 42 seconds. Additionally, CNN devoted just seven minutes toMillers emails despite CNNs Reliable Sources host, Brian Stelter, describing the revelations as one other story ... that I hope doesnt get overlooked. MSNBC, by contrast, spent an hour and nine minutes on the leaked emails, including lengthy segments on All In with Chris Hayes, The Last Word with Lawrence ODonnell, Morning Joe, and AM Joy.

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Fox News and CNN have hardly covered Stephen Miller's white nationalist emails - Media Matters for America

President Marc Tessier-Lavigne introduced two women, each renowned in their respective fields, as scientific trailblazers to a packed CEMEX auditorium of 600 people on Monday. Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist who invented CRISPR, and Fei-Fei Li, who currently heads the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) endeavor, discussed the twin revolutions of CRISPR and artificial intelligence with moderator Russ Altman, a bioengineering professor.

But beyond just talking about those innovations, Tessier-Lavigne noted the significant urgency present to consider the broader societal impacts of their work: to notice both the promise and peril that accompany innovation.

Innovation alone isnt sufficient, Tessier-Lavigne said. Creating a disruption does not guarantee positive effects for our society or for individuals. Disrupting just for disruptions sake is no honorable activity. Remarkable opportunities for good can also be misused.

Doudna and Lis work has been influential within the fields of gene editing and artificial intelligence, respectively. Doudna and her team developed the technology known as CRISPR-Cas9, which allows for the editing of DNA and genomes as well as for a myriad of control applications within the body and potential development of biotechnology products.

Li was the leading scientist of ImageNet, a database used in visual object recognition software that enables computers to recognize a wide variety of human, everyday objects through machine learning.

Both speakers acknowledged the ethical concerns looming over these innovations. This beginning of a revolution in deep learning is accompanied by the threat of ethical complications such as eugenics, patentability and heritable genome editing.

The recognition ability [of ImageNet] is in the background of Google searches when you use Facebook or when you communicate with your phone; its always present, Altman said, adding that recent developments in AI have caused the field to become a breeding ground of questions surrounding ethics.

When asked if it was obvious that the results were going to lead to such an explosive reaction both inside and out of the scientific community, Li said that she knew they were approaching a holy grail question.

We were granting the computers an ability that took humans 540 million years of evolution to achieve, she said. I would be lying, however, if I said I recognized the societal implications of the work at the time.

Doudna replied similarly, saying that for those of us working in the world of CRISPR, it was a very esoteric area of biology back then. It was surprising to see that our very esoteric area was merging with a very important part of biotechnology.

Could I have predicted the advancements, CRISPR babies? she asked, referring to former Stanford postdoctoral fellow He Jiankui who launched international controversy when he announced he created the worlds first gene-edited babies using CRISPR technology. Definitely not, but it was a very exciting progression.

A significant part of the discussion centered on ethics, with Altman asking the innovators about their engagement with ethics throughout their research. Doudna recalled 2012 as the year that a moral obligation really arose in her life. After reading a published article of CRISPR being applied to human primates, she recalled realizing the potential for genome editing in humans.

I was quite reluctant, but I did feel a real responsibility to engage in the discussion at that point, Dounda said.

Li also described her surprise when her own career in AI came under public scrutiny, with some critics calling genome editing a field summoning a demon.

While major parts of their professional journeys align, their paths diverge in terms of confronting the ethical problems of their work. To combat the potential misuses of CRISPR, Doudna felt like the scientific community really needed to [be] engaged as a whole. She convened meetings to broach the subject of the morality behind CRISPR applications and recalls thinking that that was the beginning of my education in ethics I felt like a student learning how to think about this and how to approach it.

Lis approach was different because CS was a much younger discipline, without an ethics sub-area, and I didnt know who to talk to. She decided to turn her focus to the drivers of AI, the human representation in the field, especially to diversify the field and open it up to more women and minorities.

Li went on to start the program AI4ALL, which began at Stanford and then grew to become nationally recognized 500 alumni of the program and 11 college campuses that host the students, all with the mission of engaging underrepresented students in underserved communities.

The academic pioneers were then asked about the exposure of young scientists to ethical information, with both agreeing that there needed to be more educating done in their fields.

Its a cultural thing in our field, Doudna said. We are in the vein of creating scholars in our specific subject rather than creating a group of holistically knowledgeable people.

Li added that students of mine dont even have the language to talk about these issues.

Altman went on to note that these are unlikely to be the last scientific revolutions. He wondered what advice the two women had for handling these explosive introductions of research.

We definitely havent seen the end of the AI story its just the beginning, Li answered. We need to invest in people. Diversity and inclusion is a way to ensure that we maximize human representation during these times.

As for representation in policy, Doudna said she would like to see more scientists in Congress.

I was really struck when I met with Bill Foster and he pointed out that he was the only Ph.D. in congress, Doudna said. I think we need to see more representation.

As for their hopes for their work moving forward, their visions were the same: an international framework to cooperate and communicate. Li noted that there are issues of warfare, bioterrorism and a myriad of other potential dangers. She noted that every discovery has a dual potential, which is why we need laws, ethical principles, an international framework given how powerful these technologies are.

Contact Hannah Shelby at hshelby at stanford.edu.

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Renowned scientists address ethics, 'twin scientific revolutions' of AI and CRISPR - The Stanford Daily

Eric Rasmusen is a tenured business school professor at Indiana University Bloomington; for many years, he's posted a stream of "racist, sexist, and homophobic views" to his personal social media, including the idea that women do not belong in the workplace (he often refers to women by slurs like "slut" when discussing this and other subjects); that gay men should not be allowed in academia because of their insatiable sexual appetites and propensity for abusing students; that Black students are academically inferior to white students and do not belong at elite academic institutions.

Indiana U is a state college and bound by the First Amendment's prohibition on discrimination on the basis of speech and Rasmusen has confined his odious speech acts to his personal social media, apparently refraining from voicing these views on campus while acting in a professional capacity. As a result, it's the view of the university provost that he cannot be fired, despite her characterization of Rasmusen's views as "vile and stupid" and "stunningly ignorant." Provost Lauren Robel has also said that her own respect for the First Amendment is such that she would not fire Rasmusen for his personal views, even if she could.

However, Robel and the university acknowledge that Rasmusen's views call into question his impartiality and also expose students to a reasonable belief that they could not be fairly graded or assessed by Rasmusen. Accordingly the university has undertaken a pari of extraordinary measures to protect students without trampling the First Amendment.

1. All classes that Rasmusen teaches will also be offered by another instructor so that any student can chose to take the class without coming into contact with Rasmusen.

2. Rasmusen will be required to grade all assignments on a double-blind basis, and when that is not possible, he will be closely supervised by another business school prof who will ensure that he does not practice discrimination.

The provost goes on to say that this is not exhaustive, and the university is prepared to take further steps to protect students and faculty members from Rasmusen's bigotry.

Rasmusen's publications include articles like "Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably." He has posted a detailed rebuttal to the provost's article.

I think the most interesting thing about this is that Rasmusen was tenured: for decades after the rise of Reaganism, a lot of people assumed that right wingers who dabbled in eugenics, white supremacy, dominionism and other medieval/crypto-fascist ideas were just colorful provocateurs LARPing Archie Bunker. It turned out they were deadly fucking serious. They were a sleeper cell from Gilead, and now they're finished masturbating over the Turner Diaries and have broken cover and plan on enacting a full-blown Dominionist white theocracy.

The First Amendment is strong medicine, and works both ways. All of us are free to condemn views that we find reprehensible, and to do so as vehemently and publicly as Professor Rasmusen expresses his views. We are free to avoid his classes, and demand that the university ensure that he does not, or has not, acted on those views in ways that violate either the federal and state civil rights laws or IUs nondiscrimination policies. I condemn, in the strongest terms, Professor Rasmusens views on race, gender, and sexuality, and I think others should condemn them. But my strong disagreement with his viewsindeed, the fact that I find them loathsomeis not a reason for Indiana University to violate the Constitution of the United States.

On the First Amendment [Lauren Robel/Indiana University]

20 years ago, Illinois was rocked by a scandal after the widespread practice of locking schoolchildren, especially those with disabilities or special needs, in small, confining boxes was revealed. The teachers who imprisoned these children argued that they did so out of the interests of safety -- that of the imprisoned students, of the other []

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Laurent Simons is pursuing a bachelors degree in electrical engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) in the Netherlands. Hes 9 years old. After graduation, he intends to earn a PhD in electrical engineering along with a medical degree. His longterm goal is to develop artificial organs for transplant. From CNN: While Laurent comes []

If youve ever worked with two monitors, you know how much time they save. When youre dealing with big jobs that involve lots of data, theres nothing like being able to see all your charts and spreadsheets at a single glance. Once youre used to it, theres no reason youd ever go back other than []

When youre planning a vacation, think about things from the airlines point of view. Jet fuel is expensive. Airplane maintenance is expensive. Ergo, empty seats equal a lot of lost revenue. There are a few travel sites out there that can turn someone elses canceled flight into your gain, but youd be hard-pressed to find []

Things break, and even in this disposable world, theres a need to fix them. Up until recently, thats been the crusty bottle of glue in your junk drawer, which is just as liable to coat your fingers as the thing you actually want to repair. Looks like theres finally a Star Trek-level solution on the []

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Indiana University Provost: The First Amendment says we can't fire our notorious bigot professor, so here's what we're doing instead - Boing Boing

Lewis Madison Terman was one of the most prominent eugenicists at Stanford. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Lewis Madison Terman was born in 1877 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Deemed a precocious and bookish child, Terman claimed to have performed his first psychology experiment at age 11. He received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1905 before coming to Stanford University in 1910, where he stayed until his death in 1956. Terman is best known for developing the Stanford-Binet IQ test, a development which made both him and Stanford University well-known throughout the United States. Termans interest in intelligence, however, was not it was motivated and shaped by Termans deep belief in eugenics.

Surpassed by perhaps only David Starr Jordan, Terman was the most influential Stanford eugenicist. He was a firm believer in attempts to improve the human race through selective and restrictive breeding. He joined and served as a high ranking member in many eugenic organizations (the Human Betterment Foundation, the American Eugenics Society, and the Eugenics Research Association), and worked alongside many others (such as the American Institute of Family Relations and the California Bureau of Juvenile Research). Terman was a central figure in the expanding network of American eugenicists in the early 20th century, a fact which can be seen clearly in his research interests.

Termans academic research as a psychologist was always linked to the furthering of his eugenic ideals. One of his major fields of study was gender and sexual deviance, as shown in his 1936 book Sex and Personality: Studies in Masculinity and Femininity. In this text, Terman set out to quantify sexual deviancy, using tests and questionaires to scientifically determine if an individual was sexually deviant, non-conforming to gender roles or a potential homosexual. Two years later, Terman extended these findings and argued that marriages could only be successful when parents obeyed tradition gender roles, as he argued in his 1938 book Psychological Factors in Marital Happiness. Terman, like many eugenicists, was dedicated to preserving the marriages of white Americans, promoting them to have eugenically fit children. In Building a Better Race, historian Wendy Kline argues that Termans motives behind both of these studies were rooted in eugenic thought. Terman did not just want to identify sexually deviant individuals: he aimed to promote the eugenic eradication of those who did not fit into his strict gender and sexual roles in the name of preserving the (white), happy heterosexual family.

But Termans most famous contribution to both eugenic movements and society at large was the Stanford-Binet IQ test. Terman did not invent intelligence quotient tests. Many existed before him, with the most prevalent being the Binet IQ test. Developed by French psychologist Alfred Binet, the Binet IQ test mixed quantitative and qualitative methods because Binet viewed intelligence as too multifaceted to be expressed by numbers alone. Terman, however, held a more simplistic view of intelligence. For him, intelligence was an innate trait which could be quantified and acted according to Mendelian theories of inheritance. With this in mind, Terman revised Binets test in his 1916 The Measurement of Intelligence, in which he devised a quantifiable scale of intelligence from idiocy to feeblemindedness to genius all of which could be determined with a simple test.

Early attempts to quantify intelligence included questions such as this one, in which test takers were asked to identify the prettiest face.

From its very conception, Termans Stanford-Binet IQ test had questionable applications. In The Measurement of Intelligence, Terman used his test to present an argument of IQ deficiency in Indigenous, Mexican, and Black communities, supporting theories of racial intelligence that other eugenicists, including Stanfords own Leonas Burlingame, often embraced. He argued that the dullness of these communities were racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come, and that there were significant racial differences in general intelligence.As historian Alexandra Minna Stern examines in her book Eugenic Nation, contemporary researchers (mainly Termans own students) used the IQ test to determine the intellectual worth of Mexican immigrants and communities, often concluding that Mexicans were racially inferior. Termans test was also used regularly to determine who should be sterilized in the name of eugenics: individuals with an IQ of under 70 (deemed feebleminded) were targeted for sterilization by the state, such as in the famous case of Carrie Buck. In the United States, over 600,000 people were sterilized by the state for eugenic reasons, often because of IQ test results. For many eugenicists, Termans research finally presented a way to efficiently and objectively judge the eugenic worth of human lives.

Even after Terman, IQ tests have been abused and misused for political and eugenic motives. Termans IQ test inspired similar aptitude tests, such as the SAT, which has been used historically and today to limit the quantity of marginalized people in the academy. In recent years, theories of racial intelligence have resurged in popularity one example is Charles Murrays influential 1994 The Bell Curve, often used as an excuse for racist exclusionary practices based on some of the same faulty assumptions as Termans original theories.

Many have criticized the very idea of intelligence existing as a quantifiable and inherited value. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, for instance, in The Mismeasurement of Man, shows the flawed assumptions made in Termans belief in racial IQ and intelligence as an inheritable trait, showing instead that a) intelligence is far too complex to be understood as a Mendelian trait and that b) the IQ test likely does not measure intelligence (a rather abstract concept) at all. But even if intelligence could be quantifiably valued, Termans approach of ranking human ability, and the application of his methods in determining who was welcome in a eugenic society, would still be unacceptable. A number can never define the worth of a human being.

Lewis Madison Terman has the most complex legacy of the Stanford eugenicists. We, as gifted Stanford students, have a vested interest in believing in the value of IQ and quantifiable ability. We have a vested interest in upholding elite education institutions and in pretending that we are somehow more deserving of resources and prestige than anyone else. We have a vested interest in prolonging the myth that Stanford and other elite academies select only the best and the brightest. There is no building honoring Lewis Terman on Stanfords campus. Terman Fountain is, as the administration is quick to point out, named after his son, esteemed engineer Frederick Terman. However, Stanford University, as an elite and exclusionary institution and a gatekeeper of knowledge, is perhaps the greatest monument to Lewis Terman.

Contact Ben Maldonado at bmaldona at stanford.edu.

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Originally posted here:

Eugenics on the Farm: Lewis Terman - The Stanford Daily

Fitzgerald was mocking Toms concern about the impending demise of white Nordics Americans of English and Scandinavian descent at the hands of subpar colored breeds from Southern and Eastern Europe. But a century ago such anxieties about what was called race suicide were shared by the most influential Americans of the age. An enthusiasm for eugenics, the belief that only men and women of superior racial stock should be encouraged to reproduce, fueled a fervor to sharply restrict immigration. Beginning in the years before World War I, that fervor was communicated by Boston Brahmins, progressive politicians, Ivy League academics, and widely read journalists. Above all, it was endorsed and promoted by scientists.

As Daniel Okrent documents in The Guarded Gate, a riveting new history of the anti-immigration movement of the early 20th century, the flames of racial xenophobia were fanned by respected men with scientific credentials experts in biology, zoology, anthropology, even paleontology and climatology. The threat posed to white Americans of Nordic ancestry by the unchecked influx of low-quality foreigners was not a figment of Fitzgeralds imagination. It was a matter of scientific and scholarly consensus, set forth as incontestable fact in biology textbooks, in prestigious newspapers and magazines, and in bestselling books by activists who saw catastrophe looming.

One of those bestsellers (thinly disguised in Gatsby) was The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, by the Harvard historian and political scientist Lothrop Stoddard. Published in 1920, it bewailed the headlong plunge into white race-suicide and warned of the calamity Americans faced from the hordes of immigrant Alpines and Mediterraneans, not to mention Asiatic elements like Levantines and Jews. He foresaw cataclysmic possibilities, among them mongrelization and the end of white political dominion.

Stoddards book was effusively praised by Madison Grant, the nations most renowned conservationist and the chairman of the New York Zoological Society. Grant, to whom the media routinely turned for scientific insight, served on the National Research Council established by President Wilson to stimulate research in the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences. He was also the author of his own influential book of white-supremacist nativism, The Passing of the Great Race, which argued forcefully for an end to open immigration before it was too late. Immigrant laborers are now breeding out their masters, and killing by filth and by crowding as effectively as by the sword, he wrote.

Stoddard and Grant worked closely with Henry Fairfield Osborn, a Princeton-educated geologist and paleontologist, professor of zoology at Columbia, and longtime president of the American Museum of Natural History. In 1921, Osborn convened the Second International Eugenics Congress in New York, presiding over a glittering roster of scientific delegates that included Alexander Graham Bell. In addition to exhibits and papers on heredity and evolution, writes Okrent, the theme of immigration restriction was inescapable. In his welcoming address, Osborn proclaimed the urgency of barring the entrance of those who are unfit to share the duties and responsibilities of our well-founded government.

Again and again, the need to overturn US immigration policy above all by excluding Italians, Russians, Jews, and Asians was presented not as a radical political position but as a scientific imperative, something on which all educated people agreed. Science is our polestar," Stoddard averred. There were a few intellectual dissidents, but most skeptics eventually succumbed to the overwhelming scientific and progressive consensus.

The prominent biologist Charles Davenport, for example, disliked the idea that whole ethnic groups should be deemed undesirable. Yet by 1911, readers of his college textbook were informed that unless immigration rules were changed, the population of the United States will, on account of the great influx of blood from Southeastern Europe, rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more attached to music and art, [and] more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape and sex-immorality than were the original English settlers.

Leading media voices echoed and amplified the scientists warnings. The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, The Century magazine, Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post all were on the nativist bandwagon, many invoking the authority of science in support of the anti-immigration crusade.

They had their victory. In 1924, Congress passed the harshest immigration law in US history, slamming the gates shut on virtually all non-Nordic immigrants. Before the law was enacted, 76 percent of newcomers were from the nations of Southern and Eastern Europe. That fell to 11 percent after the new law took effect.

The 1924 quotas remained in place for decades. Not even the rise of the Third Reich could induce Washington to lift them. In 1939, the SS St. Louis, carrying 900 refugees from Hitlers Germany, reached the United States. But the quota for German immigrants was filled. The ship returned to Europe, where the Holocaust was waiting.

A century ago, immigration restrictionists were glad to cloak their racial bigotry in the reputable language of science. Like Tom Buchanan, they readily believed those who assured them their prejudices were all scientific, and had been "proved by experts with advanced degrees. But a thing isnt true or false just because scientists say it is. Science is no more reliable a touchstone of right from wrong, or wise from foolish, than any other form of human inquiry. Like all human beings, scientists are prone to fanaticism and confirmation bias and the lure of popular acclaim. Skepticism is always in order when sweeping changes in policy are demanded in the name of science. What Okrent calls "the corrupting potential of scientific authority uncoiled with devastating effect in the last century. If we arent careful, it can do the same in this one.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jeff.jacoby@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeff_jacoby.

Excerpt from:

A century ago, the science was settled: Immigrants had to be kept out - The Boston Globe

Premiering this week, Personhood is the latest film highlighting the state of reproductive rights in the United States and how efforts to undermine the constitutional right to abortion cause unnecessary harm. In addition to exposing how fetal personhoodor the anti-abortion idea of legal protection for fetusesimmediately threatens the lives and well-being of pregnant people, the documentary film covers important issues concerning what the future could hold if state and federal policy continues in this trajectory. Personhoodserves as a reminder that more organizing and political activism are needed to meet the challenges ahead.

Produced by Rosalie Miller and directed by Jo Ardinger, the documentary film follows Tamara Tammy Loertscherafter her incarceration as she rebuilds her life and fights to overturn Wisconsins Unborn Child Protection Act, also known as the cocaine momlaw. The law allows state officials to detain, imprison, and institutionalize pregnant people against their will due to current or past alcohol and substance use under the concept of fetal personhood.

As Rewire.Newshas reported, personhood laws seek to classify fertilized eggs, zygotes, embryos, and fetuses as persons, and to grant them full legal protection under the U.S. Constitution, including the right to life from the moment of conception. Wisconsin is one of at least 38 states that grant some form of personhood to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetusesmost states do so through fetal homicide lawsand is the result of the anti-choice movements decades-long effort to pit the rights of pregnant people against the alleged rights of fetuses.

Ardinger first had the idea for the film, her directorial debut, in 2011 after watching a Rachel Maddow segment on the Mississippi personhood amendment, which would have defined life as beginning at the moment of fertilization. Wed been watching the avalanche of these incremental restrictions, but what took me aback about Mississippi was the complete ban and all the other implications, Ardinger told Rewire.News in a phone interview. As I went deeper into the research, my question turned away from what if we become El Salvador? where they prosecute people for miscarriages, because I learned that we were already doing that. This is [about] so much more than abortion access.

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Ardinger had not heard much about the concept of personhoodor seen it in other films, and no one she spoke with knew about it, so she decided to make a film of her own to help expand the national conversation. Ardinger met Loertscherthrough the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), a nonprofit organization working to secure human and civil rights for pregnant and parenting people.

As the film documents, Loertscher struggled with thyroid issues and couldnt afford her medication after losing her job and health insurance. Eventually, she started self-medicating her thyroid-related depression and fatigue with methamphetamine and marijuana. Upon finding out she was pregnant, she stopped using these substances and immediately sought medical care to ensure the health of her fetus. She shared her drug use with members of her care team so they could provide appropriate treatment. Instead, she was detained in the hospital after someone there reported her. Under the law, her fetus was put into protective custody, assigned a guardian, and given a lawyer. Loertscher, on the other hand, was denied legal counsel when she asked for it and subsequently refused to participate in the proceedings, which went on without her.

The state-assigned guardian to her fetus didnt object to Loertscher being placed in jail, where she experienced conditions that are not conducive to a healthy pregnancy. She went without access to prenatal care, says she was abused by jail staff, and was eventually put in solitary confinement. After several weeks, she was released on the condition that she submit to weekly drug testing for the duration of her pregnancy.

Loertschers story isnt unique. In Wisconsin alone, more than 4,000 women have been affected by the Unborn Child Protection Act, as the film notes. Loertscher was just one of few of the legislations victims who fought back.

Across the United States, pregnant people who experience miscarriage or stillbirth, who choose to give birth at home, who seek abortion, or who are exposed to interpersonal violence are criminalized. Those most targeted for criminalization include low-income women and women of color. Astudy from NAPW published in 2013 found that 71 percent of targets for arrest, detention, and forced interventions are low-income women and 59 percent are women of color.

I became a filmmaker to tell stories like Tammys, Ardinger said. These stories get buried. For every one story that makes the headlines, its just the tip of the iceberg.

Tammy represents so many women who are going through this, Ardinger added.

The Cost of Fetal Personhood

Beyond sharing Loertschers story as an example of experiences happening around the country, the film highlights the growing threat of laws seeking to personify fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses. In particular, these laws have the potential to erase human rights for entire groups of people, to deter people from seeking health care by interfering in the patient-provider relationship, and to push the United States further along the slippery slope of eugenics.

In the film, NAPW founder and executive director Lynn Paltrow says, There is no way to add fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses to the Constitution without subtracting pregnant women. But the personhood movement is working to do just that. Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the political right has been working to establish fetuses as constitutional persons under the law. In the Roe v. Wade decision, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun suggested that a fetus could be protected under the 14th Amendment if its personhood was established. Lawmakers introduced the first personhood legislation in Maryland only a week later.

The courts have issued mixed rulings on the issue. In early 2017, a federal court ruled Wisconsins Unborn Child Protection Act unconstitutional. But in July of the same year, the nations highest court had issued an order upholding the law. As a result, pregnant people in Wisconsin are still subject to a law that gives the state police power over pregnant women without any protections others would have under similar circumstances, explained Paltrow.

The cost of personhood for fetuses is the human rights of pregnant people. As witnessed inLoertschers case, legal proceedings could go on without regard to the actual pregnant person, as if they simply do not exist. This ideology is best captured in comments from Florida lawmaker Jos Oliva, who referred to pregnant women as host bodies and fetuses as lives in a TV interview earlier this year.

If you recognize fetuses or the unborn from the moment of conception as separate, you subtract women, Paltrow told Rewire.News in a phone interview. If [the personhood movement] succeeds, the people who get pregnant are going to lose their fundamental rights to privacy, to equality, to due process of law.

If the state can protect fertilized eggs, the moment a woman becomes pregnant and poses a risk, she could be locked up, Paltrow added.

Another concern raised in Personhood is that of eugenics. There is a long history in the United States of limiting the reproduction of certain groups of people through forced sterilization and forced or coerced contraception. In the film, Arthur Caplan, a professor of Bioethics at New York University School of Medicine, asserts that legally permitting fetal personhood could have long-term implications for eugenics in the United States.

Speaking by phone with Rewire.News, Caplan explained that the personhood movement could pave the way for a shift away from an ideology in which certain groups are eliminated to one with a focus on making the best babiesboth of which would be a form of eugenics. In the past we had eugenics programs brought about by certain government officials or doctors themselves who took it upon themselves to sterilize. In the future you could have much more systemic national programs. They could treat [embryos] like little people, like little patients, Caplan said.

According to Caplan, the scientific community could do more to challenge rhetoric equating embryos to people. They know that many embryos dont go on to become fetuses much less babies, he said. But researchers are afraid to lose their funding, so they have tended to run away from it.

Laws criminalizing pregnant people for substance use also have the effect of deterring them from seeking care and disrupting the trust between patients and providers. If someone can be detained or imprisoned because their care providers or anyone in a hospital or health-care facility can report them, it follows that they might be more hesitant to share information they believe could get them in trouble at a time when what they really need is help.

When Tammy got pregnant, she went to the doctor, and she did all the right things to get help, Ardinger said. Tammy was working to ensure the health of her fetus, and what they did was put her in a dangerous situation. Theyre discouraging people from getting help.

Advocates say there is evidence supporting this. For example, Tennessees expired law that allowed people to be charged with assault if they had pregnancy complications after using illegal drugs is seen as having discouraged people from seeking care. Cherisse Scott, founder and CEO of the Tennessee-based reproductive justice organization SisterReach, discusses it in Personhood. This law put a wedge between doctors and mothers, Scott said. The law basically turned their doctor into a warden into a probation officer into the police. So, [pregnant people] didnt want to go to the doctor anymore, Scott added.

Pregnant people using substances or experiencing other health-care challenges must be met with compassion, not punishment. Scott continued, SisterReach was involved in this work to shed light on the other things in peoples lives that may lead to them using drugs in the first place. And to shed light on the fact that there were not enough facilities to even service women.

So, where do we go from here? Scott said in the filmwe now have an opportunity to shift how people think about pregnant people, including low-income people and those who use substances.

At the end of the film, viewers are encouraged to vote against fetal personhood. The anti-choice movement has been very coordinated at filling political seats with people who will advance their agenda to strip women, queer folks, people of color, and low-income families of their human rights to reproductive autonomy and health care. Keeping them out of office and defeating anti-choice legislation by voting is important. But tackling these threats also requires those who believe in justice, in reproductive autonomy, and in human rights to do more than vote. It also requires pro-choice, justice-oriented progressive candidates to run for office.

Theres support for people who are interested in running. EMILYs List provides training and support to elect pro-choice candidates, and groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America endorse candidates who prioritize access to abortion and reproductive health care.

Personhood premieres at the DOC NYC Film Festival on November 8 and 14. The filmmakers will announce additional screenings over the next few months.

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'Personhood' Film Shows the Cost of the Push for Fetal Rights - Rewire.News