Simply: eugenics is selective human breeding, but you don’t get to decide.
It was exemplified in Nazi Germany, when so many were considered ‘inferior’ by others. To ‘improve’ the human race, they were exterminated. Hitler intended to create a ‘master race’.
Josef Rudolf Mengele (the Angel of Death):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele (German pronunciation: [ˈjoːzɛf ˈʁuːdɔlf ˈmɛŋɡələ],[1] March 16, 1911 – February 7, 1979), also known as the Angel of Death (German: Todesengel) was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University. He initially gained notoriety for being one of the SS physicians who supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced laborer, but is far more infamous for performing grisly human experiments on camp inmates, including children, for which Mengele was called the "Angel of Death."
http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race."
‘Me and Mengele’ by Dianne Irving:
http://www.cogforlife.org/irvingmengele.htm
One of those items they brought me in a wicker basket one day was the actual lab book that belonged to Dr. Mengele, along with piles of random photographs taken in his lab of his "patients" during his experiments. [[For some odd reason it is claimed today that no such lab book exists; but it did, as I held it in my hands several times]]. One set of twin experiments attracted my attention - those performed on about three-year old blonde hair, blue eyed Eastern European Gypsy twins. One twin would be held as the "control" of the experiment; the other twin was subjected to serial experiments, designed to mimic wounds of Nazi soldiers in the battle fields.
The twins were kept in cages right in Mengele's laboratory, just off his office. The cages measured 1 by 1 by 1 meters. During the mornings Mengele would come into the lab to visit with his "girls"; such times he was always dressed impeccably in his suit. He would take the girls out of their cages and bounce them on his knees, asking them to call him "Papa". But in the afternoons he would come back to the lab wearing his starched white lab coat, and the girls knew then that it was time for more experimenting. He would take one of the twins into a small narrow closet-like space, where he would take a knife and remove more and more of her femur bone in one leg - and then observe. No anesthetic, no pain killers, no antibiotics, no ice, no bandages, no nothing - thus resembling the conditions of the battle field. After he finished cutting the twin's leg bone, he would simply carry her over to a "stretcher" and let her remain there until she was ready to be placed back into her cage with her sister. The photos of the tiny suffering little girl in that dense and dark "recovery" room, so butchered, and bloody and pathetic, would be etched into my memory for a long long time - a memory that I would carry with me into the rest of my work to come.
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Comments
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good but a touch unfair Caz?
28.11.2011 21:28
Actually, it's selective human breeding whether or not the people involved get to decide. We don't have two terms in the language, one for imposed and one for with choice. There are communities in which lethal genes are to be found in high percentage in which genetic screening before marriage is common and if two carriers do marry they may choose not to have (biological) children. That's STILL eugenics.
We certainly want to oppose bad eugenics. But do we want to oppose seelctive breeding by choice?
MDN
yes, this is a bit misleading
28.11.2011 23:17
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
Remember this is over 100 years ago, when they didn't really know so much about genes and DNA as we do now. Also that social attitudes were very different - sexism and racism were more accepted then.
[disclaimer: I haven't seen the programme at all, just read the website]
anon
WRONG [name removed]!
19.01.2012 13:47
It is not only insulting, but completely ignorant. You have posted the contact details and home address of someone who is in no way connected to the hideous claims your website has posted.
[removed] is a respected and active member of his community and for people to read such trash about him is just plain disgusting and misleading.
PLEASE REMOVE THIS FROM YOUR WEBSITE IMMEDIATELY.
Jack Jones
Extraordinary, really......
11.03.2012 19:30
It can never be assumed that a business address, or a community network address, is anyone's home address. Many company registered addresses are the addresses of accountancy firms (quite normal) and an address for something such as 'West Ealing Neighbours' is not necessarily a home address. (Community houses, etc). I did not ever suggest this was a home address.
I would not make such a claim (the link between David Highton and eugenics) without the evidence to support it.
How forthcoming is David Highton within the West Ealing Community about his influence in schools with respect to advising students to read about eugenics?
Caz