Public release date: 15-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Gerry Everding gerry_everding@wustl.edu 314-935-6375 Washington University in St. Louis

Why is the world so full of "morons" and "degenerates" and what, if anything, can be done to fix them?

These are questions that Robert W. Sussman, PhD, a professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will explore Feb. 15 as he addresses the 2013 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, Mass. one of the world's largest gatherings of scientific researchers.

Sussman will deliver a talk on "The Importance of the Concept of Culture to Science and Society" (http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2013/webprogram/Paper8433.html )during a session titled The Whole of Culture: Anthropology Back on Track.

Sussman, author of Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators and Human Evolution, says that science has struggled to understand the mysteries of "less-than-human" beings since the late 1400s when the Spanish Inquisition first formalized state persecution of Jews and Muslims.

And while the horrors of Nazi Germany exposed fatal flaws in science's quest to build the master race, the ethical dilemmas posed by the science of eugenics are far from behind us.

As Sussman presents his lecture on the evolution of scientific and cultural explanations for criminality, homosexuality, drunkenness and other variances in human behavior, scientists elsewhere at the AAAS meeting will be unveiling amazing new techniques for the genetic engineering of humans tools more powerful than a Nazi's wildest dreams.

Meanwhile, legislation currently being considered in Virginia, North Carolina and other states would provide monetary compensation for the survivors of high-minded efforts to improve the gene pool by forcibly sterilizing some 65,000 mostly poor, minority or disabled Americans. Some of these state-sponsored sterilization programs, which first became common in the 1920s, were still in place as recently as the 1970s.

As recent news reports have detailed, at least nine U.S. states, including California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Oregon, Texas and Wisconsin, still have versions of chemical castration laws on their books, usually as a penalty or "fix" for habitual child sexual predators.

Go here to see the original:

Deja vu all over again? Cultural understanding vs. horrors of eugenics