Daily Archives: May 20, 2021

Richard Dawkins, renowned biologist and emeritus professor at the University of Oxford, has stated that it is immoral to bring a child with Downs Syndrome into the world.

What is actually immoral, though, is to look at a world not built for disabled people including those with Downs and agree that they are the problem, rather than the inherent inaccessibility and ableism that runs rampant in our society.

While speaking to RTE presenter Brendan OConnor recently, Dawkins was challenged about an exchange he had in 2014, where he told a Twitter user who mentioned the ethical dilemma of having a baby with Downs Syndrome, that they should: Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.

Although Dawkins admitted that he had put his view a bit too strongly, he doubled down by saying: It seems to me to be plausible that you probably would increase the amount of happiness in the world more by having another child instead [of one with a disability.

What Dawkins argued whilst also stating that he has never met a person with Downs Syndrome is that people with trisomy 21 (another name for Downs Syndrome) are a drain on the world, offer nothing and are not functioning members of society. I turn to my brother at this point.

Luke, who is now 23, takes his role as big brother very seriously. He is concerned if Im ever ill, and wanted to make sure I was drinking a lot of water after I had my dose of the Pfizer vaccine. He is also very proud whenever I write an article, and reads them all very seriously. Hes offered to be my agent, so I have that box ticked. Luke also has Downs Syndrome.

This doesnt mean he isnt strong or wonderful. In fact, when I called to check in on how he was doing after he had his vaccine, he simply told me he was strong and brave and thus doing fine, and I had nothing to worry about.

He also prior to the pandemic has a job as a catering assistant at a big school in London, with garlic bread duty being his favourite role. Luke is everything that is right about a human being, including his extra chromosome. I cant be too nice though, because I am still his little sister and sibling rivalry will always exist beyond and above health conditions. In short, Luke and everyone else Ive ever met with Downs is a representation of why Dawkins argument is so wrong.

The people we should be fighting against are the people who argue that those with disabilities are less than or are a drain, a burden or a mistake. Ensuring that his argument involved well-rounded offence, Richard Dawkins also said that women who brought children with Downs Syndrome into the world were immoral.

Bethany and her brother Luke

(Bethany Dawson)

Women can choose what to do with their pregnancies. My parents didnt know that my brother had Downs before he was born, but they knew there was a 25 per cent chance that I had it (based upon prenatal testing when I was in-utero, also known as the last time I got a good nights sleep). My mother did what she wanted to with her pregnancies, and made a choice based on the resources available to her and her personal opinions. A parents choice is their own to make. Its not anyone elses decision.

The so-called argument against the existence of people with Downs Syndrome (I say so-called, because, in reality, its just eugenics) lacks any form of nuance. It doesnt recognise disabled people as individuals. It takes the horrible, inherently ableist view that a person with a disability is less-than, and thus judges them as not worthy of life.

The discourse that Dawkins has employed uses the medical model of disability, wherein physical differences are regarded as the sole disabling factor within a disabled persons existence. In reality, however, the social model of disability wherein ableism and a structural lack of accessibility are viewed as the primary disabling element of existence is more accurate.

Life would be easier if disability was not seen as such a dirty word. As well as being the sibling to a disabled person, I too am disabled with a number of medical conditions that alter my everyday existence. But, because I look healthy, and present in the ways that people deem acceptable (Im independent, have a job, a degree, an active social life etc.), I will never be painted with the same brush as my brother.

Roughly 1 in 1,000 babies born have Downs Syndrome, making it more common than having red hair. Its the most common chromosomal disorder and this is one of the reasons why we must make the world a better place for people with Downs, and fight to show people like Dawkins why they are so wrong.

Disability Downs Syndrome is common, normal and needs to be treated as such.

Luke gave his express consent to have this article written

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Richard Dawkins argument against women having babies with Downs Syndrome is nothing more than eugenics - The Independent

AMHERST COUNTY, Va. (WFXR) State and local officials are trying to get 350 acres of land in Amherst County cleaned up, zoned, and occupied. Its the campus of what was the Central Virginia Training Center (CVTC), with a history dating all the way back to 1910.

While CVTC helped many disabled residents over the years, those grounds are also where a very dark chapter in American history played out.

Megan Lucas, CEO of Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance (LRBA), is excited about what will become of the land.

We have an opportunity to really telescope the vision for the future of our region, Lucas said. There are still a lot of hurdles associated with this piece of property.

Before the federal government shut it down a process that took a decade and finally finished in 2020 CVTC had a yearly economic impact of more than $87 million. Now, that economic impact is gone and the LRBA is working with the Commonwealth to get the land thriving once again.

The hurdles, however, are significant. There are 98 buildings on site, mostly full of asbestos and lead-based paint. There are roughly $30 million in bonds tied to the property, but there has been interest.

According to Lucas, Ive had a meeting with a developer in Dallas who is interested in the site. Ive had meetings with local developers who are interested in the site and weve received calls from folks who are interested as well.

Author Dr. Paul Lombardo has not called, but he has a request.

I think that, at the very least, the state should ensure, and the people there in Lynchburg should ensure, that the memories of what happened there are not somehow scrubbed away, Dr. Lombardo said.

Dr. Lombardo is referring to a stain on the history of Virginia and several other states, a reprehensible program that took place on CVTCs grounds: eugenics.

Back then, many states forcibly sterilized thousands of residents, men and women because they were fed by the notion that socially unfit people, those with intellectual disabilities, criminals, the poor, and those deemed to be without morals would pass those traits onto their children.

There are headlines from the era which basically say eugenics is the way to lower taxes, Dr. Lombardo explained. Well eliminate hospitals. Well eliminate asylums and various kinds of places where we take care of people at public cost. Well eliminate poverty, so we wont have to worry about people in that setting. And these are all used as financial reasons that we need to have sterilization laws.

Dr. Lombardo wrote a book about eugenics: Three Generations, No Imbeciles, after he was shocked when he read about a Virginia case, Buck v. Bell, that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, and the blunt opinion written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., giving the Commonwealth legal permission to sterilize a woman named Carrie Buck.

It read, in part, Instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.

Holmes then referred to the Buck family, saying, three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Adolf Hitler found that ruling, and the entire eugenics program quite appealing, helping lead Nazi Germany to its program of racial cleansing.

Over the years, what started as the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded became the Central Virginia Training Center.

Now, decades after the last reported sterilization occurred there in 1956, and a few years after the final disabled patients were served there, the land must start yet another chapter.

A feasibility study has been underway and should be completed within the next few months.

Lucas points to the many possibilities, mixed-use residential, corporate park scenarios, retail, restaurants, and breweries across the James River from the City of Lynchburg.

She and Dr. Lombardo also want a plan to remember, some sort of memorial to the people whose lives were impacted by the facility, whether it be from its inception as the colony, where the concept of eugenics was created, or to the people who lived here and were treated for various disabilities, or to the lives that were buried on that land in the seven-acre cemetery on site. Approximately 1,500 people are buried there.

In the words of Dr. Lombardo, I think theres a great deal of remembering that needs to go on.

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Link:

What does the future hold for Central Virginia Training Centers land? - WFXRtv.com

ACLU has not apologized for its support of racism in the past

To the editor:

The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 to support freedom of speech. The ACLU has courageously supported freedom of speech in some cases, notably the Jehovahs Witness and the violent racists attack of African American physician Ossian Sweet who moved into a White neighborhood in Detroit. Inexplicably, they have consistently refused to defend teachers terminated for rejecting human evolution based on racism.

For the first five years of their existence, the ACLU had virtually no success in furthering the organizations goals. That all changed in 1925 when the ACLU persuaded teacher John T. Scopes to defy Tennessees new anti-evolution law that did not permit teaching human evolution in government funded public schools.

Atheist Clarence Darrow, a leading supporter and member of the ACLU National Committee, headed Scopes legal defense team. The prosecution was led by a leading Democrat, William Jennings Bryan. The law, the Butler Act, opposed teaching only human evolution in government schools, not the evolution of reptiles, birds nor even apes. The pretense for the opposition of the Butler act was to defend the separation of church and state. Bryan, a progressive nicknamed The Commoner for fighting for the common people, believed all humans were descendants of Adam and Eve, thus all were the same race, the human race. A specific concern was the high school textbook Civic Biology by George Hunter, then widely used in America including Tennessee.

On page 196, Hunter wrote under the subheading The Races of Man, At the present time there exists upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other .... These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa ... and the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America. Under the subtitle Eugenics, Hunter wrote, The science of being well-born (is actually) eugenics. He then added, Hundreds of families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease ... They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites ... If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums (and) preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race (page 261).

Professor Tontonoz in his study of the case correctly observed that Bryan could accept that lower species had evolved from simpler forms, but he refused to apply the doctrine to humans. To do so was, in effect, to lend implicit support to troubling social policies and ideologies, such as racism and eugenics. In short, Bryan aggressively opposed racism, and the ACLU aggressively opposed Bryan. One disturbing result of the trial was racism being openly taught in many biology textbooks until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s ended this long term practice. In fact, one of the major pieces of evidence for human evolution was Neanderthal man, today acknowledged as fully human. Another major evidence of human evolution was Piltdown man, proven as an elaborate hoax in 1953. The third common evidence of evolution was so-called inferior races including Australian Aborigines and American Blacks. I collect old biology textbooks which include many illustrations featuring these examples of our evolutionary ancestors.

The ACLU has never apologized for their support for these once popular icons of human evolution which were not purged from textbooks and popular books until the 1960s.

Jerry Bergman, PhD.

Montpelier, Ohio

Read more:

ACLU has not apologized for its support of racism in the past - KPCnews.com

Photo credit: Fronteiras do Pensamento [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

I have rarely seen a more vivid illustration of the lethal consequences of utilitarian thinking. In 2014, Richard Dawkins was asked on Twitter what a woman carrying a Down baby should do.His responsewas blunt and curt:

Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.

On what possible basis could it be immoral to bring one of these sweet and loving people into the world?

Seven years later, he explainedin a podcast interview(ostensibly, about his new book) with Brendan OConnor, the father of a child with Down syndrome. After some interesting back-and-forth about the importance of science, scientists and religion, and COVID, Dawkins was asked directly about the above tweet. The famousatheism prosylitizer explained:

That was probably putting it a bit too strongly. But given that the amount of suffering in the world probably does not go down, but probably does go up compared to another child who does not have Down syndrome . . .

When eliminating suffering because societys first priority instead of protecting innocent human life it very easily metastasizes intoeliminating the sufferer. And the suffering need not even be that of the person eliminated, but of family or society. Utilitarianism always leads to justifying killing.

OConnor interrupted Dawkins at that point and asked how he knows that there would be less suffering. Dawkins responded:

I dont know for certain. It seems to me to be plausible. You probably would increase the amount of happiness in the world more by having another child instead.

Good grief, if human life has intrinsic value that is, it matters morally simply because one is human the issue of whether there is more or less suffering, or more or less happiness, is utterly irrelevant! Indeed, if we are to maintain humane, equal, and moral societies if we are to protect the weak, vulnerable, and dependent such considerations must be of no consequence whatsoever.

OConnor pushed back:

OConnor: But you have no reason for knowing that.

Dawkins: I have no direct evidence.

OConnor(sarcastically): OK. You know youre such a scientific, logical person I thought you could possibly have some logical backup to it.

Of course, this isnt an issue of science but of morality and ethics. Do we have the love in our hearts to embrace these beautiful people? These days, so many precious people with Down syndrome are aborted, meaning so few are born that we are all the losers.

Dawkins admits he doesnt know anyone with Down syndrome and OConnor says that everyone has their own experience of it and that there are many who think he is not necessarily right.

OConnor: Do you think it would be immoral not to do it?

Dawkins: Lets leave out the immoral.

OConnor: You brought immoral into it.

Dawkins: Okay. I take that back. But it would be wise and sensible.

OConnor: Do you know children who are so-called perfect can cause terrible suffering in the world too. But I suppose we have no way of checking.

Dawkins. No. Of course.

I am glad OConnor handed Dawkins his lunch. But we need to reflect: Dawkinss attitude illustrates the consequences that flow directly from rejecting human exceptionalism which Dawkinshas done repeatedlyover the years. Human unexceptionalism (if you will) has led to so much evil in the world that it cant be quantified from slavery andJim Crow to eugenics and genocide.

Gratifyingly, Dawkins is beinghit with the brickbatsthat he so richly deserves.

Cross-posted at The Corner.

Continue reading here:

Dawkins: Wise and Sensible to Abort Babies with Down Syndrome - Discovery Institute