Category Archives: Eugenics

Here follows a non-exhaustive list of my genetic flaws. I am short-sighted, more so as I age. I have bunions, dodgy knees and even dodgier shoulders. I have asthma. My skin blisters easily. My hair started going grey when I was in my late teens. I have zero talent for foreign languages, running or music. I am prone to nightmares, as well as to depression and anxiety.

Relatively mild flaws, as they go. But still, these arent traits Im eager to pass on. Our three-year-old already shows a tendency for nightmares that sometimes makes me wince with guilt. Not that its my fault, of course. We dont get to choose which of our genes we pass on. Every conception is a roll of the dice.

The technology will be described with euphemisms such as genetic enhancement or genetic health

But soon that will no longer be true. In fact, its already not quite true, at least for those who have the means and determination to load the dice. Emerging technology is about to present parents with a set of ethical questions that make the usual kinds of debates breast milk or formula? Nanny or daycare? seem trivial. We have always had the power (more or less) to control our childrens nurture. Before long perhaps in just a few years any parent who can afford to will have control over the minutest details of a childs nature too.

The crucial change set to turn our lives upside-down is called preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders (PGT-P), hereafter polygenic screening. Testing a foetus or embryo for some conditions is now a routine part of the modern pregnancy experience. Prenatal Downs Syndrome tests, for instance, are so widespread that in some Scandinavian countries almost 100 per cent of women choose to abort a foetus diagnosed with the condition, or if using IVF not implant the affected embryo. The result is a visible change to these populations: there are simply no more people with Downs to be seen on the streets of Iceland and Denmark.

Until now, these prenatal tests have been available only for some conditions. Whats revolutionary about polygenic screening is that it allows parents to take a batch of embryos conceived through IVF, have a report compiled for each one, based on their genetic risk factors, and then use these reports to decide which embryo to implant.

Such reports give a very full picture of the adult that embryo could become, including their vulnerability to an enormous number of diseases heart disease, diabetes, cancer and their likely physical and psychological traits: height, hair colour, athletic ability, conscientiousness, altruism, intelligence.

The list is long, and ethically fraught. Polygenic screening permits parents to choose the very best children, according to their own preferences, almost entirely removing the role of luck in the normal genetic lottery.

Should we welcome a new kind of commercial product that will allow some people mostly rich ones to have healthier, happier and cleverer children? And should you the reader seek out such a product for yourself? Should I?

Its a live question. Im currently pregnant with our second baby conceived the old fashioned way but we want to have more children. And I know enough people in the world of biotech to gain access to this novel service, which is not, at present, advertised as a single package, but must be procured via at least two different companies: one for the IVF, one for the polygenic screening. The screening itself is expensive, but not prohibitively so probably in the region of 7,000-12,000, which is less than a year of full-time daycare in London. Equally expensive, and far more physically onerous for the mother, is the IVF process, which my husband and I would otherwise have no reason to pursue.

But think of whats on offer: the opportunity to offer your children the best possible chance in life. Why would the kind of upper-middle-class parents who think nothing of spending vast sums on their childrens education not opt for polygenic screening? My bet is that they will, and soon.

If the word eugenics has sprung to mind while reading this, youre not alone. What were talking about here can best be understood as a new kind of eugenics one likely to be quite different from the first eugenics movement that emerged in Britain at the end of the 19th century.

For one thing, the new eugenics will be far more scientifically sophisticated. The earliest eugenicists did not know that the gene was the basic unit of heredity, since the term was not coined until 1909. They talked instead of gemmules and pangens. And they assumed that some traits such as homosexuality were far more heritable than they really are. The first eugenicists made many factual errors, as well as moral ones.

But while eugenics may be a dirty word in the 21st-century West, the fundamental claim behind the first eugenics movement nevertheless remains true. Victorian and Edwardian scientists were correct to notice that our genetic inheritance affects often to a large degree not only our physical but also our psychological characteristics. It is therefore possible to manipulate the characteristics of a population by encouraging or discouraging the reproduction of some genes which historically meant, in practice, the reproduction of some people.

Its one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds, as the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins tweeted in 2020. Its quite another to conclude that it wouldnt work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldnt it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.

This is racist trash, Richard, replied Dan Hicks, professor of archaeology at Oxford, putting ideology before facts, and highlighting the key contemporary objection to the use of the word eugenics (if not, as we shall see later, the actual practice of it).

Critics such as Hicks are wrong to suggest that eugenics, as Dawkins phrased it, wouldnt work. Evolution can occur quite quickly, given the right conditions. Mutations that provide protection against malaria have been strongly selected for over the past few centuries in parts of the world where the disease is endemic. In the West, the invention of the caesarean section in the 18th century removed the selection pressure that historically restricted the size of the human head, meaning that heads are growing larger. These are not examples of artificial selection that is, humans consciously selecting particular features but they nevertheless demonstrate the speed and power of the evolutionary process upon which eugenics relies.

Which is not to say, of course, that it all comes down to genes. On the ancient question of nature or nurture?, by far the most defensible scientific answer is both. But while it is rare to come across anyone who insists that environment plays no role whatsoever in the development of physical and psychological traits, it is common to find people on the left who reject the role of nature altogether, insisting that humans are born as blank slates.

There are two motivations behind this ideological stance. The first is utopian: if you support any kind of revolutionary political project egalitarianism, say then you need to believe humans could, given the right conditions, radically overhaul their instinctive behaviour and desires. For revolutionaries, the idea of a fixed human nature presents a hateful obstacle to their political ambitions (good ideology; wrong species as E.O. Wilson said of communism, a political system that he declared might work well for ants, but is reliably disastrous for Homo sapiens).

The second motivation comes from a well-meaning urge to reject eugenics on moral grounds. The horror most modern people feel when they hear the word is justified by the atrocities associated with the first movement. The extermination programmes of the Nazis, for example, were directly inspired by the eugenics movement of the Anglosphere, not least the programmes permitted by American eugenic legislation that saw more than 64,000 individuals forcibly sterilised between 1907 and 1963, disproportionately African-American and indigenous women. The procedure was known in medical slang as a Mississippi appendectomy.

The instinct to condemn as racist trash even a partial defence of the science of eugenics is rooted in the recognition that this science has, within living memory, been used to justify many evil deeds. And this is a question that any defender of the new eugenics must provide an answer to: is that process inevitable? Does a widespread belief that some genes are better or worse than others lead to the widespread conclusion that some people are better or worse than others? And does this conclusion always lead to some very dark places?

We are about to find out. The new eugenics will shortly be with us, although it will not describe itself as such. It will be described with euphemisms such as genetic enhancement or genetic health.

Unlike the first eugenics movement, which attempted to harness the power of the state to determine who should and should not be encouraged (or forbidden) to reproduce, the new version will not concern itself especially with government policy. Rather, it will mostly take the form of private individuals quietly opting for new commercial services like polygenic screening and, in the future, more radical biotech. These individuals will typically spend large sums of money on these services because they will have reached the conclusion that socially desirable traits such as intelligence and beauty are heavily influenced by genetics.

Some countries may well subsidise polygenic screening. Israel already offers its citizens free IVF services, and China has recently announced its intention to do the same. Laws that permit or incentivise the use of these biotech services can accurately be described as eugenic laws, albeit not ones written with the intention of manipulating the gene pool at scale.

My prediction is that the new eugenics will be just as popular as the first which is to say, very. What is often forgotten about the first eugenics movement is how extraordinarily influential it was in its day, particularly among the self-defined progressive upper-middle classes of Britain and America.

The best contemporary comparison is perhaps the environmentalist movement, which has also achieved rapid mainstreaming within a few decades. Like environmentalism, eugenics was endorsed by the most prestigious scientific associations and journals. Like environmentalism, it found passionate advocates among celebrities and the socially conscious middle classes. It wasnt popular only among Wasp conservatives. Black progressives Kelly Miller and W.E.B. Dubois were eugenicists, for example, as were some of the leading socialists of the day. For the Fabian reformer Sidney Webb, the first eugenics movement combined perfectly with his famous injunction to Interfere! Interfere! Interfere! Moulding a healthier and more intelligent population was regarded as not just a virtuous cause, but a duty.

One technology the first eugenicists made use of was abortion. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a prominent eugenicist, as was Marie Stopes, her British counterpart, who gave her name to Marie Stopes International (MSI), one of the worlds foremost providers of abortion services to this day. So great was Stopess eugenics fervour that in 1947 she forbade her son from marrying a beautiful heiress because the woman was short-sighted. After he went ahead anyway, Stopes cut him out of her will.

When criticism of eugenics came, it was mainly from Catholics, in part because most eugenicists vigorously endorsed the use of both birth control and abortion to further their goals. G.K. Chesterton was perhaps the best-known opponent of the movement. He once wrote a comic story about a woman (strongly reminiscent of Stopes) who breaks off an engagement after her fianc falls off his bicycle, since this revealed his genetic feebleness. He condemned eugenics as a thing no more to be bargained about than poisoning.

But such objections were rare before the second world war. And even after Nazi atrocities were made known, it took some decades for the word eugenics to fall entirely out of favour (the American Eugenics Society did not change its name until 1973).

Yet while the term is now stigmatised, plenty of eugenic laws and practices remain popular. In a recent essay titled Youre Probably a Eugenicist, the evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman points out that the efforts of the non-profit organisation Dor Yeshorim to reduce the incidence of Tay-Sachs disease and cystic fibrosis in Jewish families could accurately be described as eugenicist. The practice of aborting foetuses likely to be affected by Downs Syndrome is also eugenicist. Laws forbidding sibling or cousin marriage are definitely eugenicist, in that they are motivated by a desire to reduce the incidence of disease caused by inbreeding. And whats more, as Fleischman writes: Gay men and lesbian women in the US often use gamete donors from egg and sperm banks to have kids in a process that is transparently eugenicOrganisations that recruit egg and sperm donors dont just recruit for fertility, they also screen for mental and physical health, height, education and criminal history because thats what their clients want and expect.

It is common to find people on the left who reject the role of nature altogether

The current bien-pensant position on eugenics is to talk the talk on opposing it, without walking the walk. The increasing availability of polygenic screening is likely to make that dissonance more obvious.

Jonathan Anomaly is one of the few philosophers thinking seriously about the ethical implications. In his 2020 book, Creating Future People, he explored the many practical and moral problems that might result from widespread use of polygenic screening, including the risk of what evolutionary biologists call speciation: that is, a group becoming so genetically distinct from the rest of its species that the two populations are no longer genetically similar enough to interbreed. Strange as this may sound, the run-away use of polygenic screening by an elite group could result in just such an outcome. The social and political differences between the two human species would then become so enormous that the fracturing of polities would be likely, with genetically enhanced people eventually forming their own nation states that exclude the non-enhanced.

Personally, I share the nervousness that many feel in response to the unnaturalness of polygenic screening. But it is worth remembering how unnatural our modern lives already are not least the artificially low levels of child mortality we now enjoy. For most of our species history, something in the region of 40-50 per cent of children would die before their 15th birthdays. Now, the rate globally is at about 4 per cent, and much lower in the rich world.

This is an enormous blessing. It also ensures that people who in other eras would have died as children perhaps including me, as a fairly sickly asthmatic are now able to pass on the genes that make them vulnerable to premature disease and death. This so-called crumbling genome problem means that without the use of genetic enhancement technology of some kind, we will become steadily more genetically sick as a species: childhood cancers will become more common, our immune systems will become weaker and we will become steadily more reliant on modern medical technology to allow us to weather threats. If for any reason those medical systems fail, its game over.

The only natural way out of this quandary is to return to historically normal child mortality rates a possibility that strikes terror into my parental heart. The truth is that any parent grateful for unnatural technologies such as vaccines and effective treatments for childhood cancer should also be open to the prospect of using other unnatural technologies such as polygenic screening.

Parents have historically moved heaven and earth to protect the health and happiness of their children. We should expect those of the future to do the same. And very soon they will have another tool at their disposal: a radical and potentially dangerous tool, but one that any parent with the means to acquire it will almost certainly be unable to resist.

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The quiet return of eugenics - The Spectator

This is the story of Madison Grant, a wealthy conservationist, influential progressive, and one of the fathers of eugenics in the U.S. His 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, prompted a flattering letter from Adolf Hitler about the book, which Hitler called his bible. Progressives regarded eugenics as cutting-edge science, but in the hands of experts, this science led to unspeakable horrors, the consequences of which are still felt today.

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Ep 2 | The Monster Masterminds of Eugenics | The Beck Story - iHeart

This article is part of the Fine Arts & Exhibits special section on the art worlds expanded view of what art is and who can make it.

Three groundbreaking Black portraiture artists have exhibitions this fall at university art museums, two of which are Ivy League schools historically white spaces with pasts that are entangled with slavery.

The shows speak to the evolution of art institutions as they confront calls to diversify, which began in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 when museums nationwide were charged with racism and discriminatory practices.

Lauren Haynes, director of curatorial affairs and programs at the Queens Museum in New York City, and co-curator of one of the three university exhibitions, said she hopes these are part of a sustained effort by museums of all sizes to create exhibitions and collections that reflect their communities and the larger world in which they exist.

Yale Universitys history includes the use of enslaved African labor and faculty members who led the American Eugenics movement of the 1920s and 1930s. The first nine presidents of Princeton University owned enslaved people, and a slave auction took place on campus in 1766. Duke Universitys history is entwined with slavery, post-Emancipation segregation and white supremacy. In 2018, the universitys trustees voted to change the name of a building honoring an early benefactor of the school, Julian Carr, who was a white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan member.

The exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery, Mickalene Thomas/Portrait of an Unlikely Space, which opened on Sept. 8 and runs through Jan. 7, 2024, centers on a collection of small-scale portraits miniatures, daguerreotypes, silhouettes and engravings of pre-Emancipation-era African Americans, alongside works by co-curator Mickalene Thomas and other contemporary artists. Ms. Thomas, 52, earned her M.F.A. at Yale University School of Art and lives and works in New York City.

When you think about Yale University and what it is, and that its museum is now exhibiting these images and portraits that were mostly hidden away it is an unlikely space for that, she said.

The portraits are a remarkable record of the life of everyday Black Americans living between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries, with sitters often painted wearing their finest clothes and looking straight at the viewer. Far more often, said Ms. Thomas, we are presented with images that speak to the trauma and servitude of Black Americans, rather than the quality of their lives and the excellence contained in those lives.

It was the acquisition in 2016 by the gallery of a tiny, intricately detailed portrait on ivory of Rose Prentice, a domestic worker painted in her Sunday best, that inspired the exhibition. It was also the first miniature of a Black sitter in the museums large collection of American miniatures. The portraits are arranged on walls, in cases and on top of furniture, so that the viewer feels as if theyve walked into someones home, said Ms. Thomas. The stories they tell a woman sitting at a writing desk, another holding a banjo, Rose Prentices pearl cluster earrings and printed head scarf are important, she said, when you think of Black families and how long weve been seen as invisible in mainstream American culture.

The Ten Commandments of Rene Cox, which opens at Princeton University Art Museums new gallery in downtown Princeton, N.J., on Nov. 18 and runs through Jan. 28, 2024, is a mini-retrospective. Among the issues Ms. Coxs work explores are Black womanhood and motherhood, sexism, and gender fluidity, as well as the dehumanization and commodification of the Black body.

But rather than portraying Black people as victims, her work (largely photography) celebrates their power, talent and beauty. It is also the first public showing of Ms. Coxs earliest self-portrait, done while she was an undergraduate studying photography at Syracuse University. The artist, 63, who was born in Jamaica and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., often photographs herself naked or in costume, playing a character, as a way of deconstructing historical stereotypes. I see myself as flipping the script, she said. I have found there is great strength in that, and in representing self-love, which is lacking within the Black community to some degree.

For Ms. Cox, that has sometimes meant rewriting history, as in her photographic montage Yo Mamas Last Supper, a recreation of Leonardo da Vincis famous painting, in which all the figures are Black men except for Jesus, who is portrayed by a nude Ms. Cox, and Judas, who is white.

In her The Discreet Charm of the Bougies series (a play on the 1972 Luis Buuel film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) she is the fictional, privileged Missy pearl-wearing and poodle-owning photographed in a variety of situations, including sitting on a couch while being served by her white maid. The series, Ms. Cox said in an interview with Aperture, shows Missy moving from a depressive state to one where she is able to live a life of joy, which, she explained, has also been Ms. Coxs personal experience. It has led to one of the most fundamental realizations of her life, she said, and one of her Ten Commandments. Dont wait for people to validate you validate yourself.

Lyle Ashton Harris: Our First and Last Love, a retrospective showcasing 35 years of the artists work, opened on Aug. 24 at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and runs through Jan. 7, 2024. The exhibition is anchored by nine pieces that are part of Mr. Harris Shadow Works series. These are detailed assemblages constructed of personal photos, shells, beads, pottery shards, Polaroids, Post-it notes, newspaper clippings, postcards, and even cuttings of the artists hair all set within frames of stretched Ghanaian textiles. Ms. Haynes of the Queens Museum, who co-curated this exhibition, said the Shadow Works series comments on the moment we are living in, on identity, trauma, loss, relationships and the notion of legacy.

Mr. Harris, 58, who was born in the Bronx and raised in Tanzania and New York, is a meticulous archivist; his archive contains thousands of photos, lists, notes, fabric swatches and other items collected throughout his life, including more than 100 personal journals. Mr. Harris draws upon that archive for many of his works, including Obsesso II, a collage thats more than 10 feet wide, comprising hundreds of photos and ephemera from his archive.

The multiplicity of elements with which to engage resonates deeply with people; they get to time-travel, he said. Its not just hundreds of photographs of me, were looking at a club from the 90s that doesnt exist anymore or the fortune cookie that became the title of the show.

In 1993, Mr. Harris was eating Chinese food with a friend in Seattle when he opened his fortune cookie and removed the slip of paper inside. It read: Our first and last love is self-love.

Although not focused on portraiture, Silver Linings, the first national tour of works from the Spelman College Museum of Fine Arts permanent collection, features nearly 40 artists of African descent, dating from 1908 through 2017. Liz Andrews, Ph.D., the museums executive director, said although the museum was founded in 1996, the historically Black womens college has been collecting art since 1899, and this exhibition includes works of sculpture, painting, drawing and mixed media.

Silver Linings is making its first stop at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. It opened Sept. 29 and runs through Jan. 28, 2024. Like Spelman, Vassar was founded as an all-women college but admitted its first Black student unknowingly in 1897 because she was passing as a white woman. It would be another four decades before the school truly opened its doors to Black students. Its incredibly important that a place like Vassar is recognizing Spelman as its peer, said Dr. Andrews. I think people have come to understand that historically Black colleges and universities are essential to the life and culture and the arts of this nation.

See original here:

University Art Museums Become Unlikely Homes for These Portraits - The New York Times

Tom Huddleston is our special guest on this weeks Dune Talk, where were diving into his new book The Worlds of Dune! This gorgeous hardcover release looks at actual locations and people that inspired Frank Herbert as he researched and wrote his first Dune novel. Garin, Marcus, and Mark get into these historical revelations, including its more controversial themes. What was Herberts perspective eugenics and psychedelics? How were the Fremen informed by both Arabic and Native American cultures, and are some of those influences being downplayed today?

This podcast (53 minutes) is available here in both video and audio formats (below). Enjoy and spread the word to fellow Dune fans!

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Tom Huddlestons The Worlds of Dune: The Places and Cultures that Inspired Frank Herbert, published on September 26, 2023, explores the many real-world influences that went into creating the original Dune novel. This visually-appealing hardcover book, with a wealth of full-color photos, offers readers an enjoyable and insightful trek through history.

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Do you have a question or suggestion for future episodes of Dune Talk? We want to hear from you! Tweet out to @DuneTalkShow, reply to our Instagram posts @DuneTalkShow, or simply leave your note in the comment section below.

Special thanks goes out to Ashton GIeckman for music and Sheldon Lee for voice overs.

Continued here:

Real-world Influences of Frank Herbert's 'Dune' - Dune News Net

Neurodivergence, according to Forbes Health, was first defined in the 1990s by Judy Singer, a sociologist who was autistic herself. [1] She wanted a term to describe her experiences with autism: the good, the bad, and everything in between. Neurodivergent brains work differently than neurotypical brains, but these differences arent worse or bettersimply different. For example, many neurodivergent people may have fidgets or tics that dont cause them any distress, but they just arent typical or normal for their age. Neurodivergence is not a diagnosis, but a label people with learning or developmental differences can choose for themselves. Generally, conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, Down syndrome and other learning disabilities are included in the umbrella, but not everyone with these conditions self-describe themselves as neurodivergent. In the end, its a personal choice, and can be a more effective way to discuss aspects of disorders that, in reality, arent debilitating.

Nowadays, self-diagnosis is far more common than it was fifty or even twenty years ago. Thats because, up until relatively recently, neurodivergent people were the subject of discrimination, eugenics and worse. The inventor of the Aspergers syndrome diagnosis, a now outdated term to describe autistic people with lower support needs, was a Nazi who took part in genocidal killings of autistic children deemed too low-functioning to be cured, according to Time magazine. [2] This mindset persists, with efforts from some in the medical field to fix neurodivergent people or to find causes for neurodivergence and prevent it.

This fraught history is what pushed autism advocates toward the neurodivergence label: We are not broken, only different. Unfortunately, strict diagnosis and categorization is almost universally required for accommodations. Even UMass Boston, which prides itself on being accepting and open, requires a diagnosis alongside plenty of other menial paperwork to receive simple accommodations. According to the Ross Center website, Eligibility is based on information gathered during [an] initial meeting, past educational experiences and accommodations, and disability documentation. The documentation must be current, provide a clear diagnosis by the appropriate medical professional, and specify the functional limitations in an academic setting related to the disability. [3] For students who have trouble with, for example, sitting down and paying attention to paperwork for prolonged periods of time, this is hellish. Even the language on the Ross Center website is clinical and densenot accessible to anyone with dyslexia or trouble reading.

Psychologists or therapists who are registered to diagnose learning disabilities are hard to come by. Not only are they expensive, but their schedules and locations can be just as restrictive. For many neurodivergent people, self-diagnosis is their only option. Despite how commonplace knowledge of neurodiversity is now compared to the 20th century, misinformation still abounds.

Diagnostic criteria, the basis upon which a neurodivergent persons access to accommodations and care, are inherently biased against neurodivergent people. Texts like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, colloquially known as the DSM, instruct mental health professionals on how to diagnose a wide variety of conditions. These manuals are always written from the perspective of the therapist, however, and never from the perspective of the person living with the condition. Diagnostic criteria focus on how an autistic person inconveniences someone else by being too loud, or how someone with ADHD keeps interrupting them, and never on how neurodivergent people experience these conditions personally.

Discussions of neurodivergence often overlook that, while being neurodivergent does not make a person worse or inherently broken, these conditions are disabilities. Regardless of whether its due to the circumstances surrounding the neurodivergent person or whether its an innate part of the disorder, neurodivergence makes it harder to function in a world designed for neurotypicals. With the rise of pop psychology on platforms such as TikTok, this aspect often gets overlooked. Having ADHD is not cute and trendyits debilitating.

For neurodivergent people with or without diagnoses, the psychiatric field is oppressive. Oftentimes, we have to play games with healthcare professionals to convince them that we are worthy of accommodations or medication; on the other hand, many have medication and therapy forced on them in order to fix them. The less palatable symptoms of ASD and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder such as anger issues, vocal tics and yelling, and even conditions that are often comorbid with neurodivergence like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, depression and schizophreniaall these conditions dont receive the treatment from healthcare professionals that they should. Mentally ill and neurodivergent people can be detained against their will, have their rights stripped from them, and forced to be under the care of someone who might not have their best interest in mind, whether that be a state-appointed guardian or a nurse. Like it or not, many of these people will turn to self-medication, only to be unjustly punished by this exact system for being drug addicts.

Being neurodivergent doesnt make people unable to communicate for themselves, even if theyre nonverbal or need a caretaker. For decades, neurodivergent people have been trying to advocate for themselves beyond peoples fascination with pop psychology. The solution is simple: We need more neurodivergent people in psychiatry, writing about and advocating for neurodiversity. In short, we need more Judy Singers.

SOURCES:

[1] Gregory, E. (2023, Sept. 18). What Does It Mean To Be Neurodivergent?. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/what-is-neurodivergent/%C2%A0

[2] Sheffer, E. (2018, April 26). Aspergers Syndrome, the Nazi Regime and the Dangerous Power of Labeling People. Time.https://time.com/5255779/asperger-syndrome-nazi-germany-history/

[3] UMass Boston. Eligibility for Services and Documentation Guidelines. Ross Center for Disability Services. https://www.umb.edu/academics/seas/disability-services/documentation/

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Everything you don't know about neurodiversity The Mass Media - The Mass Media

Japan is confronting stories of forced sterilization and eugenics under a law which was effective from 1948 to 1996. A Parliamentary investigation has found that 24,993 people were subjected to this surgery in Japan. The youngest were a boy and girl, both 9 years old, who were sterilised in the early 60s and early 70s.

Under the now-abrogated law, a board at the prefectural government could order surgery if the person concerned could not consent. But the report claims that in some cases, people were sterilised without following protocols and without formal approvals. Health authorities told local authorities that deception could be tolerated for people with hereditary diseases.

The Eugenic Protection Law was passed unanimously in 1948. The current government has apologized for the harm done to many people.

One woman, 77-year-old Junko Iizuka, shared her story with the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. When she was 16, she was sterilized because she was living at the time in a centre for children with intellectual disabilities. However, she was not disabled. The surgery ruined her life.

Eugenic surgery deprived me of all my modest dreams of a happy marriage and children. As soon as I told my husband, whom I trusted, that I had undergone surgery that made me unable to have children, he left me and demanded a divorce, she said. As a result of the trauma she suffered serious mental health issues for most of the rest of her life.

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Details of Japans experiment with eugenic sterilization released - BioEdge

Employment levels for people with learning disabilities in the UK are 5 to 10 times lower than they were a hundred years ago. And the experiences of workers from the 1910s50s offer inspiration as well as lessons about safeguarding.

A new study by Cambridge historian Professor Lucy Delap (Murray Edwards College) argues that loud voices in the 20th-century eugenics movement have hidden a much bigger picture of inclusion in British workplaces that puts todays low rates to shame.

Professor Delap found that in some parts of Britain, up to 70% of people variously labelled defective, slow and odd at the time had paid jobs when demand for labour was high, including during and after the First World War. This proportion fell during recessions, but even then, 30% remained in work. By contrast, in the UK today less than 5% of adults with intellectual disabilities are employed (source: BASE).

A recession now couldnt make levels of employment of people with learning disabilities much worse, they are on the floor already, Professor Delap says. Her study, published in the journal Social History of Medicine (access here) follows a decade of painstakingly piecing together evidence of people with learning disabilities in the British workforce in the first half of the 20th century.

Delap found no trace in employers records or in state archives which focused on segregation and detaining people. But she struck gold in The National Archives in Kew with a survey of employment exchanges undertaken in 1955 to investigate how people then termed subnormal or mentally handicapped were being employed. Delap found further evidence in the inspection records of Trade Boards now held at Warwick Universitys Modern Records Centre. In 1909, a complex system of rates and inspection emerged as part of an effort to set minimum wages. This led to the development of exemption permits for a range of employees not considered to be worth full payment.

Delap says: Once I found these workers, they appeared everywhere and not just in stereotypical trades like shoe repair and basket-weaving. They were working in domestic service, all kinds of manufacturing, shops, coal mining, agriculture, and local authority jobs.

Delaps research goes against most previous writing about people with intellectual disabilities which has focused on eugenics and the idea that preindustrial community inclusion gave way to segregation and asylums in the nineteenth century. We've been too ready to accept that narrative and havent gone looking for people in the archive, Delap says. Many werent swept up into institutions, they lived relatively independent lives, precarious lives, but often with the support of families, friends and co-workers.

Wage age versus IQ

Previous studies have focused on the rise of IQ testing in this period, but the employment records that Delap studied showed something very different: a more positive sense of ability couched in terms of the wages someone was worth. This involved imagining a persons wage age, meaning that an adult worker could begin with a starting age of 14 and advance in wage age through their working life. Not everyone did advance though.

Delap says The idea of wage age was harsh in many ways but it was far less stigmatising than IQ which emphasised divisions between normal and defective and suggested people couldnt advance beyond a certain point. By contrast, ideas of fairness, productivity and the going rate were deployed to evaluate workers. When labour was in demand, workers had leverage to negotiate their wage age up. IQ didn't give people that power.

Appeal to employers

Under the exemption system, employers saw the business case for employing usually at a significantly lower rate of pay loyal workers who could be trusted to carry out routine tasks.

Delap says: If anything, governments gave signals that these people shouldn't be employed, that they were better off under the care and control of the mental deficiency boards. But employers understood that they could be good workers.

In 1918, an odd job worker employed for 20 years at a London tin works was described as suffering from mental deficiency and didnt know the time of the year or who Britain was fighting. Nevertheless, in the inspectors opinion, he was little if at all inferior to an ordinary worker of full capacity on the hand press and His speed at cutting out on an unguarded fly machine was noticeable. His employer agreed to a raise from 18 to 24 shillings a week, just below what a carter could earn.

Employer calculations, Delap emphasises, fluctuated with the state of the labour market. When workers were in short supply, those with learning disabilities became more attractive. When demand for labour fell these workers might be the first to lose their jobs.

Were employers just exploiting vulnerable workers?

Delap found clear evidence of some workers being exploited, being stuck on the same very low wage and the same monotonous task for years.

We shouldnt feel nostalgic, this wasnt a golden age of disability-friendly employment, Delap says. And yet, the archive reveals a strong reciprocal sense of real work being done and wages being paid in exchange. Many of these people would have considered themselves valued workers and not charity cases. Some were able to negotiate better conditions and many resisted being told to do boring, repetitive work.

Delap repeatedly encountered families policing the treatment of their relative. In 1922, the owner of a laundry in Lincolnshire considered sacking a 25-year-old mentally deficient woman who starched collars because trade is so bad but kept her on at request of her parents. Workers who had families looking out for them were more able to ask for wage rises, refuse to do certain jobs and limit exploitation, Delap says. I found lots of evidence of love and you don't often see that in archives of intellectual disability.

Parents or siblings sometimes worked on the same premises which, Delap argues, strengthened the bonds of moral obligation that existed between employers and families. In 1918, for instance, a 16-year-old who attached the bottoms of tin cans in Glamorgan was hired for the sake of her sisters who are employed by the firm and are satisfactory workers.

Lessons for today

Delap sees concerning similarities between the 1920s and the 2020s in terms of how British institutions manage, care for and educate people with learning disabilities.

Historically, Delap argues, institutions were just stop-gaps, places where people could be kept without onward pathways. People were often not trained at all or trained to do work that didn't really exist like basket-weaving. This remains a problem today, Delap says. We have a fast-changing labour market and our special schools and other institutions arent equipping people well enough for viable paid opportunities.

Delap argues that evidence of people with learning disabilities successfully working in many different roles and environments in the past undermines todays focus on a very narrow range of job types and sectors. She highlights the fact that many workers with learning disabilities used to be involved in the service sector, including public facing roles, and not just working in factories. They were doing roles which brought them into contact with the general public and being a service sector economy today, we have lots of those jobs.

Delap also believes that structural factors continue to prevent people from accessing jobs. Credentialism has made it very difficult for people dont have qualifications to get jobs which they might actually be very good at, she says. We need to think much harder about how we make the system work for people with a range of abilities. I also think the rise of IT is a factor, we havent been training people with learning disabilities well enough in computer skills so it has become an obstacle.

Delap believes that Britains ageing population and struggle to fill unskilled jobs means there is a growing economic as well as a moral case for employing more people with learning disabilities.

She points out that many people with intellectual disabilities used to work in agriculture, a sector now facing chronic labour shortages. Delap acknowledges that exploitation remains a problem in agriculture, so safeguarding would be paramount, as it would be in every sector.

I think employers are recognising that they need active inclusion strategies to fill vacancies and that they need to cultivate loyalty, Delap says. Work remains a place where we find meaning in our lives and where we make social connections and that's why so many people with disabilities really want to work and why it deprives them of so much when they are excluded. We need to have more bold ambition and stop being content with really marginal forms of inclusion.

Reference

L. Delap, Slow Workers: Labelling and Labouring in Britain, c. 19091955, Social History of Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1093/shm/hkad043.

Media contacts

Tom Almeroth-Williams, Communications Manager (Research), University of Cambridge: researchcommunications@admin.cam.ac.uk / tel: +44 (0) 7540 139 444

Professor Lucy Delap (Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge): lmd11@cam.ac.uk

Social History of Medicine

People

Slow Workers: Labelling and Labouring in Britain, c. 19091955

14-Jul-2023

Excerpt from:

Give more people with learning disabilities the chance to work ... - EurekAlert

John Boyega does a bang-up job in They Cloned Tyrone Juel Taylor's combination Blaxploitation throwback/conspiracy comedy-drama but he's also the on-screen avatar for its most indulgent flaws. The more Boyega's drug dealer character Fontaine pulls back the curtain, along with the delightful duo of Teyonah Parris's Yo-Yo and Jamie Foxx's Slick Charles, the more the film feels the need to explain itself. And, unfortunately, the answers to its questions aren't always satisfying.

That being said, They Cloned Tyrone makes for both a fitting dramatic showcase for all involved and a wildly fun time for anyone watching, so its shortcomings don't always matter in the moment. However, whether as a result of post-J.J. Abrams puzzle-box movie viewing, or because filmmakers like Jordan Peele have trained Hollywood audiences to spot deeper social metaphors, the movie always feels like it's charging towards some grand unifying vision that never fully emerges when you think back on it.

So, what is exactly They Cloned Tyrone hiding, and why does its big reveal falter? Let's dive in.

The film's fictitious neighborhood, once overrun by crime and drug dealing, turns out to be the site of mysterious government experiments involving cloning. This much is clear from the trailer. However, the film's earliest twist sees Boyega's protagonist being shot and killed within the first 15 minutes, only to wake up with no memory of the event. From there on out, it isn't hard to put two and two together for the audience anyway, since we know the movie's title. This recently awakened version of Fontaine is a clone, but the reasons why remain a mystery for now.

After the lead trio investigates a secret scientific bunker, they interrogate and accidentally kill a lab tech, who they note looks like a white man with a distinctly Black afro. Here, they also discover a white, powdery substance that makes them affable and docile. It's not unlike an actual recreational drug (sometimes it even acts like laughing gas), but they soon discover that this chemical is being pumped into several products heavily marketed and consumed throughout The Glen: fried chicken, grape soda, even hair straightener. This, coupled with specific music tracks that seem to put people under hypnosis, leads to the further discovery of Pavlovian mind-control experiments, in which residents are forcefully conditioned to respond to these various stimuli with near-total obedience. One of those obedient residents includes yet another Fontaine clone; this one appears as a silent, unquestioning security guard working for Kiefer Sutherland's ruthless government enforcer, Nixon.

After finding out the full extent of the experiment (or so it would seem), the trio goes back to their regular lives, now believing their roles in society to have been programmed and pre-ordained by mysterious suits for an unknown length of time. Fontaine in particular is troubled by this, since it means his purpose as a dope dealer is to drown his hometown in drugs and violence so that the rest of the country will ignore it, and so the men in black beneath it can keep conducting their obedience experiments undeterred. This would be a fine enough premise had the reveals ended there, but there's one more big twist to come, and it unfortunately sucks the air out of the room.

When the trio enlist the help of friends and enemies alike to mount a raid on the underground facility, they discover an untold number of clones of everyone they know (including themselves). Fontaine ends up face to face with the local mastermind of the operation, albeit one who claims to answer to other people himself. It turns out to be a much older version of Fontaine, and ignoring the cartoonish old-man makeup job, it's not an altogether terrible twist in concept.

However, while the "what" may be surprising, the "why" is rather convoluted, and works against the movie's own themes. This is partially because the film spends practically no time exploring what made the older Fontaine this way, or what pushed him to run these experiments on not just his own neighborhood but on clones of himself. He claims it's because no one should have had to suffer the pain he did when his younger brother was gunned down a backstory hinted at but seldom explored for the Fontaine we've been following but the jump from this origin story to mad scientist is a leap too far for the film to reconcile.

It turns out that, over several generations, the older Fontaine has been trying to breed out Blackness itself, slowly but surely isolating genes and creating a significantly white race of people (as evidenced by the aforementioned lab tech, and a handful of other white characters with Black hair). It's in part a realistic depiction of the way genocides have sometimes functioned the goal of the North Carolina Eugenics Board was to "breed out" African Americans through both sterilization and selective breeding but to make a Black man the ostensible face of this operation, as well as the scientist who apparently devised the entire scheme, touches on a deep, dark element of racial self-hatred the film isn't nearly ready to unpack.

It also doesn't help that while the action is unfolding elsewhere, thanks to some of Yo-Yo and Slick Charles' propulsive comedic shenanigans, the film keeps cutting to a sterile boardroom setting so the older Fontaine can explain this plan in a lengthy monologue to his younger self. It's an uninteresting reveal presented in an equally uninteresting manner, adding little to what was already a loaded-enough saga of self-worth and forced circumstance. Plus, its quickfire resolution never affords the younger Fontaine the opportunity to reflect on this brand-new dimension of his own potential. If the older version of some other character were revealed to be in charge or some other, unrelated person entirely little about the movie would change. However, despite dropping the ball in this regard, They Cloned Tyrone does wrap up in a fun way that potentially opens the door to a follow-up film.

Plans haven't yet been announced for any sequels or spin-offs, but the film's ultimate conclusion hints at the potential for all sorts of new iterations of this very story. After the trio frees the numerous clones being kept in hibernation, they decide to set off to Memphis (and elsewhere) to potentially free more clones wherever they might find them, since this operation appears to be nationwide. Reporters also flock to The Glen to report on the bizarre story of naked doppelgngers suddenly roaming the streets, and the film briefly cuts to its closing titles, before cutting suddenly back to a scene resembling Fontaine's repetitive mornings. This time, however, the specifics are slightly different.

Far away, in a crumbling Los Angeles neighborhood, yet another clone played by Boyega goes about his familiar routine, which mirrors that of Fontaine. He ends up watching the news with several of his friends, who note that one of the clones roaming The Glen resembles him, and they refer to him as Tyrone. The film cuts to credits again, playing a version of Erykah Badu's live performance of "Tyrone," only with the lyrics like "You need to call Tyrone" cheekily changed to "Somebody cloned Tyrone" an uncanny clone of the song itself.

With Fontaine, Yo-Yo, and Slick Charles setting out on a mission of sorts, and with other potential clones like Tyrone discovering the conspiracy for themselves, the movie's final scenes offer up all sorts of possibilities for future installments. However, even as a self-contained story, these mere hints at how widespread the experiments may be are a fine enough exclamation point on a story that weaves numerous metaphors about oppression and poverty in modern America, albeit to mixed results. Either way, it's great to see Boyega getting to flex his dramatic muscles while playing numerous characters, and we certainly wouldn't say no to more of that.

They Cloned Tyrone is currently in theaters, and it premieres on Netflix July 21.

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'They Cloned Tyrone' ending explained - Mashable

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Two very different gatherings this month have got me thinking.

The first was this years Byline Festival, which hosted a series of wide-ranging debates about the huge challenges facing the country today: above all, the future of the NHS, the reality of climate change, and Britains troubled relationship with the European Union.

The festival took place at Dartington Hall in Devon, where the 1945 Labour Party manifesto was written. Who, the festival asked, was prepared to face up to todays challenges? In other words, is this a 1945 moment?

The election of Attlees Government saw the creation of the NHS and the welfare state. It is, by any standards, an historic achievement, and deserves our thanks and admiration.

History, however, is contradictory.

For the truth is that, for all the talk of comprehensive support from cradle to grave, the 1945 reforms left behind a group of particularly vulnerable people those whom we would today describe as learning disabled.

We take pride in the defeat of fascism and despise the lies and cruelty on which it was built. But the pseudo-science of eugenics, used to justify many of the worst atrocities, remained alive and well in post-war Britain.

Indeed, William Beveridge, the revered architect of the welfare state, slipped out of the gallery of the House of Commons the day it debated his report to reassure the ladies and gentlemen of the Eugenics Society that his report was eugenic in intent and would prove so in effect.

Then, in 1946, John Maynard Keynes director of the Eugenics Society through much of the war described eugenics as the most important and significant branch of sociology, and the renowned evolutionist Julian Huxley insisted on its value in his manifesto for UNESCO.

Meanwhile, the senior psychiatrist and neurologist Dr Alfred Tredgold updated his influential Textbook of Mental Deficiency to recommend euthanasia for the 80,000 or so more idiots and imbeciles whose care and support, whether in their own homes or in institutions, absorb a large amount of time, energy and money of the normal population which could be utilised to better purpose.

The families of profoundly learning-disabled people are involved in a continuous struggle for their most fundamental rights and dignities, writes Stephen Unwin

Stephen Unwin

Dr Tredgolds conclusions were as monstrous as anything uttered by the Nazis:Many of the defectives are utterly helpless, repulsive in appearance and revolting in their manners. Their existence is a perpetual source of sorrow and unhappiness to their parents. In my opinion it would be an economical and humane procedure were their very existence to be painlessly terminated.

Tragically, something of this contempt was hard-wired into the 1946 National Health Service Act, which took more than 100 mental defect asylums into public ownership and turned them into long-stay hospitals.

Astonishingly, the new NHS defined a hospital as an institution for the reception and treatment of persons suffering from illness or mental defectiveness. By 1957, 125,000 people lived in such dreadful places, deprived of dignity, freedom and the most rudimentary human rights. These institutions were soon starved of funds, resulting in the neglect, abuse and cruelty that followed.

Meanwhile, learning disabled children were written off as educationally subnormal and placed in segregated schools, dismissed as being ineducable with the popular belief that it was a waste of public money to give them anything beyond the bare minimum.

Hardly comprehensive.

The evening before the Byline Festival, I attended a very different event hosted by the Learning Disability Network London at the Canal Museum behind Kings Cross. This aimed to shine a spotlight on the abuse of people in NHS-run assessment and treatment units (ATUs).

ATUs are supposed to offer short-term residential help to learning disabled and autistic people when, for whatever reason, their support package breaks down. Tragically, they tend to provide neither assessment nor treatment and have become the worst kinds of long-stay prisons. Inmates and their families fight bitterly to get their loved ones released. They very rarely succeed.

The event started with the autistic activist Alexis Quinn speaking harrowingly of how she had been treated in several ATUs, and gave graphic descriptions of the manhandling, neglect and abuse that she experienced (and her eventual escape).

The journalist and activist George Julian then told us that thousands of learning disabled and/or autistic people are still incarcerated under the Mental Health Act in unsafe, inappropriate and punitive ATUs across the country, while many others live in substandard residential homes and supported living units.

She explained that, when the decision was taken to close the ATUs, they held 2,600 people; five years later there are 2,580. She also said that, of the remaining inpatients, 215 have been detained for between five and 10 years, and a staggering 135 for more than 10 years. And this for no crime other than being autistic or having learning disabilities.

For all the reports and talk of lessons learned, however, little progress has been made in resolving this ongoing scandal.

But it was Sara Ryans quietly spoken account of the death of her gorgeous son, Connor Sparrowhawk, who drowned in a bath while having a seizure in an ATU in Oxford 10 years ago, that reduced the assembly to tears of grief, tears of rage. She described unimaginable levels of neglect leading up to Connors death, and a desperate process of passing the buck and avoiding responsibility in the long fight for justice that followed.

She concluded with words that should shake us all: All our lives are impoverished by the exclusion of a proportion of the population, and the way in which we, as a society, are failing people is something we should all take responsibility for.None of what we are talking about this evening is fine. None of it. Stop pretending it apparently is.

These, however, are just the worst aspects of an entire system which consistently fails the 1.5 million learning disabled people in Britain.

Coronavirus mortality rates for learning disabled young people with no significant comorbidities were six times worse than the average, according to Public Health England in 2020.

The provision of annual health checks is sporadic and life expectancy for learning disabled males is 22 years shorter than for the rest of the population, while for females the figure is a staggering 26 years less. Every month brings another premature, preventable death. Its as if such lives were disposable.

The fact is that no one ever died of a learning disability and this dreadful discrepancy is a direct consequence of how our society and, Im afraid, the NHS and social care fails them so abysmally.

After a decade of disinvestment, special education is creaking badly, and learning-disabled people and their families face continuous battles simply to secure their basic human rights. Every family is different, just as every learning disabled person is different. But theyre united in their frustration and fury at a system which is not fit for purpose.

The struggles never end.

Even problems that could be easily resolved are left unattended. Thus, almost 60 million of state and private investments are locked up in child trust funds which cannot be accessed by their beneficiaries because they lack capacity. A simple adjustment in the process could sort this out. But nothing ever happens.

The dreadful fact is that, for far too long, a group of our fellow humans has been abandoned in a wasteland of our own making. Of course, we should celebrate the birth of the NHS and the welfare state, but we should also acknowledge that it has too often let learning disabled people down in the worst way imaginable.

Is it too much to hope that we are finally learning our lesson and are prepared to hear their voices, and that of their champions, and bring about dramatic and serious change?

Sadly, many of us are unconvinced. And we are left grateful to people like Sara Ryan for reminding us of what she, and by extension all of us, have lost and continue to lose.

Stephen Unwin is a theatre and opera director, writer and teacher

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Failing Learning Disabled People: The Contradictions of 1945 ... - Byline Times

Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced his resignation as president of Stanford University on July 19. Hired in 2016, he presided over major challenges at Stanford University, not the least of which was the COVID-19 pandemic.

Numerous controversies erupted during his tenure, from an investigation into the handling of sexual assault complaints, to the school's involvement in the national college-admissions scandal known as Operation Varsity Blues, to the removal of the name of the university's first president, David Starr Jordan, from campus buildings and streets owing to his promotion of eugenics.

On the flip side, Tessier-Lavigne in 2017 hired the university's second female provost, Persis Drell, who announced in May that she'd be stepping down this fall. And the university in 2021 launched its first new school in seven decades, to be dedicated to environmental sciences and examining climate and sustainability issues.

Here's a look at the university's milestones under Tessier-Lavigne. (To advance slides on desktop or laptop, hover your cursor at the far right and click.)

Originally posted here:

What happened during Marc Tessier-Lavigne's tenure as Stanford ... - Palo Alto Online