This is a long article, but worth the time to read it:

The tragic view comes closest to describing how I now look at Peter Singer. He is a man of unusual gifts, reaching for the heights. He writes that he is trying to create a system of ethics derived from fact and reason, that largely throws off the perspectives of religion, place, family, tribe, community and maybe even species — to "take the point of view of the universe." His is a grand, heroic undertaking.

But like the protagonist in a classical drama, Singer has his flaw. It is his unexamined assumption that disabled people are inherently "worse off," that we ''suffer," that we have lesser "prospects of a happy life." Because of this all-too-common prejudice, and his rare courage in taking it to its logical conclusion, catastrophe looms. Here in the midpoint of the play, I can't look at him without fellow-feeling.

It has sadly reached the point that my ancient 'pooter and cranky dial-up connection simply cannot load the On Holocaust Memorial Day thread anymore. I've had to follow comments from the admin board, and I can't post from there.

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Writing in Nature, professor of biology Chris D. Thomas bemoans the environmental damages caused by human activity. But not to worry, he says. In a few million years, humans will be extinct.

The geological perspective of Terra is bizarrely reassuring. Humans will presumably be gone within a few million years, perhaps sooner. If the past that Novacek describes is a guide to the future, global ecosystem processes will be restored some tens of thousands to a million years after our demise, and new forms of life over the ensuing millions of years will exploit the denuded planet we leave behind. Thirty million years on, things will be back to normal, albeit a very different 'normal' from before. It is good to be optimistic. The problem is living here in the meantime.

Robin Hanson wonders: "Yet if a plague, for example, were to produce this outcome within the next ten years, I'm pretty sure most everyone would see this as a catastrophe of the highest possible order. So how does this become a good thing if it happens in the next million years?"

More on scientists cheering for the death of humans here.

[Check out the trailer for my book here]

Recently, scientists created a transgenic "supermouse." The researchers were studying the gene for phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPCK-C), a metabolic enzyme that is expressed in the liver, kidneys, and adipocytes. Using standard techniques in genetic engineering and stem cell technology, they were able to express this gene is skeletal muscle with remarkable consequences:

The mouse can run up to six kilometres (3.7 miles) at a speed of 20 metres per minute for five hours or more without stopping. Scientists said that this was equivalent of a man cycling at speed up an Alpine mountain without a break. Although it eats up to 60 per cent more food than an ordinary mouse, the modified mouse does not put on weight. It also lives longer and enjoys an active sex life well into old age "“ being capable of breeding at three times the normal maximum age.

and

Animal behavior studies later demonstrated that the PEPCK-Cmus mice are seven times more active in their home cages than controls; in addition, the mice were also markedly more aggressive. "The enhanced level of activity noted in the PEPCK-Cmus mice extends well beyond two years of age; this is considered old-age for mice," the researchers said.

The mighty mice also provide much food for thought. Consider some of the issues their existence brings to the table.

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Some time ago, I warned that James Watson was a modern day eugenicist.

He has now taken it a step further:

One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.

On the back of Barbara Forrest's & Paul Gross' anti-ID polemic is a blurb by prominent evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson, praising the book for exploring the struggle between "religion-based tribal values and science-based universal values."

Physician Alexis Carrel and aviator Charles Lindbergh did superb scientific work, designing pumps to keep organs alive outside the body. Let's see what these great intellectual minds can teach us about "science-based universal values". From the New York Time's review of The Immortalists by journalist David Friedman:

The scientific success only fueled Lindbergh and Carrel's philosophic zeal: if immortality was indeed on the horizon, it certainly should not be for everyone. In his 1935 best seller "Man, the Unknown," Carrel urgently argued for the creation of biologic classes, with the weak and sick at one end, and the strong and fit (long might they live, propagate and receive new organs as needed) at the other. The sorting was to be accomplished by a council of scientific experts much like himself.

Lindbergh, meanwhile, suffering through the kidnapping and murder of his oldest son, and the miserable press orgy that followed, became less and less inclined to tolerate any part of the common man. Living in Europe to avoid the paparazzi in the United States, he was soon vocally admiring the order and precision of Nazi Germany.

(HT: John Hawks)

From here:

The state has agreed to pay $925,000 to unwitting subjects of an infamous 1930s stuttering experiment "” orphans who were badgered and belittled as children by University of Iowa researchers trying to induce speech impediments.

["¦.]

The 1939 experiment has come to be known as "The Monster Study" because of its methods and the theory researchers set out to prove "” that stuttering is a learned behavior that can be induced in children.

Over a six-month period, Dr. Wendell Johnson, a nationally renowned pioneer in the field of speech pathology, and his staff tested his theory on 22 children who were in the care of the state-run Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home. Some were subjected to steady harassment, badgering and other negative therapy in an attempt to get them to stutter; the rest served as a control group.

According to the study, none became stutterers, but some became reluctant to speak or self-conscious about their speech.

["¦]

The university kept the experiment and its methods from the former subjects for decades. It was not until 2001 when the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News published an investigative story about the study and its methods did the former subjects learn about the experiment's true purpose.

From here (including audio version):

Deadly Medicine Creating the Master Race is currently on display at the Global health Odyssey at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The traveling exhibit traces the transition of Eugenics a theory that sought to apply Charles Darwin's theories of survival of the fittest' to human beings. Eugenics' ultimate distortion by Nazi Germany led to the slaughter of 6 million Jews. Professor Paul Lombardo an historian who has researched Eugenics, take us through the exhibit.

The Great Bioethicist, Peter Singer, is going to use Reason to show us the way this week:

Singer does not believe that the difference between humans and animals is fundamental, nor is human life solely sacrosanct. On his fourth lecture scheduled on May 21 at the Press Center, he plans to go through the argument for human embryo research as well as euthanasia of newborn babies with severe disabilities.

Oh, pay no attention to the fact that this fountain of ethics cannot practice what he preaches:

Even Singer cannot live up to all of his own standards. When his mother could no longer speak or think due to advanced Alzheimer's disease — rendering her a "nonperson" by his own criterion — he spent large sums to keep her alive. While he says he gives 20 percent of his income to charity, he admits he lives on far more money than the standards set in his books.

The Fernald School is the oldest institution of its kind in the country. At its peak, some 2,500 people were confined here, most of them children. All of them were called feeble-minded, whether they were or not.

The people who ran Fernald back in the bad, old days are no longer alive, but many of the victims still are — victims like Fred Boyce, who was locked up there for 11 years. He came back to Fernald with Correspondent Bob Simon.

"We thought for a long time that we belonged there, that we were not part of the species. We thought we were some kind of, you know, people that wasn't supposed to be born," says Boyce.

And that was precisely the idea.

The Fernald School, and others like it, was part of a popular American movement in the early 20th century called the Eugenics movement. The idea was to separate people considered to be genetically inferior from the rest of society, to prevent them from reproducing.

Eugenics is usually associated with Nazi Germany, but in fact, it started in America. Not only that, it continued here long after Hitler's Germany was in ruins.

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