JFActivist

United Methodist Church Repents of Its Past Support of Eugenics

On April 30, 2008, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed a resolution by which the United Methodist Church acknowledges and repents of its past support of the eugenics movement.

This resolution marks the first denomination based in the United States to repent of its past support of eugenics.

READ MORE:
Download the resolution and read about the role the Methodist Church played in the Eugenics movement, how they characterize "New Eugenics," and how they repent of their past actions.

92% Termination Rate of Fetuses with Down Syndrome Leads to Dwindling Populations

From the Roswell Beacon (Georgia) - April 21:

An excerpt follows from the article entitled
"Modern Eugenics: The Elimination of a People" by Alan Sverdlik:

Overcoming The Odds
Scanning the faces bunched together in a converted Sunday school classroom – innocent, mischievous, curious, mirthful – it is startling to consider that most of them overcame daunting odds just to be born, let alone accept a genetic defect with such evident grace. In fact, the number of people with Down syndrome, which can cause mild to moderate mental retardation, are dwindling so rapidly that respected advocacy groups consider them an endangered species whose survivors face a bleak future: lonely, unwelcome, ignored by medical researchers, shunned by insurance companies...

...Read the entire article.

Court Deines Bid to Sterilize Woman with Traumatic Brain Injury and Other Disabilities

From the Chicago Tribune:

Court denies bid to sterilize mentally disabled woman
Advocates, ethicists hail precedent-setting ruling

By Michael Higgins | Tribune reporter
April 18, 2008

Disability rights advocates and medical ethicists praised a precedent-setting ruling Friday by the Illinois Appellate Court denying a bid to sterilize a mentally disabled woman against her will...

...Read more.

"Building Baby from the Genes Up"

Ronald M. Green, professor of Ethics at Dartmouth College, authored an opinions column for The Washington Post over the weekend entitled "Building Baby from the Genes Up" (April 13). While acknowledging the concerns of those leery of eugenic "slippery slopes," Green hails the possibilities of diminishing illness and disabilities via genetic technologies.

From "Building Baby from the Genes Up," by Ronald M. Green:

"Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, our understanding of the genetic bases of human disease and non-disease traits has been growing almost exponentially. The National Institutes of Health has initiated a quest for the "$1,000 genome," a 10-year program to develop machines that could identify all the genetic letters in anyone's genome at low cost (it took more than $3 billion to sequence the first human genome). With this technology, which some believe may be just four or five years away, we could not only scan an individual's -- or embryo's -- genome, we could also rapidly compare thousands of people and pinpoint those DNA sequences or combinations that underlie the variations that contribute to our biological differences.

With knowledge comes power. If we understand the genetic causes of obesity, for example, we can intervene by means of embryo selection to produce a child with a reduced genetic likelihood of getting fat. Eventually, without discarding embryos at all, we could use gene-targeting techniques to tweak fetal DNA sequences. No child would have to face a lifetime of dieting or experience the health and cosmetic problems associated with obesity. The same is true for cognitive problems..."

...Read more.

Eugenics Reparations Issue in NC Governor's Race

From the Winston-Salem Journal:

Eugenics payments an issue in race
Perdue pledges to seek financial compensation for sterilization victims

By James Romoser
JOURNAL RALEIGH BUREAU
Thursday, March 6, 2008

RALEIGH

The two leading Democrats running for governor both say they support steps to help surviving victims of North Carolina’s now-defunct forcible-sterilization program. But Beverly Perdue went a step further than her opponent, Richard Moore.

More than 7,600 people were sterilized between 1929 and 1974 under a eugenics program operated by the state.

Perdue, who is currently the state’s lieutenant governor, released a campaign proposal this week to enact the recommendations of a 2003 task force, which suggested that the state form a special foundation with the goal of providing financial reparations to survivors...

...Read more.

Biology Professor: "Moral Thing to Do" is Abort Down Syndrome Fetuses

From The Associated Press (February 16):

Professor's comments on Down's syndrome anger some students
A University of North Carolina professor has angered some of his students after saying he thinks fetuses with Down syndrome should be aborted.

Albert Harris, 65, made the comment in his embryology class. He has taught in Chapel Hill for 35 years.

"In my opinion," Harris wrote in his lecture notes, "the moral thing for older mothers to do is to have amniocentesis, as soon during pregnancy as is safe for the fetus, test whether placental cells have a third chromosome #21, and abort the fetus if it does. The brain is the last organ to become functional."...

...Read more.

"The Eugenics Temptation"

Hooking off of Nobel Prize-Winner James Watson's recent assertion that Africans are genetically inferior, today, op-ed columnist Michael Gerson of The Washington Post highlights the shocking and offensive comments of Watson over the years pertaining to genetic deselection of ugly women, gay offspring, and those with Down syndrome (saying of any parent who chose to carry a baby with Down syndrome to term: "You would have to be crazy to say you wanted one, because that child has no future.")

Gerson goes on to explore a tension he perceives between scientific views and liberalism and the accompanying temptation of eugenics.

In "The Eugenics Temptation," Gerson writes:

"The left in America positions itself as both the defender of egalitarianism and of unrestricted science. In the last presidential election, Sen. John Kerry pledged to "tear down every wall" that inhibited medical research. But what happens when certain scientific views lead to an erosion of the ideal of equality?"

Read the entire opinion column.