The History of Genetic Engineering
{Click on any picture to enlarge it.}
Eugenics is the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrences of desirable heritable characteristics.
California's Eugenics
Paul Popenoe
- California's Sterilization Law was to prevent the occurrences of undesirable traits. The people that were targeted were the mentally ill in state hospitals and institutes and prisoners that had repeated crimes.
- Paul Popenoe was the leading contributor to the killing of anyone that seemed “unfit”.
Hitler's Eugenics
Examples of the Aryan Nordic people for Hitler's "master race".
- Hitler used California’s eugenics and sterilization law as a model of his purification-of the race program to build an Aryan “master race”
- Hitler wanted to encourage people with “positive” traits, such as intelligence and attractiveness, to reproduce while discouraging reproduction with less desirable traits, such as being Jewish, poor, or unsightly.
- It’s through selective breeding and genetic engineering that Hitler tried to create his master race. He created the Lebensborn Home.
Hitler's Lebensborn Homes
Children held in Lebensborn Homes.
The women that were impregnated by Nazi soldiers were allowed to give secretly birth to their children in the Lebensborn Homes, as long as they had no Jewish lineage, and the people that ran the Homes fed, educated, and raised the Lebensborn children to be a Nazi soldier. Nazi soldiers also took children off that street that looked of Aryan descent. In the cases that the Nazi soldiers took children off the street or away from their parents that looked of Aryan descent and placed them in Lebensborn Homes, the children were taught to forget their parents.
After the war, some of the Lebensborn children were held in psychiatric wards and others were spat at for their past.
After the war, some of the Lebensborn children were held in psychiatric wards and others were spat at for their past.
Origin of Apes
The Origin of Apes illustrations made by Ernst Haeckel.
- The French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck influenced Hitler. Lamarck categorized each race in a specific order from the origin of apes.
- The German geneticist, Ernst Haeckel elaborated Lamarck’s theory by organizing each race into gradations from “fully human” (the top right picture of a head) to “subhuman” (the top far left picture of a head shown in the picture). Hitler used these scientist's ideas to help form his own ideals for his "master race". Hitler's ideals being backed-up by science caused more people to support him.
Cloning
To clone (use the picture to above as a reference), it begins with taking an egg from a female that will be the egg donator. The nucleus of the cell is replaced with the cell nucleus from the mammal being cloned. This cell will then be implanted into its surrogate mother where is able to grow, develop, and be born as if it were conceived normally.
Dolly and Bonnie
From left to right: Bonnie and Dolly
- Dolly was the first cloned mammal. She was born in Edinburg, Scotland in 1996.
- Bonnie is Dolly’s first baby. Bonnie is the first mammal to have a mother that was a clone. Dolly had 5 other lambs.
- Bonnie and Dolly are shown in the picture to the left of this text.
- Dolly died at the age of 6 from a common lung disease in sheep.
Homosexuality
Prader Scale for Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia
- Prenatal pill for congenital adrenal hyperplasia that is supposed to prevent ambiguous genitalia may also reduce the chance that the child would be gay.
- Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia is a disease that is when the two adrenal glands don’t have enough enzymes to make the body’s hormones while androgen, a male sex hormone, is produced. This causes male characteristics to appear early (or inappropriately) in males and females.
- The picture above shows the Prader Scale (first row of pictures are the side views, second row of pictures are the straight on view of the vagina, and the columns are of the same scale). The Prader Scale is a scoring system for grading the degrees of genital masculinization. The Prader Scale starts at "0", which is a masculinized female, and ends at "5" which is a completely masculinized (a female who appears externally male at birth with the labial/scrotal sac empty since there are no testicles). The picture above shows the Prader Virilization Scores.
- The steering of children’s sexual orientation has become more possible, the prenatal treatment for Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia is the first to test the potential o fthe advances in the treatment of babies in the uterus.