Monday Mop-Up: More on Genes, Carnival, Podcasts and Internet Privacy

A Retrospective About Posts that I Posted and Posts I Meant to Post

Grannies and Genes: A Set of Blogs

At various public meetings, the Vermont Yankee "Raging Grannies" hand out a quote from Alice Stewart. This quote is basically a summary of eugenics. Over the past week I have had four blog posts on the subject. The first post described the grannies. The next three posts talked about how the quote fits into the eugenics agenda, and why we should care.

My first post, Older and Unthinking, described the Grannies trespassing and arrest at Vermont Yankee. Some of the women have been arrested at the plant nine times, but charges are never brought against them. I suggested that being old shouldn't give you a pass on repeated lawbreaking.

My next three posts were about the Alice Stewart quote and its implications. The quote is distributed at public meetings by the grannies. Stewart claims that any mutation will spread through the population and contaminate the gene pool. A "bad seed" will build "defective genes into the population" and these will "never be rooted out."

This is the standard form of the eugenics argument: discrimination against people who are "defective" and have "defective genes." The argument has been used to forcibly sterilize imbeciles. Often, "imbecile" is defined as "person of another race" (such as the Abenaki First Nation in Vermont).

When I objected to receiving the eugenics handout at a Public Service Board meeting, I was roundly booed by the plant opponents.

My first post on this topic described the prinicples of eugenics: Grannies and Eugenics, the Cruelty of Ignorance.

The second post talked a little about Alice Stewart and her philosophy, and also explained why Vermonters, especially, should avoid making the eugenics argument. Eugenics frequently starts by trying to rid the world of "defective" genes and people, but it usually moves on to outright racism. That is what happened in Vermont with the Abenakis. My post: Alice Stewart's Work. Also, How Eugenics Affected Vermont.

My third post described modern genetics, and why "defective" genes don't actually build up in a population: Genes in Populations: A More Modern View.

The bottom line on all of this: The eugenics model is not how genes spread. Believing that eugenics is the correct model is cruel and eventually racist. The grannies should stop handing out eugenics literature at public meetings.

A Retrospective on the Posts: What About the Grannies Themselves?

There is another bottom line. Do I think the Grannies themselves are racist? No. I think they are ignorant of what they are doing, rather than racist.

They found a quote from Alice Stewart, and it fit with their ideas about how bad radiation is: "See, one bad gene can ruin the whole gene pool!"

I think that the Grannies:

• know very little about science (modern genetics)
• know even less about the history of science (the rise and fall of eugenics)
• know very little about many aspects of regular history (Hitler and eugenics, Vermont and the Abenaki and eugenics).

I think they simply don't know they are distributing a quote that summarizes the world-view of eugenics, from a person (born in 1906) who may have written these words during the hey-day of eugenics in the 30s. That's why I titled my first post: the cruelty of ignorance, rather than the cruelty of racism. That's also why I refer to them as the "eugenics grannies" not the "racist grannies."

Ignorance can lead to very bad results, however. Including racism.

Carnival

I announced the Fifteenth Blog Carnival of Nuclear Energy in one of the eugenics posts. It was pretty well buried in the post, so I repeat it here.

The Fifteenth Blog Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at Next Big Future. Nuclear Townhall notes that the Bellefonte plant at TVA is set to move forward again (construction was stopped in the 70s). Dan Yurman discusses the license process for Small Modular Reactors, and Charles Barton has a post about Australian climate scientist Barry Brook and his move to nuclear. Steve Aplin reviews the movie Countdown to Zero, about nuclear proliferation, including important insights about Iran's program. Brian Wang has put together a very interesting and eclectic mix of blog posts. Thank you Brian.

Come to the carnival! You always learn something, and it's fun, too!

The Atomic Show Podcast

I was honored and flattered to be on Rod Adams Podcast yesterday evening. Three of us discussed various topics, including the slowdown of the nuclear renaissance in this country. The three participants were Rod Adams of Atomic Insights blog, Charles Barton of Nuclear Green Revolution blog, and myself.

Download Atomic Show Podcast #160, Bumps in the Renaissance Road to hear what we said about the Renaissance, nuclear art, and more.

Internet Privacy

Yes. I'm off topic and talking about our daughter again.

In a previous post I noted that our daughter Julia Angwin is a Wall Street Journal tech editor. She just finished spearheading a major WSJ investigative project on "What They Know." This project explores what Internet marketers know about you. The WSJ web site for the project has databases and interactive graphics so you can explore your own experience.

Since then, Julia has been on several radio and television programs, talking about the project. Here is a link to see her on C-Span (forty minute interview). And here's a link to her appearance on the the NPR radio show On Point. This episode had the intriguing title of Creepy Commerce. In this program, Julia was on a panel that included an internet advertising executive. Nothing like controversy to make a show exciting!

Mop Image from Wikimedia

Carnival Image is the Carousel in the square at Avignon.

Alice Stewart's Work. Also, How Eugenics Affected Vermont

In the previous post, I wrote about eugenics in general and how the Grannie's handout expressed the eugenics worldview. In my opinion, the post was not specific enough in some areas.

This post includes more detail about two topics:

1) Alice Stewart herself: who she was and what she did

2) Why people in Vermont should be particularly concerned with avoiding support of the eugenics agenda.

The topics fill in the gaps of my previous post. I do not mean to imply that Stewart directly practiced eugenics in Vermont.

Alice Stewart

Alice Stewart is the author of the eugenics material handed out by the anti-nuclear grannies at a recent Public Service Board (PSB) meeting. I described this in a post about anti-nuclear activists and eugenics.

A little about Alice Stewart. She was born in 1906, and Stewart's biography in Wikipedia tells us that she was a physician who studied the effects of radiation. She started off by doing good things: for example, her work encouraged pregnant women to avoid x-rays. As I read it, later in her life she began to allow ideology to dominate her science. She apparently allowed a co-worker to fudge data about excessive cancers in workers at Hanford. This whole matter is still highly controversial: what she knew, what the co-worker did, and so forth.

In the Hanford work and other work, Alice Stewart was defending the linear non-threshold model of radiation damage. Her work (her error?) shows radiation to be more damaging than other studies reported. She is a hero to those who are opposed to nuclear power. For example, she received the Right Livelihood Award, an award also given to Armory Lovins.

As the quote distributed by the Grannies illustrates, Alice Stewart was also a follower of eugenics. Her concern was:

It's the genetic damage, the possibility of sowing bad seeds into the gene pool from which future generations are drawn. There will be a buildup of defective genes into the population. It won't be noticed until it is too late. Then, we'll never root it out, never get rid of it. It will be totally irrevocable.

Vermont and Eugenics

Eugenics was popular in Vermont, to the everlasting shame of the state. In the twenties and thirties, the indigenous Abenaki Indians were targeted for sterilization because of their "defective genes." According to their enemies, Abenaki were trying to disguise themselves as French Canadians, but they were actually degenerate "river rats." Hundreds, possibly thousands, were sterilized. Being identified as an Abenaki was dangerous. For example, playing the drums at home could bring the police, and the household might be added to a list of "degenerates."

The Ndakinna Cultural Center encourages Native American Culture in Vermont. Its website includes an excellent summary of the situation on the page: Eugenics in Vermont and the Hidden Lives of the Abenaki.

In 1999, UPNE (University Press of New England) published Breeding Better Vermonters, an important book by Nancy Gallagher about this history. Tara Marshall, an Abenaki, reviewed the book on Amazon. Some excerpts from her review:

It affected many Vermonters, including my grandmother's cousin, who was seized, put in a mental institution, and sterilized. The reason. He was Abenaki....the surviving victims of the Vermont Eugenics society (have not been) recompensed in any way for the pain and suffering they've been through.

I had never heard of these sterilizations until about a year ago, when I went to a booksigning by local authors. That day, Beth Kanell read from her young adult book, Darkness Under the Water. The School Library Journal description of that book begins with the following words:

Grade 8 Up—Molly and her Abenaki family get caught up in a government eugenics project set to rid Vermont of "weak links" in the genetic code.

At the booksigning, I liked Ms. Kanell and I liked her writing style. I didn't buy the book because the subject felt too dark for me. I feel bad about that. I didn't want to contemplate the painful past.

Vermonters Today

As humans and as Vermonters, we can not allow the cruelties of the past to become the way of the future. We must avoid supporting the agenda of eugenics. Obviously, this starts with refusing to distribute or support eugenics literature.

The Eugenics Grannies should be ashamed of themselves.

(I will post about modern genetics soon.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

And now...for something really different....

It's Blog Carnival Time Again!

The Fifteenth Blog Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at Next Big Future. Nuclear Townhall notes that Bellefonte plant at TVA is set to move forward again (construction was stopped in the 70s). Dan Yurman discusses the license process for Small Modular Reactors, and Charles Barton has a post about Australian climate scientist Barry Brook and his move to nuclear. Steve Aplin reviews the movie Countdown to Zero, about nuclear proliferation, including important insights about Iran's program. Brian Wang has put together a very interesting and eclectic mix of blog posts. Thank you Brian.

Come to the carnival! You always learn something.

DNA image from Wikipedia

Abenaki First Nations, 18th Century Image from Wikipedia

Grannies and Eugenics: The Cruelty of Ignorance

Racism and the "Raging Grannies"

In July, the Public Service Board (PSB) held a meeting in Brattleboro. At that meeting, one of the "Raging Grannies" handed a copy of the document below to everyone in the crowd. (Double-clicking on the image will enlarge it.)

This is a quote from Alice Stewart, born in 1906, a pioneer against misuse of radiation. She sees mutations caused by radiation as the worst scenario possible. Mutations (any mutations, she doesn't mention radiation in this quote) lead to

It's the genetic damage, the possibility of sowing bad seeds into the gene pool from which future generations are drawn. There will be a buildup of defective genes into the population. It won't be noticed until it is too late. Then, we'll never root it out, never get rid of it. It will be totally irrevocable.

Stewart was an early pioneer in radiation research. She was born in 1906, and spent her youth and young adulthood during the heyday of eugenics. Her quote above is a clear statement of the all-too-common Eugenics view, which was widely held in the early to middle of the 20th century.

(In order to not get sidetracked, I plan another post about Alice Stewart and genetics in general.)

The Eugenics View

According to eugenics, any negative change to a gene would propagate through the population, driving down the level of human beings. The eugenics model for the spread of negative genes is exactly as Stewart states it above. (Of course, the top people in society had the privilege of deciding what a negative gene was and who belongs to a lower level of humans.)

As science, this is complete bunk. We know a great deal about how genes propagate in populations. Eugenics is wrong. Eugenics is just a stupid incorrect model, based on fear and prejudice, and pushed for a political agenda. After WWII, eugenics went out of fashion, having reached its zenith under Hitler.

By the way. Hitler didn't go after the Jews first. He went after the retarded, the ones with "defective genes" that had to be "rooted out." Hitler started with eugenics, sterilizing and euthanizing retarded German children. With this success behind him, he later expanded his reach.

America, Forced Sterilization, and Buck vs. Bell

Wouldn't it be nice if it was just evil Mr. Hitler who followed Eugenics? It wasn't. America and Britain were at the forefront of the movement. People in America sterilized the retarded at a great rate: 20,000 sterilizations in California alone. Buck vs. Bell was a Supreme Court case in 1927 about whether the retarded could be sterilized by the state. The answer: They could be sterilized without their consent. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice of the Supreme Court, wrote in his opinion on Buck vs. Bell: "Three generations of imbeciles is enough."

According to the Wikipedia article about this case, the woman who was sterilized was an avid reader, and her only daughter (a girl who died young of measles) was an honor student. When you are sterilizing imbeciles, I gather you also get to choose who is an imbecile.

There's an extremely disturbing video of the Buck vs. Bell case, with footage from 1927. I decided not to embed it. I'll add a picture of Frances Galton, the father of Eugenics instead. Handsome guy, yes? Let's have some eye-candy.

I Speak at the Meeting. People Boo.

Back to Alice Stewart and the PSB meeting. At meeting where this yellow sheet was handed out, we could sign up to give two minute opinions about Vermont Yankee. I spoke briefly about Yankee. Then I objected to being handed racist eugenics material at a public meeting about a power plant.

I was roundly booed as I spoke. People hissed that I should learn some history. They shouted that Alice Stewart was not a racist. It was all very upsetting. The opponents of the plant simply could not see this handout for what it was.

Ignorance is Ignorance. Ignorance is Cruelty.

I'll write a in another post about how our knowledge of genetics has grown. Right now, I just want to say that in their eagerness to show what immense, irreparable harm nuclear plants do, the Grannies ignore modern biology. They have chosen eugenics as the biological model that better suits their needs to bash the power plant. They have gone too far for me.

Let me address the Grannies here. Stop handing that Alice Stewart statement out. Okay? Stop using those eugenics arguments. Can't you read that statement? Can't you read how the same words are about Defending the White Race and rooting out defects? Just stop it. Bash nuclear power some other way. As I said above: Eugenics is wrong. Eugenics is just a stupid incorrect model, based on fear and prejudice, and pushed for a political agenda.

And be a little humble, my friends. We are all carrying less-than-perfect genes, and the more we learn about genetics, the more we begin to know about our own genes. People have genes that carry higher risks of breast cancer, alcoholism, autism, you name it. You begin talking about "never being able to root out bad genes," and you are forgetting the part about genetic heritage that can be described as "for whom the bell tolls."

It tolls for thee. And for me. And for all of us.

Photograph of Francis Galton, the Father of Eugenics, from Wikimedia.