{"id":332,"date":"2011-03-07T22:18:13","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T04:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=332"},"modified":"2011-03-07T22:20:52","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T04:20:52","slug":"im-sorry-but-dr-bauman-is-an-eugenist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=332","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m sorry, but Dr. Bauman is an eugenist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>A Non-Participant\u2019s Critique of Dr. Bauman\u2019s Deaf-Gain Presentation<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Dirksen contends that deaf people contribute a <em>gain<\/em> to humanity. But central to his argument is simply that they add to humanity\u2019s <em>diversity<\/em>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The  Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1852 is a well-known example of dangers of  homogeneity in food production. Not a lot of people remember that potato  actually originated in the Americas. It was introduced to Europe in the  late 16<sup>th<\/sup> century by the Spaniards following their conquest  of the Inca Empire. Potato has thousands of varieties, but a limited  variety was introduced to Europe, making their crop vulnerable to  disease. This makes heterogeneity in food production, or more generally,  <em>genetic<\/em> diversity, essential, vital, imperative, and what have you.<\/p>\n<p>A  lot of people remember that the Americas\u2019 original populations were  decimated by the diseases introduced by the Europeans: smallpox,  measles, and diphtheria, to name a few. Amerindians hadn\u2019t needed  genetic defenses against them. The conditions were so different in the  Americas such that there was low selective pressure on Amerindians\u2019 HLA  genes. The HLA system (for human leukocyte antigen) is our immune  system\u2019s missile guidance system. When a virus infects a cell, HLA  molecules display viral proteins on the outside of the cell, so that  those infected cells can be destroyed by the immune system. By combating  crowd diseases and animal diseases over thousands of years, Europeans  retained high HLA diversity in their genes. But Amerindians didn\u2019t have  that diversity.<\/p>\n<p>Diversity is <em>all<\/em>.  If true, Alexander Graham Bell, by his ignorance of genetics, was on a  misguided mission to homogenize humanity, most noticeably his 1884  essay, \u201cUpon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race.\u201d This means  he was, in actuality, promoting <em>dysgenics.<\/em> If genetic diversity is what truly brings about <em>improvement<\/em> to humanity, Dirksen is, then, promoting true <em>eugenics.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Why  are there deaf genes? Several deaf genes exist, but the most common for  European descendants is connexin-26 deafness. Since it is one of  recessive genetic \u201cdisorders\u201d that are common in Europe and the Middle  East, like cystic fibrosis, alpha-1-antitrypsin, and hemochromatosis,  all nonexistent in Amerindians (discounting recent admixture), it must  have mutated there for a reason. With confluence of diseases in Europe,  this particular deaf gene probably has emerged as a <em>side effect<\/em> of genetic defenses, much like sickle-cell anemia is a side effect of  genetic defenses against malaria. No one likes the thought of being a  \u201cside effect,\u201d but as Dirksen would have it: It\u2019s better than being <em>decimated.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Non-Participant\u2019s Critique of Dr. Bauman\u2019s Deaf-Gain Presentation Dirksen contends that deaf people contribute a gain to humanity. But central to his argument is simply that they add to humanity\u2019s diversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":740,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[12],"tags":[36,37,96],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1Af2X-5m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/740"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}