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Indian Scientist's Tool To Map Genes In Demand
Roland Piquepaille writes "On April 15, the Human Genome Project's announced that it had completed the task of sequencing the collection of genes that make up the human code. In fact, only 99.9 per cent of the 3 billion pairs of DNA have been sequenced. How will we find the missing pieces? The Hindu reports that "the biotech community is increasingly turning to Pradeep Kumar Chatterjee, Head of Genomics and Bioinformatics at the Julius L. Chambers Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute (BBRI) of North Carolina Central University, U.S." He has perfected a process called "deletion mapping technology" to map genes by checking both the sequence of every DNA pair as well as its position in the strand. This is a powerful tool for those who now want to use the genome map to analyze specific strands of DNA to attack individual diseases. Check this column for more details and discover Chatterjee's future projects."
The study of eugenics has its beginning in Germany, sometime after the mid-19th century mark, stimulated by volkish concerns for Aryan racial purity. Rudolf Virchow, pathologist and politician, began a study of national ethnic statistics in 1871, convinced that the majority of Germans would prove to be of relatively pure Nordic descent. The results of his studies proved otherwise. According to Virchow, the obvious solution was to set about Nordicizing the debased German stock. The popularity of eugenics theories was given a jumpstart in England by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. In 1869 Galton published his book "Hereditary Genius", that Cornell University anthropology professor Davydd Greenwood has called "an impassioned brief for hereditary aristocracy that became the first modern document of the modern eugenics movement". Galton was the man who launched the "nature vs. nurture" debate that quietly rages today, arguing for the domination of innate rather than acquired human abilities. It was Galton's opinion that the human race could be improved by selective breeding and the extermination of the unfit. Galton once said that he hope that eugenics would become "the religion of the future". In the latter part of the century, with endeavors like the Human Genome Project that seeks to map the entirety of human DNA, his hope seems to be moving toward fulfillment. Galton's theories were influenced in part by his examination of the family trees of eminent stuffed shirts in England. He noted that most persons of accomplishment were related to each other - an aristocratic theory of intelligence thus theoretically putting the aristocracy on a genetic pedestal and rationalising a stratified society, or caste system, in Britain and the world. Even the name of the subject betrays something of its orientation. Galton derived the word eugenics from the Greek "eugenes" meaning "well born". This aggrandizement of the privileged class was one of the reasons why eugenics research found ready support from the monied in both America and Europe; it justified their disdain for and parasitism of "the masses". Chairs in Eugenics and Eugenics in Working Society were established at the University College in London in 1904, with the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics founded in 1907. In 1905, in the United States, the Rockefellers and Carnegies constructed the Eugenics Records Office at Cold Springs Harbor, New York, where genetic research (none dare call it eugenics) is still being done in 1999. In 1912 the first International Congress of Eugenics was convened at the University of London, presided over by its president, who also happened to be Charles Darwin's son. Vice Presidents of the Congress included the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill; M. von Gruber, Professor of Hygiene at Munich University; Dr. Alfred Ploetz, President of the International Society for Race Hygiene; Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, and the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell. The second International Congress of Eugenics was held in 1921, sponsored by U. S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and the presidents of Clark University, Smith College, and the Carnegie Institution. Other prominent support the history of control to follow -included many members of the American Eastern establishment, particularly of the Eastern Establishment Dulles and Harriman families. From 1907 to 1960 more than 100,000 persons were eugenically sterilized in over thirty states in the United States. It is unlikely that the well-known and horrific Nazi approach to eugenics, brutally carried out in laboratories and concentration camps during World War II and reportedly claiming hundreds of thousands of victims, would have taken place without eugenics theory having been earlier popularized by British and American scientists and media, and funded by American and British money interests. German eugenics studies were organized and bankrolled by the family-run Rockefeller Foundation and its allies in medicine, industry, and politics,
The links point to the submitter's own blog. This looks like a lame attempt to trick people into reading the blog. Slashdot editors should take care not to post such links.
1. Got a (reputable) source for anything in this Rusty-Shacklefordian post?
2. Got a reason for me to believe that even if true I should fear the study of genetics and/or genetic engineering? Especially since I and almost any other person studying biology uses genetic engineering of some kind as a tool at some stage in research?
3. Paragraphs! (less than sign)br(greater than sign) is your friend.
4. Man, I can't believe I read all that.
The Golden Path. Jim Kent rools!