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Genetic Research In The Heart of Amish Country
FrenchyinOntario writes "Insular, inbred communities like the Ashkenazi Jews and Indian tribes can be a bonanza of genetic information for researchers, and the Amish & Mennonite communities in the United States are proving to be fertile ground as well for scientists who want to better understand the nature of genetic diseases and how rare illnesses occur more frequently in such closed-off communities. The Amish, famous for their renunciation of a lot of technology, are embracing a lab that has been built in the centre of their community because their faith teaches them to "help their fellow man", recognizing that helping scientists better understand the genetic causes of diabetes, mental retardation, and some of the rarer diseases in their families, helps themselves as well as others. For a better understanding of the Amish and their approach to technology, Wired magazine ran an excellent story a few years back better illustrating why they are not just mindless kneejerk technophobes."
I've always always heard it as ah-mish, never the other way.
Or you can just say "Pennsylvania Dutch" and be done with it... *smirk
Not all Pennsylvania Dutch are Amish though. I come from a Pennsylvania Dutch family, and while my great grandparents spoke low-german, and were farmers, my great-grandfather also worked in a commercial dairy for an hourly wage. My great-grandparents was buried in a lutheran church, in York, PA. Amish have much stricter(simpler?) religious convictions, but on the outside, I can see how people confuse the two. My grandfather joined the Navy out of high school, and then went to college, as did most of the males from his community (WWII), and took a government job. He was a member of a lutheran church, and later an alderman of a methodist church for many years. If you met him on the street, you would have no idea, other than he is very careful about how he spends money (not cheap, but thrifty), tends to shun anything more than the basics, and values education over pretty much anything else.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
The Amish (and I believe to a lesser extent, Mennonites in general) believe that you have to make a conscious and informed decision to be baptised and formally join their faith, so Rumspringa lets them have a taste of life on the outside. The majority usually decide to stay, but UPN had a reality TV show Amish in the City and for some reason, the four Amish that were featured all decided to leave the community. Probably had something to do with the fact that they put them up with a bunch of "English" in a big mansion, and got them doing various activities together.
Just a little guy, y'know?
The main thing to remember about true Amish is that they're an orthodox branch of the Anabaptist church.
:) But if they're standing side by side on a sidewalk you'd never be able to tell who is who.
The Mennonites are a non-orthodox denomination; however, to see them on the street together you'd have no idea which is the Amish and which is the Mennonite. Mennonites still hold onto the traditions except that they accept "modern" lifestyles - they own cars, TVs, computers, and so forth, but still honor the traditional dress and religious beliefs. My wife works with a Mennonite at a local grocer, and he's always in his straw hat and overalls whenever he works. It was actually a shock to see him in a "regular" suit and tie at the company Christmas party last year.
I live about 45 minutes from Strasburg and go through that area often. There are Mennonite churches all over the place, even as far out as Carlisle and as far north as Selinsgrove (not that those names mean anything to people who are not from the area).
Basically, if they own a buggy, they're Amish. If they own a car, they're Mennonite.
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Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou. I remember visiting my grandparents in Pennsylvania, my grandmother would get really upset with tourists who would talk about wanting to go see the AIM-ISH like they were a tourist attraction.
More entirely on topic, I think it's a good thing that the Amish evaluate technology and its impact on community instead of chasing after every new thing without thinking. There are both negative and positive consequences to technology, but in our culture we are driven only to look at the positive. The case can be made that the Amish methods of farming are much more environmentally friendly, there's less environmental impact farming with horses than tractors, and there have been particularly rainy seasons where the Amish were able to plant their crops much earlier than farmers using tractors because horses don't sink in the mud nearly as much as a tractor. But, that doesn't mean that even in farming, they don't use technology, they're able to get much higher crop yield today than a hundred years ago because they're willing to use high tech fertilizers (the case can be made that they get the best of both worlds that way). It makes perfect sense that they'll allow genetic research, they see how diseases are affecting them, and research on understanding those diseases will benefit their communities and everyone else.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
I remember reading a story - I believe it appeared in the Plain Reader - that talked about the Amish approach to technology: