User talk:Udhrarticle28

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
welcome Udhrarticle28 (see above for helpful links). in general it's not advisable to put links to external sites within thebody text of an article. there's probably something in wp:moslinks about this. Solenodon (talk) 06:11, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Eugenics
Everything in Wikipedia must be verifiable. WP:V says: The deleted material has been marked as needing sources since November 2007. Rather than restoring it and asserting that there are sources, please find those sources first and add them at the same time as you restore the material. Supporting citations should make specific reference to eugenics, the topic of the article, not just to genetic differences or other tangential topics. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. ... Any material lacking a reliable source may be removed, ...

Thanks for your comment Will. The material is verifiable. Refer to Edwin Black War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. Another reference is "From Darwin to Hitler - Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany" by Richard Weikart who reaches essentially the same conclusions but from a German perspective. I do not know what the article looked like in November 2007 and I am not responding to past debates. I am drawing my material from verifiable sources outside Wikipedia. The introductory section of the article which I replaced was previously very misleading and obfuscated the true nature of Eugenics (to which my changes < > relate - not to other sciences). There is no ambiguity whatever as to what Eugenics is. In hundreds of pages Black demonstrates, quoting directly from leading Eugenicists and their materials and meetings exactly what they claimed eugenics to be, and the activities they engaged in in pursuing it. Eugenics had a very organised community of scholars and advocates organised in national and international associations which worked together to pursue Eugenic goals. The article previously started as follows:

"Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.[2] Throughout history, eugenics has been regarded by its various advocates as a social responsibility, an enlightened stance of a society, meant to create healthier, stronger and/or more intelligent people, to save resources, and lessen human suffering. Earlier proposed means of achieving these goals focused on selective breeding, while modern ones focus on prenatal testing, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering."

For Wikipedia to accept such a primary description as accurate or "balanced" only brings disrepute on Wikipedia both in terms of poor scholarship as well as of course misleading the general public in regard of a doctrine known to have produced immense human suffering. I note that the foregoing passage is largely unreferenced and although I have not read the 1937 article cited, Osborn, its author, was a founding member of the American Eugenics Society (according to Wikipedia). Such a source is not an independent one on this topic.

Reliability of Black's War Against the Weak

 * Black's book has been described as "a stew rich in facts and spiced with half-truths, exaggerations and distortions." Daniel Kevles, who wrote the NY Times book review and is one of the article sources, teaches history at Yale and would be considered by most editors to be a reliable source (WP:RS). Consequently, it may be necessary to include his criticism of Black to maintain a neutral point of view in the article.
 * You might wish to review Edwin_Black for accuracy and completeness.
 * You can learn more about citing sources and making footnotes at WP:FN.
 * BTW, if you terminate your comments on talk pages by typing " ~ " your username and a time stamp will be added automatically. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Walter. Thanks for your comments. I had the same concerns about relying primarily on Black (a question of time and access to materials), but concluded that his work is (to fail to give him due credit) sufficiently reliable to chart the main outlines of eugenics. Although he is a journalist and writes like one in terms of the message he seeks to convey (hence Kevles describes the work as polemical), it is also thoroughly researched and based on primary historical sources (i.e. well within accepted methodology of researching history). What is persuasive about his work is detail after detail - for instance references to the primary American eugenics newsletter "Eugenical News" which provides a contemporary source for attitudes and events. I have not however relied entirely on Black (e.g. the Weikart book) which gives details of the philosophical background in Germany. Another work which I have introduces eugenics as follows:

"Eugenics is not a bizarre scheme created by harmless eccentrics, neither is it an evil, obsolete aberration which ended in Hitler's death camps: this year the governments of Canada and Sweden revealed that between 1935 and 1975 thousands of their 'unfit' citizens were forced to undergo eugenic sterilisations. ... It has also been revealed that many people who were mentally ill, retarded, socially undesirable or homosexual were forcibly used for experiments, lobotomized or even killed, in efforts to perfect Sweden's genetic stock." Eugenics in Australia: Striving for National Fitness Diana Wyndham 2003 Galton Institute.

In any case, the issue seems to me in describing Eugenics in the Eugenics article whether it is to be described by reference primarily to the early twentieth century, when it was actually widely implemented, or by reference to for instance Galton (who repudiated Davenport and his work as lacking scientific rigour) or by new developments that genetic engineering and decoding of the human genome make possible. Quite understandably such more recent sciences would be reluctant to be labelled as eugenics. The recasting of the introduction I have suggested also seems to me to be more in keeping with the body of the article which actually discusses how eugenics was practised in various countries. Also it seems important to try to capture the primary mode of eugenics, because its proponents thought they were "doing good". We now have technologies eugenicists could only dream of, but if they were to be applied as eugenicists did would very likely produce horrific results. Hence the issue of properly describing Eugenics is not merely of academic or historical interest. I doubt that the changes I have suggested do the topic justice. On Black, below I have copied book reviews from http://search.barnesandnoble.com/War-Against-The-Weak/Edwin-Black/e/9781568582580 Kevles (taken out of context of course) does at least acknowledge that Black has undertaken original new research. There are a variety of views on the value of the work, but mostly it appears positive. Thanks for the wiki tip. Udhrarticle28 (talk) 22:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It appears to me that Kevles' specific criticisms are that Black's discussions of the Carnegie Institution and Rockefeller Foundation are unbalanced and that the argument that the Nazi policies drew heavily on the American eugenics movement is oversimplified. That said, I don't dispute that it is a useful source or that the overall tone of the Kevles review is positive. Also, I think that your rewrite has improved the article. Walter Siegmund (talk) 12:20, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I hadn't managed to pick up the particular Kevles review you were referring to. Kevles may have a point on both issues.  On the financial institutions, while the idea stands out, it becomes less extraordinary when its placed in the context of the time of widespread support eugenicists were able to generate for their agendas.  i.e. why should financial institutions be any different to the politicians, administrators, lawyers, scientists, doctors etc who participated in one way or another. That they funded the research both in the United States and Germany is well documented.  How much they knew or realized is open to debate.  i.e. the idea that these foundations thought they were working for the creation of a "master race" is thin (though apparently possible).  I agree with you that Black's treatment of the link between the US and German Eugenics doesn't capture the full story and is oversimplistic.  (For instance Weikart documents the local German roots of eugenics which are just as strong as in the US.)  But there are very clear links (unfortunately a lot of them) that demonstrate the U.S. example was far from lost on the Nazi policy makers. Simultaneous development was happening, but also a lot of interchange of ideas.  Chronologically in terms of law and practice the Americans were ahead early in the century, but of course far outstripped by the later German developments.Udhrarticle28 (talk) 08:13, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I apologize for not including the link to the NY Times review in my first post (I added it after you responded). I meant to, but somehow it was missing. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Reviews of Black Book
"The Washington Post Black, whose mother lived under Nazi rule in Poland, writes here with the zeal of an avenger, albeit one with the assistance of a team of 50 researchers who unearthed some 50,000 documents to support his case. He traces the eugenics movement to English economist Thomas Malthus's argument that charitable assistance to the poor "made no sense in the natural scheme of human progress" and to its later distillation in the theories of Francis J. Galton, cousin and contemporary of Charles Darwin. — Gregory Mott

The New York Times Black has used the considerable work on eugenics, assiduously checking sources...and drawn on original published and archival materials in the United States and Europe, collecting some 50,000 documents, he tells us, with the aid of numerous volunteers working in several dozen repositories. If he covers what is in the main a well-known story, he adds to it substantial new detail, much of it chilling in its exposure of the shameless racism, class prejudice and cruelties of eugenic attitudes and practices in the United States.—Daniel J. Kevles

Publishers Weekly In the first half of the 20th century, more than 60,000 Americans —poor, uneducated, members of minorities— were forcibly sterilized to prevent them from passing on supposedly defective genes. This policy, called eugenics, was the brainchild of such influential people as Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegie and Margaret Sanger. Black, author of the bestselling IBM and the Holocaust, set out to show "the sad truth of how the scientific rationales that drove killer doctors at Auschwitz were first concocted on Long Island" at the Carnegie Institution's Cold Spring Harbor complex. Along the way, he offers a detailed and heavily footnoted history that traces eugenics from its inception to America's eventual, post-WWII retreat from it, complete with stories of the people behind it, their legal battles, their detractors and the tragic stories of their victims. Black's team of 50 researchers have done an impressive job, and the resulting story is at once shocking and gripping. But the publisher's claim that Black has uncovered the truth behind America's "dirty little secret" is a bit overstated. There is a growing library of books on eugenics, including Daniel Kevles's In the Name of Eugenics and Ellen Chesler's biography of Margaret Sanger, Woman of Valor. Black's writing tends to fluctuate from scholarly to melodramatic and apocalyptic (and sometimes arrogant), but the end result is an important book that will add to the public's understanding of this critical chapter of American history. (Sept. 7)

Forecast: The publisher is supporting this in a big way, with a 75,000 first printing, a $100,000 marketing budget and a 20-city author tour. Given the success of IBM and the Holocaust, this stands to get media attention and excellent sales. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information

Library Journal That there existed an organized eugenics movement in America during the early 20th century is one of this country's dirty little secrets. In this bombshell of investigative journalism, Black (IBM and the Holocaust) reveals that it was extensive, systematic, well funded, and supported by major political and intellectual leaders; perhaps most startling, it directly inspired the rise of Nazism in Hitler's Germany. In America, the doctrine of eugenics was justified by pseudoscientific ideologies of social Darwinism and aimed, ultimately, to improve the human race by culling inferior lineages from the gene pool. The primary tool was forced sterilization of those deemed "feeble-minded." In practice, it became a legal and purportedly high-minded means by which to conduct racial and class warfare-the very features that made it appealing to the Nazis. It took the horrors of the Holocaust to discredit eugenics, but, as Black cautions, with governments today creating DNA banks of their citizens and groups from law enforcement to insurance companies seeking access to these banks, there is a reborn threat. This chilling and well-researched book is highly recommended.-Gregg Sapp, Science Lib., SUNY at Albany Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews A journalistic exposé of the early-20th-century American eugenics movement and its application in the death camps of the Third Reich. By Black’s (IBM and the Holocaust, not reviewed) account, the various American eugenicists who brought crop- and livestock-breeding techniques to the business of creating perfect humans were masters of scientific fraud, working with the blessing and material support of major corporations and foundations in the interest of "racism, ethnic hatred and academic elitism." Though predicated on overstatement—many such scientists, then as now, were looking to eradicate categories of disease, not of people—Black’s case has many merits: plenty of practitioners, working through hospitals and laboratories meant to stamp out the "feebleminded" and crippled and even those unfortunates with bad vision, had in mind the creation of a Nordic European "super race enjoying biological dominion over all others." The eugenics program put in practice throughout the US, but with particular zeal in Virginia and California, targeted victims of disease, to be sure, but also the poor and members of ethnic minorities, especially blacks and Native Americans. That program met with some resistance among scientists and social engineers, who complained that such things as tuberculosis and violent crime alike were the products of poverty and not heredity; but it also enjoyed strong support among political leaders, including Woodrow Wilson and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Along the way, Adolf Hitler became enamored of American experiments to rid the nation of the genetically suspect, and American eugenicists did a land-office business as consultants and lecturers in the Third Reich; soon,as US scientist C.M. Goethe noted, the Germans had sterilized more people in two years than California had in a quarter century. But even after WWII, Black writes, "after the Hitler regime, after the Nuremberg Trials, some twenty thousand Americans were eugenically sterilized by states and untold others by federal programs on Indian reservations and in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico." Though sure to be contested at points, of interest to human-rights activists monitoring the doings of bioengineers—who are just eugenicists, Black argues, under another name. First printing of 75,000; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour. Agent: Lynne Rabinoff"

Proposed deletion of Humphrey Draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights


The article Humphrey Draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
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