‘Follow the Science’ -The Path to undo History

Leading scientists have long been claiming to know what is "human in form but not in social potential". 'Follow the science' thus reveals a path to destruction of basic Human Rights

Democracy and Human Rights are considered ‘mutually constitutive’. The USA represent the first example of a constitutional Republic founded on the principle of Human Rights.

Science, on the other hand, is said to be “an institution congenial to democracy”, due to the values attached to science and due to the principle of “speaking truth to power”.

On the Fourth of July 1776, the Continental Congress in session in Philadelphia ratified “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America”. In the document, today known as the Declaration of Independence, the “Founding Fathers of America” stated as true, or as…

“ (…) self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It has been well recorded that King George III of Great Britain, who personified the “power” to which the colonies spoke truth, because the Crown “plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people”, rejected the idea of inalienable rights for his subjects. He scolded the “misguided Americans” and “their extravagant and inadmissable Claim of Independency”.

The course of History seemed to have vindicated the Continental Revolutionaries. 172 years and tow cataclysmic World Wars later, on December 10, 1948, the United Nations’ General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its 3rd session in Paris, it resolved the following Preamble (excerpt):

“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law (…)”

The UN was set up just three years earlier in order to prevent “another world war like the one [the world] had just lived through.” The “tyranny and oppression” mentioned in the preamble must be read as a reference to the Nazi war crimes, which were exposed to the world public during the ‘Nuremberg Trials’, the last of which had sentences announced not before April of 1949.

Belle Mayer Zeck was a young attorney of 26 years of age when she was sent to Nuremberg to participate in preparing the indictment for the I.G. Farben Case. Fifty Years later, Mrs Mayer Zeck expressed distress about how little had been done for “the perpetuation of the Nuremberg principles and (…) the cause of human rights.”

Nuremberg Principles and Human Rights

Even though after World War II and the Holocaust, the concept of “eugenics” was discredited (in part due to the genocide and other crimes committed in the name of Nazi racial ideology), scientists were quick to continue their search for apparent justification of individual human rights in a related mindset: one of a belief in a perceived need to safeguard the future of the human species at the expense of individual human rights.

Joshua Lederberg has been one of, if not the most important proponents of such mindset for most of the six decades between his 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine and his death in 2008.

Of course, Lederberg, who was Jewish, insisted that “thinking in terms of master races” must be avoided, as he stressed in a 1964 interview for the IBM “Think”-Magazine. However, a Symposium on “The Future of Man”, hosted two years earlier by the Ciba-Foundation in London, Lederberg, who presented on the “Biological Future of Man,” and his “peers” revealed in no uncertain terms that they themselves did see each other as an elite group of “masters.” A total of 6 Nobel Laureats (1937, 1946, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1962) were among the 26 participants. Even more than the contents of the papers they presented did the contributions they made in comment to each paper show how they felt not not only equipped but also under an obligation to, as Lederberg phrased it, “face the issue of a definition of man, taking full account of his psychosocial progeny.”

“The population explosion is one example of what can happen without planning and, as of now, there is no striking evidence that we have learned our lesson. We have policies for foreign aid, civil defense, television programming, advertising campaigns, and so on. But as far as the most important thing of all is concerned, what man himself is going to be, we have no policy (…) what should be stressed now is there is less time than you may think.”
Joshua Lederberg

Francis Crick, who at the time of the Symposium had just been awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine a few weeks earlier, gives us an insight into his idea of Human Rights: Do people have the right to have children at all, he asks during the discussion of “Eugenics and Genetics” (on which Lederberg presented as well as Hermann Muller, Nobel Laureat of 1946).

“It would not be very difficult (…) for a government to put something into our food so that nobody could have children. Then possibly-and this is hypothetical-they could provide another chemical that would reverse the effect of the first, and only people licensed to bear children would be given this second chemical. This isn’t so wild that we need not discuss it. Is it the general feeling that people do have the right to have children? This is taken for granted because it is part of Christian ethics, but in terms of humanist ethics I do not see why people should have the right to have children. I think that if we can get across to people the idea that their children are not entirely their own business and that it is not a private matter, it would be an enormous step forward (emphasis added). If one did have a licensing scheme, the first child might be admitted on rather easy terms. If the parents were genetically unfavourable (emph. add.), they might be allowed to have only one child, or possibly two under certain special circumstances.”

Interestingly, from amongst his colleagues, Crick received pushback: “I think that it is no accident that the Nazi doctrines about sterilization were closely linked, intellectually and morally, to Nazi doctrines about genocide. That is why I am so alarmed to see what is happening today”, said Agricultural Economist C.G. Clark, adding: “Apparently we are beginning a second cycle of eugenic doctrines supported by some brilliant and misguided scientists, and which I am afraid will attract its quota of humbugs as well.”

Peter Medawar, author of a book about “The Uniqueness of the Individual” was also among the more cautionary voices: What frightens me about Muller and to some extent Huxley is their extreme self-confidence, their complete conviction not only that they know what ends are desirable but also that they know how to achieve them.”

However, Clark and Medawar were in the minority, as was reflected by Crick’s swift and harsh rebuttal: “I disagree strongly with Dr. Clark‘s remarks and with the standpoint from which he made them. It is clear that if we take the broad ethical question of ultimate ends we shall never reach any agreement. Moreover, those of us who are humanists have a great difficulty in that we are unable to formulate our ends as clearly as is possible for those of us who are Christians.”

The Scientific-Technological Elite

Joshua Lederberg was 37 years old when he attended the CIBA-Symposium. He went on to shape the landscape of science and the politics of science in the years to come. It is of note that he enjoyed the patronage of Oligarchs such as David Rockefeller, who included Lederberg in meetings of the Trilateral Commission. In 1978 he was elevated to President of the Rockefeller University, a position he held until 1990. Lederberg served as advisor “to a total of 9 White House administrations”. The first of these positions he assumed in 1957 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who four years later in his farewell-address warned of the danger of public policy “become the captive of a scientific-technological elite”. Lederberg has probably become the most prominent personification of this elite, and he managed to warn the U.S. Senate of the “Threat of Bioterrorism and the Spread of Infectious Disease” on September 5, 2001, just days before the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.

Another member of the scientific-technological elite is Stanley A. Plotkin, the Godfather of Vaccines.

Whilst Lederberg has been a giant in the science of genetics, intoducing the idea of gene therapy already in 1963, Stanley Plotkin has been working his whole life on the development of vaccines. In 2009 Plotkin joined the scientific advisory board of Inovio Biomedicals in an effort to develop DNA vaccines. One year earlier, Plotkin’s work was used by Vical Inc. to develop a CMV genetic vaccine. Plotkin also serves as advisor to a German company that “develops vaccines based on RNA.”

In a Deposition on January 11, 2018 Plotkin made a shocking admission about his use of orphans and mentally handicapped people during his studies of experimental vaccines, decades after the Nuremberg Code was issued in response to inhumane experiments by Nazi-scientists.

Question: Okay. Have you ever used orphans to study an experimental vaccine?

Stanley Plotkin: Yes.

Question: Have you ever used the mentally handicapped to study an experimental vaccine?

Stanley Plotkin: I don't recollect ever doing studies in mentally handicapped individuals. At the time, in the 1960s, it was not an uncommon practice.

Q: So you're saying... I'm not clear on your answer, I'm sorry, did you... Did you... Have you ever used the mentally handicapped to study an experimental vaccine?

SP: What I'm saying is, I don't recall specifically having done that, but that in the 1960s, it was not unusual to do that, and I wouldn't deny that I may have done so.

(…)

Q: Got it. Okay, so and... Well in any event, you're not denying that you... Well... There's an article entitled Attenuation of RA 27­3 rubella virus in WI­38 human diploid cells. Are you familiar with that article?

SP: Yes.
Q: Okay. In that article, one of the things it says... Is 13, is one of the things it says, is 13 sur­negative, mentally retarded children were given RA 27/3 vaccine.

SP: Okay, well then that's... In that case, that's what I did.

Q: Okay. Have you ever expressed that it's better to perform experiments on those less likely to be able to contribute to society, such as children with handicap, than with children without or adults without handicaps?

SP: I don't remember specifically, but it's possible. And again, I repeat that in the 1960s, that was more or less common practice. I've since changed my mind, but those were... That was a long time ago.

Source: Original transcript (Wayback-Machine)

As the transcript shows, Plotkin has even been aware of the parallel to “Nazi philosophy”. However, he shrugs it off by claiming that it was a common practice at the time and him having since changed his mind.

This may or may not be true. In any case he must have known that what he did violated Human Rights in a most obscene manner. The same applies to Lederberg and the CIBA-symposium participants. The scientific-technological elite of the world boldly assumes a position of authority over the rest of the population, claiming to understand, or know better what contribution to society must or can be asked of people with unwanted traits in their genetic material.

Plotkin, very much like Lederberg, seems to think that it is ok to strip human beings of their dignity and rights, provided the violations are spread evenly over different ethnic, racial or economic groups.

Following these kind of scientists is getting on a path to undo the greatest achievements in History: the declaration of Human Rights!