Everyone has a right to my opinion!

Oh, I like that quote. Nice little twist of words there.

It's a quote from a book title that came from Michael Ramirez, who is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoonists at Investors Business Daily.  So, when I blog, everyone has a right to my opinions, of course. I won't deny you that right.

The focus on what AGBell believed and understood in the past is really moot nowadays. It's a 120 year old difference. And it's even more ridiculous to go after him and declare him as being ignorant about genetics (i.e. hereditary deafness) and genetic diversity when the field of genetics began in 1866 by the work of the Augustinian friar Gregor Johann Mendel. Alexander Graham Bell had a very weak understanding of what genetics and how it worked, and even less so about on the concept of genetic diversity when he gave a lecture "Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race" to the National Academy of Sciences in 1883, a time when the field of genetics was only 17 years old. The concept of genetic diversity was absent during those times simply because the field of genetics was new. Even into the early 1900s genetics was still in its infancy in terms of understanding the importance of genetic diversity.

Back then it was a different era. A different way of thinking. A different cultural crowd of the time. People need to understand that. Unfortunately, some continue to try and find a single scapegoat.

The lack of knowledge in the field of genetic diversity in humans cannot be compared to the lack of heterogeneity of potatoes or diversity of potatoes.  The lack of diversity of potatoes in Ireland resulted in the well known Irish potato famine. Had there been a good diversity of potatoes such a famine could have easily prevented when more resilient potatoes would thrive and others would succumbed to deadly crop diseases.

"Genetic diversity" as it relates to humans wasn't even a concept developed back then. Also, the word "eugenics" had a very different conceptual meaning and understanding back in the late 1800s and early 1900s than how we view it today, especially in light of Hitler's own personal brand of gruesome eugenics program of the mid-1930s and early 1940s.

Silly little arguments and scape-goating.

Yes, people have a right to my opinion!