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[–] 234 points 11 months ago (13 children)

And additional question: even if it was technically feasible, was it really ethical to surgically implant Hitler's cloned brained into the body of a silverback gorilla and make it fight against Tigerstalin?

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  • [–] 126 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Everybody's so concerned with preserving Hitler's brain. But when you put it into the body of a great white shark, ooh, suddenly you've gone too far.

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  • [–] 58 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I find it curious that they talk about privacy for Hitler but don't mention Henrietta Lacks who this very thing happened to. Her cell cultures are being used to this day.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Is this called whataboutism? Henrietta Lacks may be why we argue this, eg, do the arguments on Henrietta Lacks apply as much to Hitler?

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    And also just generally a matter of practicality. If every time you raised an issue of medical or scientific ethics you had to simultaneously mention every single other instance where that issue came into play it'd be impossible to discuss them.

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  • [–] 141 points 11 months ago (31 children)

    Is there any value to analyzing his DNA? The idea that evil is genetic is itself feeding into some Nazi ideas about eugenics that are deeply wrong.

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  • [–] 27 points 11 months ago

    Yeah to me that's the biggest objection... he's long dead, he has no surviving family that wants good for him to my knowledge. So to me that's kind of on the same level as, digging up mummies. The evil actions he commited in life don't really come into play here, and agreed it's really stupid idea to think that his behavior is genetic.

    Kind of reminds me of when most of the nazi generals swore to have no kids to not carry on their DNA, except one, who said "No I won't sign that pledge, that's eugenics which is nazi ideology".

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  • [–] 47 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Maybe we want to clone Hitler but raise him to be antifa.

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  • [+] 26 points 11 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    I don't think this is about "is evil genetic." The first psragraph of the article states it's about his underlying health conditions. Which I think is absolutely worth studying, if it means spotting the early warning signs and intervening before another person ends up like Hitler.

    But then I remember the world we live in and realize it's probably not at all going to end up like that. So who knows? But they're definitely not going to find "the Evil Gene."

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  • [–] 20 points 11 months ago* (4 children)

    The "underlying health conditions" they mention are a possible predisposition for schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder, and kallman syndrome. Things that most certainly do not create hilters, and if it's being argued by anyone that they may then it is indeed apologia for fascist ideology. The thing that actually does create hitlers.

    I think that his genetics might somewhat illuminate or inform historical events, but having it out there in our media environment just begs to have it abused and misconstrued by the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Exaclty my point. It's information that could help us understand what conditions lead to the path he went down and thus help us understand what we can do to better prevent people from tumbling down the facist pipeline, such as better support for people with mental health issues and neurodivergent people.

    But that's not how the wider world is going to receive that information. They're going to see "autism causes facism" or some shit and mistreat people even harder without the slightest hint of irony.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Your second paragraph is exactly why this line of thinking is dangerous. People with disabilities aren’t uniquely prone to dangerous ideologies. No matter how good the intentions are this would only create an association between disability and becoming fascist, which does nothing but hurt vulnerable people in the long run. We can support them without fear-mongering about how dangerous they may be otherwise.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I am not trying to imply that. What does lead to dangerous ideology is feelings of abandonment and hurt coupled with propaganda getting you to direct your anger towards people who don't actually deserve it. Which is why baseline support and understanding for everybody is important, not just those with neurodivergence and mental illness.

    My interest would be in the potential to understand how, if he had these conditions, the treatment he endured might have lead him down that path. It would not be a stretch. As awful as mental health support is now, it was not just nonexistent in his time, you were downright abused for it.

    But I am not saying mental illness/neurodivergence = fascist inclinations, I'm saying rejection and abuse for these things leads to resentment and isolation and these are factors extremists play on to recruit people. It is not unique to these demographics, but it can be a factor, and it should be visible without extracting and studying DNA, but if it gets people to listen, fine.

    And it will get them to listen, but as I mentioned in my previous comments, they won't take the right lesson from it, and the responses I've receives prove that. All they're going to see is "mental illness leads to fascism," when I'm saying "abuse and abandonment is the problem," but that isn't coming through. We make our own demons. We have always made our own demons. And we will continue to do so as long as we choose locking them up in cages or killing them to understanding how we got here.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    It's historically interesting to maybe understand who he was as a human being. He's often painted as a monster but he was a human, and is a warning to all of us what evil human's can achieve.

    For example, they're revealed he had Kallmann Syndrome (which can cause a micropenis and undescended testes) - he may have essentially been essentially asexual which may explain some of his life choices and why he was so dedicated to politics and gaining power. They've also shown he had high genetic risks for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, as well as ADHD, autism.

    Sensationalist reporting aside, these findings do add something to our understanding of a historical figure who had massive influence on human history.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    The personality disorders that led Hitler down the path of evil have strong genetic components, so yes there's value in studying his genes.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Is that anything unique to Hitler?

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    Realistically he was just the right person at the right time with the right ideas to make a righteous mess and end and ruin so many lives in a surprisingly short timeframe.

    Also worth remembering that Hitler took heavy inspiration from Benito Mussolini, even coming to visit Mussolini early on to take inspiration from him (and later propping up Mussolini once the anti-fascists got too successful) even the Nazi sulute was inspired by Mussolini, who had lifted it from a series of silent films about a Roman hero which those films had likely invented the concept of the "Roman sulute" in one of the earliest examples of Hollywood fiction influencing reality

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Hitler himself was unique, so there's always value to studying what made him that way. Even if the research shows his genes aren't relevant to his evil, that's a valuable finding.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago*

    Everybody is unique. Unless I'm an historian, I think there's more harm than good in selecting Hilter of all people as the source for that data.

    Like if we want to add context to events in Hitlers life, then this could be useful. But our social discourse isn't immune to narratives that would seek to blame an individual's genetics for a social ideology / inevitable historic symptom of runaway global capitalism.

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  • [+] 3 points 11 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Would a Hitler clone be morally culpable of someone else's actions?

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  • [+] -2 points 11 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Wouldn't that make you an immoral monster who "should still be killed as quickly as possible"?

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  • [+] -2 points 11 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Maybe if logical consistency is silly. You argued in favor of killing someone unjustifiably. Moral principles mean nothing to you?

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  • [+] -2 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I don't think you've even broken it down to yourself. Killing a person who hasn't done anything wrong is inherently immoral. It's basic logic & moral reasoning.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    Nazis will take any data they want and turn it evil, even if it's only half true. And they'll ignore data that conflicts with their belief. It doesn't matter what science discovers.

    We already have evidence that some forms of "evil" are inheritable. This isn't new. For instance example, I saw a documentary like 20 years ago that showed how one adopted baby—in a nice suburban family, with a couple other perfectly normal kids—was a criminal at a young age. Like stealing-a-school-bus-at-age-nine criminal, and that was just one of many examples. They showed two family trees: his adopted and his biological, and highlighted people who had been arrested, convicted of crimes, etc. They used a few different colors, and sometimes colored in one person's node with two or more colors. His adopted family had like one spot going back 3 generations. His biological family was a rainbow! Remember, he was adopted as a baby and raised with love, and the other kids were fine.

    And science has demonstrated that offspring of stressed-out female mice are much more aggressive than their peers.

    Now what do we do with this kind of data? Be proactive about helping certain kids if they have certain genes. Give them safe outlets for their impulses, or what have you. Extra monitoring. I dunno.

    As for the stressed-out mothers... If you want to stop generational crime, give financial support and therapy to low income mothers. Because their stress is likely epigenetically producing criminal children.

    What would a Nazi do? Nothing. Nazis don't care if people are evil. What are they going to do, eugenics themselves? They're the ones with the most colorful family trees.

    Just some food for thought. I don't think we should suppress science just because Nazis exist.

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    [–] 45 points 11 months ago

    Does this neolithic prehuman have a right to privacy? If they can't give consent, what does it say about this project?

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  • [–] 20 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    He's been dead for 80 years, that's plenty long enough for anyone's feelings to not matter.

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    USA: IP right is 100 years after the creators death.

    So when did hitlers parents die?

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Also, it is internationally generally agreed upon that criminals forfeit their rights to personally identifying information, such as fingerprints and DNA evidence.

    Given Hitler's regime has been internationally agreed to be war criminals and have committed crimes against humanity, even if Hitler himself chose the coward's way out to avoid being convicted for these crimes, I think we can all agree on him being responsible for these crimes thus is essentially convicted posthumous.

    Therefore combining the two, Hitler was and is a criminal therefore privacy protection laws don't apply, therefore his DNA should be freely usable by the scientific community.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (3 children)

    Did he get convicted or does the ICC or ICJ need to do a court process? If any state can just allege someone being a criminal to exhume and extract dna without judicial oversight we open a door quite wide for abuse.

    Edit: "Everyone knows he did it so no court is necessary" havent given humanity perfect scores in human rights before

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Also while the UN/ICJ/ICC did not commit him due to the suicide, the UN War Crimes Commission did indict him as a war criminal, which, in civilised countries, does mean the withdrawal of certain rights, including the right to privacy, therefore the DNA is still processable.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I do see your point, however the fact that Hitler gave the direct orders (often well documented) that were later deemed criminal, I'd presume that would be enough to assume criminal status.

    Also, yknow, defending Hitler on technicalities is like defending a paedo on the distinction between paedophilia, hebephilia and ephebophilia - legally speaking you'd be correct, but in reality it just makes you sound like you're supporting the person in their acts...

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago*

    Lol, yeah I really should choose my battles of technicalities better. According to another user he seems to have been properly and lawfully declared a war criminal so my point was moot :)

    Edit: oh, that user was you!

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    Does Tutankhamun's DNA need consent?

    Disregarding the fact that he was evil, Im not sure historical figures qualify for the same rights as we average people do. I think at most, we should respect what they respected, and Hitler did not respect privacy, so get fucked nazi, your DNA is ours.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Someone who was alive in the last hundred years may well have identifiable descendents or cousins. Someone from 3,350 years ago, less likely.

    Since we often tend to consider the next of kin or manager of an estate to be the legal entity able to make certain decisions following the death of the person in question, whether there is a known/discoverable agent to ask may be relevant in this kind of matter.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (7 children)

    What privacy do you guys think your dna has???

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (4 children)

    While im alive? Don't touchy, I don't even want people taking pictures of me without permission let alone a strand of hair or skin flakes.

    But once im dead who cares, not my problem anymore.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I know until the sexbots arrive that offer free simulated* sex for new subscribers

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Just what I wanted, a true to life Hitler sexbot.

    Actually now that I think about it that would make a banger anime.

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  • [–] 25 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    For fuck sake.... Genetists needs to read some social science. What is all with this making Hitler the biggest reason for the existence of Nazism and the occurrence of the Holocaust? This is why people believe that you can beat fascism with a vote, as if it is a leadership problem and not a complete social movement and social transformation problem

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Government and bureaucracy is the duct tape and glue we made to hold society together but actual societal change is a more natural force that is completely separate from government.

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Do dead people have rights? 🤔

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    According to the GOP, since the dead pay no taxes to America, they have no rights.

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    The whole study is weird. Do they think there is a correlation between his DNA and the horrible acts he did? Are we going to start rounding up anyone with that genetic marker? Put them in camps?

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Who is harmed by this? No one living. Maybe you could argue Hitler has some right to not have his remains disturbed, but DNA testing isn't very invasive and we do it at crime scenes without consent all the time, so it's minor even if relevant.

    What could we learn? Nothing of value. Even if there is some "psychopath gene" or "genocide gene" you'd need 100s of examples to show the effect and far easier to just pick such candidates from living, diagnosed people who can consent.

    So then should we do it? Probs not. No real reason to, even though there's little reason not to.

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