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Doesn’t a criminal give up their right to freedom by doing crimes?
So why wouldn’t a war criminal give up their right to privacy by doing war crimes?
Uh, IDK about anywhere else, but in the US prisoners are supposed to retain their bodily autonomy even while imprisoned. the actual reality is that that is often ignored by the government, but that’s what the law says, at least.
Ok, but only to an extent. Prisoners 100% get fingerprinted. Not sure if they collect their DNA too, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised; to the point where I already assume they do.
“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?” Mark Twain
If it turns out Hitler had some bad genes his relatives’ descendants will get a bad name. This is obviously a joke, but it’s actually true as well. They’ve all distanced themselves from the name Hitler, but surely some people know about their relation to Adolf. I guess the questions is: how bad is it when you’re grandfathers half-brother or whatever his DNA is public. There is a legitimate privacy concern there, that shouldn’t be too easily dismissed because ‘haha hitler & privacy’.
the question if you need relatives consent to make your dna public is interesting. I have my opinions, but the question of an historical dead figure has rights to privacy is another.
However, seeing if there’s an “evil” gene is both cartoonishly naive and smells of eugenics. Hitler would have approved said study.
His relatives actually decided to not have children collectively afaik.
They appeared to be fairly nice chaps - a friend of mine interviewed one of them 20 years ago for a uni research project.
I feel like you still haven’t explained what the privacy concern is
DNA is basically your identity. Your health, your ancestry, everything. But its also, not just you. Its your family, past and future. If we start talking the DNA of the dead, and Im pretty sure we already do as the dead have no rights, then at some point someone is going to challenge the right to privacy of the living in this area. After all, we’re all going to die sooner or later, so why not get that sweet, sweet data just now?
Basic harms would be health insurance. If a provider has your DNA, it might show that your great, great granny got cancer. And they use that data to increase your rates. Or worse, deny your treatment, because your granny had the same treatment, and it didnt work.
What about work? Your ancestor has his history of health issues, and so refuses to hire you because you might get that too.
DNA from you or your relatives can also be use to track you, identify you, connect you to certain locations.
But heres the big one. Cancer. Your DNA holds the key to curing cancer. Some company has your DNA, and using your DNA creates a cure for Cancer. They then make trillions of money off of it. And you get fuck all, even though it your DNA. You dont even get to say that it should be given away. Its theirs now.
Also, once a company has your DNA. They have it forever. That you and your family, easily profiled, tracked, and whatever else until the end of time. What if, at some point, some targets you or a descendant with a DNA targeted virus? Science fiction now, but maybe not in the future.
Basically, the damage that can be done is limitless.
But heres the big one. Cancer. Your DNA holds the key to curing cancer. Some company has your DNA, and using your DNA creates a cure for Cancer. They then make trillions of money off of it. And you get fuck all, even though it your DNA. You dont even get to say that it should be given away. Its theirs now.
Basically what happened to Henrietta Lacks
So what is the actual privacy concern though?
What I just spelled out to you…
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.
They will probably use Hitler’s pseudoscience to start camps for psychological minorities. Where have we heard of that before?
Data protection only covers the living IIRC.
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Why are we even talking about Hitler’s DNA? Out of all the news why this. We are seriously weird.
Researchers sequenced his DNA recently from a bloodstained couch cushion, we’ve been getting glimpses into it lately.
Presumably the insights are just that he was a human and not a space alien.
What are they looking for exactly?
An excuse for the camps to continue Hitler’s work. How is everyone stupid enough not to figure it out?
They are trying to track down the genocide gene. Then we can screen all of our politicians for it
The Nazis couldn’t have done their genocide without the support of thousands of people, all who made the decision to actively support it for their personal gain, believes, or just plain complacency. What is a genocide supporting gene in one time is a normal suburban life gene in another time.
Yes, most people would love Hitler’s work if it wasn’t associated with Hitler/ Germany won the ww2. I fucking hate humanity.
That sounds the kdrama Mouse where they find the serial killer gene, but just because you had it doesn’t mean you’d become one. Sounds like a terrible future and another layer of future discrimination for things beyond people’s control that might just be a carrier.
People keep shouting Idiocracy.
I reckon Gaataca is the more likely outcome.
That sounds like latent serial killer genes talking
Damn you caught me!
Also he’s dead, why do dead people deserve anything, any rights? What harm happens to Hitler? He’s dead. Did we ask dinosaurs to look at their DNA, for all we know they were sentient? The whole argument is stupid.
I may be very stupid about it and not know the normative, but what is the safest option for me is the following. No informed consent -> no research on any samples from the patient.
Does not matter how important your research is. I myself would like to be informed about that stuff. I may decide to donate my organs to research after I’m dead, but I have decided that.
In the case of DNA, because it’s shared with relatives and descendants who might be still alive. In Hitler’s case, that might not be that much of an issue, but you were talking about dead people in general.
If your parents are dead, and thus they get DNA sampled, that information gained is good enough to positively identify DNA traces of all their children.
Remember how they caught the Golden State Killer? They put a DNA sample into the genetics website GEDmatch and found a few of his distant relatives. They then used publicly available family history records to construct a family tree that included all of these matches. That allowed them to narrow down the suspects to two people. One of them could be ruled out by DNA testing a close relative, which left the last one. They then took a DNA sample from his car, which was a match and that’s how they got him.
Using that kind of stuff to catch killers is likely a good use of the technology, but there’s quite a few nefarious things a state could do with a DNA database of all dead people.
Because caring for our dead is a very human trait. In my state, a housing development was put on hold after the bones of indigenous people were found there and they had a connection to people claiming descent from them making the whole thing a family affair.
oh hey i live in a neighborhood like that. my entire city is on an indian burial ground. every time they develop land, they survey, catalog, and gather the artifacts before placing them on land no one is supposed to know where but it’s by the park.
How did they know they were indigenous bones? Was dead person’s consent asked for to check if dead person wanted to be identified as ancestor of somebody?
I mean i understand caring for our dead, but anytime it’s a matter of consent, its always for the living descendants, HIPPA protects medical records for 50 years, but they’re generally protected so the living descendents don’t feel impact for anything that maybe damaging.
And talking about laws I know it’s a tangent, but the reason copyright exist after death is so that revenue can be enjoyed by living descendents. Laws are not necessarily sensible a lot of times.
They could probably tell fairly quickly by the age of the ground they were found in. Colonisation occurred less than 200 years ago making it fairly trivial to understand if they were older. The indigenous had also maintained stories describing the area as a burial ground.
For the living indigenous its a tangible link to their pre colonisation culture, thus making it incredibly important to them. After they’ve had so much of their land, language, beliefs, foods and culture has been taken away from them, I’m sure you can understand why preserving the links that they still have is important to them
You bring up a lot of good points.
Apparently there are some rights that exist beyond death. Currently HIPAA protection after death for medical privacy only extends fifty years.
So it does appear the argument is pretty moot.
Here is an interesting read on the matter.
https://aeon.co/essays/do-we-have-a-right-to-medical-privacy-after-we-are-dead
When there is a crime scene, the place is searched for fingerprints, hair, fabrics, anything that could find the suspect. No “privacy” is given, because it’s a fucking crime scene. Hitler murdered people, that’s a crime scene. He forfeited any right to privacy when he forfeited his humanity.
The whole post is ridiculous.
Just a weird topic especially with all this neo-nazism happening in the US government.
I am not saying it isn’t newsworthy at all of course. It is just the timing is suspect.
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
It’s both deeply essentialist, and insulting to people’s intelligence. If you’re planning on studying hitler’s DNA, who cares, knock yourself out. But it’s ridiculous to think all but the worst people are going to believe there’s an “evil” gene.
If you’re a scientist planning on cloning hitler, you have a lot more problems on your hands, and are obviously not pursuing any kind of scientific results and just want attention and deserve all the ridicule from other that idiots you will get.
What if it turns out Hitler saliva cures cancer, all you gotta do is make out with a Hitler clone? You know, like with lizards and limey disease.
I think I did read a recent paper outlining just such a case study.
Now I imagine limey disease. Prime symptom is talking like “Oi guvnor, u wot?”
I think he meant, bluey disease
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.
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.
What privacy do you guys think your dna has???
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.
Your entire family tree
Your dna contains that information, yes. But what is the privacy concern
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.
Ew, undersmencht dna
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?
I would unironically watch that on TV.
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.
great white shark
I see what you did here.
Well, there’s neither a great black shark nor a great Jewish shark.
Goblin sharks exist!
/j
Ah! I knew it was not a novel approach. Thanks Pr. Farnsworth, you crazy sciency trailblazer.
A great white shark with fricken laser beams!
nah, put it in a Greenland shark so that piece of shit can wallow the depths for 300 yrs
Nah put it in a pergante hyena
But in the 80s, we transplanted Donald Trump’s brain into a house cat addicted to cocaine.
That’s ridiculous cocaine was addicted to Bill
It would be to more unethical to not do that.
Stalin disappeared thousands of people. Tiger Stalin “disappeared” a few, but there was no hiding it, the pile of intestines and bones was a dead giveaway.
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?
Sounds like one step away from finding another reason for the Government to round up marginalized groups.
Hitler had it, Walt Disney had it.
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.
Maybe we want to clone Hitler but raise him to be antifa.
Reminds me of a classic AskReddit aneurysm post.
If Hitler was Hitler today, and Hitler cloning machine. You hold world hostage with Hitler Clone Hitler Unlimited Hitler. What hold hostage with exchange for Hitler Hitler?
This comment made me reach semantic satiation of the word “Hitler” and it’s kinda nice. A word so associated with disgust has ceased to even register as a word in my brain.
Give grammar lessons me unless Hitler Hitler release!
Real ambienposting hours
I’ll allow it.
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”.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nope but sociopaths probably do have a gene we can detect
We learned he had a micro penis, a potent weapon against his neo-nazi fans. The value is already immense.
Is there any value to make 2 million Hitler documentaries? No, but they do it anyways.
The personality disorders that led Hitler down the path of evil have strong genetic components, so yes there’s value in studying his genes.
Is that anything unique to Hitler?
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
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.
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.
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.
not really… identifying and/or ruling out genetic origins of diseases isn’t racism.
my moral objection to this is: we shouldn’t be scanning and storing hitler’s dna; that’s how you end up with Hitler clones.
The sort that would want a Hitler clone would be happy with a direwolf-style pseudo-clone with good marketing.
Would a Hitler clone be morally culpable of someone else’s actions?
not exactly, but it should still be killed as quickly as possible
Wouldn’t that make you an immoral monster who “should still be killed as quickly as possible”?
oh, you’re a silly one, aren’t you?
Maybe if logical consistency is silly. You argued in favor of killing someone unjustifiably. Moral principles mean nothing to you?
it’s not unjustifiable to kill a clone of hitler, but i’m not going to break it down for you, silly billy
Does this neolithic prehuman have a right to privacy? If they can’t give consent, what does it say about this project?
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.
that’s how you know the whole argument is a dog whistle…
Is this called whataboutism? Henrietta Lacks may be why we argue this, eg, do the arguments on Henrietta Lacks apply as much to Hitler?
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.
