Human Zoo's: Science's Dirty (BIG) Secret Revealed.

First I am known not to shy aware from a controversial subject, and I find this to be one of the most disturbing. Not because it happened, but because we argue over things that have roots in these types of experiments, that we would normally share in either "social issues", or "medical conspiracies".

This of course is not a thread for everyone. There is a lot of controversy about why and how this was done, so I will only bring forth the recorded facts. Which ever ideal you live by will manifest in this thread. You can see it in so many ways.

Hopefully we can all have a discussion without derailing, as the sensationalism that is currently overriding the ATS forums, sadly enough have been connected to some of the experiments that I will show today. Not just 100 years ago, but this has indeed been revamped, and resold to the masses, in order to deepen the divide.

I first decided to look into this when I heard about Dolly the cloned sheep. Everyone seemed amazed, and bewildered about what "we" had created. But most were unaware that there were hundreds of "Dollies" before than, and not as successful. For the name of science and those that praise it, sometimes tend to forget that true science is sometimes done with unethical procedures, or the final goal in mind, and with this, comes pain, death and misery, the way that I will show now.

Human Zoo's What Were We Trying To Do?

Besides the confusion and ignorance of many that were unaware of other cultures and diversity, it was not just money that people wanted, but in most if not all of these cases there were scientists, zoologists, doctors, etc,. that were looking to use this opportunity to show the major difference between the races of the world.

Not the way that we see them now in museums, or text books, or even national geographic, this was a form of human rights violations that occurred when no one stood up, because this was in the name of knowledge of what we dont know and were afraid to find out.

During a dark period of world history, intellectuals pondered where to draw the line between human and animal. They arrayed humans hierarchically, from the lightest to the darkest skin. Believing that Africans were ape-like, they weren’t sure whether to include apes as human, or Africans as apes.

One artifact of this thinking was the “human zoo.” Kidnapped from their homes at the end of the 19th century and into the next, hundreds of indigenous people were put on display for white Westerners to view. ”Often they were displayed in villages built in zoos specifically for the show,” according to a Spiegel Online sent in by Katrin, “but they were also made to perform on stage for the amusement of a paying public.” Many died quickly, being exposed to diseases foreign to them.
A German named Carl Hagenbeck was among the more famous men involved in human zoos. He would go on expeditions in foreign countries and bring back both animals and people for European collections. In his memoirs, he spoke of his involvement with pride, writing: “it was my privilege to be the first in the civilized world to present these shows of different races.”

The zoo in Hamburg still bears his name.

thesocietypages.org...


This wasnt just in the U.S, and many of the things that were learned were not just a few remote places, where no one would ask questions. This was the beginning (not to say this wasnt happening earlier) of what began to separate our societies, and until we see what could be the cause of fear, of not just other cultures, diverse groups, and places we have lived, but we are afraid because there was always something to be afraid of.

Here are some photos and details of some of the most famous "exhibits".

The text traces the presentation and degradation of many nonwestern cultures as they were presented to the western world. Beginning with a chapter about the rise of the Freak Show, the text winds through the melancholy story of the dehumanization of Asian, African, Native American, Indian and other cultures as the west explored, conquered and claimed vast portions of the globe. Among the other choice information to be found and viewed is rarely voiced perspectives of P. T. Barnum and other showmen of the time, demonstrating how such spectacles as the sideshow began a debasement of mankind culminating in the placement of "savages" in actual zoos alongside the animals.

blog.photoeye.com...

One of the most famous cases was Ota Benga.

Ota Benga (circa 1883[1] – March 20, 1916) was a Congolese Mbuti pygmy known for being featured with other Africans in an anthropology exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904, and later in a controversial human zoo exhibit in the Bronx Zoo in 1906. Benga had been freed from slave traders in the Congo by the missionary Samuel Phillips Verner, who had taken him to Missouri. At the Bronx Zoo, Benga had free run of the grounds before and after he was "exhibited" in the zoo's Monkey House. Displays of non-Western humans as examples of "earlier stages" of human evolution were common in the early 20th century, when racial theories were frequently intertwined with concepts from evolutionary biology.

en.wikipedia.org...

In 1904, Ota Benga was brought to the United States by the missionary and
explorer Samuel Phillips Verner. Verner had been hired by the St. Louis World’s
Fair to bring back pygmies for one of their ethnographic exhibits.
Verner’s story is recounted by his grandson Phillips Verner Bradford in the
book ‘Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo’. According to this account, Verner
purchased Ota Benga from African slave traders - his wife and children had
been killed in a massacre. Verner brought Benga, seven other pygmies and a
young Congolese man to St Louis where they proved to be one of the most
popular attractions at the fair. The crowds gawked, jeered and at one point
threw mud pies at the human exhibit.
From St Louis, the group travelled to New Orleans just in time for Mardi Gras,
and finally back to Africa. Benga - expressing a desire to learn to read - asked
Verner to take him with him when the explorer returned home.
Verner and Ota Benga arrived in New York in August 1906. Verner, looking for
a place for Benga to live, finally brought him to the Bronx Zoo, where, at first,
he walked the grounds and helped the workers. But in early September, it was
decided to move Benga’s hammock into an orang utan’s cage, where he was
encouraged to play with the orang utan and weave caps out of straw and to
shoot his bow and arrow. The zoo was encouraged by prominent eugenicist
and head of the New York Zoological Society Madison Grant and a sign soon
read:
The African Pigmy, ‘Ota Benga.’
Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches. Weight, 103 pounds.
Brought from the Kasai River, Congo Free State,
South Central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner.
Exhibited each afternoon during September.

www.usd116.org...

Continued Below.>

Here is a bit about Madison Grant, in case you never heard of him.

Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist. As a eugenicist, Grant was responsible for one of the most famous works of scientific racism, and played an active role in crafting strong immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.

As a conservationist, Grant was credited with the saving of many different species of animals, founding many different environmental and philanthropic organizations and developing much of the discipline of wildlife management.

Similar ideas were proposed by Gustav Kossinna in Germany. Grant promoted the idea of the "Nordic race"—a loosely defined biological-cultural grouping rooted in Scandinavia—as the key social group responsible for human development; thus the subtitle of the book was The racial basis of European history. As an avid eugenicist, Grant further advocated the separation, quarantine, and eventual collapse of "undesirable" traits and "worthless race types" from the human gene pool and the promotion, spread, and eventual restoration of desirable traits and "worthwhile race types" conducive to Nordic society:

"A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit—in other words social failures—would solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types."

en.wikipedia.org...

There is a lot in that quote that seems to resonate today in our society. The difference here is that there is NO particular race that is being excluded anymore.

His work was not stopped after his passing but continued in research throughout the years.

The effect was felt at both the state and federal level. Twenty-four states passed laws encouraging sterilization of those who were retarded, insane, or had criminal records. At the Federal level, in 1921, Albert Johnson, head of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, began a series of hearings on immigration. He appointed Harry Laughlin, who in 1922 would be one of Grant’s co-founders of the American Eugenics Society, as an expert witness on eugenics. In 1922, Laughlin reported extensively on racial differences in IQ as measured by the new army intelligence test.

In 1923, Grant’s close friend Henry Fairfield Osborn, the famous paleontologist who named “tyrannosaurus rex,” spoke enthusiastically about intelligence testing: “We have learned once and for all that the Negro is not like us.”

www.amren.com...


This became rampant in the Johnson Act of 1924.
history.state.gov...

And brought about things that many began to fear like the "Yellow Peril" aka the "Yellow Terror"

Yellow Peril (sometimes Yellow Terror) was a color metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with Chinese immigrants as coolie slaves or laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States, and later associated with the Japanese during the mid-20th century, due to Japanese military expansion and eventually all asians of East and Southeast Asian descent.

The term refers to the skin color of East Asians, and the fear that the mass immigration of Asians threatened white wages and standards of living and that they would eventually take over and destroy western civilization, their ways of life and values.

The term has also referred to the belief and fear that East Asian societies would invade and attack Western societies, wage wars with and lead to their eventual destruction and eradication.

en.wikipedia.org...

Continued Below.>

reply to post by NoRegretsEver



Its interesting how they always like to tell blacks to get over the past and forget the horrific wrongs that were done to them..... until, of course they want to bring those things up and shove it in the black peoples face.





There should be rules against patronizing whole ethnic groups.

I would like to leave this with one other that I think is relevant today.
Sarah Baartman

Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman (before 1790 – 29 December 1815)[1] (also spelled Bartman, Bartmann, Baartmen) was the most famous of at least two[2] Khoikhoi women who were exhibited as freak show attractions in 19th-century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus—"Hottentot" as the then-current name for the Khoi people, now considered an offensive term,[3] and "Venus" in reference to the Roman goddess of love.

en.wikipedia.org...


Thought the above photo is a cartoon, there are thousands of pictures from all races that seem to want this type of photo to be taken of them, without knowing the nature of the pose, this was to degrade woman that had a different body type.

Woman are spending millions a year to have this shape, and pose all over the place, and almost all have no idea where it came from.

The divide.. the GREAT divide was and is manufactured, manipulated and overall winning. If and when we decide that we have had enough, then maybe things will change.

Thank you for your time.

Peace, NRE.

Here is a little gem, that though was writtenin in 1996, is wonderful.

Genetics has always been driven by technology. As Time Magazine says, (technologically) the future is now. But the past is also still with us.

There are, to be sure, two schools of thought on the value of history. Applied to human issues, genetics becomes a humanistic and social science; and it has a poor track record. The first generation of modern human geneticists failed to appreciate the fundamental civil liberties and human rights which we take for granted now. If the post-modern world is a better place now, it is unfortunately in spite of, not because of, the genetics and geneticists of that era. And as technology improves, the opportunity for harm -- intended or not -- improves with it. That is the basic tradeoff of technology in society.

Let us make their mistakes our lessons. The responsibilities incurred by the nineteen-twentieths of the Human Genome Project’s budget which is not devoted to ethical, legal, and social implications, constitute the greatest intellectual challenge for the field. They need to be part of every present geneticist’s consciousness, and every future geneticist’s education.

personal.uncc.edu...


When we allow those that contribute in the name of science, and never ask what, or why, when or where, we wind up with things like this.

The 1958 case of Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia initiated a challenge that would eventually overturn the law. That year, Mildred Jeter (a black woman) and Richard Loving (a white man) were married in the District of Columbia. After moving to Virginia, they were indicted for violating the Racial Integrity Act. They pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in jail. The trial judge suspended their sentences on the condition that they accept banishment from the state and not return together for 25 years. The judge's written opinion declared: Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with this arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

www.eugenicsarchive.org...
They fought for thier rights, and you have to wonder, how far are we willing to go, not to repeat it?

Peace, NRE.

I so deeply apologize I forgot to add the actual documentary.

Only one hundred years ago, many of the world's leading scientists agreed with A. C. Haddon, when he wrote in his 1898 book Study of Man, that, "on the whole, the white race has progressed beyond the black race."

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists were so fascinated by race that thousands of 'exotic' and indigenous people from all over the world were put on display in human zoos. They were not intended as merely entertaining freak shows but also scientific demonstrations of racial difference. Across the western world millions gawped in fascination at these 'uncivilized savages' and would depart convinced of the superiority of the white race.

This documentary explores the phenomenon of human zoos and tells the poignant story of Ota Benga, a Batwa pygmy from the Belgian Congo, who was first put on display at the 1904 St Louis World's Fair and then the Bronx Zoo where he was labeled as the 'missing link'.

As the film reveals, it was only a short step from these human zoos to the horrors of Nazi Germany as pseudo science that underpinned one, helped legitimize the other.

www.liveleak.com...
Peace, NRE.

What a fascinating topic!

I had never come across this before and was both interested in and appalled at the actions of some of the scientists in my chosen field -- anthropology. We've sinned against humanity in as many ways as we've helped.

The BBC has a wonderful companion article on these, and mentions things that we Americans are more familiar with: Buffalo Bill's Wild West show: www.bbc.co.uk...

If this is still of interest and you would like to know more.
Eugenics Archive grows to 2200+ items

Browse 950 new photos, papers, and data – including extensive collections from noted eugenicists. Discover Francis Galton's work on fingerprint analysis and composite portraiture, and read Charles Davenport's treatise, Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding, presented in its entirety. Explore Arthur Estabrook's field photos of subjects of his (in)famous studies: The Jukes in 1915, Mongrel Virginians, and The Nam Family. Click the "Search the Archive" button to access the image database.

www.dnai.org...


Peace, NRE.

This really is a fascinating little research area, and one that deserves to be better known.

I just uncovered (thanks to Cracked, of all things) the New York Zoo's article on Ota Benga.

Here is another nice little spot.
Research Flaws in Eugenics Research.
www.eugenicsarchive.org...


There is a real reason why we must look into this. Many of the people that were involved in this later become some of the leading professors in some of the most prestigious colleges. We discuss so many things here, but now maybe it will be easier t see where we get some of out "thoughts" from.

Especially now that so many children are being diagnosed with ailments that are so concerning to parents who dont know where to look, or how to search for something that is legitimate. Many people are being wrongly diagnosed, and medicated.

What if you found out, how they found this out, or where they got this from?

Peace, NRE.

reply to post by Byrd


I wonder, are there any names that you might have heard or read about, that you didnt know were involved, or were teaching the findings of this, but not the technique?

Peace, NRE.

Though I will remain adding to this thread, I have to be sure to share how I feel this has since evolved, though racism is still alive today within ALL races, there was a "new" science that had emerged.

This was called "scientific racism".

Scientific racism is a shameful part of American science. In retros
pect, scientists wonder at
the absence of critical challenges to these racist results from early American scientists. It did not
occur to the scientists to question the results because the concepts were “so congruent with social and
political life” (Stepa
n, 171). This suggestion has implications for scientists of today and tomorrow.
Blacks suffered under slavery and unequal education conditions, but these were not the only
instances of justifying and protecting the exploitation of people. Biased studie
s have also oppressed
women and immigrants in this country; the eugenics craze affected minorities and Jews throughout
the world. What about today? Are there still social biases that scientists are unwillingly
incorporating into their studies? Where is
there exploitation today that unscrupulous scientific results
are seeking to protect? Undoubtedly, the practice of scientific racism exists, but for today’s society
to be different from our forefathers, we must demand scrutiny of both our own values and
“
objective” scientific study. Otherwise, tomorrow we could be reading about the social horrors we
justified in our own daily lives.

pat.tamu.edu...


When the racist aspect was no longer as popular, they began looking into the psychological aspect, which I feel is what is happening today. If we cannot tell by the color of your skin, we can tell by the mentality of the brain.

I will be adding more in a bit on the mental aspect that this has now become.

Peace, NRE.

This was all quite ghastly, although it cannot be "Othered" onto history.
Debates around discrimination and human zoos continue to this day.

In fact, in 2007 the BBC reported that pygmies attending a music festival in the Republic of the Congo were kept in the zoo quite literally, while other guests stayed in hotels.
otabenga.org...
The plight of the Bushmen (San) in Botswana and the global lethargy to get mixed up in "African tribal affairs" is sad.
www.survivalinternational.org...

Racism against some of the African Batwa (pygmy) and Khoisan tribes was not wholly white, but was also practiced by their agricultural Bantu-speaking neighbors.

Still today the Khoisan and pygmy peoples face discrimination in African countries from black people (notably in Botswana, where they are losing their homelands, or in South Africa where affirmative action classes the Khoisan as "colored people").
Survival International notes that racism, slavery and discrimination remain significant problems for the pygmy people: www.survivalinternational.org...

In the story of Ota Benga in the documentary film The Human Zoo it's actually narrated that the man was saved from capture by another tribe.
He was returned to Africa after an exhibition only to find his tribe extinct, and then married a woman from another tribe.
When she died of a snakebite, the tribe turned on him for witchcraft, and he actually begged to go back to the US.
en.wikipedia.org...

With the San (or Bushmen), the tide turned from dwelling on their physical "Otherness" under colonization to somehow romanticizing them in anthropological or wildlife films.

Going to the Kalahari region (where they sometimes survived traditionally into the 1980s) was like going back in time for filmmakers and anthropologists.
This obscured the fact that the Cold War in Angola and Namibia was destroying their lifestyles, and the romance had put them in a catch 22.
Conscripted or forced into armies, or having lost much of the access to animals they could increasingly no longer sustain their traditional lives, nor were they given equal state benefits as other tribes (they were supposed to be pristine hunter-gatherers to the world).
As in previous centuries in South Africa, they often became the poorest of the poor.

They did get some colonial reserves, and recently also got land rights in South Africa, although conditions vary vastly.

Debates around the "human zoo" remain to this day, and in South Africa there have been huge debates about how the Khoisan should be displayed to tourists, and the Khoisan and their descendants are very much involved in debates around art or historic exhibits.

Not too sure exactly where you are going here, but I would settle with science and non science being just different degrees of ignorance. I'll use a phrase I already used tonight elsewhere, they used to burn or drown witches didn't they..maybe not so many in reality, but it did happen, with official approval.
The people you refer to were probably in positions of influence and power of the day, and if they thought themselves as scientists may well have thought themselves correct in eradication, or sterilisation to end a defective line blah blah. It seems then nobody then thought of a third way in Correcting Genetic Defects or even the conception of that idea, something that today is holding out hope for those affected for many, including those who's mental faculties don't even comprehend a notion of hope. It's a long way away, but it will happen, and it is in these fields where science is excelling.

As I wrote before that though eugenics was a huge disappointment, there was no way that the ideas, perspectives, and research would go to waste.

The beginning of this thread was about some of the atrocities that were done against humans in the name of science, but what I would like to bring to the table now is how the so called science of yesterday, is becoming the "diagnosis"of today.

Psychology has a fascinating and rich history, filled with amazing advances. But it wasn’t all progress. Psychology has a painful past — with many victims.

One of the most devastating times in psychology was a movement called eugenics, a name coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883. The goal of eugenics was to improve the genetic composition of the population: to encourage healthy, smart individuals to reproduce (called positive eugenics) and to discourage the poor, who were considered unintelligent and unfit, from reproducing (negative eugenics).

One of the main methods to discourage reproduction was through sterilization. While it seems ludicrous now, many people, both abroad and in the U.S., agreed with the principles of eugenics.

In fact, state governments soon started establishing sterilization laws. In 1907, Indiana was the first state to legalize sterilization.

According to scientist Stephen Jay Gould in Natural History:

“Sterilization could be imposed upon those judged insane, idiotic, imbecilic, or moronic, and upon convicted rapists or criminals when recommended by a board of experts.”

psychcentral.com...

I happen to think that there is just as much research being done now as was then, except now we know even less.

Children were considered "just not right" and this seemed to be acceptable scientific diagnosis of the times.

Some things I can only link the site.
Psychology in the service of eugenics
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

There are things today that are still being researched but not discussed until it comes out in the new psychiatric magazine, or is a new diagnosis. Just look around there are a few threads out there that are outraged by the new terms of those that have "mental" disabilities.


journals.lww.com...


Peace, NRE.

I wanted to add this as well. This explains current diagnosis and where they got most of their original findings (without really mentioning it).
Psychiatric Genetics Progress Amid Controversy.
psych.colorado.edu...

While the Human Zoo information was very interesting and tragic, when I saw the documentary I was a bit disappointed that it only focused on colonial Africa.
That should definitely be a part of it.
But there were many colonized peoples at the St. Louis World Fair.

I'm also not sure whether this is really an anthropological story, or simply a story about entertainment and a search for the exotic.
Of course the two became intertwined.

Perhaps it is because here we have the history of "white racism" as exclusive racism so hammered every day politically that we know the African stories, and I was surprised to read about eugenics, for example in Canada, both for certain European groups and native groups like the Abnaki.
Most people here have never heard of that.
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com...

Originally posted by halfoldman
While the Human Zoo information was very interesting and tragic, when I saw the documentary I was a bit disappointed that it only focused on colonial Africa.
That should definitely be a part of it.
But there were many colonized peoples at the St. Louis World Fair.

I'm also not sure whether this is really an anthropological story, or simply a story about entertainment and a search for the exotic.
Of course the two became intertwined.

Perhaps it is because here we have the history of "white racism" as exclusive racism so hammered every day politically that we know the African stories, and I was surprised to read about eugenics, for example in Canada, both for certain European groups and native groups like the Abnaki.

edit on 11-6-2013 by halfoldman because: (no reason given)

I do think that the two became intertwined. I wanted to be sure that I didnt focus on one particular race, especially since I think that this is still being done, just named differently. There are to many similarities in what they found 100 years ago in what they considered "unevolved" man, that are similar to what today we see in everyday methods of mental diagnosis.

Peace, NRE.

I guess that the purpose of most of where this goes is to race. What I am now proposing is that though real, tragic, and heart-breaking, that this is still alive and well.

Race is a distraction in a sense, and has made those that choose not to be a part of that history to ignore it. I would like to propose that not only do we NOT ignore it, see where it goes, and where it might be headed.

War Against The Weak. By Edwin Black

Based on the book by New York Times best selling author and nine time
Pulitzer Prize nominee, Edwin Black,
War Against the Weak
is the untold
story of American Eugenics, a movement that attempted to breed a
Nordic master race through the elimination of those deemed “unfit”.
In the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate
philanthropy, combined with the efforts of the scientific, academic and
political elite, created the pseudoscience eugenics, and institutionalized
race politics as national policy. The goal was to create a superior, white,
Nordic race and obliterate virtually everyone else.
Eugenicists went about identifying so-called 'defective' family trees and
subjected individuals to legislated segregation and sterilization programs,
and sometimes even euthanasia. The victims were poor people, brown-
haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans,
Eastern European Jews, the infirm and anyone classified outside the
superior genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. The main
funders were The Carnegie Institution, The Rockefeller Foundation, and
The Harriman Railroad fortune. The main actors included America's most
respected scientists, hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard,
Yale, and Princeton, and operating out of a complex at Cold Spring
Harbor, Long Island. The eugenic network worked in tandem with the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, the State Department, numerous state
governmental bodies and legislatures throughout the country, and the
U.S. Supreme Court. They were all dedicated to breeding a eugenically
superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn, and
to eliminating the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.

ddata.over-blog.com...
www.waragainsttheweakmovie.com...

I am trying to get a link to the film as well.


This is no longer a race problem, this is a HUMAN problem, everything we discuss here, food, water, air, medication, vitamins, all of it can be linked back to this.

Peace, NRE.

They have done a good job of keeping this quiet.
it needs to be put on TV as a documentary.

Originally posted by NoRegretsEver
reply to post by Byrd

 

I wonder, are there any names that you might have heard or read about, that you didnt know were involved, or were teaching the findings of this, but not the technique?

Peace, NRE.

Not really.

One of the offshoots of the academic response to the "human zoo" and other similar events is a constant re-evaluation of what's ethical and what isn't in human research. I was recently shocked to the point of ranting when I watched a tv reality show on hypnotism that did some "research" in a manner that would NEVER have been approved under human research guidelines and was EXTREMELY unethical in terms of the emotional harm it caused to the subjects.

Outside the "ivory tower" things are done to people in the name of curiosity (rather than science) that are horrific. While I don't think science is completely "abuse free", the dialogues about ethics are very prominent and nowadays anyone who's educated at a Masters' level or beyond at an American university has the idea of ethics pounded into them.

Eugenics was not viewed well in biology or anthropology even in its early days and there's no interest in breeding better humans. We have dialogues about the impact of revealing genetic information (will insurance companies then be empowered to say they won't cover people with certain genetic markers, for instance.)

On a side note, my father-in-law met a young man who was bred from Hitler's breeding program. He said the man was tall, strong, blonde, and highly intelligent and maintained that if Hitler had been allowed to segregate the population and breed these supersoldiers that the war's outcome might have been very different.