Executive coach Sutherland, researching eugenics, came across some interesting information:
When I searched for “Dr R.A. Gibbons Eugenics,” the search engine focused on the last two words and I saw this paper at the top of the results: “Beyond Eugenics: The forgotten scandal of hybridizing humans and apes”.
Humans and apes?
Surely not! …but this was a paper on an academic website, so I clicked the link and read in Alexander Etkind’s abstract:
“In the mid-1920s, the zoology professor Ilia Ivanov submitted to the Soviet government a project for hybridizing humans and apes by means of artificial insemination. He received substantial financing and organized expeditions to Africa to catch apes for his experiments. His project caused an international sensation. The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism announced its fund-raising campaign to support Ivanov’s project but gave it a scandalously racist interpretation.”
The article told how Howell S. England, spokesman of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, promoted the project in the United States: according to England, the idea interested “prominent American patrons of science,” though the article mentioned no names. England confidently forecast that the experiments would be successful and that “the evolution of humankind would be proved to everyone’s satisfaction.” This crazy talk became crazier still when England predicted that types of monkeys would be bred with particular human races: orangutans with “humans from the yellow race, gorillas from the black race, chimpanzees from the white race” and gibbons with Jews.
Mark Sutherland, “Insanity is scientists doing the same experiments over and over again and expecting different results” at MercatorNet
So William Jennings Bryan, of Scopes Trial fame, was an even clearer voice of sanity than we have realized. Americans should name more institutions after him.
Like, when you look at the type of people on the other side of the Scopes Trial, well, holy cow.