Journal articles: 'Polish Eugenics Society' – Grafiati (2024)

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VILNIUS BRANCH OF THE POLISH EUGENICS SOCIETY FIGHTING AGAINST BREEDING DEGENERATION DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD — GENESIS, ACTIVITY AND LEGAL STRUCTUREVilnius Branch of the Polish Eugenics Society played asignificant role in the development and propagation of eugenic ideas. Statutory goals were realized through the establishment of eugenic and premarital counseling. In addition, alot of attention has been devoted to numerous lectures. The Vilnius society with great approval accepted the establishment of anew institution, and some resistance came from local intelligentsia and doctors.

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The Polish Eugenics Society, founded in 1915, wielded considerable influence in the founding years of the Polish Second Republic. Leading medical experts in the Society placed issues of venereal contamination and the expansion of public sex at the forefront of their concerns. Unlike similar movements in Western Europe and North America, however, Polish eugenicists rarely attacked ethnic or religious difference and the organization included several prominent assimilated Jewish doctors. This article looks at the roots of Polish eugenics in the context of late imperial East-Central Europe, showing how scientific experts used their heightened public stature to challenge the governing empires. It demonstrates the ways in which the movement sought to protect the upper classes while promoting sterilization of unworthy lower-class citizens. The piece argues that the Polish eugenics movement was more classist than racist and that its scientific vocabulary helped position the Polish nation, broadly conceived, as more progressive than the imperial states governing Polish territory.

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This article describes the relationship between Polish geneticist Stanisław Skowron's views on eugenics during the interwar period, his experiences in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and his response to Trofim D. Lysenko's ban on genetic research in Soviet-allied states after 1948. Skowron was educated at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to study in the United States, Italy, Denmark, and Great Britain from 1924 to 1926. His exposure to research being conducted outside of Poland made him an important figure in Polish genetics. During this time Skowron also began to believe that an understanding of biological principles of heredity could play an important role in improving Polish society and became a supporter of eugenics. In 1939 he was arrested along with other faculty members at the Jagiellonian and sent to Sachsenhausen and Dachau. In 1947 he published the first book updating Polish biologists on recent developments in genetics; however, after learning of the outcome of the 1948 session of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Moscow, Skowron emerged as one of the most vocal advocates for Michurinism. I argue that Skowron's conversion to Lysenkoism was motivated by more than fear or opportunism, and is better understood as the product of his need to rationalize his own support for a theory he could not possibly have believed was correct.

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SummaryThis article compares theories and social policies of social democrats and other representatives of the left-wing political spectrum in six European countries to explain why, in certain countries such as Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland, weak social groups became the target of illiberal and negative eugenic policy, especially isolation and sterilization, while elsewhere left-wing politicians and theorists were far less radical. One striking feature that emerges is the difference between acommunitarian-organicand aclass-boundform of socialism. Following Zygmunt Bauman, Michel Foucault, and James C. Scott, the article discerns a first variant of citizenship that is conditional and intended only for those with the right social attitude. Eugenics was perfectly consistent with such a view, since it offered a diagnosis and at the same time a cure. Prominent representatives of this approach were the Webbs in Britain and the Myrdals in Sweden. Such an organic-medical approach was less likely, however, in a more class-dependent variant of socialism embedded in a strong civil society. As long as social democrats and other leftist politicians believed social problems such as inequality and poverty were caused primarily by an unjust capitalist system, there was little cause for a eugenicist solution.

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In 1927 a classic textbook of human genetics made the following remark: We are coming to recognise more and more clearly that racial factors and especially hereditary mental factors, although they work (it cannot be too often repeated) in conjunction with other factors, are among the most influential in determining the course of a nation’s history . . . What historians regard as degeneration, sickness and ageing of a nation, what they look on as the decline of a nation are the outcome of the racial constituents of the people concerned.This view was typical of a large constituency of opinion-formers, policy-makers and scientists in the period from the late nineteenth until the middle of the twentieth century. Anxiety about the social effects of bad heredity led to the formation of eugenics societies in a considerable number of countries. These included the Eugenics Education Society of London in 1907, the German Society for Race Hygiene in 1905, the American Eugenics Society in 1912, and, in the same year, the French Eugenics Society. By the 1920s eugenics societies could be found in the Soviet Union (a legacy from Tsarist times), Mexico, Scandinavia, Brazil, Japan, and many other countries.

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Síntese: As expressões festivas da sociedade brasileira estão inseridas em processos de reinvenção constante, conforme o contexto político-social e os jogos de força dos grupos envolvidos e de suas redes sociais e de seus projetos de utopia. As festas permitem a visibilidade das formas de organização social e reforçam as relações de poder dessa mesma sociedade. As festas públicas não são, portanto, meros espetáculos, mas sim, mecanismos que pesam muito nos equilíbrios e rearranjos políticos e hierárquicos. Assim, pretende-se com esse trabalho analisar a festa do Divino Espírito Santo na cidade de São José, Santa Catarina, sul do Brasil, como espaço revelador das relações de poder de determinados grupos sociopolíticos que se utilizaram desta expressão religiosa para transformar este espaço de festa em uma maquinaria dos corpos em prol de uma política eugênica de miscigenação no contexto da ditadura nacionalizadora de Getúlio Vargas.Palavras-chave: Catolicismo. Nacionalização. Festa. Eugenia social. Miscigenação.Abstract: The festive expressions of Brazilian society are embedded in processes of constant reinvention, according to the political-social context and the power games of the groups involved and their social networks and their utopia projects. The feast allow the visibility of the forms of social organization and reinforce the power relations of this same society. The purpose of this work is to analyze the feast of the Divine Holy Spirit in the city of São José, Santa Catarina, southern Brazil, as a revealing space for the power relations of certain socio-political groups that have used this religious expression to transform this space of feast in a machinery of the bodies in favor of a eugenic policy of miscegenation in the context of the nationalizing dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas.Keywords: Catholicism. Nationalization. Feast. Social eugenics. Misce- genation.

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Based on source materials, this article presents the activity of Prof. Eugeniusz Piasecki towards the development of physiotherapy in Poland. After completing his studies at the Faculty of Medicine of Jagiellonian University and a pedagogical course in physical education for gymnastics teachers at secondary schools and teacher training centres, he went to Vienna to deepen his knowledge of medical gymnastics and hydrotherapy. During a scientific trip to Sweden, he became acquainted with Pehr Henrique Ling’s method. In the years 1900-1916, E. Piasecki ran a healing gymnastics, orthopaedics and massage facility in Lviv. He was also active in the „Sokol” Gymnastic Society and worked in the gymnasiums owned by his father Wenanty Piasecki in Cracow and Zakopane. At the University of Lviv he taught school hygiene, theory of physical education as well as conducting research and teaching in the physiology of exercise. There he also obtained his habilitation in 1909. His overarching objective was to eliminate German gymnastics, which he considered harmful, from schools in Galicia. Instead, he advocated Swedish gymnastics, based on scientific evidence and anatomo-physiological analysis of each movement. His research focused, among others, on the effect of various physical exercises on the cardio­respiratory and osteo-articular systems in children. The results of E. Piasecki’s studies were the basis for a critical evalu­ation of the irrational strength exercises of German gymnastics. He endeavoured to promote physical education as much as possible, adapting it to the specific needs of schools, hospitals and spas. As head of the Department of Theory of Physical Education and School Hygiene (since 1919) and then the Institute of Physical Education (since 1924) at Poznan University, together with Prof. Ireneusz Wierzejewski, Dr Wiktor Dega,Ph.D., and Dr Franciszek Raszej, Ph.D., he laid the foundations of rehabilitation in Poland. Thanks to him, the Poznan centre carried out research in medical gymnastics and massage, preparing specialists in the area of corrective exercises and, later, physiotherapy in Poland.

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For about 30 years, the topic of abortion has remained a “bone of contention” between conservative and liberal members of Polish society. In October 2020, these discussions moved from the political and religious planes to the legal field: the Constitutional Tribunal of the Republic of Poland considered the issue of women’s right to “eugenic abortion”. The Constitutional Tribunal scrutinized the provisions of a specialized law, allowing the termination of pregnancy in case of a high probability of a severe and irreversible fetal malformation or an incurable disease threatening its life. As a result, in the Judgment of 22 October 2020 no. K1/20 the Constitutional Tribunal upheld the position of the applicants, a group of deputies of the Sejm, and declared the contested legal norms unconstitutional. This process was the center of attention of mass media and the reason of mass protests throughout Poland. This article is the commentary on the decision, that attempts to comprehend the premises of the decision, its substantive and procedural aspects, as well as the consequences. The author concludes that the main purpose of the decision is to constitutionalize the traditionalist state policy in the field of reproductive rights. This decision is difficult to analyze in isolation from political and religious factors. The article notes that the value of the “eugenic abortion” case is not limited to legal aspects. The Constitutional Tribunal tried not only to change approaches to the correlation of competing rights (the right of an unborn child to life and woman’s rights in the context of freedom of reproductive choice), but also to increase “chilling effect”. It is expressed in the phasing out of abortion on pain of criminal prosecution.

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Recent advances in genetic research pose many complex problems for moral and political philosophers. On the one hand, these advances promise great things. Genetic enhancement techniques might allow us to prevent or cure a variety of debilitating diseases. But on the other hand, talk about intervening in people's genetic make-up conjures up memories of the sinister episodes of past eugenic movements. Such movements violated the most basic principles of justice. How can society capitalize on the benefits of genetic intervention and yet avoid the injustices of past eugenic movements? What basic moral principles should guide public policy and individual choice concerning the use of genetic interventions? These important questions are tackled by Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler in From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. This book brings together the thoughts of leading scholars in the field and is likely to set the agenda for serious debate on this topic.

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The study examines how doctors in interwar Czechoslovakia intervened in reproductive issues and related areas of life in an attempt to combat the declining birthrate, a trend that was considered a threat to society. Inspired by Foucault’s concept of medicalization and biopower, through the analysis of medical literature and articles from the press in the interwar period, I will demonstrate how Czechoslovak doctors, not only but especially under the influence of eugenics, foregrounded the categories of health and sickness in order to assert definitions of “correct” forms of reproduction while attempting to stigmatize and discourage forms of reproduction that they considered detrimental to the health of society or the nation. The aim of the study is not only to expand the body of knowledge about the activities and attitudes of Czechoslovak doctors in the interwar period but also to call attention to the still current topic of the political background of reproductive policy.

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One influential strand of public policy-making theory imputes considerable autonomy to civil servants (and politicians) from social pressures; and, in Heclo's variant, conceives of policy makers as engaging in a benign process of social learning, the results of which benefit society. In this article we use the campaign to enact legislation for voluntary sterilization as an example of such a process. The analysis is based on archival records of the deliberations of the Brock Committee (1932–34), established to investigate the desirability of sterilization; it demonstrates how the committee attempted to develop a stronger case for the measure than warranted by the scientific evidence. We argue that the content of the Brock Committee's deliberations conforms in broad terms to the predictions of social learning theory, but that the process was more complicated than this framework would suggest, involving a significant element of interest-group lobbying, thereby weakening the autonomy of state policy makers. Furthermore, the deliberations themselves give cause to revise the laudatory view, more or less explicit in social learning theory, of policy experts' machinations.

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Between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, American state legislatures enacted a series of new laws that delineated a class of citizens who were deemed ineligible to participate in the institution of marriage. Scholars have characterized this development as evidence that lawmakers had lost faith in a laissez-faire approach to nuptial governance, and thus transformed marriage into an object of public regulation. This essay argues that behind the ostensible nuptial privatism of the mid-nineteenth century lay a self-conscious policy of judicial governance. Judges invoked the language of nuptial privacy and the common law of contract strategically to advance their vision of moral and economic discipline. The new marital prohibitions thus represented, the essay argues, not the expansion of the state's police power into the previously private realm of domestic relations, but rather a critical transformation in how nuptial reformers and lawmakers understood the relationship between marriage and the well-being of the polity. Fueled by growing concerns about pauperism, the racial character of the urban proletariat, and the collapse of the economically independent single-male-breadwinner household, the changing form of nuptial governance signaled a thoroughgoing intellectual and strategic reorientation from an understanding of marriage as forming economically and morally viable households—the fundamental units of society—to an understanding of marriage as a largely procreative institution, as the literal source of the citizenry. This reconceptualization of marriage underwrote a strategy of nuptial governance that mobilized marriage as a strategy in the state's regulation of social reproduction.

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This paper presents Eugenia Sokolnicka, a Polish analyst who belongs to the first generation of psychoanalysts. The article provides an overview of Sokolnicka's clinical and theoretical work, describes her contribution to psychoanalysis and portrays her as a brilliant clinician and a precursor of child analysis. As a student of C.G. Jung, S. Freud and S. Ferenczi, she played a significant role in the development and promotion of Freud's method in literary and medical circles. Sokolnicka unsuccessfully attempted to establish the Polish Psychoanalytical Society and participated in the process of forming psychoanalytical institutions in France. The analysis of her papers presents her contribution to various fields of theory and techniques of psychoanalysis. Furthermore, the research on letters written between S. Freud, S. Ferenczi, K. Abraham and O. Rank provides insight into Sokolnicka's life and personality.

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The birth of the Polish official statistics, commonly associated with the establishment of Statistics Poland on 13 July 1918, was possible thanks to the ideas and grassroots work of various scholars, including statisticians, who thus demonstrated their faithfulness to the resolutions of the Four-Year Sejm (Parliament) and the Constitution of 3 May 1791. Statisticians from Kraków, who established Poland’s first statistical society (the Polish Statistical Society) and authored a study entitled Statistics of Poland, Kraków (1915), edited by Adam Krzyżanowski and Kazimierz Kumaniecki, deserve a special recognition in this paper. In the two consecutive years, 1916 and 1917, Kraków saw the publication of two important works, namely Geographical and Statistical Atlas of Poland, Kraków (1916), edited by Eugeniusz Romer and Ignacy Weinfeld, and the Yearbook of Poland. Statistical Tables, Kraków (1917). But scientists from other parts of Poland contributed to the process of laying the foundations for the Polish official statistics as well. Statisticians from Warsaw compiled three volumes of Statistical Yearbooks of the Kingdom of Poland edited by Władysław Grabski, and the work entitled Statistical Yearbook of the Kingdom of Poland and other Polish lands. The Year 1915 under the editorship of Edward Strasburger was published in 1916 in Sankt Petersburg. Around the same period, Polish scientists associated with the University of Lviv expanded the scope of their scientific activity. After regaining independence, the process of establishing the system of official statistics in Poland, at that time carried out already within the framework of Statistic Poland, continued developing dynamically thanks to the scientific input of several dozen Polish statisticians.

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The Carpathian Skiing Society in LvivVery few people interested in the history of Polish skiing realise that it began in the second half of the 19th century in Galicia. It was first in the Eastern Carpathians that skis began to be used by foresters wanting to move more easily in their work and slightly later by tourists in their highland treks. In the late 19th century skiers appeared in Lviv, where in the early 20th century the sport began to be promoted by the Popular Entertainment Society. This was also where various institutions dealing with skiing were established, institutions like the Skiing Section of the Czarni Sports Club and, above all, the Carpathian Skiing Society founded in early 1907, the first Polish association seeking to popularise skiing as its main objective. The society’s founders included Kazimierz Panek, Maksymilian Dudryk, Zygmunt Klemensiewicz, Roman Kordys and Eugeniusz Romer, i.e. well-known mountaineers, tourists or even skiers. In addition to popularising skiing, e.g. by conducting training courses and publishing various manuals, the Society soon brought about a construction of a hostel in Sławsko. The resort became a favourite among Lviv skiers because of the excellent skiing conditions and good railway connection to Lviv. Burned during the war in May 1915, it was quickly rebuilt after the war and faithfully served tourists throughout the interwar period. On the day of its reopening, 11 March 1923, the Polish Skiing Association organised the 4th Polish Skiing Championship in Sławsko. By establishing its regional branches, the Carpathian Skiing Society promoted tourism in the Carpathians, initially in Galicia, and then throughout the Carpathian region in the Second Polish Republic. Kraków was the seat of a branch of the Society, which gave rise to another association, another important contributor to the development of Polish skiing — the Tatra Skiing Society. In 1919 the two organisations, together with three others, founded the Polish Skiing Association. Initially, the Society was active both in sport and tourism; later, given the easier access to Alps-type mountains with better snow conditions the Tatras for skiers from Zakopane, skiers from the region achieved much better results than their Lviv counterparts. The most important sporting achievements that should be noted include the successes of Janina Loteczkowa, who for several years in the second half of the 1920s had no equals in Europe. The Society was represented at the St. Moritz Olympics by Franciszek Kawa. In addition, the Society was instrumental in the construction of a professional ski jumping hill in Lviv. The 1930s were marked by a clear turn towards tourism, resulting in the construction and opening, in 1936, of a mountain hostel on Maryszewska. It is worth stressing, therefore, that such a relatively small organisation its membership never exceeded 400 in one year could do so much for the development of skiing in Poland.

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Eugenia Mcgill is a professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She granted this interview to Esferas Journal addressing the topic of gender equality public policies and the importance of this field in academic research, in society and in the global context. Professor McGill discussed the need for society to understand what gender issues are, and how they result in inequalities and injustices in countries. The challenge is to build a global agenda to eradicate gender inequalities, especially among black, indigenous, and poor women around the world. In the transcription that follows, we chose to keep the oral aspects of the interview.

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AbstractThis paper explores the Nazi view of nature as violent but orderly, contrasted with what the Nazis took to be the chaos and confusion of human society. In imposing strict authoritarian controls, the Nazis strove to emulate what they viewed as the natural discipline of instinct. They saw this as embodied in wild animals, especially large predators such as wolves, while the opposite were domesticated mongrels whose instincts, like those of overly civilized peoples, had been ruined through careless breeding. Those who anticipated this view included Nietzsche and Kipling. The author finds the Nazi perspective best articulated by Nobel-laureate Konrad Lorenz, a member of the Nazi party and its Office for Race Policy, who believed that traits indicating genetic decline crossed species lines. He advocated correcting the alleged damage done to animals and people by civilization through eugenic controls.

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Although the repression and elimination of Roma from Hungarian society in the 1940s did not reach the same extent as in the German and Austrian part of the Third Reich, their characterization as lazy and work-shy, used to justify their persecution, was similar. This paper establishes the presence of racial hygienic discourse related to Roma during the late 1930s and the first half of the 1940s in Hungary, and traces its survival and influence on regional policy-making in the postwar period. It furthermore explores the transformation and adaptation of racism and eugenics to the socialist ideology of equality based on citizens' participation in productive work in the early state socialist period, including the first Party declaration on the situation of Roma in Hungary in 1961. Specific attention is paid to the role of medical experts who discussed the “radical solution of the Gypsy-question” in the early 1940s and the immediate years following World War II. Reflecting on wider transformations of racism in the postcolonial and post-World War II period in Europe and North America, the paper contributes to scholarship that complicates the evaluation of the state socialist past, including the connection between medicine and politics in Cold War Europe.

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AbstractThe introduction of blindness into the Sterilization Law passed by the Nazis in July 1933, was exceptional, even by the standards of the time. Prior sterilization bills had focused on mental and nervous disorders, and they almost always excluded blindness as a category. The wish to sterilize the blind cannot be explained solely as stemming from the eugenic or economic threat that they allegedly posed to German society; such threats were acknowledged to be marginal, and they paled in comparison to the perceived menace attributed to the so-called feeble-minded and mentally ill. What made blindness of special significance for Nazi lawmakers was its disciplinary status among geneticists as an indisputable demonstration of the validity of the laws of heredity to human maladies. Together with two additional disease categories—deafness and Huntington's chorea—blindness provided Nazi legislators with scientific legitimization that helped pave the way for the sterilization of the mentally ill. For the blind, it was therefore not the fanaticism of the Nazis but rather their aspiration to ground their policy in biological teaching that ultimately proved fateful.

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School museums – which had been founded mostly in the vicinity of educational institutions – used to collect teaching aids. So-called natural history cabinets were the most popular among them, recommended, inter alia, by the Commission of National Education in 1783. The tradition of collecting this type of exhibits was common until the middle of the 20th century. There are two types to be distinguished: school museums and pedagogical museums, which differ with respect to the character of their activity and the kind of exhibits. School museums collected basically objects of natural science, instruments for teaching geography, chemistry and mathematics as well as prints and facilities used during lessons. The second group also specialised in exhibits of natural science, but they were no longer used and usually of higher scientific value, including patterns and examples known in the education system. Among the earliest school museums created in the Kingdom of Poland were Warsaw collections of the Institute for Deaf and Blind People (1875), and those of the Eugeniusz Babiński’s so-called Realschule. At the beginning of the 20th century the idea was spreading, inspired inter alia by the exemplary activity of the Polish School Museum in Lviv (1903). The biggest number of school museums and collections were created in institutions founded by the Polish Educational Society (1906–1907). The survived resources give us relatively detailed information about the collections from Warsaw and Pabianice, which aspired to be categorised as pedagogical museums. The Secondary School for Boys of the Merchants Association in Łódź and the Pedagogical Museum in Warsaw (1917) had also in their possession some interesting collections. The latter one was based upon the collections of former governmental schools, in which – in accordance with a decree issued by Russian authorities – the scientific exhibits were to be collected.

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Even with the passage of time, the misguided motivations of highly educated, physician-participants in the genocide known as the Holocaust remain inexplicable and opaque. Typically, the physician-patient relationship inherent within the practice of medicine, has been rooted in the partnership between individuals. However, under the Third Reich, this covenant between a physician and patient was displaced by a public health agenda that was grounded in the scientific theory of eugenics and which served the needs of a polarized political system that relied on this hypothesis to justify society’s racial hygiene laws. As part of the National Socialist propaganda, Adolf Hitler ominously argued that the cultural decline of Germany after World War I could largely be based on interbreeding and a “resultant drop in the racial level.” This foundational premise defined those who could be ostracized, labeled and persecuted by society, including those who were assimilated. The indoctrination and implementation of this distorted social policy required the early and sustained cooperation and leadership of the medical profession. Because National Socialism promised it could restore Germany’s power, honor and dignity, physicians embraced their special role in the repair of the state. This article will explore the imperative role, moral risks and deliberate actions of physicians who participated in the amplification process from “euthanasia” to systemic murder to medically-sanctioned genocide. A goal of this analysis will be to explore what perils today’s physicians would face if they were to experience the transitional and collective behaviors of a corrupted medical profession, or if they would, instead, have the fortitude and courage necessary to protect themselves against this collaboration. Our premise is that an awareness of history can serve as a safeguard to the conceit of political ascendency and discrimination.

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Sara Brill's new book develops her argument for understanding ‘shared life’ as central to Aristotle's ethics and politics. By focusing on this notion of shared life, she seeks to establish the connection between Aristotle's ethical, political, and zoological works in order to ground her emphasis on the essential animality of human society in Aristotle's conception. Her argument turns on a distinction between bios, a ‘way of life’ that we can choose or reject, and zoē, ‘life itself’ (3), and she is committed to establishing the generally unrecognized significance of the latter in Aristotle's ethical thought. The volume is divided into three parts. The first (‘Shared Life in Aristotle's Ethics and Politics’) concentrates on developing an account of Aristotle's concept of ‘shared life’ in the ethical and political works in such a way as to establish the importance of the zoological perspective. Here, Brill argues that shared life is at the heart of many of the central concerns of the Nicomachean Ethics, including his account of friendship. This is not simply sharing of goods or communal living: ‘Because living in its authoritative sense is perceiving and thinking, sharing one's life is sharing in perception and sharing in thinking’ (52). Brill finds a similar focus on shared zoē in the Eudemian Ethics, and the suggestion that our self-awareness and self-concern depend on the presence of others. She further develops her central claim: for all that Aristotle makes repeated assertions of human exceptionality, he also adopts a zoological framework of analysis that locates human friendship within the category of ‘animal attachment’, albeit as a special case. Human society is distinguished from animal society, but primarily as an intensification of the animal, rather than as a rejection of it. As Brill notes, setting up some of the critical analysis found in the third part of the book, her emphasis on community helps to highlight both its fragility and the consequences of exclusion. This is an idea she explains further in her analysis of shared life in the Politics: ‘if Aristotle's ethics show us the most vivid form of shared life, his Politics shows us the conditions of its destruction’ (92). Brill considers two extremes of shared life to be found in the Politics. Aristotle rejects communism for the sake of the philia that lies at the heart of a true community. His account of tyranny, meanwhile, can be understood as an analysis of a polis lacking a meaningful presence of shared life or the common good. The second part of the book concentrates on fleshing out the detail of the zoological perspective at the heart of Brill's argument by focusing on the zoological works in particular. She makes the sensible point that, while Aristotle's zoological works may be inaccurate in biological detail, they nevertheless help us to understand his own thinking about the nature and relationship of intelligence and life. Beginning with the History of Animals, Brill looks for the political in Aristotle's biological, and argues that he conceives of animal sociality in terms of its various manifestations of the political bond of a common task. It is within this context that we should situate even shared human life. This is not to say that humans are not to be distinguished from animals: what marks humans out is the fact that they can choose their way of life (bios). But this choice does not liberate them from the fact of their animality. For this reason, analysis of Aristotle's politics, and of the polis itself, should be informed by an awareness of his zoological sensibility. At times in the detail of Brill's own analysis, this zoological emphasis seems to fade into the background, but her central claim remains that human politics is an intensification of animal sociality, rather than a rejection of it. The third and final part presents an intriguing exploration of intersections between Brill's account of Aristotle's zoē-politics and modern critical theory (her volume is published in the interdisciplinary series Classics in Theory). She first addresses the connection between Aristotle's commitment to private ownership and his eugenics legislation, noting the double mean of tokos as both ‘interest’ and ‘child’. She is particularly interesting on Aristotle's concern with the threat of uncontrolled or excessive reproduction. She then turns to an analysis of Aristotle's account of – and ambivalence towards – the maternal bond as central to his understanding of human communities and, especially, friendship. The two chapters of Part III are particularly compelling; I look forward to seeing further approaches to Aristotle, and ancient philosophy in general, along these lines.

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Este artigo reúne dados parciais de uma pesquisa de mestrado e tem por objetivo apresentar um recorte referente às transformações política, científica, social e educacional durante o período pós-guerra, tendo como foco o trabalho de Arthur Ramos e os desdobramentos desta perspectiva na sociedade brasileira. Arthur Ramos desenvolveu como médico psiquiatra um projeto educacional em seis escolas públicas do Rio de Janeiro no período de 1934 a 1939 com alunos selecionados por apresentarem dificuldades no processo de ensino e aprendizagem. Com este trabalho empírico o médico psiquiatra em consonância com outros intelectuais deste período ajudou a construir as bases de uma política educacional universalista em meio às perspectivas ancoradas numa ciência biológica evolucionista que tinha raça como conceito central e uma perspectiva culturalista que elegeu o processo de miscigenação para a construção e definição da identidade nacional brasileira.Brasil pós-guerra. Arthur Ramos. Eugenismo. Culturalismo. Identidade Nacional Brasileira.ABSTRACTThis article gathers partial data from a master's research and aims to present an outline referring to the different political, scientific, social and educational transformations during the post-war period, focusing on the work of Arthur Ramos and the developments of this perspective in Brazilian society. Arthur Ramos developed, as a psychiatrist, an educational project in six public schools in Rio de Janeiro in the period from 1934 to 1939 with students selected for having difficulties in the teaching and learning process. With this empirical work, the psychiatrist, in agreement with other intellectuals of this period, helped to build the bases ofa universalist educational policy amid perspectives anchored in an evolutionary biological science that has race as a central concept and a culturalist perspective that chooses the miscegenation process as a positive factor for the construction and definition of the Brazilian national identity.Post-war Brazil. Arthur Ramos. Eugenics. Culturalism. Brazilian National Identity.RESUMENEste artículo reúne datos parciales de una investigación de maestría y tiene como objetivo presentar un recorte referente a las transformaciones políticas, científicas, sociales y educacionales durante la posguerra, centrándose en el trabajo de Arthur Ramos y los desarrollos de esta perspectiva en la sociedad brasileña. Arthur Ramos desarrolló, como psiquiatra, un proyecto educativo en seis escuelas públicas de Río de Janeiro de 1934 a 1939 con alumnos seleccionados por tener dificultades en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje. Con este trabajo empírico, el psiquiatra, en acuerdo con otros intelectuales de este período, ayudó a sentar las bases de una política educativa universalista en medio de perspectivas ancladas en una ciencia biológica evolutiva que tenía la raza como concepto central y una perspectiva culturalista que elegió el proceso de mestizaje para la construcción y definición de la identidad nacional brasileña.Brasil de posguerra. Arthur Ramos. Eugenesia. Culturalismo. Identidad Nacional Brasileña.

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Abstract With the technical possibility of genome editing, we have reached a new phase of transforming human beings and even altering our genetic legacy. Genome editing constitutes new responsibilities in many fields. Science and society have never been as dependent on each other as they are today. We must also learn from the past episodes of eugenics and we need to investigate fraudulent practices and cases of failure in scientific research that have often occurred due to merciless scientific competition, profit-seeking commercial interests, or individual pride. Genome editing raises numerous legal questions, such as: Would it be possible to make a legal difference between specific versions of gene editing? Who decides on what is considered a disease or an anomaly, a condition, or a variation? Which diseases are worth being corrected or treated and which ones are not? What kinds of social implications will gene editing bring about when it becomes widely available? Some normative distinctions have already been made in the case of gene therapy: separating somatic from germline interventions. But this distinction has not yet been analyzed in the light of the most recent editing practices. Genome editing also realigns the structure of ethical debates. It makes us rethink the concept of discrimination and scrutinize its cases in the field of assisted reproductive procedures. It revolutionizes the concept of medical treatment. It may increase or reduce inequalities based on health conditions. It may lead to numerous new rights in the field of genetics. Good genome editing practice can only be achieved through the close cooperation between the natural and social sciences. The present paper will endeavor to examine this new form of dialogue.

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ABSTRACT This article examines the bioethical discourse on polygenic embryo screening (PES) in reproductive medicine in blogs and news stories published during 2021 in response to the first baby’s birth using polygenic risk scores (PRS) derived from genome-wide association studies. We further contextualize the findings by synthesizing the emerging peer-reviewed bioethics literature on the issue, which has emphasized considerations regarding the child-parent future relationship, equity of access, and the absence of professional guidelines. Our media content analysis has established that expert opinion was prominently featured in news coverage, with bioethicists and other academics contributing 38 percent of articles and providing extensive commentary on ethical, social, and policy implications in the articles written by journalists. The overall perspective towards the use of PES was primarily negative (59 percent of the articles), without significant differences in negativity and positivity between experts and science reporters. This indicates a shift from the predominantly neutral attitudes towards the technology in media discourse prior to its deployment in clinical settings. There is heightened awareness that offering these tests to prospective parents is unethical and can create unrealistic expectations, with the two most prominent arguments being uncertainty about the prediction accuracy of polygenic risk scores in this context (72 percent of the articles) and the potential of PES to lead to a eugenic future of human reproduction that normalizes the discrimination of people based on their genetics (59 percent of the articles). INTRODUCTION The possibility of using genetic technologies to engineer the perfect baby has long haunted the public imagination. While some techno-utopians have openly advocated for human genetic enhancement, many critics have warned that advances in DNA technology come with myriads of ethical dilemmas and potentially dangerous social consequences. Literary and cinematic works have offered dystopian visions of our genetic futures—from Aldous Huxley’s powerful socio-political fantasy in his book Brave New World (1932) to cult classics of sci-fi cinema, such as Blade Runner (1982) and Gattaca (1997), there has been no shortage of ominous predictions that genetic engineering would lead to a new form of eugenics, which would ultimately create new social hierarchies grounded on genetic discrimination. Moreover, concerns about the use of genetic and genomic technologies for social control have been entangled with deep philosophical questions about personal autonomy, the right of the child to an open future, and the morality of changing, improving, or redesigning human nature.1 The perennial debate on human enhancement was recently reignited with a new controversy over the use of pre-implantation screening of embryos using polygenic risk scores.2 While the profiling of IVF embryos to detect hereditary, monogenetic diseases has been widely accepted, some companies are now pushing the envelope with unrealistic promises of tests that can predict genetic possibilities for desirable traits such as a child’s intelligence, athletic ability, and physical appearance. One event that prompted a public outcry in late 2021 was news about the birth of the first baby from an embryo selected through polygenic testing, a girl named Aurea.3 Although the embryo screening in Aurea’s case was used to decrease the likelihood for certain health conditions, many commentators believed that it signaled a real possibility of embryo selection for non-medical reasons becoming a commercial procedure in the foreseeable future, especially in the largely unregulated US fertility market.4 In the past, there have been discrepancies in how ethical and policy issues arising from advances in reproductive medicine have been viewed by experts (e.g., bioethicists, philosophers, legal scholars) and presented in the news. Like other advances in medical genetics, gene editing and screening technologies have been frequently characterized by exaggeration, sensationalism, and hype around clinical possibilities.5 Moreover, news media have often amplified the anticipated health benefits of genetic testing while overlooking uncertainty associated with its clinical validity and emerging ethical concerns, as shown in a recent study of the media portrayal of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT).6 The issue of polygenic embryo screening (PES) initially gained traction in the media in 2017 when the New Jersey biotech startup Genomic Prediction made headlines with claims that its testing technology could identify and avoid implanting embryos with very low IQs.7 The company also claimed that it had the capability to identify embryos with high IQs, although it committed not to offer that procedure for ethical reasons.8 The media coverage of polygenic risk scoring of human embryos between 2017 and 2019 was previously analyzed in a study published in BMC Medical Ethics in September 2021.9 This media content analysis has established that while most news articles were neutral towards the technology, one of the most significant critiques raised by science reporters was the absence of solid scientific evidence for the technology’s predictive accuracy and its practical value in IVF settings. It has also identified five major ethical concerns articulated by science reporters that have also been addressed in the academic discourse and within broader policy debates on reproductive technologies: a slippery slope towards designer babies, well-being of the child and parents, impact on society, deliberate choice, and societal readiness. In this article, we examine the discourse on PES in bioethics blogs, opinion articles, and news stories published in 2021, with a specific focus on reactions to the birth of the first polygenic risk score baby. We compare the perspectives of experts and science reporters to establish their attitudes towards PES, the main ethical themes in press coverage, and the key issues highlighted for a future policy debate. We also juxtapose our findings to the previous study of media coverage to establish if the case of baby Aurea has raised any new issues and pressing ethical concerns. I. Polygenic Embryo Screening in Reproductive Medicine While complex diseases and human traits result from a combination of genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors, genomic medicine is quickly gaining momentum, and demands for genetic tests in clinical practice have significantly increased. Scans and analyses of genomes from various populations, a research area known as genome-wide association studies, have enabled scientists and researchers to identify genetic differences or variants associated with a particular trait or medical condition. These variants can be combined into a polygenic risk score that predicts an individual’s traits or increased risk for a certain disease. For instance, PES have been used to predict a range of diverse common conditions, from diabetes and cancer to attention deficit issues10 and, in some cases, well-being in general.11 This testing modality relies on the probabilistic susceptibility of individuals to certain diseases to offer personalized medical treatments and inform therapeutic interventions. Polygenic embryo screening uses polygenic risk scores to assess an embryo’s statistical risks of developing diseases (e.g., cardiovascular diseases) and potentially traits (e.g., intelligence, athletic ability, among others) and is performed in an IVF setting. It is currently marketed by several US companies such as MyOme, OrchidHealth, and Genomic Prediction to prospective parents as a method to screen pre-implantation embryos for health and non-health related conditions and is accessible to those who can afford to pay for it. As stated in a recent report on companies bringing PES into reproductive medicine, Genomic Prediction has already made their test for polygenic disorders, LifeView, available to couples. In contrast, Orchid Health has only recently invited couples to an early-access program for their testing technology, and MyOme is still in the process of launching its own test.12 In September 2021, Bloomberg first reported the birth of baby Aurea using screening conducted by Genomic Prediction. She was born after her parents used IVF and subsequently PES to select from 33 candidate pre-implantation embryos in 2020.13 Aurea’s embryo was deemed to have the best genetic odds of avoiding conditions such as breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and schizophrenia in adulthood. It is worth noting that Genomic Prediction made the announcement almost one year following Aurea’s birth, thus delaying the media’s reaction to this development and the ensuing bioethical and policy debates. II. Ethical, Social, and Policy Implications Some important ethical, social, and regulatory considerations regarding the development and clinical use of PES have been raised within the academic community. The bioethics literature on the issue, however, appears rather thin, which is not surprising given that prior to 2021, the possibility of using this screening method in clinical practice was largely hypothetical. Other genomic technologies that have enabled polygenic embryo selection, such as whole-genome sequencing and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, have received more attention from bioethicists, legal scholars, and Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) researchers. Our analysis of the emerging literature has shown that some proponents of PES advocate its current use and go as far as to suggest a permissive regulatory environment for the purpose of outpacing the ethical concerns and potential restrictions once the technology becomes widely available. This approach suggests that embryo selection should be allowed for or against any trait associated with higher odds for better health and well-being in general, often without further discussion of what accounts for wellbeing.14 Scholars applying the principle of procreative beneficence to defend the use of PES have also argued for regulation that addresses issues of justice and equality and expands access to the procedure for those who are currently unable to afford it. By contrast, opponents have argued that the clinical utility of this embryo selection method is yet to be proven, and its current use may create unrealistic expectations in parents, making it an unethical practice to offer the procedure as part of IVF treatments.15 They state that predictive models from PRS have been developed with data from genomes of adult populations. Therefore, extrapolating results for embryo screening, along with the absence of a research protocol to validate its diagnostic effectiveness, is dangerous and misleading.16 Another layer of complexity is added because PRS already faces many translational hurdles that would undermine its predictive value assessment for certain traits or diseases. Scientists have noted that PRS take into consideration the genetic component of a particular trait putting aside the effects of other non-genetic factors, such as lifestyle and environment, which might interfere and influence the calculation of these scores.17 Discussions on the ethics and societal implications of PES in the bioethics literature can be grouped into three distinct categories: 1) relational issues between parents and the future child (e.g., selection as identity-determining, concerns about the instrumentalization of children and the child’s right to an open future); 2) concerns about social justice and equality (e.g., fears about a new eugenics that establishes new social hierarchy, limited access to the technology due to its cost); and 3) implementation and regulatory concerns (e.g., lack of professional guidelines and advertising of PES by private companies). An important ethical implication of PES relates to the well-being of the future child and the way that selecting children based on their genetic make-up might negatively affect the parent-child relationship. This is in line with previously raised ethical concerns in the literature around cloning and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis that by choosing a child’s genetic predisposition, we are limiting to and, in some cases, denying their right to an open future. For instance, the future child’s options would be restricted if parents chose a genetic predisposition to musicality that might interfere with the child’s ability to make certain life choices.18 On a societal level, there are concerns PES may alter social perceptions of what is “normal” and “healthy,” resulting in discrimination and stigmatization of certain conditions.19 Related to this are fears about encouraging eugenic attitudes that can exacerbate discrimination against people with disabilities. Furthermore, one of the main ethical concerns raised is that the growing use of PES might exacerbate societal pressure to use this technology, influencing parents’ decisions to select the embryo with the “best” genetics giving rise to a generation of “designer babies.” 20 Finally, direct-to-consumer marketing and clinical introduction of the technology prior to the publication of professional guidelines and in the absence of scientific validity for its use, as well as without appropriate regulatory oversight, is seen as a premature step that might erode public trust.21 III. News Stories and Expert Commentary on Polygenic Embryo Screening in 2021 We conducted searches on google news using keywords such as “polygenic embryo screening,” “polygenic risk scores,” “baby Aurea,” and “embryo selection” and selected blogs and articles from major news sources (e.g., Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Guardian, The Times, etc.). An additional effort was made to collect all relevant articles from prominent bioethics blogs such as the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, Impact Ethics, Bioethics.net, Biopolitical Times (Center for Genetics and Society), among others. The time period for the study was one year, from January 1 to December 31, 2021. While most coverage occurred after the Bloomberg report on the birth of the first baby using PES, there were a number of news stories and blogs in response to a special report on embryo selection based on polygenic risk scores published in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 1, 2020.22 This report, which has received significant attention in the press, warns that companies that offer genetic services can create unrealistic expectations in health providers and prospective parents through their marketing practices. It has further emphasized the scientific uncertainty around the predictive results of PRS in the context of embryo selection. In general, our search has established that the news media coverage on PES over the past year has revolved around these two events – the NEJM Report and the announcement about the first baby born after PES. In total, we collected 29 publications, of which 12 were blog posts and 17 publications under the general category of “news,” including ten news articles, three opinion pieces/perspective articles, two press releases, and one radio broadcast transcript (see Supplementary Material). IV. Methods for content analysis We utilized an inductive-deductive process to develop coding categories for a systematic content analysis of the blogs and new articles. The first author undertook a close reading of the entire dataset to derive inductively recurrent themes and ethical arguments in the media representations of PES. Based on this preliminary analysis, both authors agreed on the categories for textual analysis. The coding book was further refined by using a deductive approach that incorporates themes that have been previously articulated in the scholarly literature on the issue, particularly questions about the perceived attributes of the test, ethical concerns, and emerging policy considerations. The following categories were used to analyze key issues and attitudes towards PES expressed by experts and science journalists: a. Claims that PES is unethical because it violates the future child’s autonomy. b. Concerns about PES as a step towards eugenics and/or genetic discrimination. c. Defenses of PES with arguments that parents have a duty to give the child the healthiest possible start in life (and reduce public health burden). d. Claims that the science behind PRS-based diagnostics is uncertain, and it will take some time to prove its clinical validity. e. Concerns about the equality of access to PES. f. Arguments that PES can exacerbate ethnic and racial inequality (e.g., that most polygenic scores are created using DNA samples from individuals of European ancestries and predictions may not be accurate in other populations). g. Arguments that PES provides health benefits and can help overcome genetic and health inequalities. h. Concerns about the negative impact that PES may have on the child-parent relationship. i. Arguments about the need for better regulatory oversight of PES. j. Suggestions that there is an urgent need for deliberation and debate on the societal and ethical implications of PES. k. Concerns that patients and clinicians may get the impression that the procedure is more effective and less risky than it is. l. Assessment of whether the article’s perspective towards the use of PES is positive, negative, or neutral. We used yes/no questions to detect the frequencies of mentions in each category, except on the last question, which required a more nuanced, qualitative assessment of the overall tone of the articles. We coded articles as “positive” when the authors viewed the technology favorably and emphasized its potential health benefits over its negative implications. Articles that did not condone the current use of PES and expressed strong concerns about the predictive accuracy of this testing method, its readiness for clinical use, and highlighted its controversial ethical and social implications were coded as “negative.” Finally, articles that simply presented information about the topic and quoted experts on the advantages and disadvantages of using PRS for embryo selection without taking a side or expressing value judgments were coded as “neutral.” Acknowledging the complex polysemic nature of media texts, we took into consideration that support or disapproval of PES may be implicit and expressed by giving credence to some experts’ opinions over others. Therefore, we coded articles that mostly cited expert opinion favorable to PES, or alternatively, presented such views as more credible, as “positive”, while we coded articles that emphasized critical perspectives as “negative.” V. Media Discourse and Expert Opinion On PES We found out that perspectives and opinions by experts were prominently featured in both news (17 articles) and blogs (12 articles). The blog posts in our dataset were written by university professors in bioethics (four articles), academics from other disciplines such as medicine, political science, psychology, human genetics, and neurobiology (four articles), and science journalists and editors (four articles). Furthermore, three of the news articles in influential newspapers and magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Scientific American were opinion articles or commentaries contributed by academics (e.g., a psychology professor, specializing in personality, individual differences, and behavior genetics, a sociology professor, and a director of research in a graduate program in human genetics). The remaining 14 news articles in our dataset were written by science reporters, editors, or other staff writers. Altogether, experts contributed 38 percent of the media coverage (11 articles) on the issue of PES and its wider societal implications. Experts’ comments were also heavily featured in the 18 articles written by science reporters and other media professionals, which accounted for 68 percent of the dataset. Of these articles, 17 extensively cited experts with academic and research backgrounds (professors and research scientists), seven articles quoted industry representatives (e.g., CEOs and spokespersons of Genomic Prediction and Orchid, other commercial developers), and four articles included opinions by parents seeking PES, particularly Aurea’s father, North Carolina neurologist Rafal Smigrodzki, who argued that a parent’s duty is to prevent disease in their child.23 The overall perspective towards the use of PES was mostly negative – 59 percent (17 articles) expressed negative attitudes, while 24 percent (seven articles) were positive and 17% (five articles) were neutral in tone and did not advance arguments in favor or against the technology and its adoption. However, we did not establish significant differences in negativity and positivity between experts and science reporters. For instance, 49 percent of the articles with negative attitudes were written by experts, while 53 percent were authored by science reports. Similarly, the articles by experts with positive perspectives on PES accounted for 13 percent of the dataset, while science reporters contributed 11 percent of the positive articles. VI. Major Themes and Issues The most discussed issue in media coverage was the prediction accuracy of polygenic risk scores and the uncertainties regarding the utility of these tests in embryo screening. Our analysis has established that 72 percent of the articles (21 out of 29) argued that the science behind PES-based diagnostics is uncertain, and it will take some time to prove its clinical validity. The second most frequently mentioned issue was the potential of PES to lead to a eugenic future of human reproduction. More than half of the articles (59 percent or 17 out of 29) raised concerns that PES could become a step towards a new form of eugenics that could eventually normalize the discrimination of people based on their genetics. Despite concerns about the accuracy of PES testing, many articles gave extensive attention to problems concerning equality of access to PES and related diagnostic services, with 49 percent of the articles (13 out of 29) expressing concerns that the procedure is currently offered at a high cost, it is not covered by health insurance plans, and people of lower socioeconomic status cannot afford it. Furthermore, 41 percent of the articles (12 out of 29) raise concern that the current use of PES reflects the existing ethnic and racial inequalities since most PES are created using DNA samples from individuals of European ancestries, and predictions may not be accurate in other populations. Although it has been reported that Genomic Prediction considers offering the procedure to parents of non-European ancestries, their messaging has suggested it would take a significant time to provide them with predictive models that are as relevant as those for European populations.24 The health benefits of this testing technology, its regulation, and the need for a wider debate on how to realize its promise in a responsible manner were also addressed, albeit to a lesser extent. The potential to overcome genetic and health inequalities by selecting healthy embryos with the best odds against diseases and chronic conditions was emphasized in 41 percent of the articles (12 out of 29). The regulation was a topic covered in 38 percent of the articles (11 out of 29), in which the authors argued that better regulatory oversight of PES is needed, especially in the present condition of an unregulated US market for genetic testing. Additionally, 38 percent suggested that there is an urgent need for deliberation and public debate on the societal and ethical implications of PES. Finally, the issue that patients and clinicians may get the wrong impression that the procedure is more effective and less risky was addressed in 31 percent (nine out of 29). We have established that critical issues about how PES may affect the well-being of the future child and the child-parent relationship have received less attention. For instance, only 17 percent of the articles (five out of 29) supported the clinical use of PES with arguments that parents have a moral obligation to give the child the healthiest possible start in life, a line of thought that is prominent in the bioethics literature on procreative beneficence and procreative autonomy.25 These authors also maintained that the technology has the potential to provide benefits to individuals and reduce the burden of disease and public health expenditure. Similarly, just 10 percent of the articles (three out of 29) expressed concerns about the negative impact that PES may have on the child-parent relationship by causing relational asymmetries between generations and limiting the autonomy of the future child. CONCLUSION Our content analysis has shown that the media discourse on PES and the birth of baby Aurea has been highly influenced by expert opinion. In fact, leading experts from bioethics and a range of other academic disciplines contributed 38 percent of the content in the form of blogs, opinion articles, and commentaries, published on prestigious bioethics fora and in the popular press. Furthermore, as our analysis has shown, science reporters have heavily relied on expert opinion in writing stories about the ethical challenges and societal implications of PES. One important finding of our study is the prevalence of negative attitudes towards the technology, as opposed to past media representations of PES, which had been neutral towards the technology.26 This change in attitudes is likely caused by the amplified voices of bioethics experts reacting to the first clinical use of the technology, which made hypothetical ethical dilemmas a very real possibility. As far as the thematic focus of media representations is concerned, the birth of the first baby using PES has raised ethical concerns similar to those highlighted in the literature on PES and embryo selection through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, with the most prominent issue being the absence of robust scientific evidence for the predictive accuracy of PRS modeling and its practical value in IVF settings. Although the critical nature of media discourse can contribute to raising public awareness about the ethical acceptability of the technology, bioethicists should also examine the effect of economic forces and societal pressures to have a perfect child that may be driving prospective parents to seek such unproven genetic interventions. PES is an emerging niche in a large, unregulated market for genetic testing services that has the potential to shape the future of reproductive medicine, and there is an urgent need for a policy debate on how it can be developed responsibly and ethically. 1 J. Habermas, "The Debate on the Ethical self-Understanding of the Species," The Future of Human Nature (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003): p. 16-100. 2 Polygenic risk scores (PRS) are used in personalized medicine to predict disease risk in different human populations, not necessarily for risk modelling in embryos. Polygenic embryo screening (PES), on the other hand, involves the clinical use of PRS modelling from genome-wide association studies of adult populations for selecting embryos with the lowest probability of developing certain health conditions in adulthood. It could potentially be used to select embryos with a higher probability for inheritance of certain physical traits or complex characteristics. 3 C. Goldberg, "Picking Embryos With Best Health Odds Sparks New DNA Debate," Bloomberg September 17, 2021. 4 D. Conley, "A new age of genetic screening is coming — and we don’t have any rules for it," The Washington Post June 14, 2021. 5 K. Kamenova, A. Reshef, and T. Caulfield, "Angelina Jolie's faulty gene: newspaper coverage of a celebrity's preventive bilateral mastectomy in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom," Genetics in Medicine 16, no. 7 (2014): 522-28. 6 K. Kamenova et al., "Media portrayal of non-invasive prenatal testing: a missing ethical dimension," Journals of Science Communication 15, no. 2 (2016): 1-19. 7 B. Talat, Choosing the "Smartest" Embryo: Embryo Profiling and the Future of Reproductive Technology, (Canadian Institute for Genomics and Society, March 14, 2019), https://www.genomicsandsociety.com/post/choosing-the-smartest-embryo-embryo-profiling-and-the-future-of-reproductive-technology8 E. Parens, S. P. Applebaum, and W. Chung, "Embryo editing for higher IQ is a fantasy. Embryo profiling for it is almost here.," Statnews, February 12, 2019. 9 T. Pagnaer et al., "Polygenic risk scoring of human embryos: a qualitative study of media coverage," BMC Medical Ethics 22, no. 1 (2021): 1-8. 10 E. L. de Zeeuw et al., "Polygenic scores associated with educational attainment in adults predict educational achievement and ADHD symptoms in children," American Journal of Medical Genetics. Part B, Neuropsychiatric Genetics 165b, no. 6 (2014): 51020. 11 A. Okbay et al., "Genetic variants associated with subjective well-being, depressive symptoms, and neuroticism identified through genome-wide analyses," Nature Genetics 48, no. 6 (2016): 624-33. 12 F. Ray, "Embryo Selection From Polygenic Risk Scores Enters Market as Clinical Value Remains Unproven," (December 22, 2021). https://www.genomeweb.com/sequencing/embryo-selection-polygenic-risk-scores-enters-market-clinical-value-remainsunproven#.YeVWzvhOk2w13 J. Savulescu, "The moral case for eugenics?," IAI News, September 28, 2021, https://iai.tv/articles/the-moral-case-for-eugenicsauid-1916. 14 S. Munday and J. Savulescu, "Three models for the regulation of polygenic scores in reproduction," Journal of Medical Ethics 47, no. 12 (2021): 1-9. 15 F. Forzano et al., "The use of polygenic risk scores in pre-implantation genetic testing: an unproven, unethical practice," European Journal of Human Genetics (2021). 16 Forzano et al., 1-3.; P. Turley et al., "Problems with Using Polygenic Scores to Select Embryos," The New England Jourmal of Medicine 385, no. 1 (2021): 78-86. 17 N. J. Wald and R. Old, "The illusion of polygenic disease risk prediction," Genetics in Medicine 21, no. 8 (2019): 1705-7. 18 M. J. Sandel, "The case against perfection: what's wrong with designer children, bionic athletes, and genetic engineering," Atlantic Monthly 292, no. 3 (2004): 50-4, 56-60, 62. 19 H. Haidar, "Polygenic Risk Scores to Select Embryos: A Need for Societal Debate," Impact Ethics (blog), November 3, 2021, https://impactethics.ca/2021/11/03/polygenic-risk-scores-to-select-embryos-a-need-for-societal-debate/. 20 Pagnaer et al., " 1-8. 21 Forzano et al., 1-8. 22 Turley et al., 78-86. 23 P. Ball, "Polygenic screening of embryos is here, but is it ethical?," The Guardian, October 17, 2021. 24 W. K. Davis, "A New Kind of Embryo Genetics Screening Makes Big Promises on Little Evidence," Slate, July 23, 2021, https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/prs-model-snp-genetic-screening-counseling.html. 25 J. Savulescu, "Procreative beneficence: why we should select the best children," Bioethics 15, no. 5-6 (2001): 413-26. 26 Pagnaer et al., 1-8.

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Introduction: Google Autocomplete Algorithms Despite recent attention to the impact of social media platforms on political discourse and public opinion, most people locate their news on search engines (Robertson et al.). When a user conducts a search, millions of outputs, in the form of videos, images, articles, and Websites are sorted to present the most relevant search predictions. Google, the most dominant search engine in the world, expanded its search index in 2009 to include the autocomplete function, which provides suggestions for query inputs (Dörr and Stephan). Google’s autocomplete function also allows users to “search smarter” by reducing typing time by 25 percent (Baker and Potts 189). Google’s complex algorithm is impacted upon by factors like search history, location, and keyword searches (Karapapa and Borghi), and there are policies to ensure the autocomplete function does not contain harmful content. In 2017, Google implemented a feedback tool to allow human evaluators to assess the quality of search results; however, the algorithm still provides misleading results that frame far-right actors as neutral. In this article, we use reverse engineering to understand the nature of these algorithms in relation to the descriptive outcome, to illustrate how autocomplete subtitles label conspiracists in three countries. According to Google, these “subtitles are generated automatically”, further stating that the “systems might determine that someone could be called an actor, director, or writer. Only one of these can appear as the subtitle” and that Google “cannot accept or create custom subtitles” (Google). We focused our attention on well-known conspiracy theorists because of their influence and audience outreach. In this article we argue that these subtitles are problematic because they can mislead the public and amplify extremist views. Google’s autocomplete feature is misleading because it does not highlight what is publicly known about these actors. The labels are neutral or positive but never negative, reflecting primary jobs and/or the actor’s preferred descriptions. This is harmful to the public because Google’s search rankings can influence a user’s knowledge and information preferences through the search engine manipulation effect (Epstein and Robertson). Users’ preferences and understanding of information can be manipulated based upon their trust in Google search results, thus allowing these labels to be widely accepted instead of providing a full picture of the harm their ideologies and belief cause. Algorithms That Mainstream Conspiracies Search engines establish order and visibility to Web pages that operationalise and stabilise meaning to particular queries (Gillespie). Google’s subtitles and blackbox operate as a complex algorithm for its search index and offer a mediated visibility to aspects of social and political life (Gillespie). Algorithms are designed to perform computational tasks through an operational sequence that computer systems must follow (Broussard), but they are also “invisible infrastructures” that Internet users consciously or unconsciously follow (Gran et al. 1779). The way algorithms rank, classify, sort, predict, and process data is political because it presents the world through a predetermined lens (Bucher 3) decided by proprietary knowledge – a “secret sauce” (O’Neil 29) – that is not disclosed to the general public (Christin). Technology titans, like Google, Facebook, and Amazon (Webb), rigorously protect and defend intellectual property for these algorithms, which are worth billions of dollars (O’Neil). As a result, algorithms are commonly defined as opaque, secret “black boxes” that conceal the decisions that are already made “behind corporate walls and layers of code” (Pasquale 899). The opacity of algorithms is related to layers of intentional secrecy, technical illiteracy, the size of algorithmic systems, and the ability of machine learning algorithms to evolve and become unintelligible to humans, even to those trained in programming languages (Christin 898-899). The opaque nature of algorithms alongside the perceived neutrality of algorithmic systems is problematic. Search engines are increasingly normalised and this leads to a socialisation where suppositions are made that “these artifacts are credible and provide accurate information that is fundamentally depoliticized and neutral” (Noble 25). Google’s autocomplete and PageRank algorithms exist outside of the veil of neutrality. In 2015, Google’s photos app, which uses machine learning techniques to help users collect, search, and categorise images, labelled two black people as ‘gorillas’ (O’Neil). Safiya Noble illustrates how media and technology are rooted in systems of white supremacy, and how these long-standing social biases surface in algorithms, illustrating how racial and gendered inequities embed into algorithmic systems. Google actively fixes algorithmic biases with band-aid-like solutions, which means the errors remain inevitable constituents within the algorithms. Rising levels of automation correspond to a rising level of errors, which can lead to confusion and misdirection of the algorithms that people use to manage their lives (O’Neil). As a result, software, code, machine learning algorithms, and facial/voice recognition technologies are scrutinised for producing and reproducing prejudices (Gray) and promoting conspiracies – often described as algorithmic bias (Bucher). Algorithmic bias occurs because algorithms are trained by historical data already embedded with social biases (O’Neil), and if that is not problematic enough, algorithms like Google’s search engine also learn and replicate the behaviours of Internet users (Benjamin 93), including conspiracy theorists and their followers. Technological errors, algorithmic bias, and increasing automation are further complicated by the fact that Google’s Internet service uses “2 billion lines of code” – a magnitude that is difficult to keep track of, including for “the programmers who designed the algorithm” (Christin 899). Understanding this level of code is not critical to understanding algorithmic logics, but we must be aware of the inscriptions such algorithms afford (Krasmann). As algorithms become more ubiquitous it is urgent to “demand that systems that hold algorithms accountable become ubiquitous as well” (O’Neil 231). This is particularly important because algorithms play a critical role in “providing the conditions for participation in public life”; however, the majority of the public has a modest to nonexistent awareness of algorithms (Gran et al. 1791). Given the heavy reliance of Internet users on Google’s search engine, it is necessary for research to provide a glimpse into the black boxes that people use to extract information especially when it comes to searching for information about conspiracy theorists. Our study fills a major gap in research as it examines a sub-category of Google’s autocomplete algorithm that has not been empirically explored before. Unlike the standard autocomplete feature that is primarily programmed according to popular searches, we examine the subtitle feature that operates as a fixed label for popular conspiracists within Google’s algorithm. Our initial foray into our research revealed that this is not only an issue with conspiracists, but also occurs with terrorists, extremists, and mass murderers. Method Using a reverse engineering approach (Bucher) from September to October 2021, we explored how Google’s autocomplete feature assigns subtitles to widely known conspiracists. The conspiracists were not geographically limited, and we searched for those who reside in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and various countries in Europe. Reverse engineering stems from Ashby’s canonical text on cybernetics, in which he argues that black boxes are not a problem; the problem or challenge is related to the way one can discern their contents. As Google’s algorithms are not disclosed to the general public (Christin), we use this method as an extraction tool to understand the nature of how these algorithms (Eilam) apply subtitles. To systematically document the search results, we took screenshots for every conspiracist we searched in an attempt to archive the Google autocomplete algorithm. By relying on previous literature, reports, and the figures’ public statements, we identified and searched Google for 37 Western-based and influencial conspiracy theorists. We initially experimented with other problematic figures, including terrorists, extremists, and mass murderers to see whether Google applied a subtitle or not. Additionally, we examined whether subtitles were positive, neutral, or negative, and compared this valence to personality descriptions for each figure. Using the standard procedures of content analysis (Krippendorff), we focus on the manifest or explicit meaning of text to inform subtitle valence in terms of their positive, negative, or neutral connotations. These manifest features refer to the “elements that are physically present and countable” (Gray and Densten 420) or what is known as the dictionary definitions of items. Using a manual query, we searched Google for subtitles ascribed to conspiracy theorists, and found the results were consistent across different countries. Searches were conducted on Firefox and Chrome and tested on an Android phone. Regardless of language input or the country location established by a Virtual Private Network (VPN), the search terms remained stable, regardless of who conducted the search. The conspiracy theorists in our dataset cover a wide range of conspiracies, including historical figures like Nesta Webster and John Robison, who were foundational in Illuminati lore, as well as contemporary conspiracists such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones. Each individual’s name was searched on Google with a VPN set to three countries. Results and Discussion This study examines Google’s autocomplete feature associated with subtitles of conspiratorial actors. We first tested Google’s subtitling system with known terrorists, convicted mass shooters, and controversial cult leaders like David Koresh. Garry et al. (154) argue that “while conspiracy theories may not have mass radicalising effects, they are extremely effective at leading to increased polarization within societies”. We believe that the impact of neutral subtitling of conspiracists reflects the integral role conspiracies plays in contemporary politics and right-wing extremism. The sample includes contemporary and historical conspiracists to establish consistency in labelling. For historical figures, the labels are less consequential and simply reflect the reality that Google’s subtitles are primarily neutral. Of the 37 conspiracy theorists we searched (see Table 1 in the Appendix), seven (18.9%) do not have an associated subtitle, and the other 30 (81%) have distinctive subtitles, but none of them reflects the public knowledge of the individuals’ harmful role in disseminating conspiracy theories. In the list, 16 (43.2%) are noted for their contribution to the arts, 4 are labelled as activists, 7 are associated with their professional affiliation or original jobs, 2 to the journalism industry, one is linked to his sports career, another one as a researcher, and 7 have no subtitle. The problem here is that when white nationalists or conspiracy theorists are not acknowledged as such in their subtitles, search engine users could possibly encounter content that may sway their understanding of society, politics, and culture. For example, a conspiracist like Alex Jones is labeled as an “American Radio Host” (see Figure 1), despite losing two defamation lawsuits for declaring that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a ‘false flag’ event. Jones’s actions on his InfoWars media platforms led to parents of shooting victims being stalked and threatened. Another conspiracy theorist, Gavin McInnes, the creator of the far-right, neo-fascist Proud Boys organisation, a known terrorist entity in Canada and hate group in the United States, is listed simply as a “Canadian writer” (see Figure 1). Fig. 1: Screenshots of Google’s subtitles for Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes. Although subtitles under an individual’s name are not audio, video, or image content, the algorithms that create these subtitles are an invisible infrastructure that could cause harm through their uninterrogated status and pervasive presence. This could then be a potential conduit to media which could cause harm and develop distrust in electoral and civic processes, or all institutions. Examples from our list include Brittany Pettibone, whose subtitle states that she is an “American writer” despite being one of the main propagators of the Pizzagate conspiracy which led to Edgar Maddison Welch (whose subtitle is “Screenwriter”) travelling from North Carolina to Washington D.C. to violently threaten and confront those who worked at Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria. The same misleading label can be found via searching for James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, who is positively labelled as “American activist”. Veritas is known for releasing audio and video recordings that contain false information designed to discredit academic, political, and service organisations. In one instance, a 2020 video released by O’Keefe accused Democrat Ilhan Omar’s campaign of illegally collecting ballots. The same dissembling of distrust applies to Mike Lindell, whose Google subtitle is “CEO of My Pillow”, as well as Sidney Powell, who is listed as an “American lawyer”; both are propagators of conspiracy theories relating to the 2020 presidential election. The subtitles attributed to conspiracists on Google do not acknowledge the widescale public awareness of the negative role these individuals play in spreading conspiracy theories or causing harm to others. Some of the selected conspiracists are well known white nationalists, including Stefan Molyneux who has been banned from social media platforms like Twitter, Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube for the promotion of scientific racism and eugenics; however, he is neutrally listed on Google as a “Canadian podcaster”. In addition, Laura Loomer, who describes herself as a “proud Islamophobe,” is listed by Google as an “Author”. These subtitles can pose a threat by normalising individuals who spread conspiracy theories, sow dissension and distrust in institutions, and cause harm to minority groups and vulnerable individuals. Once clicking on the selected person, the results, although influenced by the algorithm, did not provide information that aligned with the associated subtitle. The search results are skewed to the actual conspiratorial nature of the individuals and associated news articles. In essence, the subtitles do not reflect the subsequent search results, and provide a counter-labelling to the reality of the resulting information provided to the user. Another significant example is Jerad Miller, who is listed as “American performer”, despite the fact that he is the Las Vegas shooter who posted anti-government and white nationalist 3 Percenters memes on his social media (SunStaff), even though the majority of search results connect him to the mass shooting he orchestrated in 2014. The subtitle “performer” is certainly not the common characteristic that should be associated with Jerad Miller. Table 1 in the Appendix shows that individuals who are not within the contemporary milieux of conspiracists, but have had a significant impact, such as Nesta Webster, Robert Welch Junior, and John Robison, were listed by their original profession or sometimes without a subtitle. David Icke, infamous for his lizard people conspiracies, has a subtitle reflecting his past football career. In all cases, Google’s subtitle was never consistent with the actor’s conspiratorial behaviour. Indeed, the neutral subtitles applied to conspiracists in our research may reflect some aspect of the individuals’ previous careers but are not an accurate reflection of the individuals’ publicly known role in propagating hate, which we argue is misleading to the public. For example, David Icke may be a former footballer, but the 4.7 million search results predominantly focus on his conspiracies, his public fora, and his status of being deplatformed by mainstream social media sites. The subtitles are not only neutral, but they are not based on the actual search results, and so are misleading in what the searcher will discover; most importantly, they do not provide a warning about the misinformation contained in the autocomplete subtitle. To conclude, algorithms automate the search engines that people use in the functions of everyday life, but are also entangled in technological errors, algorithmic bias, and have the capacity to mislead the public. Through a process of reverse engineering (Ashby; Bucher), we searched 37 conspiracy theorists to decode the Google autocomplete algorithms. We identified how the subtitles attributed to conspiracy theorists are neutral, positive, but never negative, which does not accurately reflect the widely known public conspiratorial discourse these individuals propagate on the Web. This is problematic because the algorithms that determine these subtitles are invisible infrastructures acting to misinform the public and to mainstream conspiracies within larger social, cultural, and political structures. This study highlights the urgent need for Google to review the subtitles attributed to conspiracy theorists, terrorists, and mass murderers, to better inform the public about the negative nature of these actors, rather than always labelling them in neutral or positive ways. Funding Acknowledgement This project has been made possible in part by the Canadian Department of Heritage – the Digital Citizen Contribution program – under grant no. R529384. The title of the project is “Understanding hate groups’ narratives and conspiracy theories in traditional and alternative social media”. References Ashby, W. Ross. An Introduction to Cybernetics. Chapman & Hall, 1961. Baker, Paul, and Amanda Potts. "‘Why Do White People Have Thin Lips?’ Google and the Perpetuation of Stereotypes via Auto-Complete Search Forms." Critical Discourse Studies 10.2 (2013): 187-204. Benjamin, Ruha. Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity, 2019. Bucher, Taina. If... Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics. OUP, 2018. Broussard, Meredith. Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. MIT P, 2018. Christin, Angèle. "The Ethnographer and the Algorithm: Beyond the Black Box." Theory and Society 49.5 (2020): 897-918. D'Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. Data Feminism. MIT P, 2020. Dörr, Dieter, and Juliane Stephan. "The Google Autocomplete Function and the German General Right of Personality." Perspectives on Privacy. De Gruyter, 2014. 80-95. Eilam, Eldad. Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering. John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Epstein, Robert, and Ronald E. Robertson. "The Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) and Its Possible Impact on the Outcomes of Elections." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.33 (2015): E4512-E4521. Garry, Amanda, et al. "QAnon Conspiracy Theory: Examining its Evolution and Mechanisms of Radicalization." Journal for Deradicalization 26 (2021): 152-216. Gillespie, Tarleton. "Algorithmically Recognizable: Santorum’s Google Problem, and Google’s Santorum Problem." Information, Communication & Society 20.1 (2017): 63-80. Google. “Update your Google knowledge panel.” 2022. 3 Jan. 2022 <https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/7534842?hl=en#zippy=%2Csubtitle>. Gran, Anne-Britt, Peter Booth, and Taina Bucher. "To Be or Not to Be Algorithm Aware: A Question of a New Digital Divide?" Information, Communication & Society 24.12 (2021): 1779-1796. Gray, Judy H., and Iain L. Densten. "Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis Using Latent and Manifest Variables." Quality and Quantity 32.4 (1998): 419-431. Gray, Kishonna L. Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming. LSU P, 2020. Karapapa, Stavroula, and Maurizio Borghi. "Search Engine Liability for Autocomplete Suggestions: Personality, Privacy and the Power of the Algorithm." International Journal of Law and Information Technology 23.3 (2015): 261-289. Krasmann, Susanne. "The Logic of the Surface: On the Epistemology of Algorithms in Times of Big Data." Information, Communication & Society 23.14 (2020): 2096-2109. Krippendorff, Klaus. Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. Sage, 2004. Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression. New York UP, 2018. O'Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Crown, 2016. Pasquale, Frank. The Black Box Society. Harvard UP, 2015. Robertson, Ronald E., David Lazer, and Christo Wilson. "Auditing the Personalization and Composition of Politically-Related Search Engine Results Pages." Proceedings of the 2018 World Wide Web Conference. 2018. Staff, Sun. “A Look inside the Lives of Shooters Jerad Miller, Amanda Miller.” Las Vegas Sun 9 June 2014. <https://lasvegassun.com/news/2014/jun/09/look/>. Webb, Amy. The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity. Hachette UK, 2019. Appendix Table 1: The subtitles of conspiracy theorists on Google autocomplete Conspiracy Theorist Google Autocomplete Subtitle Character Description Alex Jones American radio host InfoWars founder, American far-right radio show host and conspiracy theorist. The SPLC describes Alex Jones as "the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America." Barry Zwicker Canadian journalist Filmmaker who made a documentary that claimed fear was used to control the public after 9/11. Bart Sibrel American producer Writer, producer, and director of work to falsely claim the Apollo moon landings between 1969 and 1972 were staged by NASA. Ben Garrison American cartoonist Alt-right and QAnon political cartoonist Brittany Pettibone American writer Far-right, political vlogger on YouTube and propagator of #pizzagate. Cathy O’Brien American author Cathy O’Brien claims she was a victim of a government mind control project called Project Monarch. Dan Bongino American radio host Stakeholder in Parler, Radio Host, Ex-Spy, Conspiracist (Spygate, MAGA election fraud, etc.). David Icke Former footballer Reptilian humanoid conspiracist. David Wynn Miller (No subtitle) Conspiracist, far-right tax protester, and founder of the Sovereign Citizens Movement. Jack Posobiec American activist Alt-right, alt-lite political activist, conspiracy theorist, and Internet troll. Editor of Human Events Daily. James O’Keefe American activist Founder of Project Veritas, a far-right company that propagates disinformation and conspiracy theories. John Robison Foundational Illuminati conspiracist. Kevin Annett Canadian writer Former minister and writer, who wrote a book exposing the atrocities to Indigenous Communities, and now is a conspiracist and vlogger. Laura Loomer Author Far-right, anti-Muslim, conspiracy theorist, and Internet personality. Republican nominee in Florida's 21st congressional district in 2020. Marjorie Taylor Greene United States Representative Conspiracist, QAnon adherent, and U.S. representative for Georgia's 14th congressional district. Mark Dice American YouTuber Right-wing conservative pundit and conspiracy theorist. Mark Taylor (No subtitle) QAnon minister and self-proclaimed prophet of Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. President. Michael Chossudovsky Canadian economist Professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa, founder of the Centre for Research on Globalization, and conspiracist. Michael Cremo(Drutakarmā dāsa) American researcher Self-described Vedic creationist whose book, Forbidden Archeology, argues humans have lived on earth for millions of years. Mike Lindell CEO of My Pillow Business owner and conspiracist. Neil Patel English entrepreneur Founded The Daily Caller with Tucker Carlson. Nesta Helen Webster English author Foundational Illuminati conspiracist. Naomi Wolf American author Feminist turned conspiracist (ISIS, COVID-19, etc.). Owen Benjamin American comedian Former actor/comedian now conspiracist (Beartopia), who is banned from mainstream social media for using hate speech. Pamela Geller American activist Conspiracist, Anti-Islam, Blogger, Host. Paul Joseph Watson British YouTuber InfoWars co-host and host of the YouTube show PrisonPlanetLive. QAnon Shaman (Jake Angeli) American activist Conspiracy theorist who participated in the 2021 attack on Capitol Hil. Richard B. Spencer (No subtitle) American neo-Nazi, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and white supremacist. Rick Wiles (No subtitle) Minister, Founded conspiracy site, TruNews. Robert W. Welch Jr. American businessman Founded the John Birch Society. Ronald Watkins (No subtitle) Founder of 8kun. Serge Monast Journalist Creator of Project Blue Beam conspiracy. Sidney Powell (No subtitle) One of former President Trump’s Lawyers, and renowned conspiracist regarding the 2020 Presidential election. Stanton T. Friedman Nuclear physicist Original civilian researcher of the 1947 Roswell UFO incident. Stefan Molyneux Canadian podcaster Irish-born, Canadian far-right white nationalist, podcaster, blogger, and banned YouTuber, who promotes conspiracy theories, scientific racism, eugenics, and racist views Tim LaHaye American author Founded the Council for National Policy, leader in the Moral Majority movement, and co-author of the Left Behind book series. Viva Frei (No subtitle) YouTuber/ Canadian Influencer, on the Far-Right and Covid conspiracy proponent. William Guy Carr Canadian author Illuminati/III World War Conspiracist Google searches conducted as of 9 October 2021.

Abstract:

Photo by Hédi Benyounes on Unsplash ABSTRACT The current incarceration facilities for the growing number of women are depriving expecting mothers of adequate care crucial for the child’s mental and physical development. Programs need to be established to counteract this. INTRODUCTION Currently, Diana Sanchez was eight months pregnant when she was arrested for identity theft and put in a prison cell in Denver. At five a.m., two weeks after being incarcerated, she announced to a deputy outside her cell that she was going into labor. Footage from a camera in her cell shows her pacing anxiously or writhing in her bed for the five hours preceding the arrival of her son. She banged on the door and begged for help. All she received was an absorbent pad. She gave birth alone in her prison cell on July 31, 2015, around 10:45 am. At 11:00 am, a prison nurse walked in to cut the umbilical cord and take Sanchez’s newborn baby without offering postnatal care. Sanchez was later sent to a hospital, and her baby was separated from her until she was put on probation. In 2018, on behalf of her three-year-old son, Sanchez sued Denver Health and Denver Sheriff Department and won a $480,000 settlement.[1] Though many more men are incarcerated than women, the rate of growth of female incarceration has exceeded that of male incarceration for decades. One study estimated that 231,000 women are currently incarcerated in the US,[2] 80 percent of whom are mothers, and 150,000 pregnant.[3] Another recent study of 1,396 incarcerated pregnant women found that 92 percent had live births, 6.5 percent had stillbirths or miscarriages, and 4 percent terminated the pregnancy. The authors found that there is no system of reporting pregnancy outcomes in US prisons. There is a noteworthy ethical lapse in mental, emotional, and medical care that threatens the well-being of pregnant women in prison. According to Carolyn Sufrin, “Pregnant incarcerated people are one of the most marginalized and forgotten groups in our country… and women who don't get counted don't count.” [4] Poor documentation, visibility, and transparency contribute to the systemic abuse of incarcerated women. Studies document women giving birth alone in cells and shackles in solitary confinement. Their complaints regarding contractions, bleeding, and other pains of labor are often ignored.[5] l. Prenatal Care in American Prisons Diana Sanchez was not offered any prenatal care after she was incarcerated. And neither she nor her son received appropriate postnatal care.[6] Sanchez was on medication for opioid withdrawal while pregnant, which could have been detrimental to her baby’s health.[7] There is an unacceptable absence of pre- and postnatal care in most US prisons. A lack of regulation makes the availability of perinatal care unpredictable and unreliable. Several studies confirmed that there is not a standard for prenatal care for women incarcerated during pregnancy. [8] Knowledge of the appropriate mental and physical care pregnant women require, addiction support, and support for maternal-infant bonding all exists outside the prison system and ought to be used as a benchmark. At the very least, pregnant women, birthing women, and new mothers should not be placed in solitary confinement or shackled.[9] In the prenatal arena, depriving an individual of adequate healthcare is not appropriate and could be cruel and unusual. Only 18 percent of funding in prisons goes to health care for the prisoners. That is roughly $5.7 thousand per prisoner, according to an NIH study done in 2015.[10] There should be an adequate amount of funding for the health needs of incarcerated pregnant women. By depriving pregnant women of healthcare, the prisons are depriving the fetus of adequate care. ll. Respect for Autonomy During Incarceration Women maintain healthcare autonomy even when incarcerated. The purpose of a prison sentence is retribution for crimes and rehabilitation to prevent reoffending.[11] The separation of a mother and newborn causes significant developmental and psychological harm to the child and the parent. Parent-child separation does not serve the purpose of retribution or rehabilitation and is authorized only due to prisons’ limited space and resources that make it difficult to accommodate children, as well as a state interest in children’s best interests or the custody rights of the other parent. When it is possible to keep a family together, prisons should make every effort to do so for the health of the mother-child relationship. Incarcerated people may become a burden to family or society due to prison medical neglect. For example, diabetes and hypertension, which can occur during pregnancy, can worsen without treatment. The inability to access the care they would otherwise want and need endangers women and poses a burden to the healthcare system after incarceration, Depersonalizing individuals convicted of crimes must be placed in the context of historical eugenics practices. State-sanctioned sterilization and efforts to prevent women from reproducing were widespread during the early 20th century.[12] Cases of coerced and nonconsensual sterilization of incarcerated women and men evidence the history of eugenics.[13]Abortions are offered to some incarcerated women.[14] However, many incarcerated women are denied the right to see healthcare providers to thoroughly discuss abortion or other options.[15] Although the abortions are consensual, the quality of consent is questionable. lll. Prison Nursery Programs, “I need something to live for…” Indiana Women’s Prison (IWP), a max security female prison, has a program called Wee Ones that enables women convicted of nonviolent crimes to spend 30 months bonding with their newborn child. It is one of eight programs in the country that allows pregnant mothers to spend the last few months of their sentence with their children. It is a voluntary program that allows pregnant offenders a private room in a housing unit. It offers parent education, resources that are accessible after release, and career education. The program application process and the rules to which women must adhere to remain in the program are stringent. The programs generally have a zero-tolerance policy. Even simply sleeping in the same bed as the child or arguing with other mothers can result in termination from the program. Kara, a pregnant woman incarcerated for drug possession, had a history of abuse in her family and tended to act out in anger against her peers in the program. She was learning how to have healthy reactions to anger when handling her child, but her temper ultimately led to her removal from the program. Her son was placed in foster care, and Kara returned to the regular cells. In an interview before her transfer, she told the camera that Charlie gave her a purpose. With tears in her eyes, she said, “Charlie was my way of life here [...] I need something to live for [,] and I screwed up.”[16] Pregnancy in prison can be a way to improve quality of life for some women. Studies demonstrate that nursery programs improve mental health of the incarcerated women.[17] The secure attachment of the infant to its primary caregiver promotes healthy development in the child and a bonded relationship with the mother.[18] The close bond between mother and child in prisons has been shown to decrease recidivism and to reduce the burden on the foster care system.[19] Women who do not qualify for these programs, or are incarcerated in prisons without them, are separated from their newborn babies and their other children. The disconnect can lead to the child rejecting the incarcerated mother once she is released.[20] Programs like Wee Ones honor women’s autonomy while they are incarcerated. During interviews, the women expressed that although raising a child in that environment is difficult, it was better than not being with their children. While rocking a baby in her lap, one inmate expressed her frustrations with Wee Ones but then paused to express gratitude and said, “After all, it’s prison. And prison ain’t supposed to be nice.”[21] The ethical issue of autonomy reflects a more difficult dilemma in the prison landscape. lV. Counter Arguments: Do the Nursery Programs Work for the Children and the Women Typically, newborns are taken from their incarcerated mothers within two to three days of birth and sent to live with a relative or placed in foster care. Many women are never reunited with their babies. There is much debate over whether the programs are beneficial to the children. One ethical issue is whether children, as innocents, are being punished either by being in the prison system or by being separated from their mothers. Skeptics, like James Dwyer, have argued against keeping innocent babies in the custody of incarcerated mothers asserting that there is little evidence demonstrating that the programs rehabilitate the women.[22] Dwyer commented on the “reckless” hopefulness the programs provide: "It might, in fact, be the babies distract them from rehabilitation they should be doing instead. […] They're so focused on childcare and have this euphoria — they think they'll be just fine when they get out of prison and they're not. We just don't know."[23] One study showed that 58 percent of incarcerated women are arrested again after release, 38 percent are reconvicted, and 30 percent return to prison within three years.[24] Dwyer uses this data to argue that the programs are not worthwhile. However, the data is not limited to the special population that had the prison nursery experience. The data applies to all incarcerated women limiting its applicability. More importantly, there is compelling evidence to support prison nursery programs.[25] The programs do decrease recidivism[26] and prison misconduct,[27] and they allow women to create stronger bonds with their children.[28] Bev Little argues that allowing mothers to bond with their babies only delays the inevitable separation and will cause trauma and have other ill effects on the baby. [29] But others feel that stronger maternal-fetal attachment is best for both parties. There is evidence that the bond, once formed, is long-lasting. Later in life, there is less drug addiction among children who stayed in the nursery rather than being separated from their mothers.[30] Another counterargument is that the policies in prison nurseries are not as useful for motherhood outside of the facility; thus, an issue with recidivism occurs because the women are less prepared for motherhood upon release from prison. Prison nursery programs establish methods and procedures for successful motherhood that are unique to operation within correctional environments. Yet, fortunately, parenting classes offered by prisons and jails emphasize sacrifice, self-restraint, and dedicated attention to the baby. These classes aptly apply to motherhood outside of prison.[31] One incarcerated mother experiencing addiction, Kima, was described as ambivalent toward her pregnancy. “It’s something about knowing but not knowing that makes me not accountable or makes me think I’m not accountable,” Kima shared.[32] After the nurse confirmed her pregnancy, she acknowledged fear and knew she would be held accountable to the baby. The occurrence of pregnancy ambivalence is common.[33] A study of a population of prisoners from Rhode Island found that 41 percent of the women expressed ambivalent attitudes about pregnancy. 70 of the women from a population in San Francisco expressed ambivalent or negative attitudes towards pregnancy.[34] But the ambivalence of some women toward pregnancy is not a reason to prevent women who feel differently from reaping the full benefits of programs that support them during pregnancy. Another counterargument is that prison is becoming a comfort that women might seek if they are homeless or housing insecure. For example, Evelyn was released from a San Francisco jail after being arrested for using cocaine. She was 26 weeks pregnant and had a four-year-old son in the custody of her aunt. Following her release, she was homeless and using drugs in the streets. She felt that her only hope of keeping her baby safe was to go back to jail. Like Kima, she had been in and out of jail from a young age. She grew accustomed to and dependent on the care provided there. While incarceration can provide a home and a nursery, there is no ethical reason to argue for making prison less comfortable by separating babies and children from incarcerated women. Instead, these facts suggest we are not doing enough for women outside prisons either. CONCLUSION Many experts stress the dearth of research and information on these women and their babies. There is no empirical data to show how big the problem is, but there is evidence that programs providing nursery care for the children of incarcerated women have many benefits. Because the research is not largescale enough, many pregnant women in the prison system are ignored. Many women give birth in unacceptable conditions, and their children are taken from them the moment the umbilical cord is cut. While the US incarcerates too many women, a movement to expand prison nurseries could help new mothers bond with their children. Strong educational programs could aid in lowering the rates of recidivism by providing therapeutic resources for mothers.[35] There is a growing problem of mass incarceration in the US as many women are placed in correctional facilities. Most of these women are convicted of possession or use of illegal substances.[36] Many women come from disadvantaged backgrounds, poverty, and have experienced addiction. Depriving an expectant mother of adequate care is cruel and irresponsible both to the mother and her innocent child. The criminal justice system is harming children both mentally and physically. Reform of the system is needed to provide the basic care those children need. Programs like IWP’s Wee Ones are necessary for physical, psychological, and social development. A program that offers a place for mothers to raise their babies in the community of other mothers would incentivize and facilitate healthy parental habits. Further programs for mothers who are released from prison would give them valuable resources to keep them from returning and encourage healthy relationships between the mother and the baby. - [1] Li, D. K. Video allegedly shows woman giving birth in Denver jail cell alone, with no assistance. Denver: NBC News, 2019. [2] Kajstura, Aleks. “Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019.” Prison Policy Initiative, 29 Oct. 2019, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019women.html. (“Including those in prisons, jails, and other correctional facilities.”) [3] Swavola, E, K Riley and R Subramanian. "Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform." Vera Institute of Justice August 2016. [4] Sufrin, C. Pregnant Behind Bars: What We Do and Don't Know About Pregnancy and Incarceration Allison Chang. 21 March 2019. Transcript. [5] Sufrin, C., 2019. (Suffrin expressed that she had seen such practices firsthand working as an OB/GYN for incarcerated women.) [6] Padilla, M. “Woman Gave Birth in Denver Jail Cell Alone, Lawsuit Says,” New York Times, Sep. 1, 2019. [7] Li, D. “Video allegedly shows woman giving birth in Denver jail cell alone, with no assistance,” NBC U.S. News, Apr. 29. 2019. [8] Knittel, A. and C. Sufrin. "Maternal Health Equity and Justice for Pregnant Women Who Experience Incarceration." JAMA Network Open 3.8 (2020). A study in Ontario, Canada, coincided with a study done in Australia. [9] Sufrin, C., et al. "Pregnancy Outcomes in US Prisons, 2016–2017." p. 803-804. [10] Sridhar, S., R. Cornish and S. Fazel. "The Costs of Healthcare in Prison and Custody: Systematic Review of Current Estimates and Proposed Guidelines for Future Reporting." Frontiers in Psychiatry 9.716 (2018). [11] Kifer, M., Hemmens, C., Stohr, M. K. “The Goals of Corrections: Perspectives from the Line” Criminal Justice Review. 1 May 2003 [12] Perry, D. M. "Our Long, Troubling History of Sterilizing the Incarcerated." The Marshall Project: Sterilization of Women in Prison 26 July 2017. [13] Rachel Roth & Sara L. Ainsworth, If They Hand You a Paper, You Sign It: A Call to End the Sterilization of Women in Prison, 26 Hastings WOMEN's L.J. 7 (2015); See Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942) (procreation considered a fundamental right; fact pattern of male sterilization in prison based on type of crime.) [14] Sufrin, C., M. D. Creinin, J. C. Chang. “Incarcerated Women and Abortion Provision: A Survey of Correctional Health Providers.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. p. 6-11. 23 March 2009. [15] Kasdan, D. “Abortion Access for Incarcerated Women: Are Correctional Health Practices in Conflict with Constitutional Standards?” Guttmacher Institute. 26 March 2009. [16] Born Behind Bars. Season 1, Episode 5, “They Can Take Your Baby Away,” produced by Luke Ellis, Francis Gasparini, & Jen Wise, aired on 15 Nov. 2017 A&E Networks [17] Bick, J., & Dozier, M. (2008). Helping Foster Parents Change: The Role of Parental State of Mind. In H. Steele & M. Steele (Eds.), Clinical applications of the Adult Attachment Interview (pp. 452–470). New York: Guilford Press. [18]Sroufe, L. A., B. Egeland, E. A. Carlson, W. A. Collins. (2005). The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood. New York: Guilford Press. [19] Goshin, L. S., & Byrne, M. W. “Converging Streams of Opportunity for Prison Nursery Programs in the United States.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. 15 Apr 2009. [20] Babies Behind Bars. Dirs. W. Serrill and S. O'Brien. 2015. Another IWP pregnant woman is Taylor. At the time of the show, she was pregnant and expecting twins. In interviews throughout the episode, she expressed how her pregnancies in prison had put her in a better mood and felt beneficial to her. She had tried to sign up for the nursery program for her previous pregnancy, but her sentence was too long to get it. Her child was sent to live with a caregiver, and when Taylor was on probation, Taylor’s daughter didn’t want to be around Taylor. Taylor was so distraught that she messed up and went back, this time, pregnant with twins. After she was reincarcerated, she was able to be accepted into Wee Ones. She expressed to the camera man that the program might help her feel more like a mother so that when she gets out, she will have someone to care for. Taylor, Kara, and many other women depend on their children or their pregnancy for a purpose while behind bars. They relied on their babies to be a boon for them. [21] Babies Behind Bars. Dirs. W. Serrill and S. O'Brien. 2015. [22] Corley, C. "Programs Help Incarcerated Moms Bond with Their Babies in Prison." Criminal Justice Collaborative (2018). [23] Corley, C. "Programs Help Incarcerated Moms Bond with Their Babies in Prison." Criminal Justice Collaborative (2018). [24] Owen, B. & Crow, J. “Recidivism among Female Prisoners: Secondary Analysis of the 1994 BJS Recidivism Data Set” Department of Criminology California State University (2006) p. 28 [25] Prison Nursery Programs: Literature Review and Fact Sheet for CT. Diamond Research Consulting, 2012, www.cga.ct.gov/2013/JUDdata/tmy/2013HB-06642-R000401-Sarah Diamond - Director, Diamond Research Consulting-TMY.PDF. [26] New York Department of Correction Services (NYDOCS). (1993). Profile of Participants: The Bedford and Taconic Nursery Program in 1992. Albany, NY. Department of Correction Services.Rowland, M., & Watts, A. (2007). Washington State’s effort to the generational impact on crime. Corrections Today. Retrieved September 12, 2007, from http://www. aca.org/publications/pdf/Rowland_Watts_Aug07.pdf. [27] Carlson, J. R. (2001). Prison nursery 2000: A five-year review of the prison nursery at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 33, 75–97. [28] Carlson, J.R. [29] Little, B. "What Happens When a Woman Gives Birth Behind Bars?" A+E Networks, 29 October 2019. <https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/what-happens-when-a-woman-gives-birth-in-jail-or-prison>. [30] Margolies, J. K., & Kraft-Stolar, T. When “Free” Means Losing Your Mother: The Collision of Child Welfare and the Incarceration of Women in New York State 1, 9 (Correctional Association of N.Y. Women in Prison Project 2006) [31] Sufrin, C. Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. [32] Sufrin, C. Jailcare: p. 155. [33] Peart, M. S. & Knittel, A. K. “Contraception need and available services among incarcerated women in the United States: a systematic review.” Contraception and Reproductive Medicine. 17 March 2020 [34] LaRochelle, F., C. Castro, J. Goldenson, J. P. Tulsky, D.L. Cohan, P. D. Blumenthal, et al. “Contraceptive use and barriers to access among newly arrested women.” J Correct Health Care. (2012) p. 111–119. [35] Goshin, L., & Byrne, M. (2009). “Converging streams of opportunity for prison nursery programs in the United States.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. 2009. p.271–295. [36] Elizabeth Swavola, Kristine Riley, Ram Subramanian. Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2016.

Abstract:

There is a moment in Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth devised to expose the sheer audacity of fossil fuel lobby groups in the United States. In their attempts to address significant scientific consensus and growing public concern over climate change, these groups are resorting to what Gore’s film suggests are grotesque distortions of fact. A particular example highlighted in the film is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CPE—a lobby group funded by ExxonMobil) “pro” energy industry advertisem*nt: “Carbon dioxide”, the ad states. “They call it pollution, we call it life.” While on the one hand employing rhetoric against the “inconvenient truth” that carbon dioxide emissions are ratcheting up the Earth’s temperature, these advertisem*nts also pose a question – though perhaps unintended – that is worth addressing. Where does life reside? This is not an issue of essentialism, but relates to the claims, materials and technologies through which life as a political object emerges. The danger of entertaining the vested interests of polluting industry in a discussion of climate change and its biopolitics is countered by an imperative to acknowledge the ways in which multiple positions in the climate change debate invoke and appeal to ‘life’ as the bottom line, or inviolable interest, of their political, social or economic work. In doing so, other questions come to the fore that a politics of climate change framed in terms of moral positions or competing values will tend to overlook. These questions concern the manifold practices of life that constitute the contemporary terrain of the political, and the actors and instruments put in this employ. Who speaks for life? And who or what produces it? Climate change as a matter of concern (Latour) has gathered and generated a host of experts, communities, narratives and technical devices all invested in the administration of life. It is, as Malcom Bull argues, “the paradigmatic issue of the new politics,” a politics which “draws people towards the public realm and makes life itself subject to the caprices of state and market” (2). This paper seeks to highlight the politics of life that have emerged around climate change as a public issue. It will argue that these politics appear in incremental and multiple ways that situate an array of actors and interests as active in both contesting and generating the terms of life: what life is and how we come to know it. This way of thinking about climate change debates opposes a prevalent moralistic framework that reads the practices and discourses of debate in terms of oppositional positions alone. While sympathies may flow in varying directions, especially when it comes to such a highly charged and massively consequential issue as climate change, there is little insight to be had from charging the CPE (for example) with manipulating consumers, or misrepresenting well-known facts. Where new and more productive understandings open up is in relation to the fields through which these gathering actors play out their claims to the project of life. These fields, from the state, to the corporation, to the domestic sphere, reveal a complex network of strategies and devices that seek to secure life in constantly renovated terms. Life Politics Biopolitical scholarship in the wake of Foucault has challenged life as a pre-given uncritical category, and sought to highlight the means through which it is put under question and constituted through varying and composing assemblages of practitioners and practices. Such work regards the project of human well-being as highly complex and technical, and has undertaken to document this empirically through close attention to the everyday ecologies in which humans are enmeshed. This is a political and theoretical project in itself, situating political processes in micro, as well as macro, registers, including daily life as a site of (self) management and governance. Rabinow and Rose refer to biopolitical circuits that draw together and inter-relate the multiple sites and scales operative in the administration of life. These involve not just technologies, rationalities and regimes of authority and control, but also politics “from below” in the form of rights claims and community formation and agitation (198). Active in these circuits, too, are corporate and non-state interests for whom the pursuit of maximising life’s qualities and capabilities has become a concern through which “market relations and shareholder value” are negotiated (Rabinow and Rose 211). As many biopolitical scholars argue, biopower—the strategies through which biopolitics are enacted—is characteristic of the “disciplinary neo-liberalism” that has come to define the modern state, and through which the conduct of conduct is practiced (Di Muzio 305). Foucault’s concept of governmentality describes the devolution of state-based disciplinarity and sovereignty to a host of non-state actors, rationalities and strategies of governing, including the self-managing subject, not in opposition to the state, but contributing to its form. According to Bratich, Packer and McCarthy, everyday life is thus “saturated with governmental techniques” (18) in which we are all enrolled. Unlike regimes of biopolitics identified with what Agamben terms “thanopolitics”—the exercise of biopower “which ultimately rests on the power of some to threaten the death of others” (Rabinow and Rose 198), such as the Nazi’s National Socialism and other eugenic campaigns—governmental arts in the service of “vitalist” biopolitics (Rose 1) are increasingly diffused amongst all those with an “interest” in sustaining life, from organisations to individuals. The integration of techniques of self-governance which ask the individual to work on themselves and their own dispositions with State functions has broadened the base by which life is governed, and foregrounded an unsettled terrain of life claims. Rose argues that medical science is at the forefront of these contemporary biopolitics, and to this effect “has […] been fully engaged in the ethical questions of how we should live—of what kinds of creatures we are, of the kinds of obligations that we have to ourselves and to others, of the kinds of techniques we can and should use to improve ourselves” (20). Asking individuals to self-identify through their medical histories and bodily specificities, medical cultures are also shaping new political arrangements, as communities connected by shared genetics or physical conditions, for instance, emerge, evolve and agitate according to the latest medical knowledge. Yet it is not just medicine that provokes ethical work and new political forms. The environment is a key site for life politics that entails a multi-faceted discourse of obligations and entitlements, across fields and scales of engagement. Calculating Environments In line with neo-liberal logic, environmental discourse concerned with ameliorating climate change has increasingly focused upon the individual as an agent of self-monitoring, to both facilitate government agendas at a distance, and to “self-fashion” in the mode of the autonomous subject, securing against external risks (Ong 501). Climate change is commonly represented as such a risk, to both human and non-human life. A recent letter published by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in two leading British medical journals, named climate change as the “biggest global health threat of the twenty-first century” (Morton). As I have argued elsewhere (Potter), security is central to dominant cultures of environmental governance in the West; these cultures tie sustainability goals to various and interrelated regimes of monitoring which attach to concepts of what Clark and Stevenson call “the good ecological citizen” (238). Citizenship is thus practiced through strategies of governmentality which call on individuals to invest not just in their own well-being, but in the broader project of life. Calculation is a primary technique through which modern environmental governance is enacted; calculative strategies are seen to mediate risk, according to Foucault, and consequently to “assure living” (Elden 575). Rationalised schemes for self-monitoring are proliferating under climate change and the project of environmentalism more broadly, something which critics of neo-liberalism have identified as symptomatic of the privatisation of politics that liberal governmentality has fostered. As we have seen in Australia, an evolving policy emphasis on individual practices and the domestic sphere as crucial sites of environmental action – for instance, the introduction of domestic water restrictions, and the phasing out of energy-inefficient light bulbs in the home—provides a leading discourse of ethico-political responsibility. The rise of carbon dioxide counting is symptomatic of this culture, and indicates the distributed fields of life management in contemporary governmentality. Carbon dioxide, as the CPE is keen to point out, is crucial to life, but it is also—in too large an amount—a force of destruction. Its management, in vitalist terms, is thus established as an effort to protect life in the face of death. The concept of “carbon footprinting” has been promoted by governments, NGOs, industry and individuals as a way of securing this goal, and a host of calculative techniques and strategies are employed to this end, across a spectrum of activities and contexts all framed in the interests of life. The footprinting measure seeks to secure living via self-policed limits, which also—in classic biopolitical form—shift previously private practices into a public realm of count-ability and accountability. The carbon footprint, like its associates the ecological footprint and the water footprint, has developed as a multi-faceted tool of citizenship beyond the traditional boundaries of the state. Suggesting an ecological conception of territory and of our relationships and responsibilities to this, the footprint, as a measure of resource use and emissions relative to the Earth’s capacities to absorb these, calculates and visualises the “specific qualities” (Elden 575) that, in a spatialised understanding of security, constitute and define this territory. The carbon footprint’s relatively simple remit of measuring carbon emissions per unit of assessment—be that the individual, the corporation, or the nation—belies the ways in which life is formatted and produced through its calculations. A tangled set of devices, practices and discourses is employed to make carbon and thus life calculable and manageable. Treading Lightly The old environmental adage to “tread lightly upon the Earth” has been literalised in the metaphor of the footprint, which attempts both to symbolise environmental practice and to directly translate data in order to meaningfully communicate necessary boundaries for our living. The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2008 exemplifies the growing popularity of the footprint as a political and poetic hook: speaking in terms of our “ecological overshoot,” and the move from “ecological credit to ecological deficit”, the report urges an attendance to our “global footprint” which “now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30 per cent” (1). Angela Crombie’s A Lighter Footprint, an instruction manual for sustainable living, is one of a host of media through which individuals are educated in modes of footprint calculation and management. She presents a range of techniques, including carbon offsetting, shifting to sustainable modes of transport, eating and buying differently, recycling and conserving water, to mediate our carbon dioxide output, and to “show […] politicians how easy it is” (13). Governments however, need no persuading from citizens that carbon calculation is an exercise to be harnessed. As governments around the world move (slowly) to address climate change, policies that instrumentalise carbon dioxide emission and reduction via an auditing of credits and deficits have come to the fore—for example, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the Chicago Climate Exchange. In Australia, we have the currently-under-debate Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a part of which is the Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (AETS) that will introduce a system of “carbon credits” and trading in a market-based model of supply and demand. This initiative will put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, and cap the amount of emissions any one polluter can produce without purchasing further credits. In readiness for the scheme, business initiatives are forming to take advantage of this new carbon market. Industries in carbon auditing and off-setting services are consolidating; hectares of trees, already active in the carbon sequestration market, are being cultivated as “carbon sinks” and key sites of compliance for polluters under the AETS. Governments are also planning to turn their tracts of forested public land into carbon credits worth billions of dollars (Arup 7). The attachment of emission measures to goods and services requires a range of calculative experts, and the implementation of new marketing and branding strategies, aimed at conveying the carbon “health” of a product. The introduction of “food mile” labelling (the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in the transportation of the food from source to consumer) in certain supermarkets in the United Kingdom is an example of this. Carbon risk analysis and management programs are being introduced across businesses in readiness for the forthcoming “carbon economy”. As one flyer selling “a suite of carbon related services” explains, “early action will give you the edge in understanding and mitigating the risks, and puts you in a prime position to capitalise on the rewards” (MGI Business Solutions Worldwide). In addition, lobby groups are working to ensure exclusions from or the free allocation of permits within the proposed AETS, with degrees of compulsion applied to different industries – the Federal Government, for instance, will provide a $3.9 billion compensation package for the electric power sector when the AETS commences, to enable their “adjustment” to this carbon regime. Performing Life Noortje Mares provides a further means of thinking through the politics of life in the context of climate change by complicating the distinction between public and private interest. Her study of “green living experiments” describes the rise of carbon calculation in the home in recent years, and the implementation of technologies such as the smart electricity meter that provides a constantly updating display of data relating to amounts and cost of energy consumed and the carbon dioxide emitted in the routines of domestic life. Her research tracks the entry of these personal calculative regimes into public life via internet forums such as blogs, where individuals notate or discuss their experiences of pursing low-carbon lifestyles. On the one hand, these calculative practices of living and their public representation can be read as evidencing the pervasive neo-liberal governmentality at work in contemporary environmental practice, where individuals are encouraged to scrupulously monitor their domestic cultures. The rise of auditing as a technology of self, and more broadly as a technique of public accountability, has come under fire for its “immunity-granting role” (Charkiewicz 79), where internal audits become substituted for external compliance and regulation. Mares challenges this reading, however, by demonstrating the ways in which green living experiments “transform everyday material practices into practices of public involvement” that (118) don’t resolve or pin down relations between the individual, the non-human environment, and the social, or reveal a mappable flow of actions and effects between the public realm and the home. The empirical modes of publicity that these individuals employ, “the careful recording of measurements and the reliable descriptions of sensory observation, so as to enable ‘virtual witnessing’ by wider audiences”, open up to much more complex understandings than one of calculative self-discipline at work. As “instrument[s] of public involvement” (120), the experiments that Mares describe locate the politics of life in the embodied socio-material entanglements of the domestic sphere, in arrangements of humans and non-human technologies. Such arrangements, she suggests, are ontologically productive in that they introduce “not only new knowledge, but also new entities […] to society” (119), and as such these experiments and the modes of calculation they employ become active in the composition of reality. Recent work in economic sociology and cultural studies has similarly contended that calculation, far from either a naturalised or thoroughly abstract process, relies upon a host of devices, relations, and techniques: that is, as Gay Hawkins explains, calculative processes “have to be enacted” (108). Environmental governmentality in the service of securing life is a networked practice that draws in a host of actors, not a top-down imposition. The institution of carbon economies and carbon emissions as a new register of public accountability, brings alternative ways to calculate the world into being, and consequently re-calibrates life as it emerges from these heterogeneous arrangements. All That Gathers Latour writes that we come to know a matter of concern by all the things that gather around it (Latour). This includes the human, as well as the non-human actors, policies, practices and technologies that are put to work in the making of our realities. Climate change is routinely represented as a threat to life, with predicted (and occurring) species extinction, growing numbers of climate change refugees, dispossessed from uninhabitable lands, and the rise of diseases and extreme weather scenarios that put human life in peril. There is no doubt, of course, that climate change does mean death for some: indeed, there are thanopolitical overtones in inequitable relations between the fall-out of impacts from major polluting nations on poorer countries, or those much more susceptible to rising sea levels. Biosocial equity, as Bull points out, is a “matter of being equally alive and equally dead” (2). Yet in the biopolitical project of assuring living, life is burgeoning around the problem of climate change. The critique of neo-liberalism as a blanketing system that subjects all aspects of life to market logic, and in which the cynical techniques of industry seek to appropriate ethico-political stances for their own material ends, are insufficient responses to what is actually unfolding in the messy terrain of climate change and its biopolitics. What this paper has attempted to show is that there is no particular purchase on life that can be had by any one actor who gathers around this concern. Varying interests, ambitions, and intentions, without moral hierarchy, stake their claim in life as a constantly constituting site in which they participate, and from this perspective, the ways in which we understand life to be both produced and managed expand. This is to refuse either an opposition or a conflation between the market and nature, or the market and life. It is also to argue that we cannot essentialise human-ness in the climate change debate. For while human relations with animals, plants and weathers may make us what we are, so too do our relations with (in a much less romantic view) non-human things, technologies, schemes, and even markets—from carbon auditing services, to the label on a tin on the supermarket shelf. As these intersect and entangle, the project of life, in the new politics of climate change, is far from straightforward. References An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Village Roadshow, 2006. Arup, Tom. “Victoria Makes Enormous Carbon Stocktake in Bid for Offset Billions.” The Age 24 Sep. 2009: 7. Bratich, Jack Z., Jeremy Packer, and Cameron McCarthy. “Governing the Present.” Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality. Ed. Bratich, Packer and McCarthy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 3-21. Bull, Malcolm. “Globalization and Biopolitics.” New Left Review 45 (2007): 12 May 2009 . < http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2675 >. Charkiewicz, Ewa. “Corporations, the UN and Neo-liberal Bio-politics.” Development 48.1 (2005): 75-83. Clark, Nigel, and Nick Stevenson. “Care in a Time of Catastrophe: Citizenship, Community and the Ecological Imagination.” Journal of Human Rights 2.2 (2003): 235-246. Crombie, Angela. A Lighter Footprint: A Practical Guide to Minimising Your Impact on the Planet. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe, 2007. Di Muzio, Tim. “Governing Global Slums: The Biopolitics of Target 11.” Global Governance. 14.3 (2008): 305-326. Elden, Stuart. “Governmentality, Calculation and Territory.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (2007): 562-580. Hawkins, Gay. The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004): 225-248. Mares, Noortje. “Testing Powers of Engagement: Green Living Experiments, the Ontological Turn and the Undoability and Involvement.” European Journal of Social Theory 12.1 (2009): 117-133. MGI Business Solutions Worldwide. “Carbon News.” Adelaide. 2 Aug. 2009. Ong, Aihwa. “Mutations in Citizenship.” Theory, Culture and Society 23.2-3 (2006): 499-505. Potter, Emily. “Footprints in the Mallee: Climate Change, Sustaining Communities, and the Nature of Place.” Landscapes and Learning: Place Studies in a Global World. Ed. Margaret Somerville, Kerith Power and Phoenix de Carteret. Sense Publishers. Forthcoming. Rabinow, Paul, and Nikolas Rose. “Biopower Today.” Biosocieties 1 (2006): 195-217. Rose, Nikolas. “The Politics of Life Itself.” Theory, Culture and Society 18.6 (2001): 1-30. World Wildlife Fund. Living Planet Report 2008. Switzerland, 2008.

Abstract:

Introduction Within wellness circles, there has been growing concern over an increasing focus on Alternative Right (or Alt-right) conspiracy (see Aubry; Bloom and Moskalenko). Greene, referring to a definition provided by the Anti-Defamation League, defines the Alt-right as a loose political network characterised by its rejection of mainstream conservatism, embrace of white nationalism, and use of online platforms (33). The “wellness revolution”, on the other hand, which marked a split from the health care sector in which “thought leaders” replaced medical experts as authorities on health (Pilzer, qtd. in Kickbusch and Payne 275), combines New Age practices with ideological movements that emphasise the “interdependence of body, mind and spirit” (Voigt and Laing 32). It has been noted that there is overlap between the circulation of conspiracy theory and New Age mysticism (see Ward and Voas; Parmigiani). Influencers following the Paleo diet, or Palaeolithic diet, such as Australian celebrity chef and Paleo diet guru Pete Evans, have also come under fire for sharing conspiracy theories and pseudoscience (see Brennan). Johnson notes that the origins of the Paleo diet can be traced back to 1975, with the publication of Dr Walter Voegtlin’s book The Stone Age Diet. This text, however, has been largely disavowed by Paleo leaders due to Voegtlin’s “white supremacist, eugenicist, and generally unpalatable politics”. Nevertheless, it is interesting to consider how white nationalism and conspiracy theory may overlap within the wellness space. A specific example occurred in 2020, when Pete Evans shared an Alt-right conspiracy meme to his Facebook account. The ‘butterfly-caterpillar meme’ contained the image of a black sun, a symbol equated with the swastika (Goodrick-Clarke 3). Though Evans later commented that the sharing of the hate symbol was unintentional, and that he misunderstood the symbol, this case raised questions about the ability of wellness influencers to amplify white nationalist messaging. This essay is concerned with the question: what makes the wellness industry a target for the spreading of white nationalist ideas? It argues that the wellness industry and far-right ideology possess a pre-occupation with bodily purity which makes it more likely that white nationalist material carrying this message will be spread via wellness networks. Through a critical examination of the media surrounding Evans’s sharing of the butterfly-caterpillar meme, this case study will examine the ideological aspects of the Paleo diet and how they appeal to a white nationalist agenda. Focussing on the Australian context, this essay will theorise the spreadability of memes in relation to white nationalist symbolism. It contends that the Paleo diet positions foods that are not organic as impure, and holds a preference for positive messaging. Alt-right propaganda packaged in a positive and New Age frame poses a danger in that it can operate as a kind of contagion for high-profile networks, exponentially increasing its spreadability. This is of particular concern when it is considered that diet can have an impact on people’s actions outside of the online space: it impacts what people consume and do with their bodies, as evidenced by calls for eating disorders created by algorithmic repetition to be considered a ‘cyber-pathy’. This creates the conditions for the wellness industry to be targeted using memes as recruitment material for white nationalist groups. The Paleo Diet and the Sharing of a Neo-Nazi Meme Pete Evans is a famous Australian TV Chef from the hit series My Kitchen Rules, a show that ran from 2010-2020. The show followed pairs from different households as they cooked for Evans and his co-host Manu Feildel. During the show’s run, Evans also became known for spruiking the Paleo diet, producing several cookbooks and a documentary on the topic. According to Catie Gressier, who conducted a study of Paleo dieters in Melbourne, Paleo’s aim is “to eat only those foods available prior to the agricultural revolution: meat, fish, vegetables, nuts, seeds and a small amount of fruit” and that this framed as a more “authentic” diet (3). This is seen as an ideological diet as opposed to others which may consist of rules or eating restrictions. The Paleo diet stresses “real foods” or “organic foods as close to their real state as possible” (Ramachandran et al.). Studies find that the paleo diet can be very nutritious (Cambeses-Franco et al. 2021). However, it is important to note that the presence of multiple influencers and thought leaders in the field means that there can be several variations in the diet. This article will limit its examination to that of the diet promoted by Evans. A common rationale is that the human body is incompatible with certain mass-produced foods (like grains, pulses, and dairy products, sugar, salt, and modification practices (like food processing), and that these are the cause of many modern conditions (Cambeses-Franco et al. 2021). While growing concerns over unnatural additives in foods are warranted, it can be observed that in Evans’s case, the promotion of the Paleo diet increasingly blurred the line between pseudoscience and conspiracy. In his Paleo diet book for toddlers, Evans emphasised the importance of the ideological diet and suggested that parents feed their toddlers bone broth instead of breast milk, prompting a federal investigation by the health department (Brennan). This escalated in 2020 during the global pandemic. In January, Evans promoted the work of a prominent anti-vaccine advocate (Molloy). In April, his Biocharger device, which he claimed could cure coronavirus, earned him a hefty fine from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (White). In November, several months after My Kitchen Rules was cancelled, Evans posted an Alt-right political cartoon with the image of a black sun, a symbol equated with the swastika (Goodrick-Clarke 3), to his Facebook account (Gillespie). In later news reports, it was also pointed out that the black sun symbol was emblazoned on the backpack of the Christchurch shooter (see Sutton and Molloy) who had targeted two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 people and injuring 40. Initially, when a user on Facebook pointed out that the meme contained a black sun, Evans responded “I was waiting for someone to see that” (Evans, qtd. in Gillespie). Evans eventually recanted the image, writing: sincere apologies to anyone who misinterpreted a previous post of a caterpillar and a butterfly having a chat over a drink and perceived that I was promoting hatred. I look forward to studying every symbol that have ever existed and research them thoroughly before posting. Hopefully this symbol ❤️ resonates deeply into the hearts of ALL! (Evans, qtd. in Gillespie). The post was later deleted. In December of 2020, Evans’s Facebook page of around 1.5 million followers was removed due to its sharing of conspiracy theories and misinformation about the coronavirus (Gillespie). However, it should be noted that the sharing of the caterpillar-butterfly meme was different from the previous instances of conspiracy sharing, in that Evans stated that it was unintentional, and it included imagery associated with neo-Nazi ideology (the black sun). Evans’s response implies that, while the values of the Paleo diet are framed in terms of positivity, the symbols in the butterfly-caterpillar meme are associated with “promoting hatred”. In this way, Evans frames racism as merely and simplistically an act of hatred, rather than engaging in the ways in which it reinforces a racial hierarchy and racially motivated violence. According to Hartzell (10), white nationalists tend to position themselves as superior to other races and see themselves as protectors of the “white race”. “White” in this context is of European descent (Geary, Schofield and Sutton). There are conspiracy theories associated with this belief, one of which is that their race is under threat of extinction because of immigration from ‘undesirable’ countries of origin. This can also be observed in the Alt-right, which is a white nationalist movement that was created and organised online. According to Berger, this movement “seeks to unify the activities of several different extremist movements or ideologies”. This is characterised by anti-immigrant sentiment, conspiracy theories, and support for former US President Donald Trump. It can be argued, in this case, that the symbol links to a larger conspiracy theory in which whiteness must be defended against some perceived threat. The meme implies that there is an ‘us’ versus ‘them’, or ‘good’ versus ‘evil’, and that some people are ‘in the know’ while others are not. Spreadable Memes An important aspect of this case study is that this instance of far-right recruitment used the form of a meme. Memes are highly spreadable, and they have very complex mechanisms for disseminating ideas and ideology. This can have a dramatic impact if that ideology is a harmful one, such a white supremacist symbol. While the digital meme, an image with a small amount of text, is common today, Richard Dawkins originally used the term meme to describe the ways in which units of culture can be spread from person to person (qtd. in Shifman 9). These can be anything from the lyrics of a song to a political idea. Jeff Hemsley and Robert Mason (qtd. in Shifman) see virality as a “process wherein a message is actively forwarded from one person to other, within and between multiple weakly linked personal networks, resulting in a rapid increase in the number of people who are exposed to the message” (55). This also links to Jenkins, Ford, and Green’s notions of spreadability (3-11), a natural selection process by which media content continues to exist through networked sharing, or disappears once it stops being shared. Evans’s response indicates that he merely shared the image. Despite the black sun imagery, a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat is clearly present. A political presence, and one that is associated with white nationalism, is present despite Evans’s attempts to frame the meme in the language of innocence and positivity. This is not to say Evans is extremist or supports a white nationalist agenda. However, in much the same way that sharing of imagery may not necessarily indicate agreement with its ideological messaging, this framing creates a way in which wellness influencers may avoid criticism (Ma 1). Furthermore, the act of sharing the meme, regardless of intention, amplifies its message exponentially. The Paleo Diet, the Far Right and Purity This overlap between wellness and white nationalist ideology is not new. In Jules Evans’s exploration of why QAnon is popular with New Age and far-right followers, she points to the fact that many Nazi leaders – Hitler, Hess, Himmler – “were into alternative medicine, organic and vegetarian diets, homeopathy, anti-vaxxing, and natural healing”. Similarly, Bernhard Forchtner and Ana Tominc argue that a natural diet which focussed on food purity was favoured by the Nazis (421). In their examination of the German neo-Nazi YouTube channel Balaclava Küche they argue add that “present-day extreme right views on environment and diet are often close to positions found in contemporary Green movements and foodie magazines” (422). Like neo-Nazi preoccupations with food, the Paleo diet’s ideology has its basis in the concept of purity. Gressier found that the Paleo diet contains an “embedded moralism” that “filters into constructions of food as either pure or polluting” (1). This is supported by Ramachandran et al.’s study, which found that the diet “promoted ‘real food’ – or the shift to consuming organic whole foods that are as close to their natural state as possible, with an avoidance of processed foods”. This framing of the food as real creates a binary – if one is real, the other must not be. Another example can be seen in Pete Evans’s Webpage, which lists about 33 Paleo recipes. The Butter Chicken recipe states: the paleo way of life is not meant to be restrictive, as you can see from this lovely butter chicken recipe. All the nasties have been replaced with good-quality ingredients that make it as good, if not better, than the original. I prefer chicken thighs for their superior flavour and tenderness. The term “nasties” here can be seen to create a dichotomy between real and fake, the west and the east. We see these foods are associated with impurity, the foods that are not “real foods” are positioned as a threat. It can be seen as an orientalist approach, othering those not associated with the west. As can be observed in this Butter Chicken recipe that is “getting rid of the nasties”, it appropriates and ‘sanitises’ ingredients. In her article on the campaign to boycott Halal, Shakira Hussein points out that “ethnic food” presents as multiculturalism in the context of white chefs and homecooks, but the opposite is true if the roles are switched (91). Later in her essay “Halal Chops and Fascist Cupcakes”, she discusses the “weaponisation of food” and how specific white nationalist groups express disgust at the thought of consuming Muslim food. This ethnocentric framing of butter chicken projects a western superiority, replacing traditional ingredients with ‘familiar’ ingredients, making it more palatable to nationalistic tastes. Spreading Consumption I have established that the Paleo diet, with its emphasis on ‘real foods’, is deeply embedded with nationalist ideology. I have also discussed how this is highly spreadable in the form of a meme, particularly when it is framed in the language of positivity. Furthermore, I have argued that this is an attempt to escape criticism for promoting white nationalist values. I would like to turn now to how this spreadability through diet can have an impact on the physical actions of its followers through its digital communication. The Paleo diet, and how to go about following it as described by celebrity influencers, has an impact on what people do with their bodies. Hanganu-Bresch discusses the concept of orthorexia, a fixation with eating proper foods that operates as a cyber-pathy, a digitally propagated condition targeting media users. Like the ‘viral’ and ‘spreadable’ meme, this puritanical obsession with eating can also be considered both a spreadable condition and ideology. According to Hanganu-Bresch, orthorexia sees this diet as a way to overcome an illness or to improve general health, but this also begins to feel righteous and even holy or spiritual. This operates within the context of neoliberalism. Brice and Thorpe talk about women’s activewear worn in everyday settings, or ‘athleisure’, as a neoliberal uniform that says, ‘I’m taking control of my body and health’. To take this idea a step further, this uniform could be extended out into digital spaces as well in terms of what people post on their profiles and social media. This ideological aspect operates as not only a highly spreadable message, but one that is targeted at the overall health of its followers. It encourages not only the spreading of ideology, in this case, white nationalist ideology, but also the modification of food consumption. If this were then to be used as a vehicle to spread messages that encourage white nationalist ideology, it can be seen to be not only a kind of contagion but a powerful one at that. White nationalist iconography that is clearly associated with white supremacist propaganda has the potential to spread extremism. However, neoliberal principles of discipline and bodywork operate through “messages of empowerment, choice, and self-care” (Lavrence and Lozanski, qtd. in Brice and Thorpe). While racist extremism does not necessarily equate to neoliberal and ethnocentric values, a frame of growth, purity, and positivity create an overlap that allow extremist messaging to spread more easily through these networks. Conclusion The case of Pete Evans’s sharing of the butterfly-caterpillar meme exemplifies a concerning overlap between white nationalist discourse and wellness. Ideologically based diets that emphasise real foods, such as the Paleo diet, have a preoccupation with purity and consumption that appeals to white nationalism. They also share a tolerance for the promotion of conspiracy theory and tendency to create an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy. Noting these points can provide insight into a potential targeting of the wellness industry to spread racist ideology. As research into spreadability shows, memes are extremely shareable, even if the user does not grasp the meaning behind the symbolism. This article has also extended the idea of the cyberpathy further, noting a weaponisation of the properties of the meme, for the purposes of radicalisation, and how these are accelerated by celebrity influence. This is more potent within the wellness industry when the message is packaged as a form of growth and positivity, which serve to deflect accusations of racism. Furthermore, when diet is combined with white nationalist ideology, it may operate like a contagion, creating the conditions for racism. Those exposed may not have the intention of sharing or spreading racist ideology, but its amplification contributes to the promotion of a racist agenda nevertheless. As such, further investigation into the far-right infiltration of the wellness industry would be beneficial as it could provide more insight into how wellness groups are targeted. Acknowledgements A previous version of this article was presented with Dr Shakira Hussein and Scheherazade Bloul at the Just Food Conference at New York University in June 2021. This article would not have been possible without their input and advice. Dr Shakira Hussein can be contacted at shussein@unimelb.edu.au and Scheherazade Bloul can be contacted at scherrybloul@gmail.com. References Aubry, Sophie. “‘Playing with Fire’: The Curious Marriage of Qanon and Wellness.” Sydney Morning Herald 27 Sep. 2020. 29 July 2020 <https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/playing-with-fire-the- curious-marriage-of-qanon-and-wellness-20200924-p55yu7.html>. Berger, J.M. “Trump Is the Glue That Binds the Far Right.” The Atlantic 29 Oct. 2018. 20 July 2021 <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/trump-alt-right-twitter/574219/>. Bloom, Mia, and Sophia Moskalenko. Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon. Stanford University Press, 2021. Brennan, Imogen. “Pete Evans’ Co-Authored Paleo Diet Cookbook for Babies under Investigation.” ABC News 12 Mar. 2015. 13 Nov. 2021 <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-12/paleo-diet-cookbook-for-babies-under-investigation-pete-evans/6309452>. Brice, Julie, and Holly Thorpe. “Chapter 1: Activewear: The Uniform of the Neoliberal Female Citizen.” Sportswomen’s Apparel around the World: Uniformly Dressed (New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures). Ed. Linda K. Fuller. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 19-35. Cambeses-Franco, Cristina, Sara González-García, Gumersindo Feijoo, and María Teresa Moreira. “Is the Paleo Diet Safe for Health and the Environment?” Science of the Total Environment 781 (2021). <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972101785X>. Evans, Pete. “Butter Chicken.” Peteevans.com. 8 Mar. 2022 <https://peteevans.com/recipes/butter-chicken/>. 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Abstract:

As a genre, science fiction deals with possible futures, imagining places and technologies that typically do not exist in audiences’ own lives. Science fiction film takes this directive a step further by creating visual representations of these futures and possibilities, presenting audiences with imagined ideas of what new technologies or unfamiliar places might look like. Thus, although any science fiction text can describe sociocultural and technological futures, science fiction film goes a step further by providing images that viewers do not have to envision for themselves. This difference can enable science fiction films to deliver even more incisive stories and commentaries on futuristic technologies as “sociotechnical assemblages” (Gillespie 18) – that is, as machines whose possibilities stem from humans’ interactions with them as much as from the technologies themselves.Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra maintain that today’s society is already interested in a real-world version of sociotechnologies: they call this interest the “prosthetic impulse” (4). For Smith and Morra, the prosthetic impulse can denote either “ways that the body and technology come into contact with one another” (4) or else any exploration of boundaries between technoculture and “the body, its histories, and its mutability” (6). However, Smith and Morra also warn that the prosthetic impulse often creates unreasonable expectations of what technology can accomplish: a prosthetic can “assume an epic status that is out of proportion with its abilities to fulfill our ambitions for it” (Smith and Morra 2), and the drive to “enhance” human bodies’ capabilities can signify beliefs that abled bodies are the standard, desirable norm (S. Smith).Science fiction films in turn often pick up on real-world ideas such as Smith and Morra’s prosthetic impulse as new ways of visualizing possible futures. Knowledgeable fans could undoubtedly list several examples of prosthetics in favorite sci-fi movies, including those donned by Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker, Star Trek’s Borg collective, Mad Max: Fury Road’s Imperator Furiosa, and many more. However, these films can also heighten the prosthetic’s immoderately “epic status” (Smith and Morra 2) and result in “our fantasies for technological possibility [being] played out across depictions of impairment” (Hung par. 10). In science fiction film, then, the prosthetic impulse can strongly reinforce problematic assumptions about what human beings “need” to have added, augmented, or replaced in order to function according to subjective norms.Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence, though, expands the implications of the prosthetic impulse even further by broadening the types of bodies, losses, and functions that we imagine prosthetics can address. Set in a dystopian future where human-driven climate change has decimated the environment, world governments have instituted mandatory birth control, and socioeconomic stratification has skyrocketed, A.I. Artificial Intelligence speaks directly to Vivian Carol Sobchack’s 2006 concern that “theoretical use of the prosthetic metaphor tends to transfer agency [from] human actors to human artifacts” (23), though it does so in a novel way.The film’s human characters, or “human actors” to use Sobchack’s term, expend their creativity and resources not to address the issues of environmental catastrophe, starvation, and class warfare that humans themselves have created: instead, they turn to manufacturing advanced robots, or “mechas”, that are literally “human artifacts” (Sobchack 23) created to help humanity avoid the debilitating consequences of its own destructive actions. As a result, the film’s mecha characters, seen most clearly in the “child-substitute mecha” David and the mecha prostitute Gigolo Joe, are positioned as prosthetic humans intended to fill social roles and functions that human beings themselves are incapable of fully satisfying.The Prosthetic HumanEven though it offers a new angle to this concept, A.I. Artificial Intelligence is hardly the only science fiction film concerned with some configuration of the prosthetic impulse. In fact, several other science fiction films incorporate one of three other versions, each building up to more and more complex possibilities before we reach the prosthetic human as envisioned in A.I.The first – and arguably most common – treatment of the prosthetic impulse in science fiction film is found in the partial prosthetic, where technology is depicted as replacing or repairing one visible part of the perceptible bodily whole. Common versions of the partial prosthetic include replacements for limbs or even certain organs, with examples such as Luke Skywalker’s prosthetic hand in Star Wars, the techno-organic Borg collective in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Bucky Barnes’s metal arm in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and other Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films, and Furiosa’s metal arm in Mad Max: Fury Road. The partial prosthetic in science fiction film is the most analogous to real-world prosthetics, despite problematic conflations created by this comparison (S. Smith), and the partial prosthetic is also the one that Mailee Hung is describing when she maintains that in science fiction film “it is technological, or even technophilic, fantasy that is being explored rather than the spectrum of human ability” (par. 11).A second treatment of the prosthetic impulse in science fiction film is visible in the full-body prosthetic, which denotes a technology that completely encloses or envelops the human body. Anne McCaffrey offers an early example of this type with her “Ship Who Sang” series (1961–1969), where “brainships” are created when children with severe physical disabilities but above-average brains can be rescued from euthanasia by having their minds linked with spaceships. Thankfully, later science fiction narratives tend to avoid most of the eugenicist and ableist overtones plaguing McCaffrey’s work. Science fiction films also offer examples of full-body prosthetics that can be departed or disengaged from at will, and these prosthetics may be used to enhance an abled body rather than housing a disabled one. Examples of full-body prosthetics in science fiction film include the boxing robots of Real Steel (2011), the Jaegers of Pacific Rim (2013) and Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), the genetically-engineered alien bodies operated by remote human pilots in James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), and the police robot MOOSE in Chappie (2015), among others. In these cases, the full-body prosthetic is a technological entity that must be interfaced with by a human consciousness – and sometimes the whole human body – in order to perform some function that the human body alone cannot accomplish.A third way of depicting the prosthetic impulse in science fiction film can be found in what Victor Grech calls Pinocchio Syndrome, or a “reverse prosthetic impulse” (265). Here technological, non-human characters “desire to become human” (Grech 263) and often attempt to gain humanity in the form of a human body, “its histories, and its mutability” (Smith and Morra 6) that will replace their own mechanical components. Examples of this third type include Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994 television, 1994–2002 films) and NDR-113/Andrew of the novelette “Bicentennial Man” (1967), the novel Positronic Man (1992), and the film Bicentennial Man (1999). Data is an android, and Andrew is a service robot, who both explore what it would mean to “be” human and actively pursue different means of achieving humanness – Data through human emotions and NDR-113/Andrew through a fully human body.All three of these science fiction versions – the partial prosthetic, the full prosthetic, and the reverse prosthetic impulse or Pinocchio Syndrome – tend to reinforce Smith and Morra’s warning that the prosthetic, both as an aid and as a technology, can “assume an epic status that is out of proportion with its abilities to fulfill our ambitions for it” (2). Put differently, just because these technologies exist within the films’ storyworlds does not mean that they can fix the characters’ or even the worlds’ problems, and the plots of many science fiction films actually stem from these assumptions.Of these three versions, Grech’s “reverse prosthetic impulse” (265) might initially seem the most applicable to A.I. Artificial Intelligence, particularly because most of the film follows David’s quest to find the Blue Fairy of the Pinocchio tale and petition her to make him “a real boy” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence). However, even Grech’s term does not fully cover what Spielberg’s film is attempting through its characters and its setting. Unlike robot characters who embody Grech’s reverse prosthetic impulse, David is not attempting to “become” human: instead, he articulates his struggle as the desire to “become real”, which prioritizes not humanness via a human body but instead David’s self-perceived ability to better fulfill a particular role within a nuclear family. Moreover, unlike the ways in which Data and NDR-113/Andrew fulfill primarily career-adjacent roles in their respective storyworlds – Data as a ship’s officer, NDR-113/Andrew initially as a caretaker and butler – A.I. Artificial Intelligence depicts a world in which mechas are both an “essential” form of labor in a decimated global economy, but can also be constructed to fill specifically social roles such as child or lover. Where robots like Data and NDR-113/Andrew enact a reverse prosthetic impulse in their yearning to “become” human (Grech 263), thus treating humanness and the human body as prosthetics to technology, David as a “child-substitute mecha” and Gigolo Joe as a “lover robot” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) are more like prosthetic humans.In A.I. Artificial Intelligence, humans attempt to replace, enhance, or augment specific interpersonal relationships using “human artifacts” that function like Sobchack’s “human actors” – only, better than those human actors ever could be. David is continually described as a child who demonstrates unconditional love but never loses his temper, catches ill, or grows older; Gigolo Joe describes mecha prostitutes like himself as “the guiltless pleasures of the lonely human being” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) and promises that they will never get pregnant, clingy, or tired of sex. Because David is a “toy boy” and Gigolo Joe is a “boy toy” (Sobchack 2) – both meant to enhance different types of human relationships without the inconveniences that a human actor would bring into the picture – A.I. Artificial Intelligence is also imagining sociocultural structures like the nuclear family or the heterosexual romantic relationship as the wholes, the social bodies, that the prosthetic human will supposedly repair. Here the prosthetic impulse becomes human beings’ drive to use reparative technologies to replace other human beings entirely, rather than simply parts or functions of the human body.David as Prosthetic HumanDavid’s role as a prosthetic human meant to repair or augment human relationships is made clear even before the character himself first appears onscreen. Instead, the film’s initial scene follows Professor Allen Hobby, the scientist who leads the team that later creates David, as he pitches a new mecha of “a qualitatively different order” to a skeptical audience (A.I. Artificial Intelligence). Hobby contends that his new robot will be capable of love “like a child for its parents” instead of the “sensuality simulators” already available (A.I. Artificial Intelligence), and moreover, that this kind of love “will be the key by which they [mechas] acquire a kind of sub-consciousness never before achieved. An inner world of metaphor, of intuition, of self-motivated reasoning, of dreams” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence). However, these plans are quickly challenged by a female scientist who poses a moral question: “Isn’t the real conundrum [whether] you can get a human to love them back?” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence). Hobby then cycles through three responses to his peer’s question, all of which point to the ways in which David is positioned as a prosthetic human.First, Hobby stresses that this new mecha will be “a perfect child caught in a freeze-frame: always loving, never ill, never changing” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence). His claim implies that families want or need a perfect child, and also that childhood perfection entails unwavering physical health, a permanently positive attitude, and unshakeable devotion to the parent(s) – all features that a real human child, as Sobchack’s “human actor”, cannot provide. Then too, Hobby’s claim that David is a child caught in “freeze-frame” perfection also hints that, as a form of technology, a prosthetic human supersedes many of a biological human’s limitations: just moments later, for example, the film’s audience learns that David’s adoptive family the Swintons have a young son, Martin, who has been placed in a cryogenic chamber until his terminal illness can be treated. For David, being “caught in a freeze-frame” of eternal and “perfect” childhood is beneficial to the Swintons, who will then experience his love and participation in their family unit forever – unlike Martin, who when similarly “frozen” cannot express or reciprocate familial affection at all, and so has been superseded by David.Hobby’s second response to the female scientist’s moral question is to assert that David, as a “child-substitute mecha” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence), will answer both a market need and a human one: because world governments issue a limited number of pregnancy licenses, Hobby argues, mechas like David may become many families’ only way of having children. Here, the family unit is imagined as incomplete without offspring, to the extent that there is a species-wide “human need” for children (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) even though global catastrophes such as climate change and mass starvation are unavoidable threats to real children’s future welfare. To this end, Hobby positions a “child-substitute mecha” like David as a prosthetic for the family unit, filling in for children without taking up any of the resources needed to raise an actual member of the population who will then face and inherit unfixable global issues. Moreover, toward the end of A.I. audiences also learn that David was created to look like Hobby’s own dead son, meaning that this entire line of child-substitute mechas has stemmed from Hobby’s own grief – and perhaps his need of a prosthetic to repair it.Finally, Hobby’s last response to his peer’s challenge is to ask: “In the beginning, didn’t God create Adam to love him?” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence). This rhetorical question reiterates how Hobby built David, reminding Hobby’s challenger – and by extension the film’s audience – that human actors are technology’s creators. The question’s rhetorical nature also implies that a creator’s status translates to their right to use such created technologies however they choose – regardless of the potential harm to either the prosthetic human or the "real" humans around them.Thus, although most of A.I. Artificial Intelligence does follow David’s journey to become “real”, it is important to realize that this quest actually stems from his being a prosthetic human rather than just Pinocchio Syndrome or a “reverse prosthetic impulse” (Grech 265). The very features of unconditional love, eternal innocence, and unchanging health that initially made David so attractive to the grieving Swintons are the same attributes that later lead to the family’s hostility when Martin does recover, and David is eventually abandoned in the woods – the prosthetic human child ousted for the “real” human child he was intended to replace. David’s longing to become “a real boy” so that Monica Swinton will return his love and welcome him home stems from his realization that he was always just a “technological substitution” (Hung par. 9) for Martin, and because of this, David’s desire to “become real” is better understood as him seeking to become a true part of the whole nuclear family instead of remaining a replacement or attachment to it. Rather than just “desire to become human” (Grech 263), David seeks to move from being a “human artifact” to becoming a “human actor” (Sobchack 23).Gigolo Joe as Prosthetic HumanWhile Gigolo Joe also serves as a prosthetic human in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, he does so in different ways than David. As a “child-substitute mecha”, David was created for intentionally prosthetic ends: even though he “can never be anything more than an approximate substitute” (Rosenbaum 74), he was still made specifically to repair or complete family units like the Swintons, rendering them “whole” by taking the place of an unavailable human child. As a mecha prostitute, though, Gigolo Joe was not created with prosthetic ends in mind: he was made to augment or supplement sexual experiences on a temporary basis, not to replace a long-term human partner or to make a sexual or romantic relationship whole by his presence within it. Also in obvious contrast to David, Gigolo Joe addresses sexual appetite rather than a need for filial love, provides short-term pleasure instead of a long-term connection, and is never intended to be seen by the film’s human characters as a human man instead of a male-shaped mecha. These are crucial differences between the two mechas’ purposes, functions, and target audiences, and Sobchack sums up this disparity by describing David and Gigolo Joe as two different types of “love machines” that remain “[s]uspended between an ironic Kubrickian critique of technological man and his Spielbergian redemption” (12–13).However, these differences between David and Gigolo Joe also translate into their being different kinds of prosthetic human. Where David was created to be a prosthetic human in the context of a childless family, replacing a needed member in order to make that family whole, Gigolo Joe takes the initiative to position himself as a prosthetic human, substituting the technology of his mecha body for the various physiological and/or emotional shortcomings of absent human sexual partners. Then too, where David rejects and attempts to outstrip his status as a “technological substitution” (Hung par. 9) for a human being, Gigolo Joe seems to exult in his part as substitute for human being.Audiences are shown this difference immediately. Where David is introduced through descriptions by Hobby, the scientist who created him and knows exactly what he wants David to accomplish, Gigolo Joe is introduced in person, alongside a nervous young woman who has apparently solicited him for sex. This unnamed woman admits that she has never had sex with a mecha before, and Gigolo Joe quickly discovers bruises from physical abuse by a human partner. In implied contrast to this unseen human partner, Gigolo Joe remains quiet, respectful, and gentle as he navigates the young woman’s communication of her fears and desires: he also assures her first that “once you’ve had a lover robot, you’ll never want a real man again” and then that “you are a goddess ... [and] you deserve much better in your life. You deserve me” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence). Both implicitly and explicitly, then, Gigolo Joe promises to provide his client with sexual and pseudo-romantic fulfillment: Sobchack frames this appeal as Gigolo Joe's ability to "satisfy every female sexual need and desire (including the illusion of romance) without wearing out” (5). But Gigolo Joe can only accomplish all of this because he is a perceptible, self-aware substitution for a human man – and a substitution that does not replicate the intentions and behaviors of his clients' "real" human partners.Gigolo Joe returns frequently to this idea that substitution is positive. Later, for instance, he explains to several fascinated teenage boys that mecha prostitutes “are the guiltless pleasures of the lonely human being. You’re not going to get us pregnant or have us to supper with Mommy and Daddy” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence), emphasizing that humans do not need to fulfill any social obligations toward mechas precisely because they are not “real” lovers. Gigolo Joe also pitches mecha sex workers by reminding his listeners that “We work under you, we work on you, and we work for you. Man made us better at what we do than was ever humanly possible” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence), suggesting that a substitute sexual partner will offer technological advantages over their human counterparts.Through dialogues and exchanges such as these, Gigolo Joe positions himself as a prosthetic human, acknowledging that he and his sex worker peers were not really meant to “repair” or “complete” human relationships even as he also maintains that mechas do replace human partners in important ways, even if temporarily. However, Gigolo Joe also recognizes the realities of being a prosthetic human in ways that David seems incapable of. For instance, when one of his clients is murdered by her human partner for seeking a replacement lover, Gigolo Joe realizes immediately that the man won’t even be suspected while Gigolo Joe himself automatically takes the blame. Similarly, Gigolo Joe is the one who can tell David that Monica Swinton “loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them. But she does not love you. . . You were designed and built specific like the rest of us” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence). David rejects this warning, demonstrating that his creation as a prosthetic human has made him impervious to that same reality, but Gigolo Joe’s positioning himself as a prosthetic human has made him aware that being “designed and built specific” to meet humans’ needs does not negate the dangers that come along with a designed, perfected form of substitution.Prosthetic Humans and the End of HumanityThe ending of AI: Artificial Intelligence has baffled critics and audiences alike since its theatrical release. Are the alien-like Specialists real, or does David imagine these beings as a means of explaining away Hobby’s entire line of child-substitute mechas? Does David actually see Monica again, or is this the robotic equivalent of a comforting dream before he dies? Frances Flannery-Dailey outlines nine possible ways of understanding how the film ends before noting that its ambiguity and length often frustrate audiences, leaving them with a negative impression of the film.No matter which way we try to explain the ending of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, though, it is worth noting the presence of the Specialists, who claim that they are advanced beings that evolved from mechas following humanity’s extinction. Though Flannery-Daily correctly questions whether the Specialists actually exist or else are just dream-specters of David's “death”, their presence at the end of the film suggests at least the possibility of a distant future in which the prosthetic human has completely overtaken and supplanted the “real” humans that David so wanted to join. This potential ending, as well as David’s and Gigolo Joe’s poor treatment by "real" humans throughout the film, all demonstrate that the prosthetic humans in A.I. Artificial Intelligence suffer from more than the “epic status” that Smith and Morra assign to real-world prosthetics (2), or even the shortcomings visible in other versions of the prosthetic impulse as depicted in science fiction films. Instead, A.I. Artificial Intelligence becomes bleak when we realize that these prosthetic humans actually function very well, even when (wrongly) touted as miracle technologies (Smith and Morra 2), and that instead it is humans, their needs, and their visions that have fallen sadly short. Both David and Gigolo Joe do exactly what they were "designed and built specific” to do (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) and more, yet humanity has destroyed both them and itself by the end of the film regardless.ReferencesA.I. Artificial Intelligence. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2001. Flannery-Dailey, Frances. "Robot Heavens and Robot Dreams: Ultimate Reality in A.I. and Other Recent Films." Journal of Religion & Film 7.2 (2016). 1 July 2019 <https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol7/iss2/7>.Gillespie, Tarleton. Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.Grech, Victor. "The Pinocchio Syndrome and the Prosthetic Impulse." Intelligence Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds. Eds. Russel Blackford and Damien Broderick. Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. 263–278.Hung, Mailee. “We Are More than Our Machines.” Bitch Media (24 Aug. 2017). 2 July 2019 <https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/more-our-machines/aesthetics-and-prosthetics-science-fiction>.Rosenbaum, Jonathan. "A Matter of Life and Death: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Directed by Steven Spielberg)." Film Quarterly 65.3 (2012): 74-78.Smith, Susan. "‘Limbitless Solutions’: The Prosthetic Arm, Iron Man and the Science Fiction of Technoscience." Medical Humanities 42.4 (2016): 259–264.Smith, Marquard, and Joanne Morra. “Introduction.” The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future. Eds. Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. 1–15. Sobchack, Vivian. “A Leg to Stand On: Prosthetics, Metaphor, and Materiality.” The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future. Eds. Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006. 17–42.Sobchack, Vivian Carol. "Love Machines: Boy Toys, Toy Boys and the Oxymorons of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence." Science Fiction Film and Television 1.1 (2009): 1–13.