Previously, I wrote about an episode from Bill Nye’s new show, “Bill Nye Saves the World” that focused on overpopulation and eugenics. He continues pushing eugenics in another episode entitled “Designer Babies”. In this episode, he discusses the possibility of editing the genes of humans in order to have more desirable babies.
In this episode, Nye does a pretty good job of using scientific terms to mask the horrors that he is promoting.
“In the past, we had engineered our way out of awkward situations,” Nye claims. “aqueducts to get water to more people and building skyscrapers up for more people to be able to live in cities”. From there he starts talking about how we can use engineering to get out of the “awkward situation” of having children born with sicknesses and disabilities. The big issue he brings up is Invitro Fertilization (IVF).
Nye explains how many people who have trouble conceiving naturally turn to IVF and that in the IVF process, a doctor takes a human sperm and a human egg and combines them outside of the womb to form multiple “fertilized eggs”. Right from the start, he uses the term “fertilized egg” in reference to a human being in the earliest stage of development. Scientifically, there is no such thing as a “fertilized egg”. The moment the sperm unites with the egg, both parts cease to exist. In their place is a unique living and whole human being at it its earliest stage of development. Leading embryology textbooks confirm this, as well as scientists and even National Geographic. So, right off the bat, he uses terms that attempt to dehumanize innocent human beings.
“In some cases (of IVF) doctors have added a step. They take ‘fertilized eggs’ and let them divide a few times and then they take a cell sample and screen its genes. They can let would-be-parents know which of those ‘cell clusters’ is most likely to be free of certain genetic diseases, which could lead to healthier children.”
In that statement, he refers to human beings as “fertilized eggs” and “cell clusters”, both of which are dehumanizing terms. Throughout history, we see cases where the people in power used dehumanizing terms in order to eventually kill innocents. During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as “rats.” Hutus in Rwanda called Tutsis “cockroaches.” Slave owners throughout history considered slaves to be subhuman animals.
In an NPR interview with David Livingstone Smith, on his book, Less Than Human, Smith says that it is important to define and describe dehumanization because it’s what opens the door for cruelty and genocide.
“We all know, despite what we see in the movies, that it’s very difficult, psychologically, to kill another human being up close and in cold blood, or to inflict atrocities on them. So, when it does happen, it can be helpful to understand what it is that allows human beings to overcome the very deep and natural inhibitions they have against treating other people like game animals or vermin or dangerous predators.”
In the book, Smith writes, “Thinking sets the agenda for action, and thinking of humans as less than human paves the way for an atrocity. The Nazis were explicit about the status of their victims. They were Untermenschen — subhumans — and as such were excluded from the system of moral rights and obligations that bind humankind together. It’s wrong to kill a person, but permissible to exterminate a rat. To the Nazis, all the Jews, Gypsies and others were rats: dangerous, disease-carrying rats.”
That is precisely what Bill Nye and those who promote abortion do. They deny the scientific facts that the preborn are human beings, and instead think of them as “less than human” or simply not human at all. They ascribe false terms for them such as “fertilized eggs,” “clumps of cells,” or “cell clusters” in order to dehumanize them and exclude them from the system of moral rights and obligations that bind them to the rest of humanity. By calling these innocent human beings by these terms, it desensitizes people to the violence and horror of abortion.
Back to Mr. Nye.
“We can look at the genes before we re-implant the eggs and you can know, whether or not you have an undesirable ‘set of genes’ or a desirable ‘set of genes’.” The way Nye explains the IVF process is very misleading. Once again, by using terms such as “set of genes”, Nye dehumanizes the preborn child created in IVF. The “set of genes” he refers to is the embryo created after the sperm and egg are combined, which we know, is scientifically a unique living and whole human being at its earliest stages of development. To better understand the point that I am trying to make, let’s try replacing the dehumanizing words Nye uses with the words of what they actually are.
“We can look at the genes before we re-implant the eggs and you can know, whether or not you have an undesirable set of genes or a desirable set of genes.”
“We can look at the children before we re-implant the children and you can know, whether or not you have an undesirable child or a desirable child.”
Mr. Nye fancies himself as a “science guy,” yet when it comes to basic biology and human development, he seems to abandon science altogether to promote a political agenda.
As stated in my first article, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, eugenics was a popular idea held among the intellectual elite. Authors H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, world leaders such as Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt, as well as scientists like Francis Crick and Alexander Graham Bell were among those who supported eugenics. It was a widely accepted view in those times until World War II happened. As Francis Crick wrote in 1971,
“The main difficulty is that people have to start thinking out eugenics in a different way. The Nazis gave it a bad name and I think it is time something was done to make it respectable again.”
Just two years after he wrote that, something was done to make eugenics “respectable” again: elective abortion on demand was made legal in the United States for any reason, all nine months of pregnancy, up until the day of birth. Because of Roe vs Wade and Doe vs Bolton, the U.S. (along with North Korea, China, and Canada) is one of only four countries that allow abortion during all nine months. America’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, was founded by renowned eugenicist Margaret Sanger with the intention of eliminating the black race and others she determined to be “unfit” to be in society. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry has followed her vision by specifically targeting minorities and placing the majority of their facilities in minority neighborhoods.
A 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us that while black women make up only six percent of the U.S. population, they account for 35 percent of abortions reported. Planned Parenthood has even been caught accepting donations specifically for aborting black children.
It appears that Crick’s wish came true. Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, more and more people in academia, science, and politics have jumped onboard the eugenics train. But instead of calling it eugenics, they disguise it with terms like “reproductive health” and “overpopulation”.
It is in this current-day eugenics movement that we find Bill Nye, hiding behind a facade of “science” to promote desirable offspring and killing millions of innocent human beings.
The View Point 