Posted on 11/08/2007 5:36:03 PM PST by Mobile Vulgus
No, those aren't the facts. Twins were separated because of financial problems among adoptive parents not so that the twins could reach some potential that their twin would not allow them to reach.
There are loads of studies of twins separately adopted, going back at least to the 1930s, showing that it was common practice.
It was a common practice because of financial considerations not because of the nonsense spewed by the idiot in the article or to satisfy the whims of researchers.
I had the same question reading this article. Click on the name of the twins (see article) - the rest of the story is there. Like the author of this article, I do not trust science alone without a system (faith, ethics, etc.) to keep it in check. But, there were many more players in this story:
The adoption agency had a policy of separating twins, and the agency was "in on" the study. Even the adoptive parents were aware their adopted daughters were being studied, though they didn't know the true nature of the study. The birth mother has no interest in meeting the twins. They probably would've been raised separately, even if the scientist hadn't taken advantage of the opportunity to study them. I wouldn't put him in the same category as Mengele.
Even script writers recognize the perils of science guided only by human intelligence and greed.
Like others you are missing the point. It is not unethical for scientists to study spearated twins, it is unethical for twins to be separated to conduct a scientific study.
“How does one explain the countless cases of people who believe in religion that have done equally or more horrible things?”
Mainly by debunking them.
Exactly right. The article I posted was not decrying separating twins for adoption. It was decrying it becoming an EXPERIMENT while doing it. The experiment was the bad thing, the fact that twins were separated wasn’t even focused on at all.
Thanks. I suspected something like that. When the story’s emotional plea gets ahead of the details, I’m always suspicious.
I agree, jwalsh07! It just seems that, in this case, they would've been separated, anyway. Here's information about the adoption agency from the other article:
"The twins found that he was willingly aided by the Louise Wise adoption agency that handled both their adoptions. Viola Bernard, a child psychologist and consultant to the agency, had firmly believed that twins should be raised separately to improve their psychological development, and that dressing and treating them the same retarded their minds. Separating twins at birth was ended in the state of New York in 1980, a year after the study ended."
That's why I think the adoption agency is to blame in this story. For the record, I don't think siblings should be separated, whether they're twins or not. I'm glad that old policy was ended.
Peter Neubauer, M.D. - Board Member. Peter Neubauer, M.D. is a renowned psychoanalyst with a private practice in New York. A native of Vienna, Austria, Dr. Neubauer received his undergraduate degree from the University of Vienna Medical School and his M.D. from the University of Bern Medical School in 1938. He has served numerous Board appointments including the Sigmund Freud Archives and the Sigmund Freud Gesellschaft. He is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association. Previously, Dr. Neubauer served as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New York University and as a Founding Member of the National Advisory Council for Clinical and Infant Programs at the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Neubauer has been recognized with numerous awards, most recently the Margaret Mahler Psychiatric Research Foundation Literature Award in May of 2003. He is author of over 150 chapters in psychoanalytic texts.
http://www.zukunftwissen.apa.at/fti-und-wissenschaft/special_volltext.html;jsessionid=azrqwkogPaZ_?level=0&meldung=CMS1185368977213&id=CMS1184159109446
Margaret Schonberger Mahler
Just nine months and 6 days after Gustav Schonberger and Eugenia Weiner-Schonberger were wed, they bore a daughter on May 10, in 1897. Margaret Mahler was born in the small western Hungarian town of Sopron close to Vienna............Eugenia dominated the household and was very unhappy with having a child at such a young age. Gustav became the primary care giver to Margaret.............. Four years after Margaret an expected child was born, Margaret had a younger sister named Suzanne that was adored by Eugenia. Margaret once overheard her mother say to Suzanne “I have brought you into this world, I suckle you, I love you, I adore you, I live only for you, you are my whole life.” Margaret’s heart being shattered, replied, “And I, I was born to my father.” Margaret later believed that the way her mother treated her was the reason she grew such an interest in pediatrics and psychoanalysis. One of the happiest moments of Margaret’s childhood was when Suzanne was two and put her cheek to a hot iron. Their mother was mortified and hysterical. She couldn’t believe her “pretty daughter” ruined her face............Growing up for Margaret was not a happy time, she had a very low self-esteem and was jealous of the praises that Suzanne received from their mother.
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/mahler.html
They are acting inconsistently with the tenets of religion and are condemned as hypocrites.
When 'science' is pursued in an amoral fashion, their are no consistent grounds for condemning such behaviour.
Cheers!
There is no morality outside of religion because there is no reason for any code of morality binding more than one person and if it only binds one person then it binds no one. It is not morality. It is self-interest only. For morality to be a norm for a population it must be perceived as emanating from a source outside and above that population. If it is the morality of omnipotent government then it is not morality because it is infinitely mutable and therefore essentially random. The great inhumanities that are perpetrated in he name of Religion are aberrations even when repeated over and over because at some point the moral norm is resurrected and the aberrations are recognized as just that, aberrations and IMmoral.
Capitalism was invented by the Jews in Europe in the Middle Ages and was only possible because of Jewish morality which permitted them to trust each other because the fact of being Jews gave them the knowledge that certain behaviour could be expected. If they had to rely on each man deciding his own morality it would never have happened. Trade would have remained primitive. The Christians were able to follow the Capitalist path the Jews opened up because they understood and believed in the same morality because it derived from the same ultimate source. It was promulgated by an outside source that was trusted itself, to wit, God. It is happening in Asia now. In Viet Nam the Catholics were the businessmen because Christians can trust other Christians who are not co-familial. The Buđhists saw the benefits and learned to follow suit, by adopting the Other-derived morality of the Christians and the country is developing fast. Korea, that business miracle of the modern Age brings it from that same Christian background which has been strong in that country for centuries.
Human beings can agree to norms of behavior if there is posited a superior promulgator and guardian of those standards, a standard against which each can measure others. Without that superior source no one can assume another’s morality. Again you would not have any basis for your own morality except that you are a part of a commonly religious society and others can assume something about your morality because they know that they subscribe to the same source. Anarchy does not work out. It is a great theory but must very quickly end in the strongest ruling by virtue of his strength. There is no real morality in paganism, real paganism, not the faux motherearthism of our modern “dissidents”. Because of that, pagans do not do trade very well. There is no superior guarantor that the standards are reliable. That is why the great Chinese corporations, huge as they are, are either family-only operations(among the overseas Chinese) or government/PLA corporations.
No one's much interested in facts when they get in the way of their righteous indignation.
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