So today in my Evolution class, we were talking about Eugenics. For those of you who live under a rock and have never heard of the Holocaust, or Hitler or anything like that, Eugenics is a pretty sad thing.
Taken from Wikipedia:
"Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually a human population.[2][3] The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance, and the theories of August Weismann.[4]"
So, as you can tell, this isn't really something to laugh about. I've heard a few different figures, but the US used to be a firm believer in forceful sterilizations and evolution through genetics. There were 30 states which had laws that enforced forceful sterilization, California being one of the worst. There even used to be a Eugenics Center at Coffman Union here at the U. (However, once the founder was found to have ties to Hitler, they got rid of it). Anyways, during our discussion, our professor decided to try to lighten the mood. We were looking at clips from a movie depicting the horrors of Eugenics and there was a man getting a vasectomy (forcefully). Our professor than said "That's a lot of doctors for a simple procedure like that. There's a vas deferens between medical technology then and now". Wait, what? Yeah, that's what he said. My professor likes to make awkward jokes like that. It took the class a few seconds to catch on to the joke. But in the end, everyone likes penis jokes.
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