Eugenics

When i first heard about Eugenics i thought what the heck is that? I bet there are a lot more people who are thinking the same thing right about now too. But after reading and researching about it a little, i found out that Eugenics pretty much means people should control what their kids will look like, all the way from the color of eyes to the color of their hair. Eugenic origins first started after the Civil War. America was pretty racist and anti- minority during that time, and Eugenics reflected on that.  It was a pretty crazy time for everyone. People started moving and losing jobs so one brilliant man proposed the survival of the fittest, but there was a problem with that and the problem was that the "rich were having a problem with reproduction, and the "poor" people were in a baby boom! So since the more wealthy people had the money to do things with that's where eugenics helped them out a lot.

      The word Eugenics was brought up by a man very into science, Francis Galton. In 1883, this is how they could take over genetics and control what kids looked like, kind of like what we now call segregation. This is where medicine came in and really impacted the study of Eugenics because they needed the different medicanes. This is also where pedigrees came in, so they could look at family history of people to help them have a better understanding  of things. 

     Eugenic's first major challenge was made in 1915 by Thomas Hurt Morgan. He showed Genetic mutation outside of inheritance involving the finding of birth of a fruit fly with white eyes coming from a family of red- eyed flies. He had said that this showed that major genetic changes occurred outside of inheritance and that the concept of eugenics based on genetic inheritance being severely flawed. Seeing the results of the fruit fly gave him an idea of what all this was about. 

      To this day, it is a horrible movement that has inflicted massive human rights violations of millions and millions of people. There are many things engaged in eugenicists involving violations of privacy, attacks on people's reputations, violations of the right to life, to found a family, to freedom from discrimination are all classified as violations of human right today. It is a thing hated by many people, but  then again there are people out there that like it. 

     In my opinion, i think that Eugenics is a very wrong thing. It's not the right thing at all in my eyes.  Let your offspring come out the way they are supposed to. God has people come out the way they are supposed to for a reason. I know people would like to choose the way that their kids come out, but i think they should come out naturally the way they're supposed to come out, not the way you choose for them to come out. 

Paper Tasting project

In this project, we got little pieces of paper that you taste and see if you taste anything. When i tried it it tasted really bitter and really gross. It's kind of a hard thing to explain? But i have to go home and the relatives that are living her close to me, have them taste it and then come back to school and fill out my pedigree chart on whether they tasted it or not. It's kind of a cool little experiment to see who all can taste it and who can't.

     I went to my family with these little paper tasting test strips to see who could taste them and there weren't many of us who could. Only me, my mom, and my sister could taste the weird taste on the paper.  When my sister tasted it she took it out of her mouth right away and said whatever it was that she tasted was gross. My brother it on his tongue and asked what it was that he was supposed to be tasting because he tasted nothing. My mom was in the shower at the time and i needed to go so i had her stick her tongue out and taste it. She definitely tasted it because she started gagging and asked me what it was. My grandma from my moms side taste nothing too. My grandma and grandpa from my dads side(not blood related)  tasted nothing also. So i guess not everyone tastes things the same as other people.

Genetics

      I really liked that we went over this stuff, because i like learning about genetics and things like that. It interests me, because those things really happen when you have a kid. It's really neat to think about what your child will look like when they are born depending on your looks, and when you meet the partner you want to be the other parent to your kid and what they look like. Doing all the activities we did like we did with the whole making the baby thing was pretty fun. To see what dominant and recessive traits your kid would get from you. DNA is the most important thing when it come to genetics, reproduction and all of the other things like that. Working on what we are now is also interesting, like learning what all of the pedigree charts mean is really cool. It's weird that one person in your family can have one trait and the other  person doesn't. Genetics has so much to do with everything. You can figure out how your offspring will be, and you can also see if you will be affected or if you may become a carrier of a certain disease.

This is a paper that we did to help us understand the concept of genetics. It was a pretty good way to teach us and for us to learn the way it works. 

Reproduction

Going over the whole period of time that we went over reproduction, i learned A LOT that i defiantly didn't know before. Reproduction is the biological process in which new life are produced from their parents. Reproduction is a feature known of all life with both animals and humans. The two main types of reproduction methods are grouped into two different types. Asexual and Sexual. Asexual reproduction is the process by which an organism makes a genetically very similar, or identical copy of itself without any genetic material from another person. Sexual reproduction is the biological progress in which organisms make descendants that have a combination of genetic material from two different members of the same species. Most animals and plants reproduce sexually. By reproducing sexually, you have different sets of genes for every trait, better known as an allele. Offspring get one allele for each trait from each one of the parents, which makes sure that the offspring will have a combination of the parents genes. A diploid is having two copies of every gene within one organism.

      In class we watched a movie type thing showing us a couple and their process of having a baby. It was very informing to me and i thought it was really cool i got to learn about the things i did. It usually happens to every single one of us, so it's nice to learn all these things so you can know what's happening when i does happen to you. Child birth can be a very rough thing to go through, but hearing from other people, it is also one of the most amazing things that an happen to you. Genetics have a lot to do with child birth too, because when the the sperm and egg get together and make the baby, the baby 23 of them moms and 23 of the dads chromosomes which makes up the DNA of the baby. It's actually kind of hard remembering the video and explaining it but i did learn a lot from it. 

In sickness and in health

In Sickness and in Health

Greg and Olga's Pedigree

1. No, they do not.
2. No, just because his mom has two siblings that have it doesn't mean he will.
3. No
4. 50% chance
5. 0% chance
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1. Not everyone can get it, it shows up less.
2.Consanguineous means being from the same kinship as another person. Being descended from the same ancestor as another person. It is pretty much a complicated word for incest.
3. Autosomal gives men and women the equal chance of getting something, but through out the pedigree, no women have factor VIII. It's all men.
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1. The gene that determines what sex a person will become.
2. Because he x chromosome has to come from the mom. They get the y from the dad.
3. She has to have Two copies.
4. (on pedigree)
5. There is a 25% chance that she can be a carrier. There is a 50% chance that she could pass it to her offspring. The males may be affected differently because only males in both families. Not really any women.
6. There is a 0% chance. He doesn't carry it, and he cannot pass it on to his children.