Racist Englishmen Can Be Cured Using Drugs - Allegedly
QUOTE
The Pill That Cures ‘Racism’
Press reports about a pill that cures racism will
have no doubt fired the imagination of egalitarians across the Western world,
from the Kapital-thumping theologian burrowed in the catacombs of
university humanities departments to the orangutanaceous brick-throwing
Marxist of balaclava and combat boots.
It appears that Propranolol, a drug normally prescribed for heart disease, has the unexpected side effect of suppressing implicit racial attitudes. Tests showed that subjects on the pill exhibited lower levels of subconsciously cautious attitudes towards members of another race than subjects on a placebo.
According to the Press Association report,
Experimental psychologist Dr Sylvia Terbeck, from Oxford University, who led the study published in the journal Psychopharmacology, said: “Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias.
“Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality. Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest.”
Two groups of 18 participants took part in the study. Each volunteer was asked to undertake a “racial Implicit Association Test” (IAT) one to two hours after taking propranolol or the placebo.
The test involved categorising positive and negative words, and pictures of black and white individuals, on a computer screen. More than a third of the volunteers had a “negative” IAT score, meaning they were biased towards being non-racist at a subconscious level. This was not seen in any member of the placebo group.
Co-author Professor Julian Savulescu, from Oxford University’s Faculty of Philosophy, said: “Such research raises the tantalising possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis . . .”
A similar report appears in The Telegraph. A Google search for “heart disease drug combats racism” yielded 75 news reports.
Propranolol is a sympatholytic non-selective beta blocker, used to treat hypertension, angina pectoris, tachyarrhythmias, and myocardial infarction, among other conditions. Sympatholytics, however, are also used to treat or combat anxiety and panic, and this has lead to various off-label and investigational uses for Propranolol. For example, musicians and other performers often use it to prevent stage fright, and surgeons have taken it to reduce innate hand tremours during surgery.
Key to the research mentioned above is Propranolol’s ability to inhibit the actions of norepinephrine, a neurotrasmitter that enhances memory consolidation. Propranolol-based medication can act as a memory dampener that modifies behavioural response to past (traumatic) experiences.
The aspect of the study most curious and relevant to us, however, is the choice of subjects. In her description of her experiment, Sylvia Terbeck, who is listed as a graduate student in the Oxford Centre for the Study of Intergroup Conflict (part of Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology), states:
Healthy volunteers of white ethnic origin received a single oral dose of the β-adrenoceptor antagonist, propranolol, in a randomised, double-blind, parallel group, placebo-controlled, design. [my emphasis.]
Indeed. The subjects were White.
A number of questions now come to mind.
Firstly, why is a doctoral student in philosophy at Oxford University, conducting this type of psychopharmacological research?
I can understand the drug being investigated as potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, colorectal cancer recurrence, severe infantile hemangiomas, malaria, or hypermetabolism and muscle wasting in patients with severe burns.
But White racial ‘prejudice’?
The very existence of the study points to the a priori conclusion that a bias for caution among Whites faced with members of another race is a psychopathology—a disease that needs medicating.
The limited choice of subjects further points to the a priori conclusion that only Whites can be racist.
Why did the experiment not use racially diverse subjects?
And is this particular experiment to be followed by others testing for Propranolol’s effects on racial prejudice among members of other races?
Is Oxford University interested in racism among members of other races, or is the university only interested in White ‘racism’?
Sylvia Terbeck’s study goes somewhat beyond the sort of literary psychopathologising engaged upon by egalitarians when discussing White racial consciousness: it transfers a subjective ideological position into the laboratory, to be treated as serious experimental science.
Certainly intriguing are the questions that follow from this transference:
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Are we now to expect a future where ‘anti-racist’ drugs are introduced into our food or our water supply, or sold in pharmacies alongside multivitamins, in an effort to turn us White folk into docile multiracialists?
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Are Western governments interested in this type of research?
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Is other such research being conducted in other centres?
At this point it bears noting that Terbeck’s co-author, Professor Julian Savulescu, affiliated with the Uehiro Centre FOR Practical Ethics [ Founded by Eiji Uehiro(?) - Editor ] that funded Terbeck’s study, has some interesting ideas of his own.
As per a talk delivered at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney in 2009 (watch the video: part 1 and part 2), Savulescu’s thesis is that human biology and psychology are unfit for the kind of society that we live in and that, if we are to avert annihilation by our own design, we must alter our political institutions, severely curtail technological development, lower our standard of living, or genetically enhance ourselves. By altering our political institutions Savulescu means specifically reducing our commitment to liberalism, limiting privacy, engaging in surveillance, emphasising moral education, and adopting long-term strategies. By genetically enhancing ourselves Savulescu means specifically eugenics.
We can now see his interest and connection to Terbeck’s research project. His position regarding question number 1 above becomes clear when in the Q & A session following his presentation he is asked how we are genetically to modify our emotions. His reply:
The first way you can change the genetics of human beings is just by selecting between different natures, so once we understand the biological basis of psychopathy or the contribution of it—not to say that biology causes psychopathy, but—if you indentify individuals at risk of developing a psychopathic personality you will be able to select embryos that don’t have that disposition . . . So one way of modifying the emotions of future generations, or modifying moral behaviour, is to select out those characteristics that represent a threat to the survival of humanity. Further down the track you might be able to genetically alter those embryos or to provide drugs that change people’s behaviour.
Many of Savulescu’s ideas are fully compatible with those of his predecessors in the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. The above answer could have well come from a Lothrop Stoddard, particularly since he favours genetically engineering human embryos for higher IQ. And Savulescu’s remarks about the need to make humans less aggressive, made during his presentation, could have come from a David Starr Jordan. The difference is that, in an egalitarian cultural climate, the purpose of eugenics includes the creation of a Homo equalis.
Oswald Spengler saw Caesarism was a trait of declining mature civilisations. In turn, and following Spengler, Francis Parker Yockey stipulated a resurgence of authority in what he aptly termed the ‘Age of Absolute Politics’. Yockey also argued that civilisations, like living organisms, can develop pathologies and consequently become distorted. Since it seems evident that the current model of maximalised liberal democracy is unsustainable in the long run—in this I concur with Savulescu—absent a deposing of egalitarianism as the dominant ideological paradigm across Western societies, the egalitarian pathology in our civilisation may eventually give way to a form of liberal fascism, as prefigured by the Terbeck-Savulescu axis.
Faced as we are now with the prospect of more insidious threats to our existence as a biologically distinct group, it seems the case of purging egalitarians from the seats of power has become more urgent than ever.