"Does Hitler have a right to privacy?" and other big questions in research ethics.

And additional question: even if it was technically feasible, was it really ethical to surgically implant Hitler's cloned brained into the body of a silverback gorilla and make it fight against Tigerstalin?

Everybody's so concerned with preserving Hitler's brain. But when you put it into the body of a great white shark, ooh, suddenly you've gone too far.
- Ah! I knew it was not a novel approach. Thanks Pr. Farnsworth, you crazy sciency trailblazer.
- great white shark
  I see what you did here.
- A great white shark with fricken laser beams!
- nah, put it in a Greenland shark so that piece of shit can wallow the depths for 300 yrs
But in the 80s, we transplanted Donald Trump's brain into a house cat addicted to cocaine.
- That's ridiculous cocaine was addicted to Bill
It would be to more unethical to not do that.
Stalin disappeared thousands of people. Tiger Stalin "disappeared" a few, but there was no hiding it, the pile of intestines and bones was a dead giveaway.
I would unironically watch that on TV.

Is there any value to analyzing his DNA? The idea that evil is genetic is itself feeding into some Nazi ideas about eugenics that are deeply wrong.

Maybe we want to clone Hitler but raise him to be antifa.
- Reminds me of a classic AskReddit aneurysm post.
  If Hitler was Hitler today, and Hitler cloning machine. You hold world hostage with Hitler Clone Hitler Unlimited Hitler. What hold hostage with exchange for Hitler Hitler?
- I'll allow it.
Yeah to me that's the biggest objection... he's long dead, he has no surviving family that wants good for him to my knowledge. So to me that's kind of on the same level as, digging up mummies. The evil actions he commited in life don't really come into play here, and agreed it's really stupid idea to think that his behavior is genetic.
Kind of reminds me of when most of the nazi generals swore to have no kids to not carry on their DNA, except one, who said "No I won't sign that pledge, that's eugenics which is nazi ideology".
I don't think this is about "is evil genetic." The first psragraph of the article states it's about his underlying health conditions. Which I think is absolutely worth studying, if it means spotting the early warning signs and intervening before another person ends up like Hitler.
But then I remember the world we live in and realize it's probably not at all going to end up like that. So who knows? But they're definitely not going to find "the Evil Gene."
- The "underlying health conditions" they mention are a possible predisposition for schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder, and kallman syndrome. Things that most certainly do not create hilters, and if it's being argued by anyone that they may then it is indeed apologia for fascist ideology. The thing that actually does create hitlers.
  I think that his genetics might somewhat illuminate or inform historical events, but having it out there in our media environment just begs to have it abused and misconstrued by the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
We learned he had a micro penis, a potent weapon against his neo-nazi fans. The value is already immense.
- And monorchidia
The personality disorders that led Hitler down the path of evil have strong genetic components, so yes there's value in studying his genes.
- Is that anything unique to Hitler?
Is there any value to make 2 million Hitler documentaries? No, but they do it anyways.
It's historically interesting to maybe understand who he was as a human being. He's often painted as a monster but he was a human, and is a warning to all of us what evil human's can achieve.
For example, they're revealed he had Kallmann Syndrome (which can cause a micropenis and undescended testes) - he may have essentially been essentially asexual which may explain some of his life choices and why he was so dedicated to politics and gaining power. They've also shown he had high genetic risks for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, as well as ADHD, autism.
Sensationalist reporting aside, these findings do add something to our understanding of a historical figure who had massive influence on human history.
not really… identifying and/or ruling out genetic origins of diseases isn’t racism.
my moral objection to this is: we shouldn’t be scanning and storing hitler’s dna; that’s how you end up with Hitler clones.
- The sort that would want a Hitler clone would be happy with a direwolf-style pseudo-clone with good marketing.
Nazis will take any data they want and turn it evil, even if it's only half true. And they'll ignore data that conflicts with their belief. It doesn't matter what science discovers.
We already have evidence that some forms of "evil" are inheritable. This isn't new. For instance example, I saw a documentary like 20 years ago that showed how one adopted baby—in a nice suburban family, with a couple other perfectly normal kids—was a criminal at a young age. Like stealing-a-school-bus-at-age-nine criminal, and that was just one of many examples. They showed two family trees: his adopted and his biological, and highlighted people who had been arrested, convicted of crimes, etc. They used a few different colors, and sometimes colored in one person's node with two or more colors. His adopted family had like one spot going back 3 generations. His biological family was a rainbow! Remember, he was adopted as a baby and raised with love, and the other kids were fine.
And science has demonstrated that offspring of stressed-out female mice are much more aggressive than their peers.
Now what do we do with this kind of data? Be proactive about helping certain kids if they have certain genes. Give them safe outlets for their impulses, or what have you. Extra monitoring. I dunno.
As for the stressed-out mothers... If you want to stop generational crime, give financial support and therapy to low income mothers. Because their stress is likely epigenetically producing criminal children.
What would a Nazi do? Nothing. Nazis don't care if people are evil. What are they going to do, eugenics themselves? They're the ones with the most colorful family trees.
Just some food for thought. I don't think we should suppress science just because Nazis exist.

I find it curious that they talk about privacy for Hitler but don't mention Henrietta Lacks who this very thing happened to. Her cell cultures are being used to this day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks

that's how you know the whole argument is a dog whistle...

Does this neolithic prehuman have a right to privacy? If they can't give consent, what does it say about this project?

If it turns out Hitler had some bad genes his relatives' descendants will get a bad name. This is obviously a joke, but it's actually true as well. They've all distanced themselves from the name Hitler, but surely some people know about their relation to Adolf. I guess the questions is: how bad is it when you're grandfathers half-brother or whatever his DNA is public. There is a legitimate privacy concern there, that shouldn't be too easily dismissed because 'haha hitler & privacy'.

the question if you need relatives consent to make your dna public is interesting. I have my opinions, but the question of an historical dead figure has rights to privacy is another.
However, seeing if there's an "evil" gene is both cartoonishly naive and smells of eugenics. Hitler would have approved said study.
His relatives actually decided to not have children collectively afaik.
They appeared to be fairly nice chaps - a friend of mine interviewed one of them 20 years ago for a uni research project.

For fuck sake.... Genetists needs to read some social science. What is all with this making Hitler the biggest reason for the existence of Nazism and the occurrence of the Holocaust? This is why people believe that you can beat fascism with a vote, as if it is a leadership problem and not a complete social movement and social transformation problem

It's both deeply essentialist, and insulting to people's intelligence. If you're planning on studying hitler's DNA, who cares, knock yourself out. But it's ridiculous to think all but the worst people are going to believe there's an "evil" gene.
If you're a scientist planning on cloning hitler, you have a lot more problems on your hands, and are obviously not pursuing any kind of scientific results and just want attention and deserve all the ridicule from other that idiots you will get.
- What if it turns out Hitler saliva cures cancer, all you gotta do is make out with a Hitler clone? You know, like with lizards and limey disease.
Government and bureaucracy is the duct tape and glue we made to hold society together but actual societal change is a more natural force that is completely separate from government.

The whole study is weird. Do they think there is a correlation between his DNA and the horrible acts he did? Are we going to start rounding up anyone with that genetic marker? Put them in camps?

Sounds like one step away from finding another reason for the Government to round up marginalized groups.
Hitler had it, Walt Disney had it.
- I rest my case

He's been dead for 80 years, that's plenty long enough for anyone's feelings to not matter.

USA: IP right is 100 years after the creators death.
So when did hitlers parents die?
- US IP rights are only a good example of a bad example.
- US law is an interesting response to an ethics question
Also, it is internationally generally agreed upon that criminals forfeit their rights to personally identifying information, such as fingerprints and DNA evidence.
Given Hitler's regime has been internationally agreed to be war criminals and have committed crimes against humanity, even if Hitler himself chose the coward's way out to avoid being convicted for these crimes, I think we can all agree on him being responsible for these crimes thus is essentially convicted posthumous.
Therefore combining the two, Hitler was and is a criminal therefore privacy protection laws don't apply, therefore his DNA should be freely usable by the scientific community.
- Did he get convicted or does the ICC or ICJ need to do a court process? If any state can just allege someone being a criminal to exhume and extract dna without judicial oversight we open a door quite wide for abuse.
  Edit: "Everyone knows he did it so no court is necessary" havent given humanity perfect scores in human rights before

Does Tutankhamun's DNA need consent?

Disregarding the fact that he was evil, Im not sure historical figures qualify for the same rights as we average people do. I think at most, we should respect what they respected, and Hitler did not respect privacy, so get fucked nazi, your DNA is ours.

Someone who was alive in the last hundred years may well have identifiable descendents or cousins. Someone from 3,350 years ago, less likely.
Since we often tend to consider the next of kin or manager of an estate to be the legal entity able to make certain decisions following the death of the person in question, whether there is a known/discoverable agent to ask may be relevant in this kind of matter.
Ew, undersmencht dna

I think that's an easy one: Hitler is dead and, as far as I know, never had any direct descendants or relatives that could object on valid reasons.

Hitler's (half?) nephew served in the US Navy during WW2. ~~I don't think William has any remaining kin though.~~ Looks like William has four children, 3 of whom may still be alive. None of those 4 have had any children of their own.
https://lyonairmuseum.org/blog/corpsman-hitler-us-navy/
Why should doing experiments on ones bodily components be an opt-out situation?
- Whether it be an opt-out or -in situation is beyond the topic of this question, but neither are applicable here.

What a pointless question. There's literally nothing we could hope to learn from examining his specific DNA.

This is like how some scientist stole Einstein's brain to see what made him so smart and didn't find anything. Pointless.

The fact that this is being used as an argument against right to privacy is an ad absurdum strawman.

Why are we even talking about Hitler's DNA? Out of all the news why this. We are seriously weird.

Researchers sequenced his DNA recently from a bloodstained couch cushion, we've been getting glimpses into it lately.
- Also he's dead, why do dead people deserve anything, any rights? What harm happens to Hitler? He's dead. Did we ask dinosaurs to look at their DNA, for all we know they were sentient? The whole argument is stupid.
- Presumably the insights are just that he was a human and not a space alien.
  What are they looking for exactly?
- Just a weird topic especially with all this neo-nazism happening in the US government.
  I am not saying it isn't newsworthy at all of course. It is just the timing is suspect.

Doesn't a criminal give up their right to freedom by doing crimes?

So why wouldn't a war criminal give up their right to privacy by doing war crimes?

Is it already proven that they are criminals or do you want to remove someone right in order to prove they are criminals?
- Rights of people are regularly taken away to prove they are criminal.
  Searching peoples homes for evidence is probably the most common way.
  It's also proven that Hitler was one of the worst human beeings ever to walk the earth.
that sounds good until laws are weaponized against freedom and normal people
but dont even go that far. you are now a criminal for saying something mean to a public figure on the internet, for jaywalking, for making a mistake in reporting your taxes, ...

According to the GOP, since the dead pay no taxes to America, they have no rights.

Fetuses don't pay taxes either and yet the GOP are really interested in making sure they have rights.

Who is harmed by this? No one living. Maybe you could argue Hitler has some right to not have his remains disturbed, but DNA testing isn't very invasive and we do it at crime scenes without consent all the time, so it's minor even if relevant.

What could we learn? Nothing of value. Even if there is some "psychopath gene" or "genocide gene" you'd need 100s of examples to show the effect and far easier to just pick such candidates from living, diagnosed people who can consent.

So then should we do it? Probs not. No real reason to, even though there's little reason not to.

They will probably use Hitler's pseudoscience to start camps for psychological minorities. Where have we heard of that before?

There's propaganda value to "Hitler was quasi-Trans" as same revisionist demonism as "Hitler was a socialist" to revive a (neo) naziism without the baggage of Hitler, that can better serve Zionist first Christofascism in erradicating Islam, humanist governance, and whatever "the woke" needs to mean.

Beyond privacy rights, is what is the usefulness of the messaging, and could that usefulness be more important to someone/agenda than the moral failures of completely fabricating it.

Nice try, but I watched The Boys From Brazil. No Hitler DNA for you!

Data protection only covers the living IIRC.

Most arguments for using Hitler's DNA end up supporting the eugenicist trash Nazi scientists espoused. There is little practical use for it.

Ethically, it may be questionable, personally, IDGAF.

The DNA would probably fall in public domain before any significant research could be done with it.

Maybe this is the way, we looked at ancient human DNA, maybe there should be a public domain aspect to it. Sequence today, study after XX years.

Oh suuure...!

What is the scientific value of it and why can't those values be realised in a way that does not even raise ethical concerns?

The best argument for it was that eventually someone would do it and they may just as well do it rigorously.

This article make a big stink about how mentioning that he had genes that showed "very high" scores for a predisposition to autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and how we shouldn't mention that because it might make people with these disorders feel more Hitlery. It also says he had similar genes for having a micropenis but doesn't show the same concern for people with this affliction. Well, Lemmy, does this new information make you feel more Hitlery?

I know my institution wouldn't allow this without informed consent from himself pre-death or legally responsible family members. Plus you have to be able to withdraw consent at any time and we have to destroy all data, including sequencing analysis, upon request. Not sure how that affects published data but we'd have to strip it out of any data repositories the publications may point to as well.

Other dead people have no right to privacy, especially dead famous people

This means release the Epstein files.

Just ask whoever saved his brain to ask permission

i see BBC is still at the "hard hitting" story telling 🙄