By Daniel Taylor
In order to understand our history, the development of our society and political structure, the influence of the large foundations in America is an essential area of research. Their investment into the social sciences and medical establishment shaped their direction for the 20th Century and beyond. Social control and eugenics became a primary directive. These ideas, primarily due to the work of the Rockefeller and Carnegie philanthropies, spread throughout the intelligentsia and elite circles throughout the western world.
Dr. Lily E. Kay's 1993 book "The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology" documents much of the early history behind the rise of eugenics and life sciences. Kay demonstrates that the drive for social control and eugenics was largely responsible for the emergence and growth of the science of molecular biology. Dr. Kay is a recipient of the Smithsonian Fellowship at the National Museum of American History, and an assistant professor of history of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Kay's 2001obituary from MIT describes her as "...one of the outstanding historians of biology of her generation."
As Dr. Kay documents, large foundations effectively drew the maps for society to follow. The intelligentsia, trained and schooled under the strong influence of the foundations, closely followed the vision of the elite. This vision extended into the realms of education, politics, religion, and the financial world. As Dr. Lily Kay has painstakingly documented, this influential group set out in the United States to engage in a massive research campaign to discover the inner workings of man and in turn to devise methods of social-biological control. The United States, in turn, became the 20th Century progenitor of eugenics.
Dr. Kay paints a clear picture of the massive influence that the wealthy elite in the United States wields, even to the "...development of culture and the production of knowledge in the United States..." Kay writes,
"Thus by the end of the Progressive Era, even before the large-scale commitment to the "advancement of knowledge" spurred by World War I, the human sciences received considerable support from the large foundations. Their numerous projects and the unprecedented scope of their financial and institutional resources shaped the development of culture and the production of knowledge in the United States. Through education, public opinion, stimulation of specific research agenda, and the promotion of selective categories of knowledge and research, the Foundation played a key role in the creation of a hegemonic bloc; the resources and prestige flowing into those fields relevant to problems of social control were instrumental in the formation of consensus between social and political elites, on the one hand, and academic interests on the other."Large foundations - primarily Rockefeller and Carnegie - were investigated in 1915 by the United States Congress, which reported nearly identical findings to the later 1953 Reece Committee, dedicated to the same cause. The 1915 U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations reported that:
"The domination by the men in whose hands the final control of a large part of American industry rests is not limited to their employees, but is being rapidly extended to control the education and social survival of the nation. This control is being extended largely through the creation of enormous privately managed funds for indefinite purposes, hereafter designated "foundations", by the endowment of colleges and universities, by the creation of funds for the pensioning of teachers, by contributions to private charities, as well as through controlling or influencing the public press...As Dr. Kay documents, many of the original members of the large foundations and their offshoots were driven by the philosophy that they were the chosen elite. In their minds, moral authority was on their side. They sought to guide the direction of the nation and mold mankind's development. Frederick T. Gates, a Baptist minister who worked closely with the Rockefeller family and its many initiatives, is quoted as saying,
"...when you die and come to approach the judgment of Almighty God what do you think He will demand of you...? Do you think he will inquire into your trivial sins, your paltry values? NO! He will ask you just One Question: 'What did you do as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation?'"Chester Bernard, who served as president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1948-1952, was unquestionably a member of the establishment. He saw what the Rockefeller Foundation and much of the scientific community was attempting to do and spoke out against it, but couched his criticism with the assumption of pure motives. Bernard writes in the Rockefeller Foundation's 1948 Annual Report,
"Inherent in our systematic efforts to promote the welfare of mankind there may be an assumption that... by reason and science we may govern the future of unborn generations in ways that we know are right... Do we mean that because we have learned to navigate the tides we shall also control them? ... We have already begun the attempts to regulate local weather. Where do we think we shall stop -- with the control of the speed of rotation of the earth, of its revolution around the sun? ... Pride goeth before a fall."Dr. Kay comments on Bernard's criticism, stating that, "Given this wisdom, it is paradoxical that Barnard did not hear the dissonance between his poignant words and the Rockefeller Foundation's agenda in biology, where the primary justification for studying the fundamental mechanisms of soma and psyche was the promise of intervening in the course of human behavior on a global scale."
This original directive has remained unchanged. However, Dr. Kay concludes by stating that "The eugenic goals, which had informed the design of the molecular biology program and had been attenuated by the lessons of the Holocaust, revived by the late 1950's... a new eugenics... came to rest in safety on the high ground of medical discourse and latter-day rhetoric of population control."
Today we see this agenda moving full speed ahead. Foundations are acting more and more like governments. In an interview with the Seattle Times, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was asked, "Some say the emergence of super rich philanthropies like the Gates Foundation has undermined the effectiveness of the U.N. and its member organizations, like the WHO." Moon responded,
"On the contrary that is what we really want -- contributions from the business community as well as philanthropies. We need to have political support, but it doesn't give us all that we need. NGOs and philanthropies and many foundations such as Bill Gates Foundation -- they're taking a very important role."In 1996 the Rockefeller Foundation supplied grant money for early research on edible vaccines. The $58,000 grant, given to the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University, was aimed at developing and transferring edible vaccine technology to developing countries.
Edible vaccines, according to the Indian Journal of Medical Microbiology, will be a more socioculturally acceptable alternative to needles. In other words, people will be less resistant to eating a mundane banana than taking a shot in the arm. The Journal states that new edible vaccine technology may serve a dual purpose of birth control.
As calls are made for lithium to be added to water supplies world-wide and genetically modified organisms spread throughout the ecosystem, the elite agenda of "...intervening in the course of human behavior on a global scale..." is fast becoming reality.
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
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