Corn isn't the only contribution of the New World.
Despite what teachers say about how Colombus brought syphilis to the natives, the opposite happened.
Two articles: 1st on syphilis, 2nd on liberal education.
Can Genes Solve the Syphilis Mystery?
Carl Zimmer*
Whether Columbus brought syphilis to the New World--or to the Old World--has been the subject of conjecture for at least 500 years. Over the past 5 decades, paleopathologists have been scouring skeletons for clues. The bones, however, tell an ambiguous story. Some seem to clearly implicate Columbus, or at least his crew. Bones of precontact Native Americans bear scars that are consistent with syphilis, and the first records of syphilis in Europe turned up shortly after Columbus returned from the New World.
But in June 2000, a new report challenged that idea. Researchers at the University of Bradford, U.K., who have been excavating skeletons from an English monastery in the town of Hull, claimed that the skeletons show signs of syphilis. British television producers commissioned a study of the age of one of the affected skeletons and announced last summer that it dated back between 1300 and 1450. If the monks did in fact have syphilis, they couldn't have gotten it from Columbus's voyage, which was still years in the future. That doesn't necessarily mean that their infections couldn't have come from the New World--perhaps the Vikings brought syphilis home instead (Science, 4 August 2000, p. 723).
Since that report, however, the story has gotten murkier. According to Anthea Boylston, who leads the excavation, the preliminary date may need to be recalibrated because the residents of Hull ate a lot of fish, which can skew radiocarbon results. And it's possible, some critics say, that the residents of Hull didn't have syphilis at all.
Bruce Rothschild, a New World-origin advocate at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown, questions the diagnosis of the monastery skeletons. Only a small fraction of victims typically develop the characteristic bone lesions and deformities of syphilis. Yet 30% of the bones at the monastery reportedly show evidence of syphilis, implying that the entire population of both monks and villagers had the disease. Rothschild suggests that the people buried at Hull contracted yaws, a closely related skin disease that typically leaves its mark on a higher fraction of its hosts. He has also offered evidence that syphilis was present not only in the New World when Columbus arrived, but at the very place he landed. In the October 2000 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Rothschild describes signs of syphilis on bones dating back between 1200 and 500 years ago found in the Dominican Republic. "That's the smoking gun," he says.
Some resolution may come from George Weinstock of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and his colleagues. In 1998 they sequenced the genome of Treponema pallidum pallidum, the bacterium that causes syphilis. Since then they've compared parts of its genome to that of T. p. pertenue, the bacterium associated with yaws. "They're remarkably similar," says Weinstock. "We've found only four areas with noticeable differences." Weinstock hopes to analyze those areas on strains of syphilis and yaws and construct a phylogeny. Another possibility is to use them to isolate the bacterial DNA from bones Rothschild and others have studied and determine which form they are. "We should be able to scan a large number of syphilis isolates from around the world. That's one of the things on our list to do, for sure."
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Agendas in the classroom
Linda Bowles
There was a time, let's call them the good old days, when
parents could send their little children off to school
with full confidence they would be in good hands.
Sadly, the good old days are gone.
It is appropriate that most of the criticism of government
schools deals with academic failure. But that is only half
the wretched story. Contrary to what many parents think,
most of those responsible for the education of our children
are not socially and politically neutral. They are ideologues
with an agenda.
While a good case could be made to say we are on the verge
of being overrun by an avalanche of academic ignorance, it
would not be accurate to say our kids are graduating
empty-headed. Perhaps it' s time for another updated review
of some of the important things our children are learning
in government school classrooms.
While Johnny and Jill may not be learning how to read, they
are learning that:
Teachers are underpaid, God is irrelevant, big business
is ruining the environment, the Bible says driving an
SUV is a sin, rewards should be based on need rather
than performance, bisexual individuals are under the
command of unstable genes, the Alamo was a great Mexican
victory, society rather than the individual is responsible
for crime, saving the sucker fish is more important than
saving farmers, teachers' pay should be doubled, a
diversity of cultures and languages is America's
strength, Thomas Jefferson was a racist, 2 plus 2 equals
whatever, competition is destructive, the right to be
wrong makes wrong right, the Boy Scouts are a hate group,
Ronald Reagan is responsible for the disappearance of
the dinosaurs, the Catholic Church is a hate group,
defending yourself promotes violence, the government
is the source from which all blessings flow, Southern
Baptists are a hate group, high taxes are good for
America, equality is more important than excellence.
And they are learning that carbon dioxide is poisoning
the world, cops hate black people, putting a condom on
a cucumber is child's play, the Salvation Army is a hate
group, the Constitution is obsolete, God is a homophobe,
porpoises are smarter than people, the Constitution
requires the government to censor religious speech,
taxes are the same as charitable contributions, boys
and girls are exactly the same except girls are better,
the toleration of evil is a virtue, moral discernment
is a hate crime, cutting taxes is like stealing from
poor people, American Indians would not have polluted
the environment even if they had known how, George
Washington was a racist, rich people enjoy stomping
on poor people, the condom is mightier than the conscience.
They are further being taught that Christopher Columbus
infected the natives with syphilis, one person's opinion
is as good as any other, the American Constitution was
written by racists and sexists, Ronald Reagan is
responsible for the spread of AIDS, teachers should be
paid as much as NFL quarterbacks, sex between consenting
children is inevitable, all sexual orientations are
created equal, religious people are bigots, in the
beginning there was a big explosion, a family is any
collection of oddballs living under one roof, the right
to kill babies is in the Constitution, it is un-American
to have more than someone else does, the only hope of
the world is for workers everywhere to unite, and it
is the constitutional responsibility of government to
provide jobs, housing, clothing, condoms, hot lunches,
living wages, family leave, child care and Band-Aids
to all citizens.
It is little wonder that more and more parents are
frightened and frustrated as they watch their children
grow away from them and become like strangers, full
of -- strange ideas.
It is time to face the wretched reality that the American
classroom has been appropriated by liberal ideologues.
Their goal is to strip away all vestiges of religion,
and fill the vulnerable psyches of children with the
secular mind-sets, ideas and philosophies that will
resonate with a hedonistic and socialistic society.
One answer to the problem of education in America is
school choice. A better answer is complete privatization,
with a high wall of separation between state and education.
This will subject schools to that tried and true,
all-American, marketplace competition, which demands
results, instills discipline and accountability,
relentlessly drives toward excellence, and puts
customers (parents and children) first.
It is time to return to parents control over the
education and "upbringing" of their own children. When
and by what authority did the government take charge
of the children? Whose children are they, anyway? And
why, in the land of the free and the brave, has it
become necessary to ask such a question? |
