September 16, 2016


News and Views


A “MEDIA BIAS”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-campaign-clarifies-trump-jrs-gas-chamber-comment/

Donald Trump campaign clarifies Trump Jr's gas chamber comment
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
September 16, 2016, 10:03 AM

Photograph -- Donald Trump Jr. arrives before the start of the second day of the Republican National Convention on July 19, 2016 at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. JIM WATSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
17 PHOTOS -- The Trump kids


Donald Trump Jr. on Friday said that he used a “poor choice of words” when he said that the media would be “warming up the gas chamber” if the GOP acted like Hillary Clinton.

“It was a poor choice of words, but perhaps, but in no way, shape or form was I remotely talking about the Holocaust. I wouldn’t do it. I think that’s disgusting,” the GOP presidential nominee’s son said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Trump Jr. added that the firestorm over his comments confirms there is a media bias against him. He made the original remark in an interview with 120 WPHT radio in Philadelphia on Wednesday, and it went viral Thursday.

“The media has been her number one surrogate in this,” he said in the interview. “Without the media, this wouldn’t even be a contest, but the media has built her up. They’ve let her slide on every in-discrepancy [SIC]*, on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing. If Republicans were doing that, they’d be warming up the gas chamber right now.”

Nazi Germany used gas chambers during the Holocaust to kill millions of Jews and others, and are now often used in Holocaust references.

But Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in an email to Reuters Thursday afternoon that Trump Jr. was trying to point out media bias.

“Don Jr. was clearly referring to capital punishment to make the case that the media continues to take words out of context in order to serve as the propaganda arm of the Hillary Clinton campaign,” he said, according to Reuters.



*First, I just have to say this. Neither “in-discrepancy,” nor “indiscrepancy” is a word. It isn’t even a rational concept. On the Net at Yahoo Answers I found a very logical and reasonable comment on that sentence – “That is not a word. The word you are looking for in that context is indiscretions.” By “Teo.” I’m sure Teo is correct here. This Malapropism ranks with the best of George W. Bush’s. Is it an “ultraconservative” characteristic, I wonder?


TRUMP ADMITS HE LIED, WITHOUT COMING OUT AND SAYING SO: THE BIRTHER NONSENSE.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-birther-obama-announcement/

Donald Trump: "Obama was born in the United States. Period."
By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS
September 16, 2016, 9:00 AM

Text: Obama Birth Certificate Long Form by CBS News Politics on Scribd
Play VIDEO -- Is Trump focusing on "birther" claim to avoid tax returns pressure?


After years of suggesting President Obama was born in Kenya, Donald Trump said early Friday that he believed the president was indeed born in the United States.

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period,” said Trump, who spent much of his time at the beginning of the event praising his “nice hotel.”

“Now we want to get back to making America great again,” he added.

He made the three-line statement at an event staged for veterans at his recently opened Washington, D.C. hotel, following weeks of declining to tell reporters that he believed President Obama was a U.S. citizen by birth.

Trump had teased the announcement Friday, telling Fox Business Network early in the morning that he had wanted to “keep the suspense going” on the so-called “birther” issue. And that he did. The statement was the last brief thing in a long preamble -- Trump first lauded the opening of his hotel and several of the veterans present made speeches in support of Trump.

“I’m going to make a big announcement on it today,” he had told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo on “Mornings with Maria” Friday morning, previewing a visit to his newly opened Washington, D.C. hotel, just blocks away from the White House.

“We know that Obama now -- he was born in America, correct?” Bartiromo asked Trump.

“You watch my statement,” Trump responded. “I have to -- we have to keep the suspense going, okay? So you watch.”

In that statement, Trump also repeated his false accusation that opponent Hillary Clinton was responsible for the birther controversy. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it,” he said, adding, “You know what I mean.”

During a Fox Business interview earlier Friday, Trump had also brought up his claim about Clinton.

“Hillary brought it up during the campaign,” Trump told Bartiromo. “It was 2008 and it was brought up to her fairly well, and she brought it up, and I was the one that was successful in getting him to release his birth certificate.”

That accusation by Trump has been consistently found to be false. He first suggested it at the CPAC conference in 2015: “Hillary Clinton wanted [Mr. Obama’s] birth certificate. Hillary is a birther,” he said then, adding that she “was unable to get [Mr. Obama’s birth certificate].”

Factcheck.org has investigated this claim and wrote in Nov. 2008 that the claim that Mr. Obama had not been born in Hawaii had been circulated in late spring of that year by “diehard Hillary Clinton supporters,” as the Democratic nomination slipped away from Clinton. The journalists who reported the story, Byron Tau and Ben Smith, told Factcheck.org that the rumor came from Clinton’s supporters, and they had not ever found a link to her campaign. Clinton’s 2008 campaign also denied that it had anything to do with the rumor.

Just before Trump’s announcement at his Washington hotel, Clinton spoke to a group of African-American women in the nation’s capital, slamming her rival once more for his “birther” comments and cautioning Americans against believing Trump has changed his mind, no matter what he said Friday.

“For five years he has led the ‘birther’ movement to delegitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history,” Clinton said at the Black Women’s Agenda Symposium. “Barack Obama was born in America plain and simple and Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology. So my friends, there is no new Donald Trump. There never will be.”

The comments from Trump Friday came less than a day after Trump refused to say in a Washington Post interview that he believed Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.

“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump told the Post Thursday. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”

Later that day, Trump’s campaign tried to neutralize the ongoing controversy with a statement from a senior aide claiming “Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.”

Mr. Obama, for his part, has stayed largely out of the birther debate. But responding to reporters’ questions about the issue, the president waded in Friday, as Trump readied his announcement in Washington.

“I was pretty confident about where I was born. I think most people were as well,” the president said in the Oval Office, registering his “shock” that such a topic would be raised when there were other important policy questions to address. “My hope would be that the presidential election reflects more serious issues.”

President Obama’s long-form birth certificate, which states he was born in Hawaii, can be found below:
Go to this website to see the text.



“My hope would be that the presidential election reflects more serious issues.” The citizens in this country who are both intelligent and HONEST will not vote for the purveyor of outrageous absurdities which are being passed off as truth. I hope and pray that that those truly GOOD CITIZENS will turn out to be over 50% of the population.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-california-berkeley-suspends-course-accused-anti-semitic-views/

University of California suspends course accused of anti-Semitic views
AP September 16, 2016, 8:38 AM

Photograph -- A view of Sather Tower on the University of California at Berkeley campus on May 22, 2014, in Berkeley, California. JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES


BERKELEY, Calif. -- The University of California at Berkeley has suspended a course amid accusations it shared anti-Semitic viewpoints and was designed to indoctrinate students against Israel.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports Berkeley suspended “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis” on Tuesday. The newspaper reports a syllabus for the one-credit course taught by an undergraduate student says it examines the history of the Palestinian territories “through the lens of settler colonialism.”

The suspension came on the same day that 43 Jewish, civil rights and education advocacy groups sent a letter raising concerns about the course. The letter says the class encourages students to accept the idea “that Israel is an illegitimate settler colonial state” and that course readings have “a blatantly anti-Israel bias.”

The Chronicle reports Berkeley says the suspension is “pending completion of the mandated review and approval process.”



They should name the undergraduate student and whatever professors or college administration personnel are backing this course. I can’t believe a college of any type is allowing an undergraduate to teach a course of any kind, even for only one credit. Graduate students do, of course, get Assistant Professor positions, at least in laboratory courses, but an undergrad is simply not prepared, and in this case I think he (or she?) has been closely following some of that Alt-right stuff on the Internet and “preaching it” to spread the word. It’s popping up lately like mildew wherever it’s damp and the sun doesn’t shine. I expect Berkeley to be the focus of a law suit after this, and they should be.



https://gma.yahoo.com/cancer-stricken-teacher-serenaded-400-students-dies-143948902--abc-news-wellness.html?post_id=1605282889713411_1792965964278435#

Cancer-Stricken Teacher Serenaded by 400 Students Dies
By NICOLE PELLETIERE
September 16, 2016
Good Morning America

View photo -- Courtesy Drew Maddux< Photograph -- 400 Students Gather Outside Cancer-Stricken Teacher’s Home to Sing Ben Ellis, the cancer-stricken teacher who was serenaded by hundreds of his students, has died, school officials said today. The Christ Presbyterian Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, where Ellis worked, told ABC News that Ellis died in the early morning hours today. "Ben was a gift to us all in the most unassuming and life-giving way," headmaster Nate Morrow said in a statement. "He left these words for us, spoken over the students at his house, and I share them with you to guide us now,” Morrow said. “He [Ellis] said, ‘I love you. I believe now, more than ever, that God is good, and that He is with us. I am full of hope, peace, and joy. I wish all this for you. Look to Jesus to know, to believe, and to be filled.’” Ellis taught Latin and the Bible since 2008. Last year, Ellis was diagnosed with cancer and began chemotherapy treatments, but that didn't stop him from showing up for his students. He is survived by his wife Shelley and his five children, who all attend Christ Presbyterian Academy. On Sept. 7, more than 400 faculty members and students, grades 9 through 12, sang outside the home of Ellis to show support during his year-long fight with an aggressive cancer. For 30 minutes, they played instruments and sang. On Sept. 13, Ellis, his students, his daughter and headmaster Morrow appeared on ABC News' "Good Morning America" to share the story. Ellis revealed how grateful he was for his students' serenade surprise. "In that moment, I felt like I was not alone," he said.
This reminds me of the news footage on 9/11/2001 of the members of both branches of the legislature, in which they all stood out on the Capitol steps and sang “God Bless America.” These things make me proud of the human race, rather than discouraged about us as a species. At our best, we can do great things. At our worst, we don’t even make an effort. It doesn’t surprise me for the students to make this wonderful homage to their beloved teacher. I had real love for most of my teachers. I do remember my English teacher in the 8th grade, who fought cancer for most of a year before dying. We were greatly moved.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/deaths-of-3-mentally-disabled-brothers-in-fire-investigated-as-homicide/

Deaths of 3 mentally disabled brothers in fire investigated as triple homicide
By CRIMESIDER STAFF AP
September 16, 2016, 2:59 PM

Photograph -- From left, Richard, Robert, and Daniel Fombelle KDKA


NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Three mentally disabled brothers have been found dead in a western Pennsylvania house fire that appears to have been fueled by a flammable liquid in several spots.

That’s why state police and the Lawrence County coroner say they’re treating the deaths of Daniel, Robert and Richard Fombelle as homicides. But police haven’t ruled out that one or more of the brothers may have caused the Thursday morning blaze in Shenango Township, and stressed that there’s no immediate threat to the public.

The brothers, Richard, 57, Robert, 56, and Daniel, 50, had lived alone in the home since their mother died. Nearly everyone else who lives on the secluded, dead-end road is related, including the men’s aunt, who lives next door. Family members contacted Friday declined comment.

“The aunt next door could smell smoke around 5 o’clock this morning,” state police Cpl. Jeffrey Martin said Thursday. “They investigated in her house and couldn’t find anything. It wasn’t until 7:30 (a.m.) when someone passing the house actually saw the fire.”

A relative who called 911 said the brothers were mentally disabled, but police and family members haven’t specified their disabilities.

Township fire officials initially said they found nobody inside the house, even after searching the basement. The bodies were eventually found hours later, close to one another in a portion of the basement not immediately accessible, police said.

Autopsies were expected Friday, though investigators suspect the men died from smoke inhalation because their bodies had no burns or other obvious injuries, Lt. Eric Helmick said.

Police couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Friday, but told reporters at the scene that the case is suspicious and being treated as a homicide case pending further tests on the evidence and more investigation.

A dog trained to assist in arson investigations determined the fuel used to start the fire also was found inside a vehicle outside the home that burned. Some fuel was spilled outside the residence, and in at least two other spots in the home where the fire began, police said.

“Right now, we are going to start it at the worst-case scenario and rule it as a homicide for now, and work backwards from there,” Helmick said.



In rural settings like this, with little input from outsiders, there can be – horrible thought – incest. That kind of inbreeding does cause inherited mental problems to come out. A recessive trait, meaning it is not “expressed,” won’t be obvious from looking at an individual, but it will be passed down the line to further generations, and then two people with the same recessive gene can marry another without knowing they both carry the characteristic. I know from listening to my grandparents talking to compare known family links between my oldest sister and her husband. Both my father’s and my mother’s families grew up within about ten miles of each other in Moore and Montgomery Counties, NC. Daddy used to talk about having to walk ten miles to court Mother. People used to be in much better physical condition then than we are now, and they did walk to “town” (two crossroads and 100 or so residents) or to church or to school.

I’m just guessing, here, of course, because the news report above states that everybody on the road are related. A social backwater is created when there’s no town or good roads, and family members live like the old Scottish and Irish Clans did a hundred years ago. From Wikipedia below comes the 1912 study of such a family group. “The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness” was a 1912 book by the American psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard. See also the article below on American Eugenics laws. Read “10 Horrifying Facts About American Eugenics” below, from “listverse.”

In the early 20th century there was a dalliance with enforced eugenics laws in this country. A number of young people who had SOME imagined or diagnosed form of mental problem (from depression to intellectual disabilities) were sterilized. I’m sure that only happened to POOR people, of course. But it was linked to Hitler’s “medical research” in the 1930s and 40s. I mentioned it because of the brothers’ living in an isolated situation in Pennsylvania, and also the fact that three of the brothers were mentally challenged. Anyway, this is sad. We do still have pockets of poverty and lack of education which can breed such problems. There are laws against first cousins marrying now, of course, but not in the “old days.” Besides, most incest happens when a dependent teenaged girl is simply raped by her father, brother, uncle, etc.


Goddard’s book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kallikak_Family


Eugenics was developed among scientists in the US, though it is based on Darwinian theories. It is almost a natural outgrowth of a society in which the top 10% are so highly divided from those of us who are “below” them that they simply have NO CONCERN about the human creature as a whole, but only about which social functions they will attend due to their family contacts. It is from us, the land of the free and the brave, that Hitler took his theories which he perfected into the “Master Race.” And here we are again, back at the same cultural point in 2016, with David Duke cheering Trump along in his political campaign. I hope everyone who reads this will go out in November and vote for Clinton.



http://listverse.com/2014/02/05/10-things-youve-never-heard-about-american-eugenics/

10 Horrifying Facts About American Eugenics
DEBRA KELLY
FEBRUARY 5, 2014


One of the main goals of the Third Reich was creating a so-called Master Race. It was a horrible time in history, and something we can look back on in sadness. But contrary to popular belief, the Third Reich didn’t invent the idea of a Master Race, or of eugenics—America did. Several decades before the movement caught on in Germany, Americans were flaunting their Caucasian genes and the “Better Babies” they would bear, and sterilizing those deemed less worthy of a family. It was a terrible program, about which Hitler would later say, “There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.” And it didn’t even end after World War II.

What It Was

The American Eugenics Society was an organization that began in the United States in the early 1900s. Its mission included not just segregation, but a racial cleansing and the establishment of a strong, pure race untainted by the blood of those that were deemed lesser, whether by race or by disability. That meant the practice of forced sterilization for those who were deemed unfit to have a family, such as those with learning disabilities or those in institutions. It also meant forbidding interracial marriage and, as we’ll cover, the forced sterilization of orphans, cripples, and the “feeble-minded.” The theories behind the practice came from the work of Charles Darwin and his cousin, Sir Francis Galton. Galton theorized that if only the best and the brightest married each other and bore children, it would elevate the human race. And in America, a country still torn by racial tensions and the reminders of a Civil War and the end of slavery, it was exactly the sort of thing those self-proclaimed best and brightest could seize upon. A 1911 treatise called “Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder’s Association to Study and Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population” presented bullet points on just how they proposed going about this project. Included were suggestions for euthanasia and gas chambers. And some of the views were, frankly, pretty visceral. Oliver Holmes, a Supreme Court Justice, famously said, “It is better for all the world…three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

30 States And 60,000 Victims

At the height of the movement, 30 states had adopted legislation that legalized the sterilization of individuals deemed unfit for reproduction. In most states, that meant the mentally ill or mentally deficient. By the time all was said and done, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 people had been forcefully sterilized in state-sanctioned procedures. In some states, such as California, sterilization records are incomplete or often altered, making it impossible to truly know how many people were subjected to the procedures. It was done to men and women, Caucasians as well as individual from other and mixed races. State laws in California included permissions for those who were in prisons to be eligible for sterilization, as well as those found to have any chance of carrying hereditary dementia or insanity. The laws also removed the patients’ rights to contest the procedure, although it was still necessary for parents to consent to the sterilization of their minor children. In the years between 1921 and 1950, roughly 450 people were sterilized in California each year.

Feeble-Minded, Deaf, And Orphans

The American eugenics movement had a very specific desire when it came to creating the perfect, pure race. Not only were they tall, intelligent, and talented, but they were blond-haired and blue-eyed. Sound familiar? It was described as a “Nordic” race in America, and it was the Aryan race in Germany. That meant weeding out everyone who wasn’t that . . . and while the American version never went as far as the German, the roots were there.While Alexander Graham Bell targeted the deaf, and laws on the whole targeted the sexually deviant offenders and the mentally ill, there was another sub-group who fell victim to the forced sterilization procedures. In California, all it took was a doctor to deem you “unworthy” to have the procedure done. And in some cases—as late as 1963—that could simply mean you were an orphan. Men like California’s Charlie Follett were sterilized against their will as children; Follett’s only crime was to be born to alcoholic parents who could not support him, leaving him a ward of the state.

Supported By Alexander Graham Bell And The Rockefellers

An appalling number of people supported the movement, in voice and in finance. Alexander Graham Bell was a staunch supporter of the movement, and thought that deaf people should not be allowed to marry. Many eugenics projects got their financing from some of the corporate moguls of the day, including the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad conglomerate. In fact, the Carnegies founded and funded the Cold Spring Harbor research facility, one of the largest centers of eugenics activities (more on that in a minute). And it was the Rockefellers who put up the money behind a branch of eugenics in Europe—that was a German branch that counted Joseph Mengele in its ranks. They also funded organizations like the German Psychiatric Institute, which in turn gave rise to one of Hitler’s most instrumental minds in medical repression, Ernst Rudin. The United States Supreme Court was also on board, upholding the laws of the eugenics movement, and one of the leaders of the American eugenic movement, Madison Grant, received a fan letter from none other than Adolf Hitler, praising his work as inspiring. While much of the financial support of families like the Rockefellers ended before the official beginning of World War II, they had already helped set things in motion.

The Racial Integrity Act

The Racial Integrity Act of Virginia was established in 1924. The purpose was to document the race of every person in the state, allowing for a massive genetic database to be created. The database was necessary for the rest of the law—making sure that someone whose heritage was purely white married only another similarly pure person. State Registrars were forbidden from issuing a marriage license unless the man and the woman in question could both produce such a certificate stating that there was no trace of any race other than Caucasian in their ancestry. If the clerk had any reason to doubt that the racial profile was accurate, they didn’t have to grant a marriage license, either—not until both parties submitted proof that they actually, truly were white. Lying about your race on the form was a felony, and could be punished by up to a year in jail.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is still around, located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Now, it’s a research facility in the fields of neuroscience, plant biology, quantitative biology, and, not surprisingly, genomics. It was originally opened in 1910 by Charles Davenport, and was known as the Carnegie Institute of Washington. The Eugenics Record Office kept detailed family records that allowed field workers to trace cases of mental and physical defects through a family line. Davenport also conducted studies on the importance of other inherited traits, such as hair and eye color, hair texture, and skin pigments. In addition to physical traits, they also tried to document how chronic diseases such as hemophilia and mental disorders like schizophrenia, along with what they called “feeble-mindedness,” were passed through a family.

The Immigrant Problem

Those that supported eugenics looked to immigrants as a problem variable that was introducing all sorts of new and undesirable genetic qualities into the American gene pool. Researchers at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory isolated some of the problems. For example, those with Italian blood were said to be prone to violence. As part of their research, prison and mental institution populations across the country were surveyed to find out just how many members of these populations came from what immigrant group. After outbreaks of illnesses like smallpox and cholera in New York City and immigrant-hub Ellis Island, the work of the eugenics movement began to gain credence. By 1911, they were operating hand-in-hand with the Immigration Restriction League to influence Congress and the Surgeon General to implement restrictions on immigration.

Better Babies And Fitter Families Contests

As the eugenics movement took off, state fairs across the country started holding Better Babies contests. In some respects, it made sense. Mothers were encouraged to bring their babies to fair judging contests, and in much the same way as livestock was judged, babies would be judged on things like health, weight, and size. While it also helped promote health and good child care, the “this isn’t so bad” part of this entry ends right about there. Better Babies soon evolved into Fitter Families, a contest where whole families would present judges not only with their happy, healthy babies, but with an abbreviated version of their racial pedigree. Doctors would perform examinations on all the members of the family, awarding and deducting points according to guidelines, and families were given a letter grade to show just how eugenics-friendly their family was. Winners would be rewarded with medals and trophies in these contests, which remained hugely popular throughout the 1920s.

Pioneered By A Stanford Professor

The whole thing was started by a Stanford professor named David Starr Jordan. A long-time student of Charles Darwin and the ideas of natural selection and Mendelian genetics, Jordan grew up in Western New York and pursued an education in botany and science. After teaching at a number of different universities, it was when he went to Stanford that he truly began preaching his values, including education, conservation, and eugenic breeding. After writing several books on the topic of eugenics, he was one of the founding members of the Eugenics Committee of the American Breeders Association and the Eugenics Record Office. Chief among his beliefs was that the upper class of America was being constantly eroded by the lower class, and that careful, selective breeding would be necessary to preserve the country’s upper crust.

Inspired Hitler’s Master Race

We’ve mentioned it once already in brief, but it’s worth revisiting again in greater depth. The American eugenics movement formed the basis for the Third Reich’s belief in a Master Race and their attempts to create one. There was a bizarre sort of mutual respect that went on between American eugenics supporters and the Nazi party. In 1937, the American Eugenics Society issued statements of praise for the work that the Nazis were doing to cleanse the gene pool. For them, the scale on which the Nazis were carrying out their mass sterilization was what they had wanted for America. Original writings of eugenic supporters spoke of cleansing the American population by methods ranging from gas chambers to simply leaving the lower classes to the mercy of the elements or to disease; they went on to lament that American society wasn’t ready for such a wide-spread, sweeping cleanse and saluted the Nazis for doing exactly what they had wanted for their own country. Hitler’s fondness for the theories and science behind American eugenics was clear; he would not only quote American texts, but use them as evidence to support his madness and to recruit others to his cause.



THEORIES BEFORE WATSON AND CRICK

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/germ-plasm-theory-heredity-1893-august-weismann

The Germ-Plasm: a Theory of Heredity (1893), by August Weismann
By Yawen Zou
Published: 2015-01-26

Friedrich Leopold August Weismann published Das Keimplasma: eine Theorie der Vererbung (The Germ-Plasm: a Theory of Heredity, hereafter The Germ-Plasm) while working at the University of Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany in 1892. William N. Parker, a professor in the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff, UK, translated The Germ-Plasm into English in 1893. In The Germ-Plasm, Weismann proposed a theory of heredity based on the concept of the germ plasm, a substance in the germ cell that carries hereditary information. The Germ-Plasm compiled Weismann's theoretical work and analyses of other biologists' experimental work in the 1880s, and it provided a framework to study development, evolution and heredity. Weismann anticipated that the germ-plasm theory would enable researchers to investigate the functions and material of hereditary substances.

. . . .

Before the germ-plasm theory, Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin, both in the UK, had proposed their own theories of heredity. Weismann argues that all the previous theories of heredity, including Darwin's theory of pangenesis, were unsatisfactory. In his 1868 book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Darwin elaborated the theory of pangenesis based on the concept of the gemmules, atomic inheritable substances that body cells emit. Darwin stated that gemmules could circulate through blood and aggregate into germ cells, but Weismann disagreed with Darwin's claim.

In the fourth part of the book, "The Transformation of Species: Its Origin in the Idioplasm," Weismann addresses the issue of inheritance of acquired characteristics, and he provides a theory of variation. Earlier, Weismann had supported, but later rejected the hypothesis that organisms inherit the characteristics that their parents' had acquired during their own lifetimes. Acquired characteristics are defined as traits acquired through environmental factors, disease, or training during the life time of an organism. Earlier scholars such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who lived in France in the early nineteenth century, proposed that such traits could transmit to the offspring. In The Germ Plasm, Weismann rejects the theory and argues that acquired characteristics are traits of the soma cells, and the hereditary substances of soma cells cannot transmit to the next generation. However, Weismann says that environments can influence the process of inheritance by modifying the germ-plasm, for example, temperatures can influence butterflies' traits.

Additionally, Weismann elaborates a theory for variation within a group of related organisms, claiming that variations in germ-plasm cause those groups to evolve. He hypothesizes two causes of variations, the first relies on environmental factors, such as nutrients, the second on the multiplication of determinants. Weismann further argues that external factors are the major causes for variation.

. . . .

De Vries engaged a two decades debate with Weismann, who had to constantly re-examine his own theory. Nevertheless, The Germ-Plasm triggered debates among and influenced twentieth century researchers, and Weismann's distinction between germ cells and soma cells became called the Weismann barrier.