Oh, man. I can’t believe no one has mentioned the name that came to me in half a second. How about the only man in history who can say he is responsible for a devastating famine in two different countries—two of the largest countries in the world?
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Trofim Lysenko, an alleged agrobiologist whose harebrained ideas about agriculture are largely responsible for millions of deaths in both the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward. If you’re a Communist, and I know we have a few on here, this is the guy you can blame for a lot of the 100 million deaths that have made your preferred ideology reviled.
Lysenko didn’t start off badly. He had some innovative ideas that, on the surface, might have made sense. For one, he thought that if you planted seeds deeper in the ground, they would develop stronger root systems and be more fruitful. For another, he thought plants grew on the basis of the amount of heat they received in their lifetime.
A third idea, called vernalization, actually was tested out on a small scale and had some success—Lysenko was trying to find a way to keep winter wheat from dying off in brutal Russian winters. He treated the seeds to make them resistant to moisture and cold, and it worked.
However, he also wrongfully assumed that future crops based on the treated seeds and their descendants would acquire the same characteristics—and it’s not that simple, not by a long shot.
The other ideas didn’t work, either. If you planted the seeds too deep in the ground, they never made it to the surface even if they took root, and the idea about heat was totally wrong. And he rejected the concepts of genetics and DNA totally, basically throwing out all of Mendel’s theories in favor of his own ideas.
Well, Lysenko talked a good game, and eventually a guy named Joseph Stalin, another Soviet who had a hardscrabble youth and made something out of himself, took a liking to Lysenko and put him in charge of the whole Soviet agricultural program.
And he stayed there, through thick and mostly thin, through Stalin’s entire reign and well after. He remained as head of the USSR’s Institute of Genetics until 1965!
By that time, another peasant in another great big country had taken over and established his own Communist government. And Mao Zedong idolized Joseph Stalin.
Included in some of the advice that Uncle Joe gave Chairman Mao was the adoption of Lysenkoism in China. Mao put Lysenko’s ideas at the forefront of the agricultural reforms of the Great Leap Forward.
And so it came to pass that tens of millions of Chinese peasants starved to death as well.
Lysenko, who never questioned his ideas even after they failed to work when implemented on a national scale in two different countries, and who used his friendship with Stalin and his successors to escape and silence any criticism, was never held to account for what he had caused.
He was publicly disgraced after Khrushchev was ousted and he was fired from his post, but he was allowed to retire and live peacefully until his death in 1976. The government of the USSR didn’t even announce his death until after he’d been buried.
The legacy of Lysenko’s ideas lasted much longer, and it wasn’t until the dying days of the Soviet Union that his malignant influence was totally purged from Russian agriculture.
He received the Order of Lenin seven times and was made a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1945. It’s almost funny until you think about how many people died because of this guy.
This guy right here:
Thomas Midgley.
He was absolutely brilliant.
This brilliant man invented leaded gasoline, and which is essentially gasoline with lead in it.
Lead exposure can lead to neurological disorders and cause extensive physical harm.
So when gas combusts, it releases lead into the air.
But it gets worse!
He was also the inventor of Freon, which is useful in refrigerators- but wait!
Freon is a CFC, or a chlorofluorocarbon. What do CFCs do?
They destroy the ozone layer and allow more UV light to penetrate the atmosphere.
Pretty bad.
But the next man makes Midgley look like a loaf of bread in terms of harm caused.
Dr. Shiro Ishii, a man who cared nothing for ethics.
A Japanese scientist.
To conduct wartime experiments he unleashed medical torment upon infants, children, pregnant women, everyone!
He would freeze limbs and thaw them to study frostbite.
He would burn victims and study the burns.
He would unleash chemical weapons over crowds to “study” the effects.
He would perform surgery without anesthesia , inject bubonic plague, freeze, burn, and ultimately kill thousands.
Quite the sadist if you ask me.
