Alan Turing Gets an Apology From Prime Minister Brown

99luftballon writes "The British government has officially apologized for the treatment of Alan Turing in the post war era. An online petition got more than enough signatures to force an official statement and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued a lengthy apology. 'Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better.'"

Re:Online petition

[Anonymous Coward]

Its been a little longer than 24 hours.... I know that there have been hundreds of petitions over at least 30 years... I've signed a fair amount of them over the years.
 
Though those are the old fashioned in-the-rain gathering signatures on paper type....

Re:TL:TL

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even just that there are people alive today who were persecuted in years past -- 93 state governments still persecute homosexuals, 7 by the death penalty.

Re:Hmmm!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so I fat-fingered FOOLED, but the word you're looking for is FOWL.

Re:It's about damn time.

[calmofthestorm]

Britain was involved in the settlement and creation of modern-day Israel. Israelis and Palestinians often kill each other. It's not a real connection but I think this is what he's going for.

Re:Hmmm!

[canajin56]

Actually, it's doesn't work both ways. You can easily prove that something halts (given an unbounded amount of time to do so in). It's only proving that it doesn't halt that's an issue ;)

I'm glad to see that apology

[Shlomi Fish]

I'm glad to see an apology for Turing's treatment being set straight. Alan Turing definitely didn't deserve the bad treatment that was inflicted upon him for his sexual orientation. He certainly deserves this apology.

One historical note is that several models of computers (or actual computers) preceded the more formal computer science [osdir.com], but naturally, the theoretical work of Turing (and related early CS pioneers such as Alonzo Church [wikipedia.org]), and their rigour should also be highly regarded.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Keen Anthony]

The formal apology actually does extend to the many other homosexuals who suffered liked Turing. From the actual statement:

I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alanâ(TM)s status as one of Britainâ(TM)s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.,

But yes, we do tend to only apologize for the most famous examples of society's cruelty to its own members. I think we have a basic need as humans to create symbolic icons. In Britain, Turing was just that. It was in no way a suggestion that his suffering was worst, or that his story alone was regrettable. Oscar Wilde is another example, though I don't think he was castrated. In America, Americans use Rosa Parks as an icon of the civil rights struggle, though she obviously did not endure the worst simply for the fact that she survived.

Re:An Easy Apology

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you. We English have a history of persecuting our great men based on their sexuality (Oscar Wilde for example).

You English also have a history for taking credit where it's not due. Oscar Wilde was Irish, not English or British.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Thomas M Hughes]

Plato said that there is no true measure of justice, but it is important for a government to give the appearance of justice to society. This is a textbook example of that in action.

What? Plato didn't say that. That's completely wrong. Plato explicitly defined justice in the Republic. I quote:

we affirmed Justice was doing one's own business, and not being a busybody

Citation: http://books.google.com/books?id=50SqFuH-4jQC&lpg=PA126&ots=O96UUppWV1&dq=justice%20not%20being%20a%20busybody%20republic&pg=PA126#v=onepage&q=&f=false [google.com]

Don't just make up quotes and attribute them to Plato. It makes philosophers really angry.

Re:Not really...

[Don_dumb]

Its easy to say you are sorry for something that you didn't do and weren't accused of doing.

Have you not being paying attention - it clearly is not easy.

This took thousands of people petitioning the government. Have a look at how long it took for apologies for the various hideous treatments to and of Australian Aborigines. Even then many people were still opposed to doing so.

If you can be proud of others before your time, then you can be genuinely sorry for acts done by others before your time.

Re:It's about damn time.

[EdIII]

You might want to do some research yourself.

Ummmm, right back at you.

I was asking a hypothetical question and the percentage was not meant to be accurate. Once again, hypothetical. You can see that I asked if it was 80% percent right after which implied that the 90% was not a statement of fact.

That being said, the chance for genetic abnormalities in 1st cousin offspring is 6-8% which is double that of the average 3-4%. However, brother and sister offspring already result in DOUBLE the chance of autosomal recessive defects being present in the offspring's DNA.

1st cousins may have probabilities twice as large as the normal population, but the discussion was really about brother/sister offspring. That is not "twice as large". Not nearly. You seem to imply single digit probabilities, yet with a little research we can see you are off by a whole order of magnitude.

I have always understood the chances of incestuous offspring from nuclear family member pairings to be QUITE HIGH. Not single digits as you seem to suggest. I can cite three sources after just a few minutes of research which seem to indicate anywhere from a 25% to 65% chance of severe defects in father/daughter-brother/sister offspring. So yes, the devil is in the details.

So I will ask the question again, "What if the chance of having a "flipper baby" is 65%?"

J Pediatr. 1982 Nov;101(5):854-7.Links
        Children of incest.
        Baird PA, McGillivray B.

        Twenty-nine children of brother-sister or father-daughter matings were studied. Twenty-one were ascertained because of the history of incest, eight because of signs or symptoms in the child. In the first group of 21 children, 12 had abnormalities, which were severe in nine (43%). In one of these the disorder was autosomal recessive. All eight of the group referred with signs or symptoms had abnormalities, three from recessive disorders. The high empiric risk for severe problems in the children of such close consanguineous matings should be borne in mind, as most of these infants are relinquished for adoption.

Int J Legal Med. 2009 Mar 13. [Epub ahead of print]Click here to read Links
        Psychomotor developmental delay and epilepsy in an offspring of father-daughter incest: quantification of the causality probability.
        Schmidtke J, Krawczak M.

        Institut für Humangenetik, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, 30625, Hannover, Germany, [e-mail].

        A 20-year-old offspring of father-daughter incest, who has been suffering from serious psychomotoric health problems since early childhood, is seeking financial compensation under the German federal act of victim indemnification. For her appeal to be valid, the probability X that the incest was causal for her disorder must exceed 50%. Based upon the available medical records, we show that this is indeed the case and that X is even likely to exceed 65%, thereby rendering the victim's claim scientifically and legally justified.

J Ment Defic Res. 1990 Dec;34 ( Pt 6):483-90.Links
        Incest and mental handicap.
        Jancar J, Johnston SJ.

        Stoke Park Hospital, Stapleton, Bristol, England.

        This is probably the first retrospective study of an adult mentally handicapped population of incestuous parentage. Eleven known incestuous unions were identified with 38 offspring, of whom 15 were admitted to the Stoke Park group of hospitals. Incest and its legal definition in different societies are considered. The effects of close inbreeding on mortality, morbidity, mental function and adoption are examined. The study also reaffirms that incest is one of the causes of mental handicap in a high percentage of offspring.

Re:It's about damn time.

[siloko]

It makes philosophers really angry.

. . . and angry philosophers are waaay scary . . . especially dead greeks. Sorry, I mean, Greeks. You can't be too careful . . .

Re:Knighthood

[:jax:]

He wasn't knighted, but he got the OBE award in 1945, which is one step below a knighthood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Hut_8_and_Naval_Enigma [wikipedia.org] Now, he obviously should have been knighted for his work and given time he probably would have been. Regrettably he wasn't given that time.

Re:It's about damn time.

[EdIII]

you're already severely mentally deficient.

Alright, if you want to be an asshole about it.....

What is "disadvantaged"?

You can keep the racist shit to yourself. Your histrionics and strawmen make poor arguments and are not worthy of this discussion.

I was being nice by using the word disadvantaged. I really meant severely fucking retarded with severe physical abnormalities like missing limbs, ah screw it. Why don't you go watch a documentary on Chernobyl and you will get the idea.

You don't understand, or care to understand, that offspring from brother/sister-father/daughter pairings have non-trivial probabilities of having really fucked up children. 1st cousins are double the average for normal couples. Once you get close than that, the probabilities pick up fucking dramatically. Not a few percent. Try a WHOLE ORDER.

That's fine, you can argue the point about statistics. Go do your own research for 10 minutes. You will find out what everyone knows by common sense. You fuck your sister, mother, or daughter and you will more than likely end up with a "flipper" baby.

You want the law to be fair and perfect. Fine. Informed consent? That's perfectly fine with me. Scientifically proven chance that is 1/4 to 1/2 chance of having some poor fucked up "kill me... kill me..." child? Not OK.

You want to drag this all over the board, bringing eugenics and racism in as a strawmen argument. Well it ain't gonna work. This about one thing, and one thing only. Incest producing severely damaged children that will require enormous resources to care for. I mean we have to right? Euthanasia? Does not sound like you support that either.

Law isn't about morality and the government should not be in the business of enforcing any particular moral code.

No fucking shit. Your kidding. This is not about morality. I totally agree on that. I could give two shits about some holy books talking about "laying downeth why thy sister and slipping her the salami is a sin".

It is about having a high probability of creating a child that society will have to take care of for the rest of that child's life.

Since I certainly don't support killing the child, I must obviously support using my taxes to take care of the child. Well then it stands to reason that I don't want brother's and sister's fucking each other creating these children deliberately that I have to take care of with my tax dollars and have my heart broken every time I see one of those poor souls.

It can all be prevented by simply keeping your dick out of your family members. So yeah, I support laws to keep your dick out of your family members. That makes me a mentally deficient, Nazi Loving, racist, eugenic supporting, totalitarian fascist.

Heil Hitler!