Why does the author say, 'the now infamous' while referring to Josef Menegle?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
A DNA molecule is made up of two long polymers, the polymers being the mixture of compounds formed by polymerization, and consisting essentially of repeating structural units. The strands are joined together with hydrogen atoms and are woven together in the shape of a double helix. Each of the polymers contains chemicals called nucleotides which in turn can be broken down into many individualized components including four nitrogenous bases that form the basic building block of life and contain all the genetic information that an organism needs. The backbone of the DNA molecule is made up of alternating sugars and phosphates and, being quite strong, it protects the whole from damage and mutation. Since one strand is a photographic negative of the other, it is very easy to replicate the information once the structure of one of the two component strands is known and understood. Replication begins with the unwinding of the helix with an enzyme and it is not mandatory that the replication has to start at the ends of the strand. It can start anywhere and once started, the enzymes create two replication forks that continue to replicate the strand in both the directions. DNA contains all the information necessary for life processes but this information never leaves the nuclei of the cells.
One of the earliest proponents of genetic research and the role of heredity in transmission of genetic disorders, and dare one say human cloning, was the now infamous Josef Menegle, from the
concentration camp of Auschwitz in the Second World War. At the acme of Hitler’s power in Germany, and indeed in most of Europe and Africa, Jew hating wasn’t just a wave; it was a way of life with not only the state machinery arrayed against them, but also a lot of otherwise unbiased citizens and fellow humans who were just caught in the maelstrom of events between the hard choices of betraying friends and neighbors and being branded traitors to the cause themselves. The Nazi party and its followers started believing in the own racial superiority and being a Jew or a gypsy meant carrying a perpetual death sentence. Indeed another contemporary of Menegle, Joseph Goebbels, who, from a failed literary writer was to become the minister of propaganda for the Nazis, commenced his attacks on Jews in 1933 and continued through 1938 when they finally took the shape of the notorious ‘Final Solution’, which looked at the total annihilation of the Jews. Menegle was especially interested in studying twins and performed a variety of experiments on them without anesthesia to determine the genetic origins of diseases as at that time medical research into twin physiology was seen as the best tool of studying the variant factor in heredity. Also, he was extremely interested in genetic segregation of the Aryan blood as he thought that Jewish and Roma blood was impure and thought that twins were the best way to carry forward the purity of lineage. Taking forward the Nazi party line of the creation and preservation of the ‘Master Race’, which included thousands of vasectomies and operations on women to weed out the undesirable parts from the population, some even credit Menegle with having impregnated hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women with the Fuhrer’s semen in order to propagate the Aryan race.