After the passing of the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta ( SSAA ) in 1928, the Provincial Training School ( PTS ) oversaw and performed the sterilizations of over 2, 800 persons to improve society by preventing the genetic transmission of undesirable traits as well as to protect unfit individuals from the burdens of parenthood.
12.
The tale of the discovery of basic mechanisms of genetic transmission in the 1950s,'60s and'70s usually is told from scientists'perspective, a saga of curiosity moving from pure to applied, descending in a straight line from Hermann Helmholz's famous pledge in 1845 to devise a research program that ultimately would describe all bodily processes in chemical terms to the 1953 parsing of the DNA molecule to the events of yesterday.
