Monday, November 05, 2007

Media Short Changes Italians of Accomplishments, Focuses on Petty Thugs

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Isn't it revolting how easily the Media overlooks the Italian Ethnicity when so many Italians have Remarkable Achievements,

and how quickly the Media must associate any petty criminal with his Italian Ethnicity.  Try to keep an eye out, and see if that is not true.

 

In this case,  while the Albany Times Union mentioned the British roots of one of the Three Nobel Prize winners, and the Welsh roots of the second Nobel Prize winner, it did NOT mention the ITALIAN  roots of the third Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Mario R. Capecchi

Egidio Currenti  a research scientist at the  New York State Health Department corrects the Record!!!!!  Thanks Egidio !!!!!!!

Nobel Story Lacked Mention of Winner's Roots

Albany Times Union
Monday, November 5, 2007

An article in the Oct. 9 Times Union stated that "two American scientists and a Briton won the Nobel Prize in medicine for ground-breaking discoveries that led to a powerful technique for manipulating genes."

However, your article lacked fairness and objectivity in treating people of Italian descent.

In fact, you justly and accurately wrote that one of the scientists was a native of Britain and another scientist was of Cardiff University in Wales, but you did not indicate that Dr. Mario R. Capecchi was a native of Italy.

The article demonstrated a lack of sensitivity toward an ethnic group that has contributed so much to the greatness of this country.

Moreover, it did not show kindliness for Italians and Italian-Americans, who celebrate October as the Italian Culture and Heritage Month. Incidentally, Dr. Capecchi was born in Verona, the sister city of Albany.

Dr. Capecchi's family was persecuted by the Nazis during the World War II. His grandfather, an archaeologist, was gunned down by the German Gestapo. His father, an Italian aviator, perished while fighting the Nazis.

He himself spent the war destitute in Northern Italy after his American mother, a poet, was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. His mother survived, after the Allies liberated the concentration camp, and was able to find her young son in an orphanage. The two of them boarded a ship in Naples and set sail for America.

Dr. Capecchi's schooling in America turned out to be excellent. He was inspired, above all, by his uncle who, as a physicist at Princeton, helped develop the first electron microscope.

He did his undergraduate degree at Antioch College in Ohio, then transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to pursue graduate work in physics and mathematics.

Dr. Capecchi spent six years at Harvard, where he met Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. He is, presently, performing his research at the University of Utah.

EGIDIO CURRENTI

Loudonville

The writer is a research scientist at the State Health Department's Wadsworth Center. 

 

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