Dwarfism

• After a stay in Leukerbad, James Baldwin affirmed:
  “From all available evidence, no black man had ever set foot in this tiny Swiss village before I came.
• Fifty years before the American writer set foot in the Alps, about two third of the Swiss population visited the “Village noir” in Geneva.
• How is it possible that, half a century later, the exhibition of 200 African people that two million people visited has fallen into oblivion?

A “Black village” in the heart of the Alps

• Back in 1896, during the Swiss Second National Exhibition, it hosted a human zoo.
• There are very few visible references to it, except for one street called after its corresponding “white” exhibition, the “Village Suisse”.
• However, several researchers’ archival work helped unearth the history of the first Swiss “Village noir”.
• Inhabited by more than 200 individuals from Senegal, the village was situated a few streets from the city’s central square, the Plaine de Plainpalais.

From freak shows to human zoos

• Far from being a Swiss peculiarity, human zoos were spread around the West.
• Human exhibitions were a form of entertainment invented in the early 19th century in Great Britain.
• Turned into a film in 2010, one of the most famous shows was Sara Baartman, the “Hottenton Venus”.
• Geneva Graduate Institute’s Mohamed Mahmoud Mohamedou suggests that human zoos were common entertainment in the second half of the 19th century.

Two faces of the same racist coin

• This was when the pseudo-scientific attempts to create a superior race thrived within Western anthropology and biology academic departments.
• For eugenicists, human zoos provided ‘samples’ for racist theories.
• Thus, scientific racism developed within academia went hand in hand with popular racism: human zoos were places where these two faces of the same coin met.

Tackling the legacies of human zoos

• Human exhibitions were the result of Western colonial thinking – says Patrick Minder – in which the Genevan’ “Village noir” fits perfectly.
• Unlike other countries, Switzerland did not stop its human exhibitions during the interwar period.
• Against this backdrop, talking about human zoos in Switzerland should not only be of interest to historians.
• If we keep silent on human zoos, we cannot see how visiting a “typical” Maasai village echoes the old colonial habits of the mise en scène of rural, primitive life.

• "With this action, children with short stature due to achondroplasia have a treatment option that targets the underlying cause of their short stature."
• People with achondroplasia have a genetic mutation that causes a certain growth regulation gene called fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 to be overly active, which prevents normal bone growth.
• Voxzogo works by binding to a specific receptor called natriuretic peptide receptor-B that reduces the growth regulation gene's activity and stimulates bone growth.
• Researchers measured the participants' annualized growth velocity, or rate of height growth, at the end of the year.

• TransCon CNP is designed to provide continuous exposure of CNP at safe, therapeutic levels via a single, weekly subcutaneous dose.
• Ascendis Pharma currently has a pipeline of multiple independent endocrinology rare disease and oncology product candidates in development.
• SKYTROFA, Ascendis, Ascendis Pharma, the Ascendis Pharma logo, the company logo and TransCon are trademarks owned by the Ascendis Pharma Group.
• August 2021 Ascendis Pharma A/S.