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The lab coats, microscopes and medical instruments on display at the Science Museum of Minnesota are typically seen as noble symbols of knowledge, healing and rational inquiry. In the case of a new exhibit, however, they are artifacts of science gone astray and medicine perverted to serve the goals of "racial hygiene," mass forced sterilization, segregation, euthanasia and ultimately genocide. "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" is the story of the eugenics movement implemented by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and '40s. The exhibit, created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., opens Wednesday in the downtown St. Paul museum. Eugenics is the belief that the human species could be improved by discouraging or stopping reproduction by people with genetic defects or undesirable traits and encouraging reproduction among those believed to have desirable, inheritable traits. It was carried out to its most horrifying extremes in Nazi Germany. But the exhibit, which includes artifacts, photos and video testimonials, shows that advocacy for eugenics predated the rise of Hitler and that many in the scientific and medical communities embraced its use. The theory also was promoted and practiced in places beyond Germany, including the United States and Minnesota............................................
Science Museum exhibit explores how Nazi eugenics effort lead to the Holocaust
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