Gene Fools

On the edge of Loring Park, down the street from La Belle Vie, sits the former site of the now-defunct Minnesota Eugenics Society. Led by Charles Dight, the society was most vocal in the years leading up to World War II, when it preached the need to stop undesirables—anyone from homosexuals to those with mental illness—from reproducing. Dight even wrote a letter to a newly elected Adolph Hitler, praising him for “stamping out mental inferiority” among the German people and wishing him well in his future endeavors.

The University of Minnesota housed the Dight Institute for the Promotion of Human Genetics until the early 1960s. Now, almost fifty years later, the U of M’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies brings Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race to the Science Museum of Minnesota, an exhibit the foundation hopes will reopen a dialogue some mistakenly believe is unnecessary.

“Many people think the Holocaust was about a bunch of crazy people spewing ideas about hate,” says Stephen Feinstein, director of the center. “These were educated people at the forefront of the movement—MDs, psychiatrists. It shows how quickly there can be an ethical slide among professionals.”

Debuting in 2004 at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the exhibit has since traveled to diverse places such as the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, bringing with it artifacts from medical experiments, propaganda posters, audio and visual clips, and testimony from survivors of the Nazi regime. According to curator Susan Bachrach, the exhibit aims to do more than expose the atrocities of the Holocaust, it “aims to present an accurate picture and humanize the bad guys. [The Holocaust happened because] educated people made a series of decisions that took the country to a dark place.”

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the traveling exhibit is the addition of a component focusing on the international support eugenics gained due to Darwin’s arguments on natural selection and the “survival of the fittest.” Many countries—including our own—preached family planning and segregation in the name of eugenics, a word that means “well born.” As a matter of public health, eugenics was also viewed by many as a legitimate way to eliminate, through breeding, serious health conditions such as epilepsy and minimize unfortunate incidences of mental illness. According to Feinstein, Minnesota’s state fair had a booth that explained the “benefits of Norwegians marrying Norwegians, Swedish marrying Swedish, not intermixing.” The current perception of eugenics as purely a Nazi invention is a direct result of the Nazis’ shift from trying to control genetics through marriage and reproduction to simply eliminating those seen as biologically unfavorable.

“When we think of Nazis as zealots, we use it to distance ourselves,” Bachrach says. “But these people weren’t always zealots.” 

The exhibit may take a different approach to eugenics than many Minnesotans learned in history class, but, according to Feinstein and Bachrach, an informed discussion is even more important at a time when the scientific and medical communities are making breakthroughs (in cloning, stem cell research, genetic mapping) that raise serious ethical questions.

“Science is a powerful tool. This exhibit is by no means antiscience, but it is important to know how science can be abused,” Bachrach says, adding that the human genome project and other research projects have the potential to turn down a similar path. “Today, there is still this idea of biological idealism,” says Bachrach. In a world where science can inform parents-to-be about their unborn child’s genetic destiny, he warns, “we have to consider whether people are still making eugenic choices.”

The Center for Holocaust Studies is also hosting a series of lectures—including talks by survivors of experiments—that Feinstein says he hopes will further the dialogue. After all, Minnesota is a state where medical facilities such as the Mayo Clinic, University of Minnesota, and others are conducting world-class research and where human rights advocacy is strong in such organizations as the Center for Victims of Torture and American Refugee Committee.

“We want people to see this and have a discussion,” Feinstein says. “Where did the Germans, who arguably had the best music, art, and science of the time, go so wrong? If we know where they went wrong, we can avoid [going down that path ourselves].” Opens Feb. 27. Science Museum of Minnesota, 120 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, 651-221-9444