Eugenics: German geneticits plead guilty
(July 18th 2008) At the Congress of Genetics in Berlin, the German Society of Human Genetics presented a statement on the foundation of the "Eugenics" programme set up by the Nazis during the German Third Reich. Karin Hollricher reports.
From July 12 to July 16, the German capital hosts the 20th Congress of Genetics with more than 2,300 participants from around the world. The German Society of Human Genetics (GfH), noting that July 14 was the 75th anniversary of the proclamation for the "Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases Act", jumped at the chance to present a new statement on the horrible events based on that law.
In 1927, geneticists were invited to Berlin for the first time. Then, mainly plant breeders and geneticists working with Drosophila - one of which was Hermann Joseph Muller - talked about mutations and heredity.
Shortly thereafter, the Nazi dictatorship misused genetics for racist purposes. Genetics in Germany plummeted downward - as did evolution - and it took many years for that discipline to recover (evolution still hasn't recovered from the impact of that dark period).
After the "Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases Act" came into effect, about 400,000 people were needlessly sterilised without their consent and as a consequence several thousand of them died. The application of that law culminated in inconceivable mass murder, the gruesome euthanasia programmes were initiated.
Last Tuesday, at the 20th Congress of Genetics, the GfH declared that physicians, geneticists and other scientists of thattime abused their scientific authority in preparing the contents of the law. Several geneticists even helped to carry out the law by serving as referees for the "Hereditary Health Courts". Despite better scientific knowledge, geneticists supported the development and phasing-in of the law for their own advantage and funding of their science, explained Wolfram Henn from the University in Saarbrücken and head of the Committee on Policy and Ethics of the GfH.
"In view of the state of knowledge of genetics at the time, their actions were indefensible, since it should have been clear that the eugenic measures planned were not only morally wrong but also biological nonsense", writes the GfH in its statement. The members of the society "reject any form of discrimination based on ethnic characteristics or on genetically-determined diseases or handicaps."
