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U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM, COURTESY OF NATURHISTORISCHES MUSEUM, VIENNAthe United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum in Washington, D.C.—shows science’srole in the campaign.The exhibition is slated for a multiyearnational tour. In its Pittsburgh launch,“Deadly Medicine” included several programsheld in collaboration with the Universityof Pittsburgh that delved into the legacyeugenics has left to modern medicine. Pitt’sMargaret McDonald, associate vice chancellorfor health sciences academic affairs, LisaParker, associate professor of human genetics,and David Barnard, professor of medicine,worked with the Warhol to offer a seriesof public talks and forums at the museum.(These were on the heels of a Scaife Hall lectureby Susan Bachrach, curator of the exhibition;her December visit was sponsored bythe C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society.)The Warhol talks featured Pitt medical geneticists,public health experts, physicians, bioethicists,art historians, and even a poet. OnFebruary 20, Arthur S. Levine, senior vicechancellor for the health sciences and dean ofthe medical school, hosted a Dean’s Summitthat drew academic medicine representativesfrom Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, WestVirginia, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. TheSchool of Medicine also offered its studentsa “Deadly Medicine” minielective with a discussionand private exhibition tour led byBachrach and Pitt’s Marta Kolthoff, assistantprofessor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductivesciences.The programs were cautionary in nature,reflecting the tone of the exhibition. “DeadlyMedicine” shows how well-respected scientistshelped prosecute mass murder, says Bachrach.“The prevailing image of Nazi medicine isthat they were fanatics and political zealots,that they weren’t mainstream.” That’s not thecase, she says.The exhibition documents the growth ofeugenics from its roots in 19th-century socialDarwinism. In the United States, eugenicsgained popularity at a time when its proponentsclaimed that the “feebleminded” andimmigrants from Southern and Eastern Europeweakened the country’s genetic stock. Writingbooks with Brave New World–like titles, such asSterilization for Human Betterment, eugenicistsin the United States argued to cull the gene poolof those with “less desirable” traits. They evenprevailed upon the country’s highest court.“Three generations of imbeciles are enough,”wrote Supreme Court Justice Oliver WendellHolmes in Buck v. Bell, the 1927 decisionallowing Virginia officials to sterilize CarrieBuck, an unwed mother with an alleged familyhistory of mental retardation. From 1909to 1933, 16,000 people in this country weresterilized, many of them wards of state psychiatricinstitutions. The practice continuedinto the 1970s; by then, 65,000 people hadbeen sterilized.In the wake of a diminishing birthrateafter World War I, Germany stressed fertility.The public health message merged with theracist and nationalist belief that the Nordic“race” was ideal. As the Nazis consolidatedtheir power, a eugenics movement also tookhold. “Deadly Medicine” shows the inexorableslide of German eugenics toward massmurder. The viewer sees still photos of sterilizationoperations before an amphitheaterof German medical students. From 1933 to1945, state doctors sterilized 400,000 disabledand mentally ill Germans, deemed “lifeundeserving of life.”The 1933 Erbgesundheitsgesetz, or lawconcerning hereditary health, paved the way forsuch sterilizations, points out Pitt’s Loren Roth,senior associate vice chancellor, health sciencesand professor of psychiatry and of health servicesadministration. Roth, who participatedin the Dean’s Summit, notes that the field ofpsychiatry was complicit in this campaign. (Healso notes that psychiatrists who objected to thepractice were removed from their positions.)Elimination of those deemed “incurable”would come next. Physicians and midwivesreferred children born with mental or physicaldefects to special pediatric euthanasiaunits, which killed 5,000 children. The exhibitionincludes a stark, metal, white crib, likethose used in the units. It sits empty.Not content with preventing “undesirableoffspring,” the Reich soon targeted the adultdisabled population for extermination. From1939 to 1945, the state killed some 200,000Germans—the most incapacitated of thosehoused in state asylums. To accomplish this,Nazi doctors developed efficient killing strategies,placing victims in gas chambers and burningtheir corpses in crematoria. That set thestage for the “Final Solution” and the annihilationof 6 million. Doctors were there every stepof the way, the exhibition reminds us.“Deadly Medicine” raises enduring questions:How could medicine become such ahand servant of evil? What would each of usdo if confronted with a similar situation?The programs urged participants to considerwhether our society is pursuing questionableideals of biological perfection in itsown way, through plastic surgery, the testingof fetuses, or whatever advances medical sciencehas in store.Pitt School of Law Dean Mary Crossley,whose own scholarship focuses on healthcareinequalities, offered words of caution in herWarhol talk. She worries about an implicitbias against sickness and imperfection.“We really need to be very attentive tothe choices we’re making,” says Crossley,“and [make sure] they promote not only thewelfare of society, but also individual welfareand freedom.”Elimination of those deemed “incurable” would come next.Barnard, a Pitt bioethicist, noted in hisWarhol talk that the Nuremberg Code waslargely responsible for changing the waydoctors conduct human experiments in thiscountry. Among other principles now understoodas dogma, the code states that a studysubject must not only consent to participatein a study, but do so without the risk of coercion,be aware of the scope of the study, andbe able to drop out at any time. It also statesthat the degree of risk scientists take in studies“should never exceed that determined bythe humanitarian importance of the problemto be solved.”Yet, Barnard reminded, some scientists stillpursued highly dubious studies in the States.In 1974, the federal government mandatedthat universities establish institutional reviewboards to oversee human subject research.It’s hard to imagine the Seidens anticipatedwhat awaited them in 1942 as they sat fortheir portraits. The scientists studying themprobably had some idea.“We don’t know what measures about theexpulsion of the Jewish People are plannedin the next months,” wrote one researcher toanother, “which, under certain circumstances,if we wait too long could deprive us of valuablematerial.”■SUMMER 2007 35