Nazi Germany has been described as a "racial state" that attempted to implement a vision of a biologically "purified" and ethnically "cleansed" community.  This presentation -- a travelling exhibition produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum -- explores the origins of a Nazi medicine in the development of a so-called science of eugenics in the early twentieth century.  It reveals how in the name of an "applied biology" and "racial hygiene", many members of the German medical community actively engaged in the compulsory sterilization and "euthanasia" of populations deemed "hereditarily ill" or "degenerate" and ethnic groups deemed "innately inferior" -- practices that ultimately led to the murder of six million of Europe's Jews in the Holocaust.  Finally, in helping us to understand the origins of the Holocaust, it invites us to reflect on issues central to contemporary bioethics -- the potential consequences of scientific advances in genetics, the balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of society, and the ethical responsibilities of medical and life-science professionals.

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