The events which led to the sterilization, torture and murder of millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and children of mixed racial heritage in the years just before and during the era of the Third Reich in Germany were rooted firmly in the science of genetics (Muller-Hill, 1988). Rooted not in fringe, lunatic science but in the mainstream of reputable genetics in what was indisputably the most advanced scientific and technological society of its day. The pursuit of genetic purity in the name of public health led directly to Dachau, Treblinka, Ravensbruck and Auschwitz.

As early as 1931 influential geneticists such as Fritz Lenz were referring to National Socialism as "applied biology" in their textbooks (Caplan, 1992). As difficult as it is for many contemporary scientists to accept (Caplan, 1992; Kater, 1992), mainstream science provided a good deal of enthusiastic scien

be pursued at the level of individuals and their direct, lineal offspring or for large groups or populations. Efforts aimed at improving or enhancing the properties of large-scale populations such as by providing incentives for large numbers of individuals with particular traits or abilities to marry and have many children or encouraging public health testing for neural tube defects constitute versions of population eugenics. The goals of such activities are to shift the makeup of the gene pool of future generations in particular directions.

Germans resorted to stealing racially acceptable children from occupied territories. Up to 100,000 children may have been stolen from just Poland alone. Some of these children were war orphans, but it is well documented that many were stolen right from their parents' arms. The criterion as stated before was blond hair and blue eyes (green eyes were also acceptable). This was one of the most horrible sides of the Lebensborn policy. Kidnapping of children "racially goods" in the eastern occupied countries. These children were forced to reject and forget their birth parents; they were told that their parents deliberately abandoned them. The children who refused Nazi education were often beaten and then transferred to concentration camps.

The day when we need to decide whether it is wrong to choose the genetic makeup of our children is not very far off. Some argue that we lack the wisdom to choose well (Lewontin, 1992). But, that hardly stops parents today from seeking to better the lot of their children through environmentally mediated efforts at enhancement. In a society that places so much emphasis on maximizing opportunities and achieving the most efficient use of resources it is hard to believe that pressures will not quickly arise on prospective parents to use genetic information and techniques for manipulating genes to better the lot of their children or of future generations of children.

Nazi race hygiene theories were false. There is no evidence to support the biological views of the inherent inferiority of races or the biological superiority of specific ethnic groups, which underlay the eugenics efforts of the Third Reich. There is not even any firm basis for differentiating groups into races on the basis of genetics (Harding, 1993). The negative eugenics programs race hygiene spawned were not only patently unethical, since they were completely involuntary and coercive they were also based upon assumptions about genes and race that are not true. The Nazi drive to design future generations based on what can now be understood as invalid science skewed by racism led to concentration camps, forced sterilization, infanticide and genocide.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2325
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)