As Mary Beth Reilly, writer for the U-M’s Center for the History of Medicine, says in the display’s gallery statement, “The Nazi regime was founded upon the conviction that ‘inferior races’ and individuals had to be eliminated from German society so that the fittest ‘Aryans’ could thrive. “By the end of World War II, six million Jews and millions of others—among them Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), people with disabilities, homosexuals, and others belonging to ethnic groups deemed inferior—had been persecuted and murdered.” And as Alexandra Minna Stern, Zina Pitcher Collegiate Professor of the History of Medicine and Associate Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the U-M Medical School, adds, “The exhibition is a visually powerful experience for viewers that shows how the doctrine of racial hygiene was taken to its most heinous extremes.” Indeed. And as the exhibit pointedly illustrates, there’s more than enough blame to go around. For the exhibit begins with a panel illustrating the various programs from countries around the world (including the United States) advocating various eugenic schemes at the turn of the 20th century whose “racial hygiene” included programs in population policy, public health education, and government-funded research whose ends (even if they weren’t remotely the same) clearly showed an undeniable bias. The rediscovery of Austrian botanist Gregor Mendel’s genetics experiments in 1900 coupled with the increasingly fashionable “Social Darwinism” of British philosopher cum sociologist Herbert Spencer, whose catchphrase “survival of the fittest” was being bandied about, led to increasing public prestige in the efforts to stabilize public policy issues that emerged with increasing industrialization and urbanization. This was, in retrospect, a philosophical and political slippery slope that was in part absorbed in the ideology and practice of the newly emergent Nazi party of the 1920s. "Hygiene" (1911 exhibition poster of the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden)From the early 1930s through the balance of the Nazi regime, there were repeated campaigns to rid German society of what they viewed as biological threats. As “Deadly Medicine” clearly shows, this policy absorbed the efforts and energies of many of the nation’s most talented doctors, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and medically trained geneticists, as well as social planners and party functionaries at every level. What started as a secret campaign to eliminate the weak and infirm disguised as medical assistance metastasized into a full-fledge program of eradication under the pressure of World War II. Ultimately, this so-called “sanitary campaign” finally took form as a genocide that we now know as the Holocaust, resulting in the near total annihilation of Europe’s Jewish population. To its credit, “Deadly Medicine” doesn’t pull any punches. Its juxtaposition of scientific certitude and racial hatred are handled as responsibly as the topics deserve. By naming names, dates, and events—as well as providing significant visual evidence—the exhibit takes the full measure of this circumstance where those in charge of healing and sustenance distorted their responsibilities until their lifework turned into a horror whose pain continues to this day. It’s certainly enough pain for Professor Stern to remind us that the example of this massive failure of science, technology, tolerance, and ultimately compassion, “raises weighty questions about the potential benefits and harms of genetic and reproductive technologies today.” And it’s on this cautionary note that the solemn exhibit rightfully concludes. “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race” will continue through April 13 at the University of Michigan Taubman Health Sciences Library—Fourth Floor, 1135 E. Catherine Road. Library hours are 8 a.m.-1:45 a.m. Monday-Friday; 10 a.m.-1:45 a.m. Saturday; and 11 a.m.-1:45 a.m. Sunday. For information, call 734-936-1394.