In the name of science. The role of biologists in Nazi atrocities: lessons for today's scientists.

Abstract

Racial prejudice is as old as mankind. It is one of the dark sides of man that we tend to decrease the value of others in order to raise ourselves. And at some point in history, prejudice found a faithful servant in science. Scientific theories and arguments were used to support the inferiority of other races, thereby legitimising crimes committed throughout history and all over the world. They were used in the United States to justify slavery and the Indian wars, as well as later for the sterlisation of disabled people. The emergence of eugenics as an ‘applied science’ culminated in the horrendous atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Third Reich. Society was to be cleaned of all alien contamination, hence the German phrase ‘Rassenhygiene’ meaning ‘racial hygiene’. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and people with hereditary diseases were deprived of their human rights, herded into concentration camps, used for scientific experimentation and murdered. And the scientists who provided the scientific backing were respected university professors or researchers of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWS), the predecessor of the Max Planck Society. Many of them remained in renowned positions even after 1945, influential enough to delay an unbiased historical confrontation. > Scientific theories and arguments were used to support the inferiority of other races The Max Planck Society is currently engaged in coming to terms with its past. Its president, Hubert Markl, launched a research programme, History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the National Socialist Era , in 1999 to investigate the involvement of scientists of the KWS in Nazi crimes. First results have now been published (Proctor, 2000; Sachse and Massin, 2000; Schmuhl, 2000). In June 2001, Markl acknowledged the historical responsibility of the Max Planck Society at a scientific symposium entitled ‘ Biomedical Sciences and Human Experimentation at …