Science, a human endeavor, seems to be ever-struggling between the possibilities of technology and the limitations of ethics. No other single event in the history of science demonstrates how the use of data and evidence were construed to massage ethics to fuel a reproductive war against the lower classes. As the introduction to the issue states, "...new immigrants were seen as troublemakers, and...

This new online exhibit and archive from the DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (reviewed in the February 19, 1999 Scout Report) documents the troubling history of the American Eugenics Movement. The movement, which began in 1904 and was most active in the first few decades of the century, sought to apply Mendel's laws to breed better human beings by encouraging people with...