In the Victorian era, in the shadow of Darwin's revolutionary theory of evolution, a sinister ideology took root — eugenics. It was an attempt to impose political control upon humanity’s unruly DNA by encouraging those with "desirable" traits to breed, while removing those with "undesirable" ones from the gene pool.
The idea, which enjoyed popular support among scientists, politicians and the general public for 60 years in Europe and the U.S., later became a cornerstone of Hitler’s Third Reich, taking the world on a horrific journey from forced sterilizations to the mass murder of millions in concentration camps such as Auschwitz.
