News Article
Department Faculty Lead Planning for Deadly Medicine Exhibit at HMS
15 Apr 2010
Harvard Medical School is hosting Deadly Medicine, a traveling exhibit of the U.S. Holocaust Museum from April through mid-July 2011. In March, HMS hosted a planning summit meeting of senior leaders from area hospitals and schools of medicine, nursing, public health, law and to plan this event. Deadly Medicine chronicles the ways in which physicians helped to advance Nazi plans both before and during World War II. Unlike many Holocaust events, this exhibit is not simply a tale of horror but an analysis of the role that the German medical elite played in turning German medicine into Nazi medicine through longstanding commitments to eugenics. The exhibit focuses specifically on the German sterilization and euthanasia campaigns directed primarily to German citizens deemed unfit. It raises contemporary issues related to professional ethics, dual agency, contemporary genetic medicine and disabilities.
Millie Solomon, Scott Podolsky, and Kathryn Hammond-Baker are leading HMS' effort to ensure that many individuals from academic and health care institutions in Boston and throughout the state make the trip to the Countway Library, where the exhibit is housed. HMS will be offering an affiliated set of lectures and workshops which will be widely publicized. According to Millie, "We are also trying to encourage faculty to develop short courses, or integrate content from the exhibit into existing courses. The exhibit's themes and primary source materials are an ideal way to bring issues of professional ethics alive for students; and I can’t think of a better way to leave a lasting legacy long after the exhibit has left town than to know that there are faculty across the city and state teaching to its themes."
For further information and involvement, contact Millie, Scott, or Francesca Holinko, who is the project coordinator. (An e-mail link to Ms. Holinko is on our people/administrative staff page.)