 Hello, I'm Eric Green, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the U.S. National Institutes of Health. I'm proud to be here to open this timely and important symposium. Today's event is an opportunity for discussion and reflection about a difficult topic, the history and reality of eugenics. The symposium will begin with a frank accounting of historical wrongs, namely the harm of eugenics and of scientific racism, not only in the distant past but even today. Eugenics, scientific racism and other forms of systemic discrimination exist around the world and here in the United States. They continue to undermine the entire scientific enterprise and to produce grievous harm to society as a whole. It is critical for us to understand these histories which remain deeply intertwined with the histories of evolutionary biology and genetics. Only through a thorough understanding of these legacies will we be able to fully combat the present forms of scientific racism and systemic discrimination. The National Institutes of Health and in particular the National Human Genome Research Institute have consistently sought to be at the leading edge of open and meaningful discussions about the uses of genetics and genomics and their potential for both revolutionary advances and at the same time grievous harm. That is why our institute founded the Ethical Legal and Social Implications or ELSI Research Program more than 30 years ago at the start of the Human Genome Project. That is also why we work closely with the genomics research community including many world-class bioethicists and social scientists to help ensure the ethical and equitable uses of genomics in medicine and society. However, while we marvel at the incredible advances brought about by the Human Genome Project and subsequent genomics research programs, genomic information continues to be misused to further racism and eugenics today. Some aspects of genetics and genomics have become historically intertwined with scientific racism and the practice of eugenics and there are legitimate concerns about the potential abuses of genomics to advance eugenics and racist beliefs. It is also critical to realize that the United States eugenics movement was the model for many other similar movements worldwide and that sadly racism and eugenics continue even today. These horrific ideals are not just part of our history but rather remain within our present day reality. At the National Human Genome Research Institute we understand the weight of eugenics and scientific racism and the continual harms that they cause. That is why we are active in the National Institutes of Health's UNITE program, a groundbreaking initiative to combat scientific racism and prejudice in biology and society and medicine. In many other ways, the institute remains vigilant to prevent eugenics and scientific racism from taking further root in science and medicine. To my knowledge, this is the first time that an institute or center at the National Institutes of Health has led a sustained effort to educate, discuss, and confront the legacies of eugenics and scientific racism in a public forum. Our institute has only begun to rigorously address the difficult legacies of eugenics within the genetics and genomics communities. We must come to terms with how key figures within our field and even our own institutes history have knowingly supported the work of eugenics and scientific racism. Only by being transparent and vigilant about the misapplications of genomics and genetics can we fully realize their potential and promise to improve the lives of all people. As I said, I am incredibly proud to host today's symposium on the fourth day of Hanukkah. In fact, the Hebrew word Hanukkah means dedication and brings with it associations of renewal and freedom from the oppression and a renewed commitment to ethical education, all important themes that resonate with this two-day symposium. I'm thankful to the institute staff, our speakers, and our partners for their dedication in making this event possible. At this point, I will turn things over to the symposium co-organizer, Chris Donahue. Thank you, Eric. I'm Christopher Donahue, the historian of the National Human Genome Research Institute. I would first like to thank all of our speakers and moderators who have not only spent a great deal of time and effort to share their unique research and expertise to guide the institute, the NIH, and our audiences through these complex and difficult history, but who have done so under the unique conditions of this ongoing pandemic. I specifically want to thank Marius Torda, who is co-leading this symposium with me. It was Marius who urged me nearly three years ago to begin the conversation at the NHGRI on the legacies of eugenics and scientific racism, with this symposium being only a first step in the work of confronting eugenics and scientific racism today. As importantly, I would also like to acknowledge Eric Green, Lawrence Brody, Ben Sponheim, Chris Gunter, Chris Wettestrand, Zach Utz, Brittany Kish, Ivana Perno, Averro and Senus, as well as many members of our extramural and intramural program community who have been steadfast in their support of the continued growth of the history program at the institute. Most critically, I would also like to acknowledge the tireless efforts of Sarah Bates, CPLB chief, and the branch to have made this symposium a reality. Over the next two days, we will have nine talks from scholars who are all internationally acknowledged experts in researching, publishing, and communicating about the history of scientific racism and the legacies and present-day realities of eugenics ideas and practices. The work by these scholars is not only historical, but explores the recent experiences of people who have been directly impacted by eugenics. Our goal is to have forthright discussions of the words and language used by eugenicists and scientific races in order to combat present-day racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination. Often, eugenicists and racists use offensive and upsetting words. They are not words that are acceptable to use to refer to individuals and groups in research, scientific, and social settings. Please be aware that you may find some of the language and historical events depicted in this symposium disturbing, but by confronting language through historical discussion, context, and analysis, we rob language, that language, of its dominating power. Through understanding the disturbing details of the debates of eugenics boards over whether to sterilize and the dehumanization of people labeled feeble-minded by doctors, scientists, and public health workers in all their brutality, we can confront eugenics and scientific racism as they still exist today. In doing so, we affirm our capacity to learn from history to build a better future. Our pledge as scientists and policymakers and as historians, ethicists, social scientists, and social workers is to never again let eugenics and scientific racism take hold in science and society. And although ideas matter, this pledge rings hollow if we only treat eugenics and scientific racism as ideologies. We must acknowledge hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone were deprived of their autonomy, their reproductive choice, and in many instances their very futures as they saw them. Sterilization of historically marginalized groups do indeed occur today in the United States and around the world. For sterilization, restriction of marriage and fertility treatments to the so-called fit, denial of housing, and equitable access to health care occupations, educational institutions, and other forms of essential human association still operate to radically diminish the life spans and prospects of many groups who are rendered as other. Such marginalization has only been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID pandemic with the medicalization of borders and the renewed rationing of care. Immediately after World War II, many of the key figures in the history of genetics and molecular biology espoused eugenic attitudes and advocated practices that were indistinguishable in many senses from the heyday of eugenics during the interwar period. These eugenicists were responsible not only for evolutionary biology and genetics as modern disciplines, but also without their work, the human genome project would not have been possible. As fundamentally, genomic studies continue to be misappropriated to support the work of contemporary eugenicists and scientific racists. The last few years in the United States and abroad have underscored that the revolutionary advances resulting from the human genome project and consequently the renewed centrality of genetics in the media and the public sphere have come at an extremely heavy cost. Genomics in many senses has undergone a weaponization which mirrors increasingly radical ideological polarizations worldwide. It is thus incumbent upon the NHGRI and the NIH more broadly to combat this phenomenon through frank dialogue and better understanding of these histories. Scientific institutions such as our own take deserved credit for the stupendous advances in the genomics field, but we must hold ourselves equally accountable to combat abuses of that science, where silence or reserve is often interpreted as quietism or worse acceptance. Recent efforts in particular at the NHGRI to promote anti-racism, equity and inclusion in the NIH's Unite initiative are concrete real steps to redress this balance. In this two-day forum, we will show you how eugenics practices go beyond statistics to affect people, neighbors and friends, young old people of all ancestries and backgrounds from all parts of the United States and in some places around the world. I expect that you like us will want to talk about what you have heard and learned afterwards. To these ends, we will follow up on the symposium with an informal roundtable discussion which will include many of the same historians and experts as well as some fantastic guests. Our goal is to keep these conversations at the forefront to promote dialogue as well as constructive action so that each member of our audience today is able to become an anti-racist as well as an anti-eugenicist. Thank you.