About an hour outside New York City in the leafy coastal town of Cold Spring Harbor,

there is a genetics research lab right on the water.

So welcome everybody to Coltrum Harbor Laboratory.

The Laboratory was founded in 1890 just after Darwin came out with his theory of evolution and natural selection.

We're here on a Sunday morning to take the tour of the campus.

There's birds chirping and a lot of brick buildings on the side of a grassy hill.

It's definitely the most adorable research lab

I've ever been to.

But we're starting our story here,

not because of what this place is now,

but because of what it used to be.

So for those who don't know, at the beginning of the 20th century, so in the late 1800s,

early 1900s, there was a push for selective breeding. So if a human was deemed unworthy of passing their traits along, they were sterilized against their will.

So we are very open about this part in our history. It is no longer an acceptable practice, which is a good thing.

And by communicating about mistakes in the past, you can learn better policies for the future.

Okay, so now we're going to go to this teaching lab.

You're listening to the documentary from BBC World Service.

I'm Stephen Jackson. I'm Peter Lang Stanton and this is the story of

eugenics in America.

All right, so if you mention the word eugenics to men or women on the street, they will automatically identify it with the Nazis and with

the Holocaust.

But they would be wrong in doing so.

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