a pseudo-science called eugenics, based on the belief that many americans were mentally defective, among them immigrants. >> america is degenerating. >> eugenicists believed so-called defectives should not be allowed to reproduce. >> sterilize women who were thought not capable of having the right kind of children. >> thousands of women were sterilized as the fake science became a national craze. the eugenics movement decided it was time to bring its research to capitol hill. >> charts of data purporting to show that people from italy, from poland, from the slavic countries were genetically inferior to the northern european, to the nordic, the aryan, the anglo-saxon. >> after months of debate, a new