Tiffany Wertheimer
Painstaking scientific testing by a team of international experts has been able to debunk a rumour on whether Hitler had Jewish ancestry (he didn't) and determine that he had a genetic disorder which affects the development of sexual organs - all from an old blood-stained swatch of fabric.
While clickbait headlines have focused on whether the Nazi dictator had a micropenis and only one testicle, more serious are the findings that his DNA showed "very high" scores - in the top 1% - for a predisposition to autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.Does this mean he had these neurological conditions? Absolutely not, say the experts - it's not a diagnosis.
But nevertheless, concerns have been raised about stigmatisation and how ethical the research was, prompting the question - should it have been done at all? "I agonised over it," says Prof Turi King within the first few minutes of Saturday's Channel 4 documentary on the research, Hitler's DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator.The genetics expert told the BBC that when she was first approached to take part in the project several years ago, she was very aware of the potential implications on studying the DNA of someone like Adolf Hitler - "I'm not interested in sensationalising things".
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