[SSRI-Research] Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race_Holocaust Museum Exhibit

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Wed, 28 Apr 2004 14:32:03 -0000

[sSRI-Research] Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race_Holocaust

Museum Exhibit

 

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)

Promoting openness and full disclosure

http://www.ahrp.org

 

FYI

" Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race " has opened at the

Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The exhibit addresses the

eugenics movement that swept Western medicine and underpinned the

Nazi Medical atrocities. " From an exploration of the rise of

eugenics, the exhibit leads inexorably, methodically and

incrementally to the Nazi era of forced sterilization, euthanasia

and, finally, concentration camps, mass killings and the ovens of

Auschwitz. Illustrating a complex interweaving of ideas are exhibits

that show the wide appeal, to both the political left and the right,

of eugenic thinking. "

 

Phillip Kennicott of The Washington Post has written an

extraordinarily insightful review, noting the chilling significance

this exhibit has for medicine and science today. " This is an

exhibition about problems that are universal to science and medicine,

about the arrogance of the Enlightenment and the willingness of

thinkers to collaborate with ideologues, all of which is deeply

troubling. "

 

The sadistic experiments of Josef Mengele are not the focus of the

exhibit. Rather, the overall medical travesty endorsed by academic

scientists, doctors, and public health reformers is exposed in

historical context. These groups provided the air of legitimacy, the

moral-intellectual framework and scientific methodology for

channeling Germany's fears and socio-economic ills toward improving

the health of the folk by expunging " undesirables " from the

community.

 

Medical scientists transformed eugenics theories into the accepted

science of the day. They devised public health policies aimed at

making Germans

" healthier: by having healthier babies, tracing and eliminating

genetic defects and preventing disease and " deviancy " from spreading

throughout the society and from one generation to the next. "

 

Eugenics provided the conceptual framework guiding Germany's descent

to Hell. The exhibit provides an unsanitized, historical account of

this " slippery slope " from the birth of an idea, to the resultant

death of millions. " At every step in this tragic process, a moral

threshold is passed. "

 

Among the artifacts exhibited: " Calipers for measuring the body,

trays of glass eyes for determining eye color and anthropological mug

shots show the scientific fascination with documenting the spectrum

of human variation. Posters show a concern with women's reproductive

health; there's also propaganda material encouraging young couples to

make genetically advantageous marriages. Documenting the other end of

this long and tragic evolution of thought is an asbestos mitt, used

by the people who stoked the crematoriums where the bodies of the

disabled were incinerated. "

 

Susan Bachrach, the exhibit curator told him that she has noted that

many physicians visiting the exhibit " get very defensive about it. "

One reason, perhaps, is that America was a leading active participant

in the eugenics movement and its implementation in forced

sterilizations. Another is that the pillars of medicine were

complicit in misapplying science first to disenfranchise, dispel and

then to murder human beings in the name of improving the genetic

stock. Famous pediatricians were instrumental in euthanizing children

with birth defects, prominent psychiatrists emptied asylums by

testing the gas later used at Auschwitz.

 

Finally, their defensiveness may stem from the recognition that the

misapplication of biological solutions ( " scientific " ) to human

problems-an outgrowth of eugenics beliefs-are in evidence today in

certain US public health policies affecting " special populations. "

Policies that strip some individuals of their rights and autonomy are

being sanctioned by public health officials, academics, physicians,

and bioethicists serving on government advisory committees.

Increasingly, children and adults are being " screened " for mental

illness under such policies, and then coerced into taking

psychotropic drugs. Even when the drug' value is in dispute and their

side effects produce severe, in some cases debilitating neurological

damage and chronic illness. Clinical trials are even under way (at

the University of Pennsylvania) surgically implanting drug dispensers

in patients to ensure they are " compliant " with their psychotropic

drug regimens.

 

" Here in a nutshell is the progress of a certain kind of public health

thinking: Fear leads to a modest, utilitarian proposal, which,

despite its effect on civil liberties, is justified in terms of cost

and efficiency. But Buckley's proposal went nowhere. Thinking about

people with this degree of cold abstraction unsettles us; it reminds

us " of Auschwitz. "

 

For those who cannot travel to Washington, the exhibit is online at:

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/narrative/in

dex.ph

p?content=science

 

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

Tel: 212-595-8974

e-mail: veracare

 

~~~~~~~~~~

The Seduction of Science To Perfect an Imperfect Race

By Philip Kennicott

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, April 22, 2004; Page C01

 

Josef Mengele, the death camp doctor whose name is synonymous with

Nazi sadism, makes only a brief appearance in the new Holocaust

Memorial Museum exhibition " Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master

Race. " He is there, almost as a footnote, surrounded by his ilk, and

more to the point, by the trappings, the prestige and the dignity of

science. Mengele, as a criminal, is a symbol for a larger travesty,

and it is that larger crime, the use and abuse of science in the name

of Nazism, that the new exhibition examines.

 

" Deadly Medicine, " which opens today and runs through October 2005,

is so cogent and chilling it's worth seeing twice. Go through the

first time the way curator Susan Bachrach intended, beginning with

the fears and anxieties of Germany just after its devastating loss in

the first World War. Defeat, poverty and the rise of urbanization

made Germans fear their culture was losing its identity and its

resilience. But rising to the challenge of saving Germany was a nexus

of doctors, reformers and scientists who promised relief. Mankind,

looked at objectively, could make itself healthier: by having

healthier babies, tracing and eliminating genetic defects and

preventing disease and " deviancy " --alcoholism, prostitution and

other " urban " ills -- from spreading throughout the society and from

one generation to the next. All of these efforts, including a

sinister strain of racism (let's keep the German bloodline pure and

healthy), were grouped under the loose field of " eugenics. " From an

exploration of the rise of eugenics, the exhibit leads inexorably,

methodically and incrementally to the Nazi era of forced

sterilization, euthanasia and, finally, concentration camps, mass

killings and the ovens of Auschwitz. Illustrating a complex

interweaving of ideas are exhibits that show the wide appeal, to both

the political left and the right, of eugenic thinking (which dated

back to the 19th century). Calipers for measuring the body, trays of

glass eyes for determining eye color and anthropological mug shots

show the scientific fascination with documenting the spectrum of

human variation. Posters show a concern with women's reproductive

health; there's also propaganda material encouraging young couples to

make genetically advantageous marriages. Documenting the other end of

this long and tragic evolution of thought is an asbestos mitt, used

by the people who stoked the crematoriums where the bodies of the

disabled were incinerated.

 

At every step in this tragic progress a moral threshold is crossed.

Why it was crossed, then and there, in Hitler's Germany, is open to

endless debate. But as the museum's director, Sara J. Bloomfield,

says in the catalogue to the exhibition, " During the Holocaust, every

institution established to uphold civilized values failed -- the

academy, the media, the judiciary, law enforcement, the churches, the

government and, yes, the medical and scientific disciplines as well. "

So much for the virtues of civil society, and so much for the

hallowed purity of science.

 

Now go through the exhibition a second time, starting with the most

distinctive failure of German society, the death camps, and strip

away each of the peculiarly German " twists " that happened to science

and medicine in the years leading up to Hitler's regime. Suddenly,

this is an exhibition about problems that are universal to science

and medicine, about the arrogance of the Enlightenment and the

willingness of thinkers to collaborate with ideologues, all of which

is deeply troubling.

 

" We've shown this to a lot of physicians, and they respond very

uniquely to it, " Bachrach says. " Some of them get very defensive

about it. " Doctors can watch exemplars of their field, famous

pediatricians, become instrumental in euthanizing children with birth

defects. Anthropologists and other scientists will see how easy it

was to cross the very fine line between gathering data on people from

other cultures and using that data to divide people into racial

classes, hierarchically arranged. One of the way stations en route to

killing 6 million Jews was figuring out just what a Jew was, and

science was more than happy to assist in making the distinction.

 

Visitors who may like to think that Germany was particularly

exceptional in its pursuit of eugenics will find no comfort either.

Early in the exhibit, there is space devoted to eugenics in other

countries. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s Supreme Court decision of

1927, which affirmed Virginia's right to sterilize Carrie Buck, a

supposedly " feebleminded " woman, is plastered on the wall. The

message is as repellent as the language is seductive: " It is better

for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate

offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility,

society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing

their kind. " And referring to Buck's mother, who was also considered

feebleminded, and her daughter, who it was assumed must be

feebleminded, he concluded in words that have become infamous: " Three

generations of imbeciles are enough. "

 

This was not one of those occasional hiccups of nastiness the court

gives us from time to time. America, in fact, was a leader in the

eugenics movement. " By 1933, by the time the Nazi sterilization law

gets passed, " says Paul Lombardo, professor of bioethics and law at

the University of Virginia, " there are about 20 states in America

that already have sterilization laws. Hitler praises American

eugenicist policies in 'Mein Kampf.' " Hitler praised eugenics, but

eugenics was not a crazed Hitlerian fantasy. It was established

science in the Western world and it didn't go away after Hitler

demonstrated the danger of using it as social policy. Eugenics wasn't

even pseudoscience. Science is what scientists agree it is, and

although there were scientific critics of eugenics (which was based

on a developing and often flawed understanding of genetics),

eugenicists were not outside the scientific mainstream.

 

" Eugenics really didn't get discredited that quickly, " Lombardo

says. " The word eugenics didn't become a dirty word in America until

the late 1960s, early 1970s. Nobody was embarrassed to call

themselves a eugenicist in 1955. " Nor did the doctors and scientists

who worked so intimately with Hitler's government necessarily find

themselves discredited by the Holocaust. Here's Eugen Fischer, a

leader of the German eugenics movement, in an article published in

Nazi Germany in 1943: " It is a rare and special good fortune for a

theoretical science to flourish at a time when the prevailing

ideology welcomes it, and its findings can immediately serve the

policy of the state. " And here's Fischer, by now an eminence of

German science, backpedaling furiously in 1955: " It is certainly not

the fault of eugenics, if godless and criminal misuse occurred in

National Socialism without any knowledge of the genetic facts, and

through the destruction of all human dignity. "

 

A curious bit of German amnesia? Consider this. In 1994, " The Bell

Curve " brought eugenic thinking back full-bore for American readers,

arguing that genetics could be used to explain differences in

intelligence and societal success between racial groups. According to

Lombardo, much of the research upon which that book was based was

supported by the Pioneer Fund, an American eugenics organization

first headed by Harry Laughlin, one of the most strident advocates of

restrictive immigration and sterilization in the 1930s. The Pioneer

Fund, which has argued that it should not be subject to guilt by

association, survived the great discrediting of most of what it once

stood for.

 

One of the curious and disturbing effects of a visit to " Deadly

Medicine " is the persistent and reflexive attempt the visitor makes

to find a way out of its various ethical mazes. Just because the

Nazis used public health and legal means to abolish civil rights for

whole classes of citizens doesn't mean that public health should be

thrown out the window. The words " guilt by association " will murmur

in the back of the mind. And so too the sense that there must be

distinctions to be made here. What of euthanasia? Using it against

unwilling children with birth defects is sickening, but what of an

elderly cancer victim who desperately wants to end his or her life

because of suffering? And what of the " promise " of genetic science?

If medicine can detect genetic defects and doctors can abort fetuses

before they are born, is that simply a few steps removed on the

ethical ladder from doctors who euthanize babies with birth defects

that will certainly lead to quick death? " I personally fall on the

side of really protecting the individual, " Bachrach says.

 

But that answer isn't entirely satisfying to Leon Kass, chairman of

the President's Council on Bioethics, who has walked through the

exhibition and wants to take the entire council to see it. " The

reliance on individual free choice is no guarantee that we won't have

a comparable eugenic prejudice and discriminatory spirit, " says Kass,

pointing to the " free choice " individuals may make to genetically

engineer their children, or themselves, which can " lead to comparable

prejudices against the infirm, the feeble and the feebleminded. "

American society, like any other society, also faces dangers that may

necessitate limiting civil rights when public health is involved. A

bioterrorist attack could require significant curtailing of

individual liberty. And the financial stresses on our health care

system have already led to discussion about how to ration care when

demand exceeds supply. Or consider the case of an Oregon death row

inmate with failing kidneys who needed a $100,000 transplant

operation to survive. When his story hit the news last spring, there

was outrage and a lot of muttering about worthy and unworthy people

that sounded decidedly eugenic in its underlying logic. " There is no

magic answer, " says Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National

Institutes of Health. " In many of these issues you have a balancing

for good and for evil, risk and benefit. The problem is how do you

get to balancing in that process? It has to be done through a

transparent process that involves multiple components of society, not

just the experts, not just one community but the checks and balances

that come from wide participation and open debate. " To the extent

that American science pursues an openness and transparency that was

manifestly absent from Nazi science, it may insulate itself from

ethical dangers. But " Deadly Medicine " diagnoses certain patterns of

thought that persist in science and social thinking.

 

The social cost of illness, welfare and medical care, and the burden

of taxation are constant themes of eugenics. " An hereditarily ill

person costs 50,000 reichsmarks on average up to the age of sixty, "

reads one passage in a Nazi-era biology textbook. " Every 15 seconds

$100 of your money goes for the care of persons with bad heredity, "

reads a wall display mounted by the American Eugenics Society in the

1920s. " That is one of the primary points of contact with the

Holocaust, " Lombardo says. " By passing laws that prohibit these

people -- poor people, criminals, the defective -- we'll be able to

lower taxes. There isn't any subtlety to it. "

 

People were also assigned varying worth. Underlying the eugenics

movement was the fear that the " worst " of society was reproducing

faster than the " best " of society, so the movement festishizes

healthy definitions of family, motherhood and children. It seeks, in

particular, to regulate marriage, trying to limit acceptable

marriages. Just like our own tax code, it used tax benefits and

inheritance law reforms to encourage the good of family life.

Consider a little chapter from the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

In March 1986, when it was becoming clear that AIDS could spread

outside of the gay community and affect the entire country, William

F. Buckley Jr. proposed tattooing people with the HIV virus (on " the

upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks,

to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals " ). It wasn't made

in jest, though Buckley later said it was just so much thinking aloud.

 

But he returned to the idea in May 1986, suggesting that tattoos were

a more efficient and effective measure than the difficult public

health process of tracing sexual contacts. A year later he returned

to the idea, this time with economic arguments, estimating the

societal cost of rampant AIDS would be $10 trillion, which " would

mean economic chaos. " He did acknowledge that his line of

thinking " reminded everyone of Auschwitz. " Here in a nutshell is the

progress of a certain kind of public health

thinking: Fear leads to a modest, utilitarian proposal, which,

despite its effect on civil liberties, is justified in terms of cost

and efficiency. But Buckley's proposal went nowhere. Thinking about

people with this degree of cold abstraction unsettles us; it reminds

us " of Auschwitz. "

 

The Holocaust Memorial Museum exists to remind us all of Auschwitz.

This particular exhibition does even more. It reminds us that when

faced with fears and anxieties similar to those that led to

Auschwitz, we have precedents -- scientific, historical, legal and

social -- that can sober us quickly and turn us toward an ethical

confusion and uncertainty that is, in the end, healthier than the

certainty with which Nazi science proceeded down its grisly road.

 

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every

day except Christmas and Yom Kippur. Admittance is free and no passes

are required for the " Deadly Medicine " exhibition. The museum is at

100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW, near the Smithsonian Metro stop. The

exhibition runs through Oct. 16, 2005.

 

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