Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus
http://www.100md.com
《新英格兰医药杂志》
During the final decade of the 20th century, several excellent accounts were written on the trio of topics of the Nazification of the medical profession in Germany from 1933 to 1945, human medical experimentation conducted in concentration camps, and the medical abuse of prisoners. This book addresses all three of these topics, with a specific emphasis on the Nazis' experimentation with typhus, from which some 1.5 million people died in concentration camps.
The subject resonates with the recently renewed national interest in infectious-disease epidemics and infectious agents in the context of biowarfare and biologic weapons. The possibility of using infectious-disease agents as instruments of terror — or even of "war by other means" (germ warfare) — has been given great attention by the media, the government, and infectious-disease scientists, and the response has been new federal legislation and appropriations designed to deal with these problems.
In this book, Naomi Baumslag extensively documents the sacrifice of both medical ethics and human beings to a political cause or perceived social threat — in this case, the goals of the Nazi Party. She attempts to understand what went wrong, with the explicit goal of preventing such atrocities in the future. It has long been a principle of medical ethics that data obtained by unethical human experiments should not be used in medical practice, research, or public health in any way. Rather than consigning such information to the unusable past, books like this one attempt to draw cautionary lessons from an experience that might otherwise remain buried in the archives.
Baumslag's book is a curious mix of political and social history, together with medical reporting. Various strands are introduced into a broad narrative in a manner that does not always appear to follow a particular train of thought. However, the documentation is undeniably compelling, and it makes an important contribution to the growing literature on what happened to medicine in Nazi Germany, using the particular example of typhus. Other authors have referred to this epoch as either "when medicine went mad" or (with a distinctly different take on the subject) when medicine was "betrayed." Either way, we would do well to pay attention yet again to the lessons of history.
The national response to infectious diseases that are deemed to be of state importance is seen as a critical part of the security of the homeland. Public health and medical practice, as well as biomedical science, are once again on the front lines.
Marc S. Micozzi, M.D., Ph.D.
Health Studies Collegium
Bethesda, MD 20814
marcmicozzi@aol.com(By Naomi Baumslag. 272 pp)
The subject resonates with the recently renewed national interest in infectious-disease epidemics and infectious agents in the context of biowarfare and biologic weapons. The possibility of using infectious-disease agents as instruments of terror — or even of "war by other means" (germ warfare) — has been given great attention by the media, the government, and infectious-disease scientists, and the response has been new federal legislation and appropriations designed to deal with these problems.
In this book, Naomi Baumslag extensively documents the sacrifice of both medical ethics and human beings to a political cause or perceived social threat — in this case, the goals of the Nazi Party. She attempts to understand what went wrong, with the explicit goal of preventing such atrocities in the future. It has long been a principle of medical ethics that data obtained by unethical human experiments should not be used in medical practice, research, or public health in any way. Rather than consigning such information to the unusable past, books like this one attempt to draw cautionary lessons from an experience that might otherwise remain buried in the archives.
Baumslag's book is a curious mix of political and social history, together with medical reporting. Various strands are introduced into a broad narrative in a manner that does not always appear to follow a particular train of thought. However, the documentation is undeniably compelling, and it makes an important contribution to the growing literature on what happened to medicine in Nazi Germany, using the particular example of typhus. Other authors have referred to this epoch as either "when medicine went mad" or (with a distinctly different take on the subject) when medicine was "betrayed." Either way, we would do well to pay attention yet again to the lessons of history.
The national response to infectious diseases that are deemed to be of state importance is seen as a critical part of the security of the homeland. Public health and medical practice, as well as biomedical science, are once again on the front lines.
Marc S. Micozzi, M.D., Ph.D.
Health Studies Collegium
Bethesda, MD 20814
marcmicozzi@aol.com(By Naomi Baumslag. 272 pp)