Editor’s note. The following introduction is from Cheryl Eckstein who directed the Compassionate Healthcare Network. The entirety of Medical Science Under Dictatorship follows the introduction. This is republished from the Compassionate Healthcare Network website.
In July of 1949, The New England Journal of Medicine printed an article by Dr. Leo Alexander titled: Medical Science Under Dictatorship. Dr. Alexander acted as consultant to the Secretary of war, and the Chief of Counsel for War Crimes held in Nuremberg Germany.
The paper is considered a classic, justifiably earning the highest respect through the decades since its publication. In it, Dr. Alexander explains what happens to medicine when it “becomes subordinated to the guiding philosophy of the dictatorship.” That philosophy is Hegelian, or “rational utility” which Alexander said “replaced moral, ethical and religious values.”
What motivated physicians to judge that there is “such a thing as life not worthy to be lived.”
How did such attitudes entice the healer to become killer?
Alexander said the crimes “started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived.”
The physicians were not repulsed by this new attitude, nor did they survey the oiled slope. The theory was about to be put into practice. But first they had to take care of a few minor details, as for instance, the Hippocratic Oath. They would have to reject the ethics outlined in the over 2,000 year old vow.
They rejected the “non-rehabilitable sick,” the “socially unwanted,” the “unproductive” the unlovely and unlovable. Seduced by so-called “Hegelian rational,” physicians veered unblushingly from noble physician to ignoble technicians. Dr. Alexander introduced a new term for destroyers of life, calling the science of killing, “ktenology”.
In the segment, “The Example of Successful Resistance by the Physicians of the Netherlands,” Dr. Alexander applauded the small country for having such a large and brave heart. It was the Dutch physicians who risked their lives by standing firm against a dictatorship that threatened to change the practice of medicine forever. Considering the present situation in Holland, one might find the information contained, unbelievable.