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The 3rd Reich, strange new respect?


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Robert N. Proctor's 2000 book, The Nazi War on Cancer, stirred controversy in academic circles by taking a look at the healthy side of the Nazi empire. He gives readers a thoroughly researched account of German medical science, posing uncomfortable questions about the ultimate worth of good research carried out under the auspices of evil. Mostly ignored at first Proctor's oeuvre is now attracting more attention than ever, notably among health activists and interventionist policy wonks.
 
Or is this merely a case of a broken clock being right twice a day? His previous book dealt with Nazi medical horrors. (he deplored them)
 
It received 3.5 stars on Amazon.

 bookjacket

From his publisher, Princeton University Press:

Collaboration in the Holocaust. Murderous and torturous medical experiments. The "euthanasia" of hundreds of thousands of people with mental or physical disabilities. Widespread sterilization of "the unfit." Nazi doctors committed these and countless other atrocities as part of Hitler's warped quest to create a German master race. Robert Proctor recently made the explosive discovery, however, that Nazi Germany was also decades ahead of other countries in promoting health reforms that we today regard as progressive and socially responsible. Most startling, Nazi scientists were the first to definitively link lung cancer and cigarette smoking. Proctor explores the controversial and troubling questions that such findings raise: Were the Nazis more complex morally than we thought? Can good science come from an evil regime? What might this reveal about health activism in our own society? Proctor argues that we must view Hitler's Germany more subtly than we have in the past. But he also concludes that the Nazis' forward-looking health activism ultimately came from the same twisted root as their medical crimes: the ideal of a sanitary racial utopia reserved exclusively for pure and healthy Germans.

Author of an earlier groundbreaking work on Nazi medical horrors, Proctor began this book after discovering documents showing that the Nazis conducted the most aggressive anti-smoking campaign in modern history. Further research revealed that Hitler's government passed a wide range of public health measures, including restrictions on asbestos, radiation, pesticides, and food dyes. Nazi health officials introduced strict occupational health and safety standards, and promoted such foods as whole-grain bread and soybeans. These policies went hand in hand with health propaganda that, for example, idealized the Führer's body and his nonsmoking, vegetarian lifestyle. Proctor shows that cancer also became an important social metaphor, as the Nazis portrayed Jews and other "enemies of the Volk" as tumors that must be eliminated from the German body politic.

This is a disturbing and profoundly important book. It is only by appreciating the connections between the "normal" and the "monstrous" aspects of Nazi science and policy, Proctor reveals, that we can fully understand not just the horror of fascism, but also its deep and seductive appeal even to otherwise right-thinking Germans.

 

Edited by Childress
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...the Nazis' forward-looking health activism ultimately came from the same twisted root as their medical crimes: the ideal of a sanitary racial utopia reserved exclusively for pure and healthy Germans.

I think that is a key point to keep in mind while trying to evaluate this book.

Michael 

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I think that is a key point to keep in mind while trying to evaluate this book.

Michael 

Or that any government attempt to modify the behavior of its citizens in the interest of 'health', however well intentioned, is rooted in a fascistic impulse. The counter-argument is that the authorities have a legitimate interest if one's behavior negatively affects others. E.g., 'second hand smoke'.

 

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Or that any government attempt to modify the behavior of its citizens in the interest of 'health', however well intentioned, is rooted in a fascistic impulse. The counter-argument is that the authorities have a legitimate interest if one's behavior negatively affects others. E.g., 'second hand smoke'.

 

Like with almost everything else, there is a sometimes fine line between legitimate public interest and overreaching meddling. A rigorous application of common sense will usually reveal where that line is, but alas as has often been observed, common sense doesn't always seem to be so common. And that is probably what will kill us as a species.

Michael

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On March 21, 2016 at 7:36 PM, Childress said:

A rather dire prognosis, ME. Care to elaborate?

Not particularly. I have done so at some length in other venues, but that was 30 years ago. I will point out that given a difficult problem with two possible answers, one correct the other not, with precisely equal probability of being chosen (in other words, you could flip a coin and get fifty-fifty results), most people will choose the wrong answer over 60% of the time. This is not a good long term strategy.

Michael

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On 3/20/2016 at 4:51 AM, Childress said:

Or that any government attempt to modify the behavior of its citizens in the interest of 'health', however well intentioned, is rooted in a fascistic impulse. The counter-argument is that the authorities have a legitimate interest if one's behavior negatively affects others. E.g., 'second hand smoke'.

 

Nice use of scare quotes smiley-rolleyes007.gif

 

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We're the Nazis more complex morally? Look at the moral cost of medical advancement. The Japanese invented tetracycline to save their soldiers from veneryl diseases. To create this wonder drug they had to experiment on allied airmen, and pregnant Russian and Chinese women, then perform needless vivisections on the victims to add to the horror. This is pure evil beyond any price.  We know the Nazi story more so in the same regard. Morality was absent, not complex.

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21 minutes ago, JonS said:

Trying to normalise the Nazis is attempting to make genocide a valid political position.

I have known people who might well have done that, not because they liked Nazis or genocide, but because they deeply felt that nothing should be forbidden. Trying to explain to them how moronically self-defeating that is was the labor of Sisyphus.

Michael

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