Brain Science Under the Swastika: Ethical Violations, Resistance, and Victimization of Neuroscientists in Nazi Europe

ISBN-13: 9780198728634 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 784 str.

Lawrence A. Zeidman (Associate Professor

Opis

80 years ago the greatest mass murder of human beings of all time occurred in Nazi occupied Europe. This began with the mass extermination of patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders that rendered them "useless eaters" to Hitler's regime. The neuropsychiatric profession was systematically "cleansed" beginning in 1933, but racism and eugenics had infiltrated the specialty in the decades before that. With the installation of Nazi-principled neuroscientists, mass forced sterilization was enacted, which slowed down by the start of World War II and the advent of patient murder. But the murder of roughly 275,000 patients by the end of the war was not enough. The patients' brains and neurological body parts were stored and used in scientific publications both during and long after the war. Also, patients themselves were used in unethical ways for epilepsy and multiple sclerosis experiments. Relatively few neuroscientists resisted the Nazis, with some success in the occupied countries. Most neuroscientists involved in unethical actions continued their careers unscathed after the war. Few answered for their actions in a professional or criminal sense, and few repented. The legacy of such a depraved era in the history of neuroscience and medical ethics is that codes exist by which patients and research subjects are protected from harm. But this protection is possibly subject to political extremes and only by understanding the horrible past can the profession police itself. Individual neuroscientists can protect patients and colleagues if they are aware of the dangers of a utilitarian, unethical, and uncompassionate mindset. Brain Science under the Swastika is the only comprehensive and scholarly published work regarding the ethical and professional abuses of neuroscientists during the Nazi era. The book explores the history of racial hygiene and eugenic infiltration of neurology and psychiatry, followed by the appalling forced sterilization and mass murder of patients with mental disease in Nazi Germany. Patients were used in numerous unethical experiments and their brains were used in scientific research that continued to be cited and used long after World War II. The author has crafted a scathing tour de force exploring the extremes of ethical abuse, but also ways that this can be resisted and hopefully prevented by future generations of neuroscientists and physicians.

Recenzje

And this book is timely: despite the appalling abuse of human life by doctors in the Third Reich, the clash between the demands of research and medical ethics is as relevant today as it has ever been...

O autorze

Dr. Zeidman is from Chicagoland and is a board-certified clinical neurologist and neuromuscular specialist, along with being a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, with joint appointments in the Department of Neurology and the Neiswanger Institute of Bioethics. In addition to being Neuro-history Associate Editor for the Journal of Child Neurology, Dr. Zeidman has taught seminars on historical-ethical issues in neuroscience. He has been awarded the prestigious Rockefeller Archive Center Grant-in-Aid, has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters, and has presented his works internationally. He also was instrumental in naming two neuroscientists as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Israel's Yad Vashem Museum for resistance against the Nazis.