Description
Book SynopsisEighty years ago the largest genocide ever occurred in Nazi Europe. This began with the mass extermination of patients with neurologic and psychiatric disorders that Hitler''s regime considered useless eaters.The neuropsychiatric profession was systematically cleansed beginning in 1933, but racism and eugenics had infiltrated the specialty long before that. With the installation of Nazi-principled neuroscientists, mass forced sterilization was enacted, which transitioned to patient murder by the start of World War II. But the murder of roughly 275,000 patients was not enough. The patients'' brains were stored and used in scientific publications both during and long after the war. Also, patients themselves were used for unethical 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, and few repented. Th
Trade ReviewThe history here is double: on the upper level, it is that of the practices of Nazi Germany for a supposed betterment of population; but, at a subterranean level, it is also the history of the complacency of a profession, which illustrates the fragility of medical ethics, the relativity of codes, and the possibly constant threat of politics. * Alain Touwaide, PhD, UCLA, Doody's Review Service *
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... * Giles MacDonogh, Brain *
Table of Contents1: Introduction: "The secret to reconciliation is remembering." Historiography, challenges, and relevance of neuroscience in the Nazi era to modern neuroscientists 2: The origins of Nazi persecution and victimization of neuroscientists in Germany, Austria, and Poland 3: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Neuroscientists help advance scientific racism and adopt eugenics and racial hygiene theories. 4: Setting the stage for mass murder and human experimentation: the Nazification of German neurology 5: Gleichschaltung and "de-Jewification" in German university neurology departments 6: Neuroscience becomes "Aryanized" at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in Germany 7: Austrian and Czech neuroscience becomes "coordinated" under National Socialism 8: Forced sterilization under the Nazis: preventing people with neuropsychiatric disorders from polluting the German gene pool 9: Hitler wages war on Europe, and on neuropsychiatric patients: neuroscientists introduce the ultimate negative eugenic measure 10: "Beautiful mental defectives" and "lovely idiots": Neuroscientists collaborate with mass murder and collect thousands of brains 11: Just "rabbits": Unethical neuroscientific experimentation on euthanasia victims 12: "Protesting against an avalanche": resistance by neuroscientists inside and outside Germany demonstrating the ordinariness of goodness over the banality of evil 13: "Washing the black sheep white again": Was German neuroscience rehabilitated after the collapse of the Third Reich? 14: Epilogue: Neuroscience in the Nazi era meets the modern age - ongoing legacies and controversies
