Transcript Theme 5 Bodies and the body politic: life, death and organ

HI269
Week 21
Theme 5
Bodies and the body politic:
life, death and organ transplantation
Tissues and treatments:
organ transplantation
Transplantation:
Medical Miracle?
A verger's dream: Saints
Cosmas and Damian performing
a miraculous cure by
transplantation of a leg Andrés
Sánchez de Oña c. 1484-1510
"Felix, the eighth pope after S. Gregory, did make a noble
church at Rome of the saints Cosmo and Damian, and
there was a man which served devoutly the holy martyrs
in that church, who a canker had consumed all his thigh.
And as he slept, the holy martyrs Cosmo and Damian,
appeared to him their devout servant, bringing with them
an instrument and ointment of whom that one said to that
other: Where shall we have flesh when we have cut away
the rotten flesh to fill the void place? Then that other said
to him: There is an Ethiopian that this day is buried …
which is yet fresh, let us … take we out of that morian's
flesh and fill this place withal. And so they fetched the
thigh of the sick man and so changed that one for that
other. And when the sick man awoke and felt no pain, he
put forth his hand and felt his leg without hurt … and saw
well that it was not his thigh, but that it was another…”
Transplantation: Medical Murder?
Heidi Cartwright, Brain in a Bowl
Transplantation:
Medical
Monstrosity?
Bodies and Identities:
Parts & wholes…
• Human bodies
imbued with social
meanings
• Bodies not regarded
as either vessels or
integrated wholes,
but as
simultaneously both:
partially dualistic, but
also partially
‘ensouled’
• So where does
identity and
‘personhood’ lie in
this complex entity?
The German context
• Ideas (and ideals) of the Volk (people) , Volkscörper
(‘body’ of society/body politic) and Volksgemeinschaft (nation as
an integrated community/ extended family)
• Post WWI, rapid urbanization combined with loss of a
generation of healthy young men, and economic
despair  concerns about ‘racial degeneration’ (not
just in Germany)
• Policy responses mirror Progressivist thinking
elsewhere (eg. USA), but with a greater emphasis on
state and professional involvement and Social
Darwinism: Rassenhygiene, Sozialhygiene, and
Volkshygiene.
• Emerging disciplines like anthropology anxious to contribute to
national drive to identify ‘undesirables’ ‘scientifically’
• Good fit with rapid growth of medical specialization and search for
medical role in governance
The German context
• National Socialism builds on this foundation:
national identity is tied to the physical bodies of
its citizens, and social/national wellbeing is tied
to physical vitality and regeneration
• In combination with common EuroAmerican
preoccupations of the day – eugenics, fears of
‘race suicide’, racism, and rising status of
science – this allows for the ‘scientific’ definition
of lebensunwertes Leben, and the ideological
stance that such lives must be subjected to
medical and scientific categorization, ‘control’,
limitation, and elimination.
So: how did Germany go from national
regeneration to the death camps? Hogle
argues for three linked factors:
– Myth of a superior national biological and
social body;
– Redefinition of all other bodies as essentially
different and lesser – as not fully human;
– Development of social and technological
means for converting such lesser material into
useful substances for the greater national
good
• Note the central place taken by medicine
and the sciences in this progression…
Resistance
Petition of Bishop of Limburg to the Reich Minister of Justice
Concerning Killing of Patients at the State Hospital for the Mentally Ill at Hadamar
13 August 1941
“About 8 kilometers from Limburg … there is an institution which had formerly served
various purposes and of late had been used as a nursing home; this institution
was renovated and furnished as a place in which… euthanasia has been systematically
practiced for months …Several times a week buses arrive in Hadamar with a
considerable number of such victims. School children of the vicinity know this vehicle
and say:" There comes the murder-box again." After the arrival of the vehicle, the
citizens of Hadamar watch the smoke rise out of the chimney and are tortured
with the ever-present thought, of the miserable victims, especially when repulsive
odors annoy them, depending on the direction of the wind. The effect of the
principles at work here are: Children call each other names and say," You're crazy;
you'll be sent to the baking oven in Hadamar." Those who do not want to marry, or find
no opportunity, say," Marry, never! Bring children into the world so they can be put into
the bottling machine!" You hear old folks say, "Don't send me to a state hospital!
After the feeble-minded have been finished off, the next useless eaters whose
turn will come are the old people."
All God-fearing men consider this destruction of helpless beings as crass injustice. …
The official notice that N. N. had died of a contagious disease and that for
that reason his body has to be burned, no longer finds credence, and such
official notices which are no longer believed have further undermined the ethical value
of the concept of authority….”
Nazi Medicine on trial: Nuremberg
Half of the German medical profession joined the Nazi party from
1933-45; only those who faced discrimination under Nazi
policies actively protested them.
The Nuremberg trials detailed the nature of Nazi medical
experimentation on death camp inmates, presented evidence of
those experiments, and crucially, judged not only individuals
but the profession and science of medicine in the Nazi era.
– A. High Altitude Experiments
B. Freezing Experiments
C. Malaria Experiments
D. Mustard Gas Experiments
E. Ravensbrueck Experiments on Sulfanilamide & Other
Drugs;
F. Ravensbrueck Experiments on Bone, Muscle, and Nerve
Regeneration and Bone Transplantation
G. Sea-Water Experiments
H. Epidemic Jaundice
I. Sterilization Experiments
J. Typhus (Fleckfieber) and Related Experiments
K. Poison Experiments
L. Incendiary Bomb Experiments
M. Jewish Skeleton Collection
Nazi Medicine on trial: Nuremberg
• Conclusion of the Prosecution’s Opening
Statement: “I have now completed the sketch
of some of the foul crimes which these
defendants committed in the name of
research. The horrible record of their
degradation needs no underlining. But
German medical science was in past years
honored throughout the world, and many of
the most illustrious names in medical
research are German. How did these things
come to pass? I will outline briefly the
historical evidence which we will offer and
which, I believe, will show that these crimes
were the logical and inevitable outcome of
the prostitution of German medicine under
the Nazis.”
Post-War medical reform and
regulation
• Nuremberg trials and establishment of the Nuremberg code
(next slide);
• Personhood laws incorporated directly into the Basic Law of
1949, formalizing ideas of ‘human dignity’ and protecting
bodily integrity of the living and the dead and heavily
regulating the removal of tissue from either:
• “The worth of persons is inviolable”
• “Everyone has the right to life and bodily integrity”
•
Virtually no medical involvement in promoting organ or
tissue donation, or in debates with opponents of
organ/tissue donation and experimentation.
SO: after privileging the interests of the Volk and Volkskörper
over those of individuals under national Socialism, Germany
now privileges individual rights most highly.
THE NUREMBERG CODE [from Trials of War Criminals before the
Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10.
Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O,
1949–1953.] Permissible Medical Experiments
The great weight of the evidence before us is to the effect that certain
types of medical experiments on human beings … conform to the
ethics of the medical profession generally. … All agree, however, that
certain basic principles must be observed in order to satisfy moral,
ethical and legal concepts:
1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
…
2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the
good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study....
3. The experiment should be so designed and based [on reliable data
& animal experiments] that the anticipated results will justify the
performance of the experiment.
4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary
physical and mental suffering and injury.
5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori
reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur...
THE NUREMBERG CODE [from Trials of War Criminals before the
Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10.
Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O,
1949–1953.] Permissible Medical Experiments
…
6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined
by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the
experiment.
7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities
provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote
possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified
persons. ....
9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at
liberty to bring the experiment to an end...
10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must
be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has
probable cause to believe … that a continuation of the experiment is
likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.
Explaining German attitudes
towards the body
Hogle puts forward two theories. either of which could
explain German views of the sanctity of the body:
• Reactions to Nazi atrocities and utilitarian attitudes
towards the bodies of the lebesunwertes leben – national
guilt/shame; fear that ‘the world is watching’ and will
condemn, etc.
• Blut und Boden – Romantic notions of the body as
emblematic of the nation, of purity, etc. Note German
attitudes towards other sources of impurity – eg. bioengineered food, environmental pollution etc.
Organs in the media
http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2008/11/dont-let-the-giant-mag
got-eat-your-corpse-.html
Daily Mail: ‘Be and organ donor, get a free funeral!
Incentive plan to ease the transplant shortage’ [20
April, 2010]
Compare
REMINDER:
Last Media Journal/Blog
entries are due NEXT WEEK
1st Year Papers are due 14
May
2nd Year Papers are due 19
May
Remember to include a coversheet, to double space
your paper, and to submit it online as well as in hard
copy!
Seminar: ‘Medicine gone mad’:
Nazis, Nuremburg, and national
identity
• Have German responses to the revelations of
Nuremberg and the post-war era created a
distinctive ‘German medicine’, or merely
reinforced differences that were already
embedded in German culture?
• Why is it shocking that medicine and medical
professionals participated fully in the Holocaust,
turning some bodies into commodities?
• And to what extent are suspicions of organ
transplantation specific to Germany?