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Friday, January 03, 2003The eponymous term "Hallervorden–Spatz syndrome" has fallen into disfavor in view of the unethical activities of the German neuropathologists Hallervorden and Spatz during World War II. We encourage the use of the term "pantothenate kinase–associated neurodegeneration" for the majority of patients with Hallervorden–Spatz syndrome who have proved or suspected mutations in PANK2. For the remainder, we propose the term "neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation." In an accompanying essay, Michael Shevell argues the same. An eponym is an honor, and these two men are not worthy. Here’s a description of Hallervorden’s work: At the outbreak of World War II, Hallervorden was the pathologist of the Brandenburg State Hospital, which included the chronic care institution at Brandenburg-Görden. This would be one of the six elimination centers established under the Aktion T-4 adult-euthanasia program. The program effected the transfer of institutionalized patients from all parts of Germany after a secret review of questionnaires based on their medical files by a central committee of physicians. After their transfer and a brief period of observation to verify the underlying diagnosis, patients were killed by gassing with carbon monoxide in disguised shower facilities. The operation was never legally mandated and was rife with deception of the affected families. A memorandum signed by Adolf Hitler, dated the opening day of the war, empowered physicians "to grant a mercy death to those judged to be incurably ill." In operation for less than two years (during the period from 1939 to 1941), the Aktion T-4 program resulted in the deaths of 70,273 persons. To an academically oriented pathologist such as Hallervorden, Aktion T-4 provided an opportunity for the study of rare specimens on a previously unimaginable scale. Hallervorden's reports to the German Association for Scientific Research and the German Research Council detail his use of specimens derived from the Brandenburg-Görden killing center. Dissatisfied by the quality of medical information in the patients' dossiers for a funded project entitled "Inherited Feeble-Mindedness," Hallervorden himself selected and examined a number of living patients before personally removing their brains at the killing center. On the basis of these materials (and others he obtained through the child-euthanasia program and the Jewish Hospitals of Warsaw and Lublin in Poland), Hallervorden published 12 scientific articles (7 as sole author) in the postwar era on a variety of topics, including the effect of carbon monoxide exposure on the fetal brain. Note those publications were after the war. In fact, Hallervorden was still very much admired and respected as late as ten years after the war. Here’s an interview with a prominent American neurologist who worked with him in 1955 in Germany: Could you tell us more about Julius Hallervorden? Well, I had great respect and fondness for him. However, I had no idea then about what had happened in the past. I wrote a small biography about him in a little book that I have right here, entitled The Founders of Child Neurology, edited by Stephen Ashwal, a pediatric neurologist. I said in the final paragraph: "He was of a quiet, reserved nature, wholly devoted to science and to neuropathology, and, at the same time, warm, friendly, and an inspiring teacher. He was one of the last great figures of the classic period of German neuropathology." In recent years, his use of the brains of children that had been killed under the Nazis' euthanasia program has been heavily criticized. When, in 1938, Spatz became Director of the recently established and well financed Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin, he invited his old friend Hallervorden to become head of the Neuropathological Division. Meanwhile, during the Nazi regime in Germany during the war, a systematic program of euthanasia was carried out on individuals officially not considered suitable for the kind of society the leaders were trying to create. In addition, there were the now well known horrors of the Holocaust. There is compelling evidence that Julius Hallervorden knowingly carried out examinations on anatomical materials from victims of these massacres, thus becoming part of a dehumanized regime that denied respect and dignity to those members of the society which, within the framework of its perverted ideology, were judged unworthy of living. And here’s Hallervorden’s own account of the events: "I heard that they were going to do that, and so I went up to them and told them, `Look here now, boys. If you are going to kill all those people, at least take the brains out so that the material can be utilized'"; "There was wonderful material among those brains, beautiful mental defectives, malformations and early infantile disease"; "They asked me: `How many can you examine?' And so I told them an unlimited number — the more the better"; and "I accepted the brains, of course. Where they came from and how they came to me was really none of my business." Those were just brains and nervous systems to him, not human beings. And, since the people who owned them had already been deemed unworthy of life, what was it to him? Might as well make some use of all that discarded human tissue. It was for the advancement of science, after all. It was for the good of humanity. Sound familiar? It should. The same argument is made today for fetal stem cell research, and for therapuetic cloning. Those aborted embryos (whether aborted surgically from a womb, or aborted during their growth and development in a petri dish) aren’t human, or if they are, they aren’t human in the full sense of the word, so the argument goes. They’ve already been denied the chance to develop fully, so why not use them for the benefit of humanity? And if you think I’m stretching the analogy, consider this statement from pro-therapeutic cloning (yet also supposedly pro-life) Senator Orrin Hatch: (via Charles Murtaugh): Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is one of four sponsors of a bill that would allow the creation of cloned human embryos but would ban their implantation in a womb. On Feb. 5, 2002, Hatch testified, "No doubt somewhere, some, such as the Raelians - are busy trying to apply the techniques that gave us Dolly the Sheep to human beings. Frankly, I am not sure that human being would even be the correct term for such an individual heretofore unknown in nature." [emphasis mine] Sieg Heil. posted by Sydney on 1/03/2003 07:31:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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