The Rule of Experts: There's an interesting article in this week's New England Journal of Medicine about the rise of racial hygiene in Nazi Medicine (available only by subscription). It has the alluring title of In the Name of Public Health, and it points out that the Nazi's publid health philosophy didn't spring de novo from Hitler's brain, but was well-rooted in the opinions of medical experts of the day - across all nationalities. It was very easy for the experts to accomodate themselves to the more unsavory consequences of their theories:

Some physicians and biologists who supported eugenics had to accommodate themselves to Nazism's rabid anti-Semitism. But in return for accepting the persecution of Jews as a source of biologic degeneration, many in the medical community welcomed the new emphasis on biology and heredity, increased research funding, and new career opportunities — including openings created by the purge of Jews and leftists from the medical and public health fields.

Interesting choice, there, to describe the victims of Nazi purges as "leftists." While it's true that they purged communists (they hated and feared Stalin, as did most of Europe) the Nazi's themselves fell on the left of the political spectrum. They were socialists, after all. Mussolini, too, leaned left.

But that's the only jarring note in an otherwise excellent essay that serves as a useful reminder that we should always be on guard against abuses of the power of government in the name of public health.