General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Nazi Anatomists
Fascinating piece...
Stieve got his material, as he called the bodies he used for research, from nearby Plötzensee Prison, where the courts sent defendants for execution after sentencing them to die. In the years following the war, Stieve would claim that he dissected the corpses of only dangerous criminals. But on that day, Pommer saw in his laboratory the bodies of political dissidents. She recognized these people. She knew them.
snip
This history matters for its own sake. It also matters for debates that remain unresolvedabout how anatomists get bodies and what to do with research that is scientifically valuable but morally disturbing.
Then theres this eerie relevance: Stieves work was the source of an explosive controversy in the 2012 U.S. elections. Its the basis for a claim that Republicans in Congress threw like a piece of dynamite into the abortion debate: The idea that women rarely or never get pregnant from rape.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2013/11/nazi_anatomy_history_the_origins_of_conservatives_anti_abortion_claims_that.html
Brickbat
(19,339 posts)sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)have been able to produce a lot for him too. Wiki shows an estimated 3,000 executions there during the Nazi years.
Uncle Joe
(58,349 posts)Thanks for the thread, MountainLaurel.
Pretzel_Warrior
(8,361 posts)many of those bodies are thought to be people executed by Chinese officials including dissidents.
riverwalker
(8,694 posts)of the now famous Mayo clinic, dissected to bodies of the 38 native americans hanged in Mankato in 1862, the largest mass hanging in US history.
http://www.nickcolemanmn.com/?p=3124
His body was taken to Le Sueur, where it was dissected by William Mayo in the presence of other doctors, and the skeleton "was cleaned and articulated for the doctor's permanent use."
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/071700/nat_071700027.shtml
jakeXT
(10,575 posts)But not all Nazi science efforts have been rejected, including the rocketry incorporated in the U.S. space effort after the war.
In the hypothermia experiments, the Nazis had a practical reason for wanting accurate results to help save German pilots shot down over the North Sea. And so, at Dachau concentration camp, between 100 to 300 inmates, including Jews, gypsies, priests and political prisoners, were placed naked in vats of ice water for two hours, five hours and more, and their bodily functions were monitored as their temperatures fell.
Some were frozen to death. Others were brought to the point of death and then various methods of recovery were tried, including warm baths, alcohol and heat from the bodies of other prisoners forced to hold them to try to warm them.
After the war an American officer, Maj. Leo Alexander, looked at the data, interviewed witnesses and wrote a description of the experiments and their results. His paper, ``The Treatment of Shock from Prolonged Exposure to Cold, Especially in Water,`` was published in 1946 by the U.S. Department of Commerce and is still available through the Library of Congress and a few libraries.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-06-07/news/8801050519_1_nazi-leo-alexander-hypothermia