| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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Brandt expressed their satisfaction with the experiment,
the latter stressing that "only doctors should carry out the gassings.57
I have referred to those initial
gassings as both experiments and demonstrations, since later testimony —
for instance, Brandt’s remarkable statements at the Nuremberg Medical
Trial — make clear that they were both. Brandt said that the original plan
was to kill people by injecting narcotics, until it was realized that these
would cause loss of consciousness but that death would not occur for some time.
An alternative suggestion was made by a psychiatrist (presumably Heyde) to use
carbon monoxide gas (which, in turn, led to the demonstration just described).
Brandt recalled not liking the idea because he felt that “this whole
question can only be looked at from a medical point of view,” and that
“in my medical imagination carbon monoxide had never played a part.”
Killing by gas, that is, made it much more difficult to maintain a medical
aura. Brandt was able to change his mind when he recalled a personal experience
of carbon monoxide poisoning in which he lost consciousness “without
feeling anything,” and realized that carbon monoxide “would be the
most humane form of death.” Yet he remained troubled because that method
required “a whole change in medical conception,” and gave the matter
extensive thought “in order to put my own conscience right.” He
brought up to Hitler the difference of opinion about the two methods, and later
remembered the Führer asking, “Which is the more humane way?”
“My answer was clear,” Brandt testified — and other leading
physicians in the program agreed. Brandt concluded this segment of testimony
with a meditation on medical breakthrough |
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This is just one example of [what happens] when
major advances in medical history are being made. There are cases of an
operation being looked on at first with contempt, but then later on one learned
it and carried it out. Here the task required by state authority was added to
the medical conception of this problem, and it was necessary to find with good
conscience a basic method that could do justice to both of these elements.58 |
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Allowing for self-serving elements and for retrospective
father-son mythology in his early relationship to Hitler, Brandt’s
description takes us to the heart of the doctors’ embrace of medicalized
killing.
The Bureaucracy of Medical
Deception
Throughout the “euthanasia” project, the
pattern was for senior doctors to make policy and render decisions, to serve as
high consultants and experts, while younger doctors did the actual killing.
That was the message from Dr. Hans F. in connection with the killing of
children, even if somewhat older chief doctors provided either orders or deadly
innuendos. The pattern was still more true in regard to adult patients. Where
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