Like 'Paperclip', only different

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

In his autobiography ("Wisdom, Madness & Folly. The Making of a 
Psychiatrist", pp. 69-70) Ronald
D. Laing reports:

"As a teaching aid in our anatomy course, Hamilton had us shown films of 
prolonged X-rays of the
body, showing joint movements, and movements of the digestive tracts, 
peristalsis, etc. They were
unique. Hopefully they still are. For exposure of the body to such 
prolonged X-rays produces massive
X-ray burns and tissue devastation, and an agonizing death unless the 
human experimental animal
is promptly put out of its misery. These were Nazi films of experiments 
done to Jews, purloined by
the British at the end of World War II and now being used as teaching 
material.
It took a little while for what was going on to sink in. I saw one 
showing. I walked out with a friend of
mine, John Owens. The other 200 or so students remained to sit and watch 
with apparent interest.
We were sickened and outraged. We went to Professor Hamilton and 
expostulated with him. 'We are
watching people burned to death! How can you use this as teaching material?'
'Yes, I know. I agree with you. But it is unique teaching material. If 
we don't use it now, their deaths
will have been in vain.'
Most of the students agreed with him. There was no 'movement' to boycott 
or ban these films. They
were interesting. Just to indulge that interest (to hell with the 
'interest' of 'science') for one second,
made me feel I had caught the plague.
This incident intensified my terror of human beings, terror at the films 
themselves, at the minds
behind the making of them, at the minds behind the bureaucratic and 
scientific efficiency that
sustained with such blandness and blindness towards evil the social 
machinery of their distribution
as well as their making.
How had we all become so docile? Why did we take so much for granted? 
Why did most of us believe
what we were told by those we believed, and almost nothing else? HOW 
were we such conditioned
creatures?"

Laing's questions belong to the 'right questions' THEY do not want us to 
ask, because if more people
could care about these issues in their physical, mental, social and - 
perhaps - metaphysical
dimension, THEY indeed would have to worry about the answers ...

KFL