Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.

[alice wellintown]

*

Medical Science Under Dictatorship
*
Leo Alexander, M.D. Boston

http://www.restoringourheritage.com/articles/nej_medicaldictatorship.pdf


On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 2:03 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com>wrote:

> Don't forget the Herero. The fact that Jews were hated before the Nazis,
> before Darwin, doesn't support your claim. The Nazis used Science, science
> was essential to the Nazi project, to the project to exterminate Jews and
> others.
>
> \Nolan, Mary. "Science for Madmen," review of Racial Hygiene: Medicine
> Under the Nazis, by
>
>
>
> \Nolan, Mary. "Science for Madmen," review of Racial Hygiene: Medicine
> Under the Nazis, by
> Robert Proctor (Harvard University Press, 1988). New York Times Book
> Review, 21 August
> 1988, p. 7.\
>
> The place of science in Hitler's Germany has become something of a hot
> topic. Lifton's The Nazi
> Doctors examined the part played by some within the medical profession and
> his conclusion
> seems to have been that there were some 300 who went along with the Nazis.
> It is, on the other
> hand, the theme of this work that it was not just a few hundred toughs or
> thugs who happened
> also to be physicians who went along with the Nazis. Rather, the
> profession went along. It had
> biology as its justification.
>
> Nazi rule was acceptable to physicians because, in Germany in the early
> 1930s, there were too
> many physicians and the profession accepted the Nazis as a way of limiting
> competition within
> the profession. By accepting the Nazi view of Jews, the profession could
> eliminate a lot of that
> competition. Moreover, physicians' status in Germany was not very high in
> the Republic and it
> was hoped that the Nazis would provide a better social status to medical
> men. The Nazis had
> promised to help physicians if physicians would help them and it worked.
>
> "The Nazis, far from being irrational or anti-intellectual, drew on the
> ‘imagery, results and
> authority of science.' They used engineers and scientists to reshape
> technology and the factory,
> for example, and recruited economists and social scientists to draw
> blueprints for ‘the new order'
> in Eastern Europe. Most significantly, as Mr. Proctor convincingly shows,
> they employed racial
> science to define social problems and prescribe dramatic cures. Germany's
> ills were no longer
> attributed to economic crisis or political conflict... but to the
> handicapped and mentally ill,
> criminals, homosexuals and asocials, or inferior yet dangerous races. By
> medicalizing social
> problems, the Nazis gave them an unambiguous biological cause, eliminated
> the possibility of
> improvement by social or political means and justified a cure that
> stressed exclusion or
> elimination."
>
> Again, science becomes a useful political ideology for anyone who wishes
> to use it.
> http://www.albany.edu/~scifraud/data/sci_fraud_1859.html
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>wrote:
>
>> “science has been and is… an  essential element in holocaust, in
>> genocide…”****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> **(1)    **Please clarify for me the role of science in encouraging or
>> enabling Turks to slaughter Armenians, Stalin to starve Ukrainians, Mao to
>> starve Chinese, Pol Pot to massacre Cambodians, Hutu to hack Tutsi, Efrain
>> Rios Montt’s troops to gun down Mayans, etc. Even w/r/t the Third Reich’s
>> “scientific” racism, rumor has it that the pedigree of murderous European
>> Jew- and Gypsy- and Slav-hatred predates Hitler, predates Chamberlain and
>> Gobineau, and predates Darwin.   ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> “the Sciences are defining the fundamental ways in which we experience
>> the world by defining the world as we experience it.”****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> **(2)    **Please restate this in less tautological form.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> “Science can not abide… the man who makes a house of nature with an
>> extension of his hand.”****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> **(3)  **Please explain to the carpenter working next door as I type
>> what, if anything, this means. The poor ignorant fellow shows remarkably
>> little concern that the National Academy of Sciences, MIT, IBM, or the laws
>> of thermodynamics are bending their chill, pitiless gaze upon him.   ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> That will do for now. If you can clear up at least some of the sheer
>> incoherent nonsense you spout on this topic, we can proceed to what’s
>> merely ignorant or mistaken.****
>>
>> ****
>>
>> *Perhaps we can proceFrom:* owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:
>> owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] *On Behalf Of *alice wellintown
>> *Sent:* Sunday, June 02, 2013 11:34 AM
>> *To:* pynchon -l
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Science and thus the scientist is essential, is indispensable to the
>> villainous acts, the evil we have seen in the 20th and 21st century.  ***
>> *
>>
>> Of course there are connections. But when we define the connections,
>> clearly, honestly, we see that science has been and is instrumental, has
>> been an essential element, in holocaust, in genocide, in war, in evil.
>> Science can't wash it hands of these crimes. While no one would attempt to
>> defend generals, businessmen, politicians, scientists take exception, make
>> excuses for the evil that science has been an integral part of, for the
>> evil deeds of scientists. While it would anger nearly everyone in the USA,
>> were they to learn that the government protected and defended, even
>> supported, a Nazi politician or general or businessman, the Nazi Scientists
>> are given special treatment. Von Braun is but one example. Why? Well,
>> because the Sciences are defining the fundamental ways in which we
>> experience the world by defining the world as we experience it. This is
>> quite a powerful position to extend to any group in a society. As the
>> saying goes, power corrupts. And, although science is quick to put on the
>> cloak of theory, to shield itself from claims to absolutes, for they know
>> that power and absolutes exposé them to claims of corruption, to claims
>> that science is against life, to accusations of gnostic death dreams (the
>> causal and causation is embodied in Blicero), it continues to divide nature
>> from human endeavors and it refuses to accept the limits of its reach.
>> Science smashes atoms and makes big data virtual tours of space for
>> voyeurs, because it can not abide a mystery, magic, or the man who makes a
>> house of nature with an extension of his hand. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Today, I worship the hammer. ****
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, June 2, 2013, Monte Davis wrote:****
>>
>> "taking responsibility for both the good stuff and bad stuff you do" --
>> I'm
>> down with that.
>>
>> It's what you mean from moment to moment by "you" that I can't get my head
>> around. Sometimes the villainous agent or agency is science, sometimes
>> it's
>> technology (not the same, and much older than science), sometimes it's
>> industrialization per se, sometimes it's industrial capitalism, sometimes
>> it's the global scaling-up with population of our species' ecological
>> footprint.
>>
>> Are there many connections -- both causal and corollary -- among all
>> these?
>> Yes.  Are they one and the same Big Bad Thing? No. I'm well aware that I'm
>> doing that analytical/dissective approach you reject... but if yours is as
>> coherent as holism gets, I think I'll pass.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org<owner-pynchon-l at waste.org>]
>> On Behalf
>> Of Joseph Tracy
>> Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2013 2:20 PM
>> To: P-list List
>> Subject: Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.
>>
>> Bullshit. I don't support, believe in or advocate Luddism though I don't
>> particularly despise those with  true and sincere distrust of technology
>> or
>> tribal peoples who don't want to adopt the technologies and science of the
>> modern world. I do advocate taking responsibility for both the good stuff
>> and bad stuff you do.  I advocate technologies  and science that don't
>> require theft and destruction. I advocate methods that are bio-spherically
>> respectful and sustainable.
>> On Jun 1, 2013, at 12:16 AM, David Morris wrote:
>>
>> > You essentially advocate Luddism.  I think Tea Party, stupid party,
>> fearful and reactionary.  I really hope TRP isn't that dumb.
>> >
>> > Dr. Mengele looks a lot like TRP:
>> > http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele
>> >
>> > Maybe he feels the Dr's guilt.
>> >
>> > David Morris
>> >
>> > On Friday, May 31, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>> >  But scientists and technologists are not merely adjuncts to bad
>> political
>> pressures, they sometimes lead the way into ethically abusive terrain,
>> atom
>> & then hydrogen bombs, nuclear power plants sited on unstable terrain(
>> Fukushima) with approval of scientists, medical scientists came up with
>> the
>> things like the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments, US military experiments
>> exposing people to radioactive materials, MK Ultra's experiments using
>> drugs, sensory deprivation and torture on unwitting Canadians. The Nazi
>> "medical" experiments were often as "scientific" as current experiments on
>> rats.  The  pragmatic, for some more than others, philosophy  of
>> "Scientific
>> advancement " demands that materials be mined and provided cheaply no
>> matter
>> the human and eco costs. Science and the products generated by science
>> demand access to the materials and cannot ask for a free pass.
>> >
>> > Sometimes scientists provide the disease and then the cure as in DDT,
>> > HFCs ,phthalates, and Thalidimide. With global warming there may be no
>> > cure
>> >
>> >  You want to say these things are entirely political, but politicians do
>> not make dioxins or PCBs, do not figure out how to mine with mercury, are
>> not the inventors of fossil fuel technologies or new plastics and other
>> products  and techniques that poison the waters and soils.. The
>> presumption
>> that all the questions and difficulties we face are neatly divisible in
>> such
>> a way as to absolve  scientists and the  scientific method is not an idea
>> to
>> which I will be genuflecting.  The science we inherit  has relied heavily
>> on
>> analysis through dissection, dissolution, explosion and the reduction of
>> all
>> things to the observable component parts. This has been a mindset with
>> some
>> very dark consequences because life, and the only reality humans can
>> actually experience is interactive, conscious, interdependent and more
>> than
>> the sum of parts or rules. There is no rule by which things desire to
>> live,
>> and no methodology of science has ever produced a living reproductive
>> organism. Once again as in the original article there is a large gap
>> between
>> what  science claims  to know and what can be demonstrated by experiment.
>> Scientific practice is not  able to be isolated as some pure and benign
>> pursuit. It has been heavily fueled throughout history by war and greed
>> and
>> has itself fueled war, injustice and avarice.  Some of this comes out with
>> heart-rending intensity in Mason and Dixon, Gravity's Rainbow, and Against
>> the Day.. Equally so in The Metaphysical Club, Frankenstein, A Brave New
>> World.
>> >
>> >
>> > On May 30, 2013, at 10:44 PM, David Morris wrote:
>> >
>> > > Good point.
>> > > But your beef is entirely political.  It has nothing to do with
>> science
>> or philosophy, except beyond their application in politics.
>> > > In the US 3rd parties are almost lays losers.  You seem to be
>> advocating
>> a allegiance of scientist as a political voice.  And Amen!
>> > > But that goal isn't about science or philosophy.  It's about
>> pragmatics.
>> > >
>> > > David Morris
>> > >
>> > > On Thursday, May 30, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>> > > No.  I****
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130602/53f8330d/attachment.html>