“When Medicine, Ministry and the Military Lose Their Culture the World Loses its Mind”
An Evil Ember has been rekindled......
85 years separate these photographs but the mindset is the same. That is frightening. “Never again”? Seems that phrase is not true at all, especially at universities and with healthcare professionals and some members of the “ministry”:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/mit-palestine-lecture-gaza-video
https://twitter.com/StopAntisemites
https://www.stopantisemitism.org/
This past week saw the long-awaited publication of the Commission on medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust: historical evidence, implications for today, teaching for tomorrow (emphasis added):
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)01845-7/fulltext
It is a long report, but I urge all of you to read it. It has ramifications of utmost importance for you personally, whether or not you are Jewish. Although the work represents an important scholarly investigation into the historical facts, this paragraph stood out to me as a glaring political commentary that seemed totally out of place with the “implications for today, teaching for tomorrow” portion of the title:
Nearly 80 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War 2, references to Nazi medical crimes remain common—the surge of Nazi tropes deployed in anti-vaccination propaganda during the COVID-19 pandemic provides striking examples. All too often, such references are based on fragmentary knowledge of the facts, simplified assumptions, and serious misconceptions. This Commission aims to provide a reliable, up-to-date compendium of medicine's and medical professionals' roles in the development and implementation of the Nazi regime's antisemitic, racist, and eugenic agenda, which culminated in a series of atrocities and, ultimately, the Holocaust. On this basis, we posit implications for the medical field and for society more broadly, and outline a roadmap for integration of this history into health sciences curriculums worldwide.
An equally, painstakingly researched and visually striking account of the same period, by actual participants and victims, came to a somewhat different conclusion of some of the “implications for today, teaching for tomorrow”:
https://rumble.com/v2rivdo-never-again-is-now-global-full-series-parts-1-5.html
It is difficult to find this massive video presentation as use of the common search engines provided by Big Tech seem to have cloaked it very effectively. And that is part of the problem, and the similarity, of the role of the media in both of these catastrophes.
The title of this post is an adaptation of a striking quote uttered by Russell Johnson, the Pastor of The Pursuit NW in Snohomish, Washington: When the Church loses its voice, the world loses its mind.
Unfortunately, this is precisely what has transpired in recent times. Russell Johnson is not the only one to recognize this. In A Letter to the American Church,
Eric Metaxas outlined the similarities between the rise of Nazism in Germany and the present day:
In brief, there were 18,000 Protestant pastors in Germany in the early 1930’s. 3,000 were vocally opposed to Nazism and 3,000 were, amazingly, supportive of Hitler. However it was the 12,000 who were silent who played the pivotal role. Their reasons were many. Some were afraid for their personal safety. Some felt that becoming politically active may influence the support they received. Some felt that they were called for “spiritual” issues only. As it turned out, none of these reasons really mattered. Their silence brought about unimaginable Evil….
I understand the concern that some have regarding comparison of anything to the horrors of The Holocaust. Until October 7, 2023 it was difficult to comprehend the reach the evil of the antisemitism of that period. Indeed, the shear EVIL of antisemitism throughout the ages is in a class by itself. There is an element….a spiritual element…that transcends ordinary “evil”.
When the EVIL of antisemitism is released, it spills over into the rest of society. The failure of European medicine and ministry to check the rise of fascism and the hatred of antisemitism caused this evil to spread. Two of my mother’s first cousins are listed as murder victims in the Jasenovac death camp run by the Ustaše Croatian client state of Germany.
Arguably, German medicine and ministry failed to adequately recover from their silence when it mattered:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II)
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179814/
The festering continued…and continues today.
One of the reasons I spent my junior year of undergraduate education at the University of Vienna (1969-1970) was an attempt to understand how the “culture” that gave us Mozart also gave us mass murder on an industrial scale. I had naively thought there was some flaw in the Germanic character. I was surprised, and a bit fearful, when I realized there was no such flaw. The same thing that happened in Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s could, given the right set of circumstances, happen in the United States. And it did in 2020….
Faced with a complex system of internal and external pressures, we readily surrendered our principles of liberty and freedom when faced with a constant bombardment of real and imagined fear that, in retrospect, seems to have been intentionally inflicted on society for reasons that still are unclear. Attempts to get to the truth have so far failed.
The same tools used to influence German, Austrian, Italian and Croatian societies were used to assure compliance with an ideology. Data made no difference. Those brave health care professionals who attempted to stand against the onslaught and offer their patients true Informed Consent on treatment were marginalized, cancelled and fired from their positions. Those who attempted to exercise their freedom of choice when it came to agents that were granted “Emergency Use Authorization” were terminated from their schooling or employment.
AS late as 1997, The New England Journal of Medicine stressed the absolute necessity of protecting Informed Consent for research subjects as stated in the Nuremberg Code:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199711133372006
The authors of the above article described testimony at the “Doctors’ Trial” in Nuremberg by noted experts Werner Leibbrand and Andrew Ivy, and this article is absolutely relevant to the current situation:
Leibbrand insisted that “the morality of a physician is to hold back his natural research urge which may result in doing harm, in order to maintain his basic medical attitude that is laid down in the Oath of Hippocrates.”…. Defense lawyers explained that Nazi doctors were ordered by the state to conduct such experiments as the high-altitude, hypothermia, and seawater experiments on inmates at the Dachau concentration camp to determine how best to protect and treat German fliers and soldiers. They contended that these experiments were necessary and that the “good of the state” takes precedence over that of the individual….
Ivy agreed with Leibbrand that researchers must refuse to conduct experiments on human beings when ordered by the state in order “to save lives,” because in such cases subjects would not be volunteers. He declared that “[t]here is no justification in killing five people in order to save the lives of five hundred” and that “no state or politician under the sun could force [him] to perform a medical experiment which [he] thought was morally unjustified.”(emphasis added) Ivy also stressed that the state may not assume the moral responsibility of physicians to their patients or research subjects, arguing that “[E]very physician should be acquainted with the Hippocratic Oath [which] represents the Golden Rule of the medical profession in the United States, and, to [his] knowledge, throughout the world.”….
Informed consent, the core of the Nuremberg Code, has rightly been viewed as the protection of subjects' human rights. The key contribution of Nuremberg was to merge Hippocratic ethics and the protection of human rights into a single code. The Nuremberg Code not only requires that physician-researchers protect the best interests of their subjects (principles 2 through 8 and 10) but also proclaims that subjects can actively protect themselves as well (principles 1 and 9). Most strikingly, for example, in Hippocratic ethics the subject relies on the physician to determine when it is in the subject's best interest to end his or her participation in an experiment. In the Nuremberg Code, the judges gave the subject as much authority as the physician-researcher to end the experiment before its conclusion (principle 9)…..
The Nuremberg Code focuses on the human rights of research subjects, the Declaration of Helsinki focuses on the obligations of physician-investigators to research subjects, and the federal regulations emphasize the obligations of research institutions that receive federal funds. Nonetheless, by insisting that medical investigators alone cannot set the rules for the ethical conduct of research, even when guided by beneficence and Hippocratic ethics, and by adopting a human-rights perspective that acknowledges the centrality of informed consent and the right of the subject to withdraw, the Nuremberg Code has changed forever the way both physicians and the public view the proper conduct of medical research on human subjects. Fifty years after Nuremberg, we recognize the human-rights legacy of the Nuremberg Code and are better able to face the critical challenge of applying the Code in its entirety and enforcing its human-rights provisions.
The authors of this article reflect back 50 years from 1997 to the formulation of the Nuremberg Code. Let us now reflect back a mere 23 years from the Spring of 2020 to the publication of the article. In 2020, reasons for suspension of the principles of the Nuremberg Code and Declaration of Helsinki as well as the safeguards of the United States Constitution were rationalized. Apparently, an “emergency” made them moot. Why does this sound so much like what happened in Germany in the 1930’s? If an emergency” can just be declared by officials, are there any safeguards at all?
The real question to me is this: Why did both medicine and ministry repeat their actions of 80 years before? Why did they not learn from history?
Simply put, I cannot know with certainty. I have an idea of where to begin, however. I may not have found a “fatal flaw” in Germanic culture, but I have an idea there is a “potentially fatal flaw” in the culture of medicine, the military, academia and ministry. Let me explain.
For the past 15 years my academic pursuits have centered around the role of Organizational Culture in Organizational Performance. I learned of this from the work of Dave Logan and his co-authors during my masters degree from the business school of USC. Their masterful work is found in Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization:
Based upon their work, we defined Organizational Culture as “The pattern of, and capacity for, constructive adaptation based on a shared history, core values, purpose and future seen through a diversity of perspective”. There are 5 “States” of culture along with their taglines:
Stage 1: Despairing Hostility; Destructive; @2% of organizations; “Life sucks”
Stage 2: Apathetic Victim; Passive Aggressive; @23% of workplace organizations; “My life sucks”
Stage 3: Lone Warrior; Knowledge hoarders; @48% of organizations; “I’m great…and you’re not”.
Stage 4: Tribal Pride; Working together for the benefit of the whole organization; @25% of organizations; “We’re great and they aren’t”
Stage 5: Use their potential for Global Impact; @2% of organizations; “Life is great”
The stages are fluid—depending upon the internal and external pressures of the organization, the culture can move up or down. There are remarkable individual exceptions, but Academia and most professions, such as medicine and the ministry, are ossified at Stage 3.
The reason seems to be that these organizations spend most of their time in preparation. They concentrate on a depth of knowledge at the expense of a breadth. They gain a large degree of technical expertise in a certain area, but perhaps suffer the knowledge of the context in which to use it. They spend most of their attention on increasing the product of their efforts with little attention to the advancement of their Organizational Culture.
Unfortunately, when they face the inevitable internal and external pressures on the production of that product, they lack the ability to constructively adapt. They find themselves in uncharted waters and novel situations. Their competence, which looks backwards on their experience, does not allow the capacity to move forward. Thus they are easy prey to those who wish to manipulate their efforts for ideological ends. They become the “useful idiots” or the “midwits” that have been so apparent in The Great COVID Disaster”.
I was prepared to see this in my own profession, but I admit I was very surprised and disheartened when I saw it in many in the ministry as well. In our work with Truth for Health:
https://www.truthforhealth.org/
we have attempted to bring hope to those who were so terrified by The Great COVID Disaster. I anticipated, unfortunately wrongly, that most spiritual leaders would be receptive to this message. The majority responded in the same way as the 12,000 German pastors described by Eric Metaxas.
However, there are some truly remarkable individuals in medicine, ministry, the military and academia who have faced great personal attack because of their courageous stand for truth and hope but they are few. Many of the names are well-known, but some are not. They have also played an important role. Some of them need to be recognized:
Steven Smith, Professor Stephen Sammut, Sister (Colonel and Surgeon) Deidre Byrne, Dr. Lee Vliet, Dr Monique Robles, Dr. Alan Moy, Dr Alan Bain, Gladys McGraw, Michele Hill, John-Henry Westen, Dr.Oz Villareal, Commander Robert A. Green, Jr. and Major Michael Gary, to name a few. It is an honor to know them…..
This brings me back to the “implications for today and teaching for tomorrow” of the document described at the start of this post. It saddens me that the authors of that document could not see that the underlying issues that allowed the horrors of 85 years ago are the same issues that allowed the rise of antisemitism today as well as the far-reaching effects of the Great COVID Disaster. Nevertheless, their recommendations have considerable merit:
One of the goals of this Commission was to develop, informed by assessment of existing medical curriculums, educational approaches that promote ethical conduct, moral development, and the formation of a professional identity based on compassion through education about medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust. As a result, we offer here a new educational paradigm, which we term history-informed professional identity formation. It integrates frameworks from health sciences education with the Commission’s specific objectives for the training of health-care professionals. We also propose a concrete roadmap to implement recommended mandatory curriculums on the history of medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust and its implications in all health sciences education. This roadmap explores pedagogical approaches, questions of curricular design, assessment, and faculty development. Importantly, beyond an informational level of learning, education centred on this history can also result in learning on the formational and transformational levels—through prompting reflection on contemporary implications, for example. The aim is to support the development of morally conscious and self-critical, yet courageous and resilient health professionals— independent thinkers who are capable of upholding professional values in the face of pressure and who will, when needed, act as agents of change.
Contemporary health professionals and societies globally have been confronted with multiple crises: the COVID-19 pandemic; a rise in overt antisemitism, anti-immigrant sentiments, and other forms of racism and discrimination; climate change; the Rohingya genocide; and wars, such as in Israel, Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. It is our conviction that the study of medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust can help to prepare medical professionals to stand up against antisemitism, racism, and other forms of discrimination, and to embrace and defend our shared humanity in their professional roles and as global citizens. It is only through understanding and reflecting upon history that we can fully understand the present and shape a better future.
It is clear that it is only through fostering of critical thinking, ethics, core values, courage and moral reasoning that these professions can advance their Organizational Culture and thus their Organizational Performance. They must spend the time and energy to form “The pattern of, and capacity for, constructive adaptation based on a shared history, core values, purpose and future seen through a diversity of perspective”. It is not enough to perfect only their product as when the winds of adversity blow though society, as they surely will, it is their Organizational Culture that will see them, and all of society, through the turbulence.
Unfortunately, this cannot be remotely successful if initiated in professional school. That is much too late. We have seen in the inaction of professional leaders to deal with both the current explosion of antisemitism as well as the conduct during the Great COVID Disaster that the professional schools are a major source of the problem. They are unwilling at best and incapable at worst of implementing the necessary reforms. Society must institute the reforms and it must start early in the educational process. Even the undergraduate level may be too late. It must start in middle and secondary education.
The loss of the formal teaching of civics, which used to be the norm 50 years ago, likely marked the genesis of the slide towards Postmodernism that has so eroded the Organizational Culture of our professions.
https://ronaldyatesbooks.com/2021/03/the-death-of-civics-education-in-schools/
This left a vacuum into which Revisionist History and Critical Theory slid. “Truth” became a relative term and Ideology became the foremost concern. Individuals were easily cast into a group based on solely subjective opinion. Some groups were favored, while others were deserving of hatred. Oppressed and Oppressor, Deserving and Second-Class. The Great Melting Pot of the United States was overturned, spilling its contents across the floor:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/6/is-americas-great-melting-pot-a-failure/
The “shared” components of Organizational Culture were thrown away only leaving the “diversity of perspective”. Is it really any wonder that it was so easy to rekindle the Evil Ember of antisemitism???
Reform is a necessary, but far from sufficient, prerequisite to make the concept “Never again!” a reality. It must be implemented with a graduated program of the fostering of critical thinking, ethics, core values, courage and moral reasoning, especially in our professions. These programs must be in part general, but in part tailored to the unique obstacles that will be faced in each profession .
That is the only way the “pattern of, and capacity for, constructive adaptation based on a shared history, core values, purpose and future seen through a diversity of perspective” can be accomplished. It will take concerted effort. I look with eager anticipation for an educational institution with sufficient reach both vertically across age groups and horizontally across professions and callings, to accomplish this noble cause. That institution will need the vision AND THE COURAGE to step up to the challenge.
Sources of funding for innovative pilot projects must be investigated. The John Templeton Foundation:
is looking to Fund research and catalyze conversations that enable people to create lives of purpose and meaning.:
Is this not exactly what is needed? Humanity stands at the crossroads. The path we take will quite literally determine the future of the world….
Excellent, Professor.
Direct and hard-hitting, but poignant as well.
You cover the COVID-19 medical crisis nicely; indeed not all regular physicians broke their oath to aid and facilitate the government plan to "vaccinate".
Re the present rise in overt antisemitism, as a son of Holocaust survivors, no one appreciates your efforts to say "J'accuse" more than I do, and you do it masterfully and very thoughtfully.
What good are our laws, the great Roman poet Horace asked rhetorically, in the absence of a thriving and effective morality? Your present piece echoes the truth of that ancient observation.
Interesting and well done.
Here's an article I wrote last year that relates: https://aapsonline.org/the-nazification-of-american-medicine/
Cheers,
Richard