Ask most people what the Nazis did for the reputation of science and they鈥檒l immediately talk about the terrible legacy of Josef Mengele, or perhaps Zyklon B and V2 rockets. Then, abruptly, they鈥檒l stop. Ask Robert Proctor, however, and he doesn鈥檛 stop. Of course the Nazis did terrible things in the name of science, genetics especially. But what few people realise, says this science historian from Pennsylvania State University, is that they also did top-class research into the causes of cancer and pioneering work on the dangers of asbestos, fatty foods, pesticides and practically every other health and environmental hazard of the modern era. Oh, and they also gave the world its first whole-grain bread movement. This is the paradox at the heart of Proctor鈥檚 book The Nazi War on Cancer. As a recipe for controversy you couldn鈥檛 ask for more. Take the book鈥檚 central claim about the link between smoking and lung cancer. Everyone knows it was first established by British and American epidemiologists in the 1950s, right? Wrong, says Proctor. The jewel in the crown of 20th-century epidemiology was actually unearthed years earlier by Nazi scientists. It鈥檚 just that we never bothered-or dared-to give them any credit. Fearing charges of anti-Semitism, at least one major American newspaper got cold feet about reviewing the book, while at the Frankfurt Book Fair many publishers were, in Proctor鈥檚 words, 鈥渢errified to touch it鈥� for translation. So who is this historian, asks David Concar?
For years, people have questioned whether it is right for scientists and libraries to make use of data from Germany during the Nazi period. Proctor turns this on its head and asks whether it is right to airbrush the Nazis鈥� cancer research out of the history books because of their crimes against humanity. It鈥檚 not a perspective that immediately inspires sympathy. Yet Proctor鈥檚 background betrays no Nazi sympathies-quite the opposite. Growing up in southern Texas at the tail end of the segregation era, he explains that his liberal father was taunted as a 鈥渘igger lover鈥�, while at Harvard he taught with Stephen Jay Gould, one of the world鈥檚 best-known opponents of genetic theories of race and behaviour. Then, in 1988, came his first book, detailing the horrors of Nazi medicine and racial hygiene, followed by a stint as scholar in residence at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
And here鈥檚 another twist: Proctor鈥檚 relationship with American Jewish groups remains as strong as ever. They like The Nazi War on Cancer. So what鈥檚 the real agenda? 鈥淚 would go to conferences on Nazi medicine and find the scholars always talking about the Big Four-sterilisation, the Nuremberg laws, the euthanasia programme and the Final Solution,鈥� says Proctor. 鈥淏ut the irony is that in this murderous regime, you also find the world鈥檚 most progressive anticancer policy. This has been totally ignored.鈥�
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That Hitler was a health freak opposed to alcohol, meat and cigarettes is, of course, well known. But not many people will know that the Nazis successfully bred 鈥渘icotine-free鈥� tobacco decades before anyone else. And Proctor鈥檚 lung-cancer claim will surely surprise many. Is it really a myth that British and American scientists got there first?
The first compelling evidence, Proctor explains, came in the late 1930s, when a young doctor and party member called Franz M眉ller began to notice that the lung cancer patients in his care were often heavy smokers. So, using questionnaires and medical histories, M眉ller compared the smoking habits of scores of people with lung cancer with those of healthy people of the same age and sex. The lung cancer victims were more than six times as likely to be extremely heavy smokers.
A few years later, a much bigger Nazi study by two other unknowns, Eberhard Schairer and Erich Sch枚niger, confirmed the finding. Analysing the smoking habits of hundreds of subjects, the two researchers discovered that, while lung cancer victims were far more likely to be smokers, the same was not true of people with other common cancers. That, according to Proctor, clinched the special link between cigarettes and lung cancer.
Although both studies are mentioned in passing in the 1964 US Surgeon General鈥檚 report, neither is cited in Smoking and Health, the famous report by Britain鈥檚 Royal College of Physicians issued in 1962. Proctor says that Richard Doll, the British epidemiologist often credited with the link between smoking and lung cancer, knew nothing of the Schairer and Sch枚niger article until he sent him a copy in 1997.
But if the research was so good, why was it ignored? 鈥淗ealth researchers feel uncomfortable citing Nazi sources, and historians are wary of stressing anything that appears `positive鈥� about the period. What has to be recognised is that good science can travel with bad politics.鈥�
War crimes apart, one objection to depicting the Nazis as health pioneers is that, in terms of lives saved, the impact of their anticancer policies seems rather mixed. For decades after the war, to be sure, lung cancer rates remained unusually low among German women. But the military culture led even more men to smoke, and for years afterwards, says Proctor, Germans were leery of anti-tobacco sentiments, which they associated with the Nazis.
Another objection is that the Nazi health officials so often seemed in thrall to prejudice and faddism. Party rulers objected to nose jobs and whipped cream because they were decadent, while they embraced homeopathy and herbal medicine even as they were clamping down on other alternative therapies. As for tobacco, it鈥檚 not immediately obvious what science led Nazi health officials to claim it caused, say, sexual degeneracy, or to introduce fines for drivers caught 鈥渦nder the influence鈥� of cigarettes.
Neuroses
Yes, retorts Proctor, but isn鈥檛 it the same today? 鈥淭oday, there鈥檚 world-class public health research and there鈥檚 health faddism. All the contradictions we see today were present then. We talk about the carcinogen of the week. We debate whether electromagnetic fields are dangerous, or fibreglass. Are these debates born of science or ideology? They鈥檙e born of both.鈥�
One might quibble whether any of today鈥檚 neuroses are as enshrined in political dogma as they were then, but certainly, genetic ideology played a big part in the Nazis鈥� war on cancer. 鈥淧arty leaders wanted healthy workers, but they also wanted to protect the German germplasm. They suffered from `homeopathic paranoia鈥�, a fear that tiny but powerful corrosive agents were eroding the health of the German race-things like lead, alcohol, tobacco. And they were forever making associations between these things and Jews and gypsies.鈥�
The wider question posed by The Nazi War on Cancer is how we should handle the science produced by immoral regimes. Aware that he is stepping into a minefield, Proctor suggests it should have a lot to do with the specifics. 鈥淭he pseudoscience done by Mengele in concentration camps is different from the human freezing experiments that US Air Force officials exploited after the war to design better life jackets. And the tobacco research is different again-it鈥檚 unimpeachable and world-class.鈥�
So is he saying that there is a sliding scale of taintedness, and, if so, where do you draw the line? 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think there is a clear line. Is membership of the Nazi Party sufficient to warrant banishment of a scientists鈥� work? That would rule out much of the cancer research. I do think it鈥檚 wrong to treat Mengele as simply just another scientist with just another piece of data to add to the scientific pile. But equally, it鈥檚 a mistake to think Nazi science is the only work we should be reflecting upon morally. If a philosopher or novelist commits a murder or a rape, should this be noted in the copies of library volumes?
In the case of Nazi science, Proctor鈥檚 bottom-line is that banning books and data may be counterproductive. It may be better to have the data out there but with the origins and details of the Nazi connection clearly stated. That way you remind people of the horrors of the regime-and, says Proctor, in the case of the cancer research, you remind people of something else. 鈥淭hat these were not just monsters or scientific outsiders, but prestigious scholars who were pioneering medical research even as they planned mass murder.鈥�
And there鈥檚 the rub. There are two main camps on Nazi biology: those who see it as pathological science, an outright perversion of the normal stuff, and those-like Proctor-who say that taken as a whole it was much closer to the mainstream of its era than many scientists like to admit. We prefer to focus on black-and-white images of jackbooted Nazi fanatics, says Proctor, because it allows us to cordon off a holy 鈥渦s鈥� from a fallen 鈥渢hem鈥�. Recognise the continuity that exists between Nazi science and normal science, and don鈥檛 the crimes seem even more disturbing?
鈥淭he Nazi campaign against tobacco and the whole-grain bread operation were as fascist as the yellow stars and the death camps,鈥� says Proctor. 鈥淲e need to make sense of that, however painful it might be.鈥�