In the republic’s attic where Hawthorne’s ghost licks flecks of cheese from its fingers we remember the history of American exterminations and eugenics. From the Cherokee to Tuskegee, from Carrie Buck to hysterectomies under ICE America has built itself a monolith of human rights calamities.
During the first weeks of COVID isolation I took it upon myself to read two books about Nazi doctors. Both detail the hyper-cruelties of science gone wrong in the hands of psychotic men, but what was worse–for there’s always something worse when talking about Nazis, was the staggering indifference of all the other doctors. I’m guessing that when we get to the bottom of the ICE hysterectomies story we’ll find there was plenty of collegial shrugging going on.
“Experimenting on women? That’s his department. I only pull healthy teeth.”
In case you’re wondering, the two books were Robert J. Lifton’s “Nazi Doctors” and “Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death” by David Marwell.
Planet of the Blind 