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Inside: Cultural Sausage. ~ Ludic Lists. ~ Skullbucket. Outside: I'm
still more than open to suggestions about next week's all-holiday
content.
"sexy underlings" "sentence for slumbering" "fart sniffing" "booze sweater" "my daddy drinks too much" "Mormon Taco Bell ownership" "fermented Kool-Aid" "science geeks vs. math nerds" |
12.16.2004
A great man once said: "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." That is certainly true of another great man: my grandfather. To the world, he was a horrible killer, a vile abomination, a sadist, a betrayer of all the principles of science and medicine, and one of the worst criminals of the Nazi regime; to me he was Grossvati Jo-Jo, always quick with a joke, ready with a candy treat, eager to loan you a textbook or a high-powered electric drill. Mention the name Josef Mengele today and you will get naught but lectures, moralistic cluckings of the tongue, and stern approbation. The evil that he did (if you wish to call it that; I am not here to argue the so-called 'right' and 'wrong' of Grandpa Joe's illuminating medical research) has lived on long after him, while the good he did is all but forgotten in a flood of stereotyping, snap judgments, and historical fogetfulness. No, I am not here to deny that the man was a saint; he had his flaws like all men. His career often kept him away from his family, and his marriage suffered because of it. He was not the best manager of money. And many physicians, concerned more with their reputations than how much of a positive impact they were having on the body of human knowledge, would have frowned at a fatality rate of some 93% amongst their patients. But my grandfather was also a good man, and more than that, he was a great doctor. He used an opportunity -- and yes, I call it an opportunity; others like to throw around meaningless buzzwords like 'holocaust', but did you know that in Chinese, the word for 'holocaust' is the same as the word for 'opportunity'? -- few men have ever been afforded to do the best he could do for science and humanity. He added more to the body of medical knowledge than we may ever know. And for this, due to the small-minded prejudices of the ignorant and the simplistic judgment of history, he is called a monster. Would a monster have insisted that his specimens (or "patients", as people insist on calling them in this age of political correctness) be clean, fit and without sexual diseases? Would a monster have taken care to keep his research facilities far away from the housing areas so that the screams of agony and constant death-rattles did not disturb the specimen's remaining family? Would a monster have taken conscientious, detailed and remarkably complete notes? Grossvati Jo-Jo knew history would read his works, and he wrote with an eye towards that historical legacy; little did he suspect that the same posterity would choose to focus on trifling details of his work (such as whether or not the patients consented, or survived) instead of looking at the bigger picture. And what does that bigger picture show us, if only we are willing to look with unbiased eyes? It teaches us many small lessons, which, in aggregate, add up to a massive and vital contribution to the physiological, bio-medical and psychological knowledge of all mankind. Without my grandfather's necessary work, we might not know exactly how long a person can survive after being submerged constantly in freezing cold water. We might not know exactly how much blood a person can lose and still be forcibly kept conscious. We might not know that you cannot run continually on a treadmill for six days without your heart exploding. We might not know the various telltale facial tics that can help a doctor diagnose his patient as suffering from being crushed under huge bolts of lead. And we might not know that Jews are much more likely to develop fatal cases of pneumonia, spontaneous facial bleeding, and negative reactions to environmental toxins in a prison-camp environment than are Gentiles. Ladies and gentlemen of the Dusseldorf University Medical Review Board, I am asking you for understanding. I am asking you not to repeat the errors of the past, and to rectify a terrible crime. I am asking you to forget the prejudices that lie behind my name, to let my grandfather's evil be interred with his bones and let the good he did live on after him. As you will see in the packets I have prepared for this presentation, I have developed a theory that people of certain religious persuasions will suffer permanently harmful or fatal heart conditions if their heads are twisted around 180 degrees by an industrial clamp. With your help, with your generous financial assistance, and most of all, witho your understanding, my theory may soon be confirmed. |
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| TODAY'S DRIFTWOOD: "The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy." (Nadia Boulanger) |