Science and religion. There's a debate that's gone on for a while. I stumbled across this article by a medical student at Johns Hopkins that dramatically changed my perspective on the issue, and I hope it will yours too. Here is the first part of the article, and then I will follow with a discussion. Let me only prep the reader by saying, exchange the words "physician" and "medicine" for "scientist" and "science" and the same message will apply:
"Moral Luck and Medical Murder: Are Physicians in Jeopardy?"
by Alessa Colaianni, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Class of 2014
"On a rainy summer day in Oswiecim, Poland, I stood next to the rusty railroad tracks leading into Auschwitz and realized that I was standing in the same place where Nazi doctors had performed "selections," sentencing millions of innocent Jews to death or imprisonment by pointing either left or right. Though I had spent weeks reading and discussing the role of physicians in the Holocaust, I was in a state of disbelief. The value of physicians to the Nazi regime is clear: physicians legitimized the "scientific" principles of eugenics on which the Nazis built their so-called Rassenpolitik (Racial Policy), and rationalized murder under the logic of "medical necessity." But what could possibly have motivated these doctors to so wholly ignore their own professional code?
"By enlisting physicians, first in the sterilization and T4 "euthanasia" programs, and later, in the "Final Solution," the Nazis seemed to have science and medicine on their side. Without active physician participation, the Nazi regime could not have achieved its murderous aims: physicians helped disguise the horrors by using deliberately misleading medical jargon, by systematizing murder, and by subverting their own professional values. The more I reflect, and the more historical analysis I read, the more elusive the answer to this fundamental question seems to become. How could so many doctors, all of whom presumably took the Hippocratic Oath, have become such an integral part of torture and genocide? (it should be noted that the Nazis were neither the first nor the last to facilitate the transformation of physicians into murderers).
"It is crucial to understand that not all physicians that participate in murder and torture do so because of some latent psychological illness or because they are under duress. It is natural for physicians (and future physicians) to try to find some fundamental difference between themselves and the Nazi doctors - to distance themselves as far as they can from the perpetrators of such heinous crimes - but to do so misses the point. Philosopher Thomas Nagel's concept of "moral luck" provides one reason why. Nagel compares the relative moral status of two men, each of whom becomes equally intoxicated and drives home impaired. one man strikes and kills a small child who happens to run out in front of his car. The other man makes it home safely: no child runs out in front of his car. Both men were equally negligent, but by virtue of circumstance -- luck -- only one man ended up with blood on his hands. In another oft-cited example, a man who may have led an uneventful life as a German citizen became a concentration camp guard and committed unimaginable crimes when the Nazis came into power. Political circumstances did not entirely cause, but certainly facilitated, the change in that man's moral record. The reality of moral luck forces us to consider the unpalatable possibility that these doctors were ordinary people under extraordinary conditions - and that we, as physicians, have the same capacity for wrongdoing."
She then goes to explain characteristics of medical practice, such as clinical detachment and medical euphemisms, that facilitated physician participation in the Holocaust, and how they exist in medical practice today.
What was the movement that provided the impetus for this terrible behavior? It's closer to home than you think:
"Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.
"Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then (used) their data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
"Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.
"In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.
"Even the United States Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense" (retrieved from The George Mason History News Network at http://hnn.us/article/1796).
So, eugenics began in the United States long before it reached Germany. In fact, Hitler quotes American scientists in his autobiography Mein Kampf who he says led the way for Germany to learn how cleanse their "racial stock". Racial cleansing occurred in numerous ways, from lethal neglect and poisoning in mental institutions to forced sterilization, especially in the state of California. The Nazis were the first to take these ideals and implement them on a large scale through systematic executions.
This is all a long-winded introduction to this simple point: just because someone is using scientific methods to distill information is no guarantee that the information will be used for any particular good purpose. Science should be a tool used by the righteous in their quest for truth, but how we find that information, and how we interpret it, and what we do as a result of it, are actions that depend entirely on our personal and social morality.
As I said in my previous post, physical and social facts are just facts. They're nothing to get angry about, until you filter the fact, or study, or survey through your lens of social understanding and say - "Aha! Someone is being oppressed!" or "Eureka! I've been right all along about men!" (or gravity, or big business, or organized religion or global warming, or whatever).
In the early 20th century, Eugenics became a popular social framework for viewing people. People's behavior, appearance, thoughts and beliefs were merely considered as evidence for a racial hierarchy. In fact, even those who disagreed with the actions of eugenicists often still adopted the lens of eugenics. Haim Nahmen Bialik, a distinguished Hebrew and Yiddish poet, believed that the eugenics studies proved that Judaism was a race - and a superior one, compared with those who claimed Judaism by practice and belief but not ethnicity. "I too, like Hitler, believe in the blood idea."
Fortunately, the eugenics framework has taken a back seat over the last several decades, but they have been replaced by other frameworks that now study people in terms of oppression, gender, socialization, media, lifestyle, sexuality, mental illness, etc.
What is your framework? If a house burns down, do you consider it a reflection of crime rates in the area? Are you concerned about the environmental impact of the smoke? Do you think about whether or not God was punishing the people who lived there? The types of questions you ask, and the answers you find, will come from the social framework through which you view the world.
Notice - your framework influences how you engage with the science, but it is not science in of itself. No scientific study can say "Skin color should not be used to determine how qualified someone is for a job" or "Women should be treated equally". Our frameworks determine that. And our frameworks are determined, to a large extent, by our morality.
So going back to the eugenics movement - How do we know we're not repeating the foolish and immoral actions of our science-loving predecessors in the early 20th century?
First of all, we must recognize that scientific intelligence has zero affect on our moral intelligence. Good people need not be educated, and educated people need not be good. The danger we currently face is that scientific knowledge is rapidly increasing, but our sense of morality is increasingly weak and simple and easily overcome for most people. We are current beneficiaries of the "moral luck" Nagel discussed, and it may take only a mere shift in the political winds, or current rhetoric, or pop culture, to leave blood on our hands as well: "The reality of moral luck forces us to consider the unpalatable possibility that these doctors were ordinary people under extraordinary conditions - and that we, as physicians, have the same capacity for wrongdoing."
Science cannot guide morality. It simply can't. The nature of science answers questions about "what", "where", "who", and "how", but it cannot answer the "why"s, or give any insight about "what should be". If we assume that science will give us those answers, the answers we get will be a reflection of our own beliefs about what is "natural" or "obvious". And if our moral education has not been thorough, the nature of these "obvious" answers will be hugely influenced by whatever winds of political and philosophical change we happen to be experiencing at the moment, whether it's eugenics or feminism. Without a consistent, reliable source of moral education, we can unwittingly make foolish decisions, all the while believing science to be our ally.
Science is not the only Kool-Aid that disguises the poison of immorality. Philosophical arguments, peer pressure, professional norms, politics, pop culture, and rhetoric can also woo us into complacency about moral principles that haven't been sufficiently anchored. Dishonesty because "it's just business", contempt because of someone's party affiliation, casual sex because you live in a frat house. The whimpering voice of morality is an easy target of mockery when everyone is having a good time: Mark Twain said "Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand." Rhetoric can deceive even very good, reasonable people, as Hitler's impassioned speeches deceived the Germans. Like science, rhetoric can paint an issue persuasively and reasonably, and yet be completely wrong.
So how do we ensure that we do not repeat the mistakes of Nazi physicians and all those who went along with the eugenics movement? The answer is this: Our individual and collective sense of morality must be cultivated and educated. Distinct from education in science, philosophy, politics, or sociology, we need to cultivate a sense of morality that derives from religious faith, and recognize that science is a tool, not the brains, behind moral action.
We have a duty to seek out the best and most correct religious teachings we can find and then teach their principles of morality as the basis for proper social conduct - if not in our public schools then in every other possible forum. I don't refer to dogma or extremism - I mean to say that most world religions teach a common base of principles that emphasize the Golden Rule, respect for others, acknowledgment of a greater power or at least that we don't have all the answers right now, and a desire to seek after goodness and truth. If the overwhelming majority of the world believes these things are good and true, why not put a stake in it? Why not teach it to our kids in formal or even state-sponsored settings? Where else should morality come from?
Who wants to argue that if we practiced genetic selection, we probably would create a healthier, stronger, longer-living population? No one - scientifically, it's still probable. But our sense of conscience dismisses that argument because we believe (for mostly unprovable reasons) that the actions that would come from that argument are just inherently wrong - no study needed. These beliefs can't come from science, and so they must come from religion. We codify these unscientific religious morals in our Bill of Rights and Constitution because we have decided that every person should be granted life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Nazi doctors failed their own morality. Their skills, experience, jargon, and trust in the science overwhelmed their ability to distinguish right from wrong. Does that make science bad? No! But without educated core convictions that grow with equal strength to our dependence on science, morality will not have the power to govern our use of science, and as with the physicians in Nazi Germany, we will not hear the quiet voice or moral reason that cuts through the distracting jargon and frameworks and speaks of right and wrong to our innermost souls.
As we study the history of our society and the foolish, immoral actions of the past, we must never believe, as Coloaianni stated, that our ancestors were simply less moral or less intelligent than we are. They, like us, acted according to contemporary philosophies, politics, and popular trends, and like us, they did it unwittingly. Let us be intelligent about morality; let our social frameworks be grounded in religious truth; let us not only accept but embrace the unscientific, unprovable, and yet essential "shoulds" that give us our humanity and provide an anchor for civilization itself.
