The Nazi war on cancer

In this pathbreaking and courageous study, Robert N Proctor not only tells a fascinating story but also makes an important historiographical critique. The horrors of Nazi science have been documented with almost missionary zeal over the years, he observes, leading to a one-dimensional portrayal of Nazi Germany as an intellectual backwater and Nazi science as quackery. In the process, many notable scientific achievements which complicate this image have been lost to historical memory. Resurrecting this "ffip side of fascism" (p. 277), Proctor challenges readers to contemplate what it means for fanaticism, crime, and callousness to have coexisted with common sense and rigorous scientific inquiry. Using the Nazi war on cancer as a vehicle for addressing these broader concerns, Proctor describes an impressive array of Nazi achievements in medicine and public health: mass-screening programmes for early detection of cancer went hand-in-hand with government-sponsored propaganda initiatives to "enlighten" the public about the wisdom of prevention. Rising concern about occupational cancers led to more rigorous labour protection laws. Nazi scientists sang the praises of fresh fruits and vegetables while warning against the dangers of artificial preservatives and colourings. Germany was home to one of the world's most vigorous anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco campaigns, and Nazi scientists were the first to link smoking with lung cancer. These activities offer one reason to dispense with the "scarecrow" image of Nazi science; the complexity of Nazi science offers another. "Nazi science", Proctor insists, "was not a monolith" (p. 250). Scientists of the same ideological stripe disagreed over everything from the hazards of X-rays to the role of meat consumption in causing cancer. Moreover, their ambitions sometimes faltered in the face of more immediate priorities: occupational health and safety protections were rolled back when they interfered with production quotas, and health enthusiasts feared alienating the public with their demands for austerity, especially during the war. This, in turn, led to inconsistencies and a certain degree of hypocrisy in the tobacco and alcohol temperance campaigns. Ideology, Proctor has ample occasions to observe, was often a far cry from reality. One of the book's most important achievements is to place the Nazis' war on cancer in the context of their more well-known, sinister ideological goals. X-rays, for example, were used not only for early detection of cancer, but also for sterilizing the "racially unfit". Initiatives to promote a healthy lifestyle and a safe workplace were intended for the sole benefit …