The Nazi War on Cancer

In a book that plumbs both the dark and light sides of the utopian impulse, Penn State history of science professor Proctor (Racial Hygiene; Cancer Wars; etc.) takes a look at the healthy side of fascism. Hitler's government implemented many laudable public health measures, including the regulation of pesticides, asbestos and food dyes. Germany, Proctor notes, had the most aggressive anti-smoking campaign in the world, and German scientists were the first to link smoking with lung cancer. As Proctor outlines the sophistication of German medical science and the ambitions of Nazi public health policy, he asks provocative questions about the relationship between scientific culture and political culture, describing, for instance, how cancer metaphors were used to describe the ""subhumans"" the regime sought to exterminate as tumors on the German body. Proctor's moral compass stays true: he doesn't exonerate Nazi science but rather looks at how the cult of the Aryan race, which stressed healthy living, played out in the everyday work of scientists who concerned themselves with public health. ""My intention is not to argue that today's antitobacco efforts have fascist roots, or that public health measures are in principle totalitarian,"" he writes. Instead, Proctor seeks to give his readers a more comlex appreciation of ""how the routine practice of science can so easily coexist with the routine exercise of cruelty."" At this, he succeeds admirably, giving readers a thoroughly researched account of Nazi medical science and posing difficult questions about the ultimate worth of good research carried out under the auspices of evil. Illustrations. (July)