A Scientist's Nazi-Era Past Haunts Prestigious Space Prize (Q105045556)
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Wall Street Journal article (December 1, 2012)
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | A Scientist's Nazi-Era Past Haunts Prestigious Space Prize |
Wall Street Journal article (December 1, 2012) |
Statements
A Scientist's Nazi-Era Past Haunts Prestigious Space Prize (English)
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But as more evidence surfaced in recent years about Dr. Strughold's wartime activities—including the disclosure by German scholars that his institute in Berlin had conducted experiments on young children from a psychiatric asylum—the doctors, scientists and astronauts who inhabit the rarefied world of space and aviation medicine have become embroiled in an anguished debate. (English)
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In 1943, half a dozen children 11 to 13 years old were taken from a nearby psychiatric facility known as Brandenburg-Goerden and brought over to the Institute. Once there, the children, most of whom had epilepsy, were subjected to "hypoxia," or oxygen deprivation experiments. They were placed in an altitude chamber and administered lower levels of oxygen to see if the conditions would trigger seizures.In a book on Nazi medical practices between 1927-1945, author Hans-Walter Schmuhl, a German scholar, recounted in detail those experiments, explaining how the tests had initially begun on rabbits. He described how Dr. Strughold had several "vacuum chambers" and the children were subjected to experiments that simulated altitudes of nearly 20,000 feet. The children survived the research, which didn't end up triggering seizures—so the undertaking was deemed a scientific failure.Even so, Dr. Schmuhl wrote that the scientists "knew from the animal experiments that young epileptic rabbits reacted…with violent, often fatal convulsions" and they "expected (and hoped) that the children would react like the rabbits." (English)
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