The National Socialist Medical Welfare State

David Gordon reports:

Every society must answer a fundamental question about its medical system. Does each person control his own body? If he does, he has the right to decide what type of medical treatment he wants. If people do not own their own bodies, then medical policy need not respect individual decisions, and individuals can be ruthlessly cast aside for the supposed general welfare.

There is no doubt about how the Nazis answered our question. Paul Diepgen, the leading historian of medicine in the Third Reich and also during the preceding Weimar Republic, said in a book that appeared in 1938: "National Socialism means something fundamentally new for medical life. It has overcome an idea that was central to medicine of the recent past: the idea of the right to one’s own body." A key Nazi slogan was "The common good is higher than the individual good."

These kinds of views are very prevalent on American college campuses.One could get tenure espousing these views.