After Auschwitz: Reflections on the Future of Medicine

by Peter Selg, Jeff Martin (Translator)

Overview

Since 2009, Peter Selg, along with Polish historians, has led seminars on medical ethics at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial for students at Witten/Herdecke University, Germany. This book was created following a public event in 2019 that investigated the "lessons of Auschwitz" for the practice of medicine in society today and in the future. As well as commemorating the individual victims, the Auschwitz event focused on the role of German physicians in the Nazi regime. In this book, Dr. Selg's discussions go far beyond the historical events of the 1930s and '40s. Countering the legacy of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the inhumane medical practices of that time, he presents us with ways to advance forms of medicine today that encourage the most compassionate treatment of one another as human beings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781621482666
Publisher:	Steiner Books
Publication date:	11/23/2021
Pages:	282
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Peter Selg studied medicine in Witten-Herdecke, Zurich, and Berlin and, until 2000, worked as the head physician of the juvenile psychiatry department of Herdecke Hospital in Germany. Dr. Selg is director of the Ita Wegman Institute for Basic Research into Anthroposophy (Arlesheim, Switzerland), professor of medicine at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences (Germany), and co-leader of the General Anthroposophical Section at the Goetheanum. He is the author of numerous books on Rudolf Steiner, anthroposophy, medical ethics, and the development of culture and consciousness.

Jeff Martin is a translator from the U.S. He studied anthroposophy at Emerson College, England, and worked as a business analyst and consultant across Europe. Now retired, he has translated several books, including Becoming Fully Human: The Significance of Anthroposophy in Comtemporary Spiritual Life (CW 82) by Rudolf Steiner and several works by Peter Selg. He lives in France.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1 Survival after Auschwitz: Primo Levi and the Hope for Change

1 The Death of Primo Levi 1

2 The Road to Auschwitz 3

3 Monowitz Buna 6

4 Medicine and Leonardo De Benedetti 12

5 If This Is a Man 15

6 Social Repression and Reappraisal 19

7 Contemporary History and Holocaust Denial 24

8 The Difficult Life 28

9 The Drowned and the Saved 32

10 Despair 36

2 Medicine without Humanity: Alexander Mitscherlich and the Forces of Persistence

1 The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial 41

2 Alexander Mitscherlich and Viktor von Weizsäcker 44

3 "Freedom and Unfreedom in Illness" 54

4 The Establishment of the German Medical Commission 70

5 "The Dictate of Contempt for Humanity" 81

6 Doctors of Infamy 85

7 Basic Questions of Medical Science 101

8 "Science without Humanity" 108

9 "Coming to Terms with the Past" and Medicine 120

10 The Late Awakening of the 1980s 143

3 "Knowingly Human": Threats and the Future of Human Medicine

1 Alexander Mitscherlich's Experience as a Patient 149

2 Gerhard Kienle and Human Medicine 156

3 "Drug Safety and Society" 161

4 Medical Judgment and Scientific Social Maturity 166

5 The Economization of Health Care 173

6 Standardization, Depersonalization, and Medical Ethics 177

7 Unspoken Basic Assumptions 183

8 Plea for Therapeutic Anthropology 194

9 Courage to Resist 212

10 Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Development of Medical Awareness 215

Notes 225

Bibliography 239

Books by Peter Selg in English Translation 258