Topic > The Dark Turn of Science: The Joint Work of Von Verschuer and Mengele

The fruition of eugenics began with Francis Galton. The term “good creation” was created to produce an elite group based on genetics. The Nazis viewed the population problem as a biological problem, particularly with the Jewish and Gypsy populations. The Nazi transformation of the medical system was based on the sterilization of those who were supposed to produce, including the aforementioned population, as well as the mentally ill. Many medical researchers were supporters of such sterilization techniques. One of them was Otmar Von Verscheur who often denied the marriages of the Jewish population, stating that they were unfit and needed to be sterilized. At the beginning of Hitler's regime it was due to mental instability. However, both von Versheur and Mengele were encouraged to sterilize, especially in their work together in the concentration camps. Although von Versheur did not personally work in the concentration camp, both he and Mengele worked on genetic differences between such populations and on twin studies. These will be the experiments most highlighted in this article. Otmar von Vershuer and Josef Mengele played a role in controlling the “non-elite” population, highlighting the differences in making the German race superior, but they also provided research to make the population unanimous. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Early in Adolf Hitler's rule, science took a dark turn in a period that lasted from 1933 to 1945. This dark science was focused on race biology, specifically how to define genetics to encourage the race gap genetic difference between Germans and the "others". World War I resulted in the trend of anti-Semitism and racial variance in Germany because non-Germans were perceived as the cause of their losing the war due to the stereotype of them stabbing them in the back. Since genetics has highlighted the difference between breeds, it could be a solution to control and eliminate the handicapped from society to create the perfect German breed. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics was appointed scientific responsible for this investigation. In 1940, Otmar Von Verschuer joined the Nazi Party, but was a long-time supporter of the Nazis' violent anti-Semitism. His work gained notoriety in 1932 due to his invasive research on Jewish twins. During his lectures on the subject, he often discussed the Jewish people not only as inferior but as a race as alien to the Germans as African Americans, Gypsies, or Mongols. Indeed, von Versheur firmly believed that man could shape the future. His first project at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute highlighted the racial biology of Jews. The project aimed to determine differences between Ashkenazi Jews and Caucasian non-Jews in genes that lead to genetic diseases or cancer. Von Versheur guaranteed that the difference in genes explains the behavior of the Jewish community often called Jews. Von Versheur and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute labeled him a danger to the German people. Von Versheur gave the government the necessary propaganda to highlight former Jewish citizens, since the marginalized and segregation were a necessary starting point for the good of the people. In 1937, von Versheur was head of another eugenics research project at the Frankfurt Institute, a collaborator of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in using science to justify Nazi policy. After World War I, French occupation forces were abundant in many parts of Germany andthey often had children with German citizens. Von Versheur analyzed the genes of supposedly illegitimate children, suspected based on their darker coloring. If they were found to be genetically illegitimate, they would be sterilized. This is the beginning of the sterilization methods used by both Verscheur and Mengele in their experiments. Furthermore, in 1937, Versehur was responsible for many cases dealing with the paternity of half-Jews. He testified that he had many imprisoned for deceiving the German people with the idea of ​​a non-Jewish father. In a case involving the genetic health justice system in Germany, they found a gypsy woman who wished to marry a German man deemed fit to marry. However, Von Versheur appealed on the grounds that, being a gypsy, she was feeble-minded and should have been sterilised, as well as placed in a mental institution for harboring such beliefs. Von Versheur fought for the law on the sterilization of all gypsies, which labeled his dark science as legal in the eyes of the state. In 1942, von Versheur became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. With this new power, he began his extensive study of twins. Initially, he began to determine the difference in blood groups between twins based on clotting factors. The study, which involved blood type analysis, involved identical twins containing the same blood type. The subject of these twin studies were gypsies, a group of people from whom von Versheur was one of the principal men to deprive of their autonomy for its use in dark science. Not surprisingly, von Versheur was Josef Mengele's mentor from much of Versheur's early years. work evolved the level of scientific curiosity with Mengele's work in concentration camps. Mengele's role in the concentration camps was to eliminate the Jewish race. Von Versheur and Mengele collaborated in their work to determine the genetic differences of the Jewish and Gypsy populations in resistance to various infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and typhus. The concentration camps were the perfect environment for these scientists because they could do whatever they wanted with these prisoners, as their death was the solution to the Jewish epidemic. Mengele performed many illegal experiments outside the protection of science and outside of von Versheur's knowledge. Documents regarding his illegal activities were found which demonstrated his horrific scientific curiosity in torture. On June 1, 1943, the cultured viral germ that led to the deaths of the animals was contracted in prisoners, to determine whether the same response would occur in humans. The same results occurred with prisoners dying of deadly fevers. A year later, on May 19, 1944, to determine if oxygen levels had any effect on a new fever serum. The Jewish prisoners were experimented with little oxygen and no oxygen. Mengele tortured Jewish prisoners with very little oxygen for 30 minutes, until they stopped breathing. In many cases, severe cyanosis resulted in foam coming out of the prisoner's mouth. In the autopsy report, the spinal cord was severed and the brain was removed. The result was severe subarachnoid edema found in the brain due to loss of oxygen. Air was trapped in the veins and arteries of the brain, causing the death of many prisoners. Those who were considered Jewish criminals due to their history of interracial relationships were subjected to cooling experiments in which they were forced underwater and the free air in the ventricles of the brain caused air embolisms in these prisoners. Many of theseprisoners were placed under water in helmets and heavy uniforms and, in retrospect, after the embolism, the brainstem could be found protruding above the water. Additionally, prisoners were placed underwater on narcotics where their body heat decreased to the point of death. Mengele's experimentation is recounted by his slave assistant, Nyiszli. Those with bodily abnormalities were examined by Nyiszli and then shot for further dissection. The bones of the corpses were sent to von Versheur for further study. On May 22, 1944, as many as fourteen gypsy twins were brought into his room, ordered to undress them, injected with chloroform to put them into a deep sleep, medically violated, and injected with chloroform into the left ventricle of the heart. be easily killed by dissection. Fourteen girls were taken because he believed that his assistants could dissect so many bodies in one day, the only reason why the fate of many gypsy twins was saved was that the assistants could only handle up to four bodies in a day for a precise job. The organs of these girls were covered in alcohol and sent to von Versheur for his research on twin studies. On January 29, 1943, many gypsies sent to Auschwitz were brought to Mengele's laboratory for the first time. Genetic defects became a personal project for von Verushe, as well as for Mengele. The prevalence of heterochromatic eyes in German gypsies could easily be studied within the field. These ocular anomalies were sent to von Versheur, where he determined hereditary malformations through genes that synthesize enzymes that destroy eye pigment in the retina. At the concentration camp, those with eye abnormalities were encouraged to be killed in order to harvest their eyes for scientific purposes. Mengele experimented with implanting blue eye color on gypsy twins, which often led to blindness, and they in turn were killed. In a position to survive or end up in the gas chamber, many parents convinced the Nazis that children with similar features were twins or that their children had "unique eyes." Therefore, this experimentation on the biology of the breed was extremely inaccurate. When other organs were sent back, along with the eyes, von Versheur analyzed them to find that the Jewish race is less susceptible to tuberculosis than the Germans. A population containing a NRAMP1 is accurately more susceptible to tuberculosis, but to support his hypothesis, von Versheur used the early work of Prof. Dr. Emil Abderhalden. These defense enzymes contained proteases that were specified in the set of infectious diseases. Von Versheur built his thesis on the assumption that the specified type or number of enzymes differentiated the races of the Jewish and German people. In late 1943, von Versheur began testing monozygotic and dizygotic twins for tuberculosis. Disparities in tuberculosis with dizygotic, but not monozygotic, twins were quite evident. So, in 1944, Mengele began the same project to determine the results of his research. He focused tuberculosis research on the racial differentiation of Eastern and Western Jews. Both Eastern and Western Jews were given the same amount of typhoid injections. Western Jews were found to be much less resistant, but all participants died within ten days of the research experiment. Mengele performed the same study on gypsy twins, continuously injecting them with typhus to determine how each pair of twins would react. Once he received the answer, he sent the twins to the gas chamber. Other times, when a twin had it done.