history

Tainted Eponyms: To Retain Is to Remember

Author:
Sheldon P. Hersh, MD
Lenox Hill Hospital/Northwell Health, New York, New York

Citation:
Hersh SP. Tainted eponyms: to retain is to remember [published online November 19, 2019]. Neurology Consultant.

 

Tainted eponyms speak of a time when healers became executioners. A time in the not-so-distant past when German physicians willingly provided their services to a racist regime that, in pursuit of genetic purity, eliminated those deemed unworthy of life. Many of Germany’s sick and disabled were euthanized at designated medical clinics, while Jews and other “undesirables” were eliminated in concentration camps and extermination centers. Seeking to revoke honor and recognition from those who were complicit in crimes against humanity is clearly justified. Yet, however well-intentioned, expunging these eponyms may prove short-sighted.

Tainted eponyms draw attention to more than just the crimes perpetrated by the physicians in question. These eponyms also reveal the plight of the many unfortunate victims and detail a little-known narrative that exposes the unholy alliance that existed between organized medicine and the Third Reich.1,2 Once tainted eponyms are expunged and forgotten, these corrupted physicians, their victims, and an appreciation of the toxic culture that turned healers into executioners will no longer receive the recognition and study they all so rightly deserve.

The subject of tainted eponyms may be approached from an entirely different perspective when viewed through the eyes of those who survived the Nazi reign of terror. One such notable individual is the late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. An examination of his extensive writings provides clarity and insight as to why tainted eponyms are best not expunged and allowed to remain in the public eye.  

Wiesel spent his life unmasking a dark and evil universe “where to be inhuman was human.”3 A universe that, he urged, must remain part of our collective consciousness. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Wiesel declared, “That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.”3 Tainted eponyms foster memory. They ask that we approach and come face to face with these tainted physicians and their hapless victims.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine,4 Wiesel identified Nazi physicians as “assassins in white coats” who tortured, maimed, and murdered innocent victims “without any crisis of conscience.” He nonetheless argued that these villains not be ignored or forgotten. In the preface to his classic book Night, Wiesel describes himself as “a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.”3 Expunging tainted eponyms rewards corrupted physicians with this one last victory by providing them with the anonymity they so eagerly sought.

Acronyms and other neutral designations cannot be expected to evoke the same disturbing imagery that comes to mind when tainted eponyms are in use. With autism spectrum disorder displacing Asperger syndrome, can we be expected to appreciate the role played by pediatrician Hans Asperger in sending disabled children to be euthanized in gas chambers? By replacing Wegener granulomatosis with granulomatosis with polyangiitis, few will ever know of pathologist Friedrich Wegener’s active and willing participation in the Nazi party. Wegener joined the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi party paramilitary force, and during the war was assigned to the health office in Lodz, Poland.5 Approximately 250,000 Jews were confined to the Lodz ghetto where the German occupiers provided little or no food or medicine. Only a handful survived.

At the first Nuremberg Trial convened on November 20, 1945, chief prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson stressed that future generations will have to contend with the very same evil that permeated German culture.6 Pointing to those on trial, Justice Jackson noted that, “These individuals are symbols of racial hatred, violence, and terrorism that future generations will have to contend with.”6 We are those future generations, and by retaining tainted eponyms, we are reminded of the need to remember. To focus on the past so as to anticipate the future.

Tainted eponyms must be retained as a means to remember. “For in the end,” says Wiesel, “it is all about memory, its sources, and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”3

Sheldon P. Hersh, MD, is an otolaryngologist in the Department of Otolaryngology at Lenox Hill Hospital/Northwell Health in New York, New York.

References:

  1. Czech H. Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and “race hygiene” in Nazi-era Vienna. Mol Autism. 2018;9:29. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-018-0208-6.
  2. Alexander L. Medical science under dictatorship. N Engl J Med. 1949;241(2):39-47. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM194907142410201.
  3. Wiesel E. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang; 2006.
  4. Wiesel E.  Without conscience. N Engl J Med. 2005;352(15):1511-1513. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp058069.
  5. Woywodt A, Haubitz M, Haller H, Matteson EL. Wegener’s granulomatosis. Lancet. 2006;367(9519):1362-1366. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68583-8.
  6. Berenbaum M. The Nuremberg Trials. In: Witness to the Holocaust. New York, NY: Harper Collins; 1997:327-357.