International Journal of Epidemiology 2001;30:31-34
© International Epidemiological Association 2001
Reiteration |
Commentary: Schairer and Schöniger's forgotten tobacco epidemiology and the Nazi quest for racial purity
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
It is important to see Schairer and Schöniger's paper against a backdrop of the history of tobacco, the history of cancer, and the history of how a causal link between the two came to be recognized. Schairer and Schöniger's paper also has to be seen, though, as a political document, a product of the Nazi ideological focus on tobacco as a corrupting force whose elimination would serve the cause of ‘racial hygiene’. Nazi Germany was governed by a health-conscious political elite bent on European conquest and genocidal extermination, and tobacco at this time was viewed as one among many ‘threats’ to the health of the chosen Volk.
Exploring this larger political context in this sense tells us something interesting about the nature of the Nazi regime. Nazism was a movement of muscular, health-conscious young men worried about things like the influence of Jews in German culture and the evils of
Cancer rates on the rise
The Nazi impulse
Astel's institute
Normal science?
References