Document 2R7GGrJ2mNExVQo7DwXY68QQR

38 CHAPTER 2 powerful friends in industry must also have helped, as did his abil ity to show that he had faithfully fought for the fatherland in the First World War.7 The Reich Anticancer Committee, suitably aryanized, appeared to support the Nazification of German cancer research. In its first annual report after the Machtergreifung the committee declared it self eager to embrace the new regime: The year 1933 was a decisive one for the war against cancer: the national socialist revolution (Umwalzung) has created entirely new opportunities for sweeping measures in an area that until now has been rather lim ited. ... The energetic and unanimous engagement (Einsatz) of the med ical profession has shown that new avenues have opened for the strug gle against cancer in the new Germany.8 The Zeitschrift fur Krebsforschung sounded similar themes,9 and the newly formed Monatsschrift announced its desire to provide anti cancer activists with new "weapons" to continue their struggle. No stone was to be left unturned.10 The Central Committee (Zentralkomitee) was dissolved in De cember of 1933; all cancer research within the borders of the Reich was henceforth to be coordinated by the more activist and nation alist Reich Anticancer Committee. The elevation of this latter orga nization after 1933 signaled an effort to unify the heretofore scat tered forces of the German anticancer effort; it also signaled a move to favor practical measures such as early detection over basic research initiatives.11 The Reich Committee had emphasized since its inception the value of preventive medicine (especially early de tection), and post-1933 policies strengthened this emphasis. Women over forty were urged to have an annual exam, and the prevention-oriented cancer exhibit prepared at Dresden's Hygiene Museum traveled all over Germany, attracting more than half a million visitors.12 The expulsion of Jews and communists, in other words, was only part of the Gleichschaltung (unification and purification) of German cancer research. Nazi ideologues also emphasized the need for a shift from "scientific abstractions" to more practical approaches. The Zeitschrift fur Krebsforschung announced that it GLEICHSCHALTUNG 39 would henceforth publish less in the areas of basic biochemistry, tissue culture, and animal experimentation, and more on clinical observation, human tumor pathology, and statistics, consistent with Liek's critique of Mdusedoktoren ("mouse doctors"--by which he meant vivisectionists or laboratory cancer specialists more gen erally). The journal cautioned against an excessive focus on labora tory methods that "lose themselves in fruitless details" (a veiled antisemitic reference); the new focus was to be more statistical, al lowing a better understanding of the distribution of cancer by race, social status, occupation, and the environmental factors that give rise to cancer in the first place.13 One surprising aspect of the Nazi turn in German science is that many Jewish scholars continued to be cited in German cancer jour nals. It is not yet clear how we should interpret this: it may suggest that German fascism was less "total" than is sometimes imagined (the system was polycentric, and sometimes "leaky"); it may also indicate that scientific citation did not have the significance that we today attach to it. There are scholars today who worry about the unreflective citation of "Nazi data" (Mengele's work on the ge netics of cleft palate is still cited);14 our present-day concerns with criminal scientific citation, however, may simply reflect the status we have invested in displays of debt and credit. No one will ever be able to say what the loss of Jewish scientific talent meant for the course of German science. From a moral point of view, of course, the loss of talent is nothing compared to the loss of life. A thousand laments for Einstein sound hollow against the silence of the millions of lesser-knowns who perished. It is also possible, though, as already noted, that the expulsion of Jewish scientists did relatively little to slow the German campaign against cancer--at least in the short run. If this is so, it is because basic science was not mainly what was needed in the war on can cer. It was already known that tobacco, soot, tar, asbestos, and ra diation were causes of cancer, and that prevention of exposure to such agents could prevent a sizable fraction of all cancers. Success ful anticancer campaigns seemed to require political and public health muscle more than scientific subtleties. That was not true in every instance--little was known about the molecular basis of