(b.October 14, 1916), was U.S. Surgeon General during President Ronald Reagan’s Administration, 1982–89; surgeon-in-chief of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 1948–81; professor of pediatric surgery and pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; and served on the board of directors of MAP International, a relief agency to undeveloped countries.
In 1977, Dr. C. Everett Koop delivered an address entitled “The Slide to Auschwitz,” to The American Academy of Pediatrics, upon receiving the William E. Ladd Medal, the highest honor given to pediatric surgeons in the country. In this address, published in The Human Life Review, Spring, 1977, C. Everett Koop, M.D., stated:
Leo Alexander, a Boston psychiatrist, was at one time (1946–47) consultant to the Secretary of War on duty with the office of chief counsel for war crimes in Nuremberg. In a remarkable paper (which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, July 4, 1949, 241:39–47), “Medical Science Under Dictatorship,” he outlined the problem. Let me just mention the highlights of Dr. Alexander’s presentation. The guiding philosophic principle of recent dictatorships, including that of the Nazis, was Hegelian in that what was considered “rational utility” and corresponding doctrine and planning had replaced moral, ethical and religious values. Medical science in Nazi Germany collaborated with this Hegelian trend particularly in the following enterprises: the mass extermination of the chronically sick in the interest of saving “useless” expenses to the community as a whole; the mass extermination of those considered socially disturbing or racially and ideologically unwanted; the individual, inconspicuous extermination of those considered disloyal to the ruling group; and the ruthless use of “human experimental material” in medical military research. Remember, physicians took part in this planning.
Adults were propagandized; one outstanding example being a motion picture called “I Accuse,” which dealt with euthanasia. This film depicted the life history of a woman suffering from multiple sclerosis and eventually showed her husband, a doctor, killing her to the accompaniment of soft piano music played by a sympathetic colleague in a adjacent room. The ideology was implanted even in high school children when their mathematics texts included problems stated in distorted terms of the cost of caring for and rehabilitating the chronically sick and crippled. For example, one problem asked how many new housing units could be built and how many marriage-allowance loans could be given newlyweds for the amount of money it cost the state to care for “the crippled, the criminal, and the insane.” This was all before Hitler. And it was all in the hands of the medical profession.
The first direct order for euthanasia came from Hitler in 1939. All state institutions were required to report on patients who had been ill for five years or more or who were unable to work. The decision regarding which patients should be killed was made entirely on the basis on name, race, marital status, nationality, next of kin, regularly visited by whom, and a statement of financial responsibility. The experts who made the decisions were chiefly professors of psychiatry in the key universities in Germany. They never say the patients. There was a specific organization for the killing of children which was known by the euphemistic name of “Realms Committee for Scientific Approach to Severe Illness Due to Heredity and Constitution.” Transportation of the patients to the killing centers was carried out by the “Charitable Transport Company for the Sick.” “The Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care” was in charge of collecting the cost of the killings from the relatives without, however, informing them what the charges were for. …
We here should be old enough to know that history does teach lessons. Destructiveness eventually is turned on the destroyer and self-destruction is the result. If you do not believe me, look at Nazi Germany. My concern is that the next time around the destruction will be greater before the ultimate self-destruction beings an end to the holocaust. …
I see the progression from abortion to infanticide, to euthanasia, to the problems that developed in Nazi Germany, and being aware of the appeal of alliteration in titles, is “Dominoes to Dachau.” But having just visited Auschwitz in the company of some of my Polish confreres and having read extensively from the Germans’ own reports about what went on there, I view what we are experiencing now as a dynamic situation which can accelerate month by month until the progress of our downhill momentum cannot be stopped. Therefore, I guess I favor the title: “The Subtle, Slippery Slide to Auschwitz.” …
The euthanasia movement—and I use that in the broadest possible sense—is with us today with greater strength and persuasion than ever has been the case before in the history of what we call modern civilization. Do not dismiss contemptuously my concern in reference to the wedge principle—that when the camel gets his nose in the tent he will soon be in bed with you. Historians and jurists are well aware of what I am saying. The first step is followed by the second step.
You can say that if the first step is moral then whatever follows must be moral. The important thing, however, is this: whether you diagnose the first step as being one worth taking or being one that is precarious rests entirely on what the second step is likely to be. …
I am concerned that there is no outcry. I can well understand that there are people who are led to starve children to death because they think that they are doing something right for society or are following a principle of Hegel that is utilitarian for society. But I cannot understand why the other people, and I know that there are many, don’t cry out. I am concerned about this because when the first 273,000 German aged, infirm, and retarded were killed in gas chambers there was no outcry from that medical profession either, and it was not far from there to Auschwitz.3764