Abstract
“The offices of T-4 prepared a questionnaire which was sent to all mental hospitals and psychiatric clinics in Germany. On the basis of the completed questionnaire… a committee of three experts, chosen from among the doctors connected with T-4, made a decision. If this long-distance diagnosis was unfavorable, the patient was sent to an ‘observation station’… unless there was a contrary diagnosis by the director of the ‘observation station,’ he was transferred to a euthanasia establishment proper… when doctors were placed at the head of these establishments, more efficient methods were introduced…. The method they devised was asphyxiation by carbon monoxide gas…. Patients were generally rendered somnolent by being given morphine, scopolamine injections or narcotic tablets before being taken, in groups of ten, to the gas chamber…. Families were advised of the patient’s death by form letters which stated that the patient had succumbed to ‘heart failure’ or ‘pneumonia.’”1
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Notes
Leon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1954), pp. 185–6.
Ibid., pp. 186–7.
T. K. Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and other works on the theory of ethics (London: Longmans, Green, 1873), p. 27.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Against the Self-Images of the Age: Essays in Ideology and Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1971), p. 166.
Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).
Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, Appendix I. Professor Ramsey appears to think that Kant’s moral philosophy is incompatible with any belief in moral progress in time and history. He can only do so by ignoring what Kant actually wrote about this and especially An Old Question Raised Again: Is The Human Race Constantly Progressing? (Both works cited in Lewis White Beck, ed., On History, [Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1963]).
Abbott, Kant’s Critique, p. 220.
Karl Barth, Römerbrief, 2d ed. (Munich, 1922), p. 128.
S. Hook, ed., Religious Experience and Truth (New York: Collier, 1961).
Alasdair Maclntyre, Epistemology and Dramatic Narrative in After Virtue (forthcoming).
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MacIntyre, A. (1981). Can Medicine Dispense with a Theological Perspective on Human Nature?. In: Callahan, D., Engelhardt, H.T. (eds) The Roots of Ethics. The Hastings Center Series in Ethics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3303-6_6
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