Alexis Carrel
From Free net encyclopedia
Alexis Carrel (June 28, 1873 – November 5, 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912. Born and educated in Lyon, France. He practiced in France and the United States (University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Institute). He developed new techniques in vascular sutures and was a pioneer in transplantology and thoracic surgery. He was a member of learned societies in the United States of America, Spain, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vatican City, Germany, Italy and Greece and received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Belfast, Princeton, California, New York, Brown and Columbia.
Contents |
Contributions to science
On January 17, 1912 Carrel placed a part of chicken's embryo heart in fresh nutrient medium in a stoppered Pyrex flask of his design. Every 48 hours the tissue doubled in size and was transferred to a new flask. The tissue was still growing 20 years later, longer than a chicken's normal lifespan.
Carrel was honored in 1912 with a Nobel Prize in medicine in recognition of his work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs. [1]
During the First World War, Carrel and the English chemist Henry Drysdale Dakin developed the Carrel-Dakin method of treating wounds with sutures, which prior to the development of widespread antibiotics, was responsible for saving many lives. For this, Carrel was awarded the Légion d'honneur.
He co-authored a book with Charles A. Lindbergh, The Culture of Organs, and worked with Lindbergh in the mid-1930s to create the "perfusion pump," which allowed living organs to exist outside of the body during surgery. The advance is said to have been a crucial step in the development of open-heart surgery and organ transplants, and to have laid the groundwork for the artificial heart, which became a reality decades later. Some critics of Lindbergh claimed that Carrel overstated Lindbergh's role to gain media attention. (Wallace, American Axis p. 101). Both Lindbergh and Carrel appeared on the cover of Time magazine on June 13, 1938.
In 1972, the Swedish Post Office honored Carrel with a stamp that was part of its Nobel stamp series. [2] In 1979, the lunar crater Carrel was named after him as a tribute to his scientific breakthroughs.
Relation to eugenics and fascism
In 1935, Carrel published a best-selling book titled L'Homme, cet inconnu (Man The Unknown) which advocated, in part, that mankind could better itself by following the guidance of an elite group intellectuals, and by implementing a regime of enforced eugenics. Roger Callois, writing in The Edge of Surrealism, quotes and paraphrases L'Homme, cet inconnu as follows: " '(p)resent-day proletarians owe their status to inherited intellectual and physical defects' (sancta simplicitas). And he [Carrel] suggests that this state of affairs should be accenetuated through appropriate measures, so as to correlate social and biological inequalities more precisely. Society would then be directed by a hereditary aristocracy composed of descendants from the Crusaders, the heroes of the Revolution, the great criminals, the financial and industrial magnates" (p. 360).
Carrel advocated the use of gas chambers to rid humanity of inferior stock. His endorsement of this idea began in the mid-1930's, prior to Nazi implementation of such practices. In the 1936 German introduction of his book, at the publishers request, he added the following praise of the Nazi regime which did not appear in the editions in other languages: "(t)he German government has taken energetic measures against the propagation of the defective, the mentally diseased, and the criminal. The ideal solution would be the suppression of each of these individuals as soon as he has proven himself to be dangerous." (quoted in Reggiani, p. 339). He also wrote: "(t)he conditioning of petty criminals with the whip, or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital, would probably suffice to insure order. Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled the public in important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gasses. A similar treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts." (quoted in Szasz)
In 1937, Carrel joined Jean Coutrot’s Centre d’Etudes des Problèmes Humains. (Coutrot’s aim was to develop what he called an ‘‘economic humanism’’ through "collective thinking.") In 1941, through connections to the Petain cabinet (specifically, French industrial physicians André Gros and Jacques Ménétrier) he went on to advocate for the creation of Fondation Française pour l’Etude des Problèmes Humains (French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems) which was created by decree of the collaborationist Vichy regime in 1941, and where he served as 'regent' (see Andrés Horacio Reggiani, Alexis Carrel, the Unknown: Eugenics and Population Research under Vichy, as well as Callois, p. 107). "The foundation was chartered as a public institution under the joint supervision of the ministries of finance and public health. It was given financial autonomy and a budget of forty million francs—roughly one franc per inhabitant—a true luxury considering the burdens imposed by the German Occupation on the nation’s resources. By way of comparison, the whole Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) was given a budget of fifty million francs." (Reggiani) [3] According to Par Gwen Terrenoire, writing in Eugenics in France (1913-1941) : a review of research findings (Joint Programmatic Commission UNESCO-ONG Science and Ethics, 2003) [4] "The foundation was a puridisciplinary centre that employed around 300 researchers (mainly statisticians, psychologists, physicians) from the summer of 1942 to the end of the autumn of 1944. After the liberation of Paris, Carrel was suspended by the Minister of Health ; he died in November 1944, but the Foundation itself was "purged", only to reappear in a short time as the Institut national d’études démographiques (INED) that is still active." Scholars including Lucien Bonnafé, Patrick Tort and Max Lafont have accused Carrel of responsibility for the execution of thousands of mentally ill or impaired patients under Vichy. They argue that this policy was inspired by Carrel's advocacy. Other scholars state that Carrel merely provided intellectual cover for policies that would have been undertaken with or without his advocacy. All this eventually led many in France to accuse him of collaboration with the Nazis.
This association with Vichy, and the harshness of his advocacy for eugenics, has led to his descent from fame to obscurity. In recent years, Jean-Marie le Pen, the French far right politician, has become an advocate for Carrel, referring to him as "the first environmentalist, or, if you will, the first modern ecologist, precisely because he committed himself to defining the relationships of natural harmony." (le Pen, L'Espoir 133-134, cited in Golson, Fascism's Return). His writings on eugenics are studied "avidly in the training camps of the National Front". (Lucien Bonnafé and Patrick Tort, L'Homme, cet inconnu? Alexis Carrel, Jean-Marie le Pen et les chambres a gaz [5])
In the 1990's, the attention the National Front's support brought to Carrel's fascist associations and advocacy for forced euthenasia created a series of controversies with respect to streets and institutions named in honor of Carrel. Over 20 French cities and towns, including Paris, renamed streets previously named for Carrel. The controversy came to a head in Lyon, his birhtplace, where a medical school was named in his honor. Lyon libération questioned the wisdom of this. In response to this, "(i)n May 1995, the Palais des Congrès of Lyon hosted a conference on Carrel and scientific racism at which several of the participants accused the inquiry commission of whitewashing the controversial scientist. In early 1996, after five years of embarrassing publicity, the governing board of the University of Lyon decided to rename its school of medicine after René Laënnec, inventor of the stethoscope." [6]
In the United States as well as France, the 1990's were not kind to Carrel's reputation. In an interview for PBS' The American Experience, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. blamed Carrel for Charles Lindbergh's increasing racism in the 1930's. Schlesinger states in response to a question concerning the source of Lindbergh's beliefs on this subject: "I suppose he got a lot of it from Alexis Carrel, the French biologist who had a kind of racial mysticism of a sort." [7]
Alleged influence on the rise of Islamism
Carrel's eugenic ideas are alleged to have influenced the thought of such early advocates of Islamism as Ali Shariati and Muslim Brotherhood propagandist Sayyed Qutb. Qutb, in fact, cites Carrel more than any other author. (Qutb was one of the key philosophers in the Muslim Brotherhood movement after the death of its founder in 1949 and Qutb's brother was bin Laden's intellectual mentor at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, along with Abdullah Azzam). (For more on the Carrel / Islamist connection, see Tariq Ali, Clash of Fundamentalisms, p. 274; Youssef Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism (London 1990) and Rudolph Walther, Die seltsamen Lehren des Doktor Carrel, DIE ZEIT 31.07.2003 Nr.32)
Tariq Ali, Youssef Choueiri, Abu-Rabi, and Aziz Al-Azmeh, as well as other scholars of Islamism, see Carrel as a primary (if unwitting) influence on the origin of Islamism. Quoting from Rudolf Walther's article in Die Zeit: "(t)he superficial commonalities between Carrel and Qutb are plain: we meet the medical man's elite in a "scientific monastery" as Qutb's "avant garde," and the Carrel's "biological classes" are Qutb's "belief classes." Whether "civilization" (Carrel) or "barbarism" (Qutb) -- neither are "worthy of us," because they contradict "our true nature" (Carrel) or Qutb's "good, healthy nature." Both are in agreement in their goal to reconcile knowledge and belief.
Qutb follows Carrel in making "human nature" the condition and measure of all thought and action. Because "human nature" is simultaneously posited as God-given, both immunize "human nature" against criticism, because God answers queries as little as "nature" does objections. The core of Qutb's supposed Middle Eastern Islamism is formed by a naturalistic logical error that is deeply rooted in European philosophy... Carrel writes: "The goal of life is to follow the laws of life. We decipher these laws from our bodies and our souls, not from philosophical systems and concepts." Thus ethical norms ("laws of life") are derived directly from biological facts and psychological diagnoses. Translated to Qutb's language, human freedom and thus a free, varied society are not possible, only obedience to the law of God. [...]
What Qutb calls "the Islamic method," the integration of education, ethics, economics and politics to a unified system of "divine uniqueness," matches Carrel's "unification of all capabilities and their coordination to a single belief," the "super-science" in every detail ..."
This influence is ironic, given that Carrel himself was a devoted Roman Catholic and Christian mystic. He mentions Islam in Man, the Unknown just once, and not in a complimentary manner. He notes of European Christian civilization, that, "(a)t the cost of immense efforts, we succeeded in thrusting back the sleep of Islamism." Throughout his book, he refers to European civilization as "Christendom." Moreover, he believed in the racial superiority of northern Europeans. These ideas would have been anathema to Qutb.
External links
- Web page about Alexis Carrel
- Nobel Prize presentation speech to Dr. Carrel
- Nobel Prize biography of Dr. Carrel
- Alexis Carrel and Sayyid Qutb
- Sayyid Qutb's French connection (Monday, August 18, 2003)
Sources
- Carrel, Alexis. Man, The Unknown. New York and London: Harper and Brothers. 1935.
- Andrés Horacio Reggiani. Alexis Carrel, the Unknown: Eugenics and Population Research under Vichy (FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES 25:2 SPRING 2002)[8]
- Wallace, Max. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich St. Martin's Press, New York, 2003.
- Szasz, TS. The Theology of Medicine New York: Syracuse University Press, 1977.
- Ali, Tariq. Clash of Fundamentalisms Verso, London, 2002
- Choueiri, Youssef. Islamic Fundamentalism Continuum International Publishing Group, London, 2002.
- Walther, Rudolph. Die seltsamen Lehren des Doktor Carrel, DIE ZEIT 31.07.2003 Nr.32 [9]
- Bonnafé, Lucien and Tort, Patrick. L'Homme, cet inconnu? Alexis Carrel, Jean-Marie le Pen et les chambres a gaz Editions Syllepse, 1996. [10]
- Abu-Rabi, Ibrahim M. Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence, SUNY Press, Albany, 1996
- Azmeh, Aziz (Aziz Al-Azmeh). Islams and Modernities Verso, London, 1993.
- Berman, Paul. Terror and Liberalism W. W. Norton, 2003
- David Zane Mairowitz. "Fascism a la mode: in France, the far right presses for national purity", Harper's Magazine; 10/1/1997
- Pioneers of Islamic Revival (edited by Ali Rahnema), Zed Books, London 1994
- Schneider, William. Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France, Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine (chap. 7 French eugenics in the thirties; and 10 Vichy and after)
- Terrenoire, Par Gwen, CNRS. Eugenics in France (1913-1941) : a review of research findings Joint Programmatic Commission UNESCO-ONG Science and Ethics, March 24, 2003 [11]de:Alexis Carrel
es:Alexis Carrel fr:Alexis Carrel id:Alexis Carrel it:Alexis Carrel ja:アレクシス・カレル pl:Alexis Carrel pt:Alexis Carrel fi:Alexis Carrel tr:Alexis Carrel