Somebody else’s body
 By Oscar Taffetani

In a worldwide operation called Last Chance, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Vienna has started to hunt Nazi war criminals who managed to hide at the end of World War II by taking advantage of the lack of control or the complicity of some state governments in South America.

One of these criminals, with a medical degree, is called Aribert Heim, also known as “Doctor Death”, and has apparently been located in some Andean towns in the south of Chile and Argentina.

Another criminal, who died -- still unpunished -- in Brazil, was called Josef Mengele and was known among the Auschwitz prisoners as the “Angel of Death”.

How can a doctor -- someone trained to cure or alleviate the pain suffered by human beings -- become a murderer? Answers to this and other questions were attempted by Bruno Bettelheim, Emanuel Levinas, Hanna Arendt, and Primo Levi, among others. And the invariable answer is that criminal behavior, the behavior of a state serial killer, is always preceded by a perverse doctrine, a doctrine which denies (in its discourse) the victim’s human condition and which provides the executioner with an alibi.

During the post-war period, perhaps as an extension of the Nazi doctrine during the times of peace, certain old citizens even argued that it was thanks to these wars that science was able to advance and that some new medicines and vaccines to cure humanity were discovered.

Heim, like Mengele -- according to the testimonies -- inoculated viruses into pregnant women and children who were given restricted food or left to starve to death in order to study their somatic reactions; their limbs were amputated and their organs taken from them while they were still alive in order to observe the evolution of those bodies in agony.

Those women and children from the experiments were human beings. Those Nazi doctors knew it. It was just that those Others, that Other, belonged to the “race” of the defeated. That Other did not deserve any rights, respect, or mercy.

The unnoticed Nazis from this 21st century, for whom there is no Operation Last Chance, who are not being sought by the police, and whose activities are not prohibited by any law, dedicate themselves to conduct experiments of vaccines and new medicines on human beings living in poverty or extreme poverty in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

“At least twelve babies who had been involved in clinical investigation protocols related to the testing of the efficiency of a vaccine died last year,” the Critica newspaper stated in an article.

“The phase three of the study (experimenting on humans) is sponsored by Glaxo Smith Kline multinational laboratory and it uses children from poor families who are ‘put under pressure and forced to sign the legal consent forms,’ as it was reported by the Health Professionals Federation of the Argentine Republic.”

“Since 2007” -- we read in Critica -- “fifteen thousand children under twelve months of age from the provinces of Mendoza, San Juan, and Santiago del Estero have entered the research protocol. ‘Only twelve died in our country, which represents a minimum figure if we compare it to the number of deaths caused each year by respiratory afflictions like pneumococcal disease,’ Enrique Smith, a pediatrician from Santiago del Estero and one of the main researchers taking part in the study, assured.”

“‘Many people want to stop taking part in the protocol and they are not allowed, they are forced to continue under the threat that, if they leave, no other vaccine will be given to them,’ Julieta Ovejero, the great aunt of one of the six babies who died in Santiago del Estero, explained. ‘There are mothers who are forced to sign because they are told that if they do not accept, their children will be taken away by the police or they will be denied medicine or not assisted at all,’ Ovejero elaborated.”

“‘The great majority are poor people, many of whom cannot read or write, who are pushed to give their consent for their children’s involvement,’ Juan Carlos Palomares, a member of Fesprosa, the entity which nationalized this denunciation at a press conference, recounted. According to the report, ‘the laboratory pays 8,000 dollars for each child involved in the study, but none of that money stays in the province which provides the public facilities and health staff for a private research study.’”

The sophisms and alibis have no reason to envy those the Nazi doctors wielded: that the percentage of resulting deaths is minimum, that the sacred end of the vaccine justifies the means, and that a part of the fees paid by the laboratories “stay in the province”.

Would Doctor Smith experiment on his own body, like some brave doctors history has seen have done? Would he be capable of trying the vaccine on his own children and family members?

No, surely not. Because before exposing one’s own body, it is better to expose someone else’s.

If those other ones cannot read or write, if they accept to give away a child, an organ, or a part of themselves for a coin or a tip, better still.

The Nazis from the 21st century work for important corporations, they respect the law, they earn juicy wages for developing vaccines and medicines that their customers -- I mean, their patients -- can afford. And all of it under the shade of a state which is absent. Or a state which is an accomplice. Or both.

The Spanish language original version of this article can be viewed at the web site www.pelotadetrapo.org.ar.

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