Flowers column was an affront to decency
To the Times:
Christine Flowers’ Oct. 28, 2021 column bewails the unfairness to her in the fact that people who identify as Jews chastised her for invoking the example of the murderous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in her criticism of Dr. Fauci for his tangential involvement in the use of dogs in invasive medical experiments. To her way of thinking, Dr. Fauci’s role in approving funding for a discrete set of medical experiments involving cruel treatment of dogs is equivalent to Dr. Mengele’s murderous behavior at Auschwitz in concocting and carrying out inhumane medical experiments on many hundreds and perhaps thousand of German prisoners, primarily Jews, at the most notorious of the many Nazi concentration camps.
Where to start in responding to this tone-deaf, callous personal grievance? Most basically, animals, even cute little puppies, are not humans and different laws and social norms apply. Speaking as a lifelong dog owner, most of us recognize that different and stricter standards of medical ethics and simple decency apply to humans as compared to animals. A simple example is that even the most devoted dog owners commonly resort to euthanizing dogs who are nearing the ends of their lives, unlike the prevailing law and ethos surrounding the ends of human lives. And as unpleasant as it seems to dog lovers, I am not aware of any laws that prohibit the common practice among overcrowded animal shelters of euthanizing hardto-place, healthy dogs. We don’t do that to humans.
Equally important, Flowers’ column fails to fully acknowledge the full inhumanity of “Doctor” Mengele. Not only did he supervise cruel medical experimentation on powerless human prisoners at Auschwitz, but he also selected those among his experiment victims whom he would dispatch to the death chambers when they outlived their usefulness as human guinea pigs. Make no mistake about it, Mengele was not only a cruel Nazi “doctor” who performed life threatening experiments on human beings (not dogs), but he was a stone cold mass murderer (of human beings, not dogs).. Regardless of ethnicity, is it really appropriate to be comparing Dr. Fauci’s role in approving funding for bona fide medical experimentation on dogs to a notorious Nazi mass murderer of human beings?
More fundamentally, it is highly ironic that the same woman who has often invoked her Italian-American bloodlines in multiple columns bashing the boxing and proposed removal of the Christopher Columbus statue in Philadelphia as an affront to her ItalianAmerican roots should be so insensitive to Jews who take offense to the casual invocation of Josef Mengele in the context of performing medical experiments on (not euthanizing) animals. So, for the Christopher Columbus statue that is so near and dear to her own identity, her columns are saying, in effect, “the boxing and removal of this statute is so mean and unfair to my people.” But she dismisses Jews who take issue with her casual invocation of the dreadful Josef Mengele, saying, in effect, “can you guys please get over this Dr. Mengele fixation already?” There are survivors of Nazi concentration camps still among us, not to mention their children and grandchildren for whom the memories and family lore of Auschwitz and the Nazis’ reign of terror are open sores. By marked contrast, Christopher Columbus died 500
plus years ago, and historians of recent generations are only now documenting the inhumane cruelties associated with his “discovery of America” that need to be told along with his commendable accomplishments. It would seem that one whose ethnic identity drives her to protest the removal of a statue associated with her ethnicity would empathize with those whose ethnic identity causes them to recoil
at casual comparisons of modern medical experiments on animals to the Nazi maestro who orchestrated the mass murder of humans who were imprisoned only because of their association with a demonized religion.
Whatever can fairly be said about Dr. Fauci and animal experiments, Dr. Mengele, Auschwitz and Nazis have no place in the discussion. If that makes those subjects a “third rail”
in the right wing netherworld that Christine Flowers occupies, so it must be in the interest of truth telling and simple decency. Let’s worry about the real neo-Nazis multiplying in our midst instead of hurt feelings about being called out for casual use of Nazi analogies. I eagerly await Ms. Flowers opinion piece on the corrosive effect of Neo-Nazis and their ilk in America.