The new Angels of Death

Captains Quarter’s reports on an exhibit by Josef Mengele the notorious Nazi doctor and pulls out one statement which measures his self-delusion.

Of his own actions in "selecting" whether victims at Auschwitz were to live to work or to be experimented upon, or to be dispatched in the gas chambers, he wrote: "I gave life in Auschwitz, I did not take it."

This creepy statement got me to thinking about a modern context to this statement. How many doctors doing embryonic stem-cell research have the exact same attitude. That the mythical benefits of ESCR will give life not take it. That the deliberate destruction of a human being in the process should be ignored in favor of the potential benefit. The embryo is the modern equivalent of the Jew – after all with this attitude neither are "really" persons deserving of protection. And if products such as soap or miracle cures can be made of them so much the better. Josef Mengele spent the last years of his life in hiding from the authorities for his crimes. We are much more enlightened now. A doctor of his caliber could have instead received a grant and moved to California to be funded by taxpayer money in ESCR.