In 1949, the US psychiatrist Leo Alexander, who had served as a medical adviser to the chief of counsel for war crimes in Nuremberg, issued a warning: “Science under dictatorship becomes subordinated to the guiding philosophy of the dictatorship.” It’s message that health workers in the United States today should heed. Alexander was keenly aware that physicians, far from resisting fascism, had often been its most eager enforcers. Nearly half of all German doctors joined the Nazi Party—double the proportion of any other profession.

But Alexander also pointed toward another possibility: When the state or medical institutions make it impossible to fulfill one’s ethical duties, principled health workers find ways to provide care outside the law and beyond hospital walls.

The post The Hippocratic Underground: Health Workers Defy Unethical Orders appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.