Alexis Carrel
Overview
Alexis Carrel was a French
surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. He is also known for making famous a miraculous healing at Lourdes
by witnessing the event. Like many intellectuals before World War II
he promoted eugenics
. He was a regent for the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems during the Nazi occupation of Vichy France
which implemented the eugenics policies there; his association with the Foundation led to allegations of collaborating with the Nazis.
Born in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon
, Rhône, Carrel was raised in a devout Catholic family and was educated by Jesuits, though he no longer practiced his religion when he entered the university.
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. He is also known for making famous a miraculous healing at Lourdes
Lourdes
Lourdes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France.Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous...
by witnessing the event. Like many intellectuals before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he promoted eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
. He was a regent for the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems during the Nazi occupation of Vichy France
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
which implemented the eugenics policies there; his association with the Foundation led to allegations of collaborating with the Nazis.
Born in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon
Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon
Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon is a commune in the Rhône department in eastern France.It is a suburb of the city of Lyon, being located to the west of the city. It is thus a component of the metropolitan Urban Community of Lyon....
, Rhône, Carrel was raised in a devout Catholic family and was educated by Jesuits, though he no longer practiced his religion when he entered the university.
Quotations
All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know.
As quoted in Nava-Vēda : God and Man (Nara and Narayan) (1968) by M. B. Raja Rao, p. 229
Encyclopedia
Alexis Carrel was a French
surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. He is also known for making famous a miraculous healing at Lourdes
by witnessing the event. Like many intellectuals before World War II
he promoted eugenics
. He was a regent for the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems during the Nazi occupation of Vichy France
which implemented the eugenics policies there; his association with the Foundation led to allegations of collaborating with the Nazis.
, Rhône, Carrel was raised in a devout Catholic family and was educated by Jesuits, though he no longer practiced his religion when he entered the university. He nevertheless succeeded in introducing an acerbic ideological strain into French Catholic mentality. He received his medical degree from Université de Lyon, and practiced in France and in the United States at the University of Chicago
and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research
. He developed new techniques in vascular
sutures and was a pioneer in transplantology and thoracic surgery
. Alexis Carrel was also a member of learned societies in the U.S., Spain, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vatican City, Germany, Italy and Greece and received honorary doctorates from Queen's University of Belfast, Princeton University
, California, New York, Brown University
and Columbia University
.
In 1902 he witnessed the miraculous cure of Marie Bailly at Lourdes
, made famous in part because she named Carrel as a witness of her cure. After the fame surrounding the event, Carrel could not obtain a hospital appointment because of the strong and pervasive anticlericalism in the French University at the time. In 1903 he emigrated to Montreal, Canada, but soon relocated to Chicago, Illinois to work for Hull Laboratory. While there he collaborated with American physician Charles Claude Guthrie
in work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs as well as the head
, and Carrel was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
for these efforts.
In 1906 he joined the newly-formed Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York where he spent the rest of his career. In the 1930's, Carrel and Charles Lindbergh
became close friends not only because of the years they worked together but also because they shared personal, political, and social views. Lindbergh initially sought out Carrel to see if his sister-in-law's heart, damaged by rheumatic fever
, could be repaired. When Lindburgh saw the crudeness of Carrel's machinery, he offered to build new equipment for the scientist. Eventually they built the first perfusion pump, an invention instrumental to the development of organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Lindbergh considered Carrel his closest friend, and said he would preserve and promote Carrel's ideals after his death.
Due to his close proximity with Jacques Doriot
's fascist Parti Populaire Français
(PPF) during the 1930s and his role in implementing eugenics policies during Vichy France, he was accused after the Liberation of collaborationism, but died before the trial.
Carrel spent his life promoting spiritualism, though he did not embrace the Catholicism
of his youth. In 1939 he met with Trappist monk Alexis Presse on a recommendation. Though Carrel was skeptical about meeting with a priest Presse ended up having a profound influence on the rest of Carrel's life. He summoned Presse to administer the Catholic Sacraments on his death bed in November, 1944.
was assassinated with a knife. His large abdominal veins had been severed, and surgeons who treated the president felt that such veins were too large to be successfully reconnected. This left a deep impression on Carrel, and he set about developing new techniques for suturing blood vessels. The technique of "triangulation", which was inspired by sewing lessons he took from an embroideress, is still used today. Julius Comroe wrote: "Between 1901 and 1910, Alexis Carrel, using experimental animals, performed every feat and developed every technique known to vascular surgery today." He had great success in reconnecting arteries and veins, and performing surgical grafts, and this led to his Nobel Prize in 1912.
(1914–1918), Carrel and the English chemist Henry Drysdale Dakin
developed the Carrel-Dakin method of treating wounds based on chlorine (Dakin's solution) which, preceding the development of antibiotics, was a major medical advance in the care of traumatic wounds. For this, Carrel was awarded the Légion d'honneur
.
, which became a reality decades later. Some critics of Lindbergh claimed that Carrel overstated Lindbergh's role to gain media attention, but other sources say Lindbergh played an important role in developing the device. Both Lindbergh and Carrel appeared on the cover of Time magazine
on June 13, 1938.
, or aging. He claimed incorrectly that all cells continued to grow indefinitely, and this became a dominant view in the early twentieth century. Carrel started an experiment on January 17, 1912 where he placed tissue cultured from an embryo
nic chicken heart in a stoppered Pyrex
flask of his own design. He maintained the living culture for over 20 years with regular supplies of nutrient. This was longer than a chicken's normal lifespan. The experiment, which was conducted at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research
, attracted considerable popular and scientific attention.
Carrel's experiment was never successfully replicated, and in the 1960s Leonard Hayflick
and Paul Moorhead proposed that differentiated cells
can only undergo a limited number of divisions before dying. This is known as the Hayflick limit
, and is now a pillar of biology.
It is not certain how Carrel obtained his anomalous results. Leonard Hayflick
suggests that the daily feeding of nutrient was continually introducing new living cells to the alleged immortal culture. J. A. Witkowski has argued that, while "immortal" strains of visibly mutated cells have been obtained by other experimenters, a more likely explanation is deliberate introduction of new cells into the culture, possibly without Carrel's knowledge.
was named after him as a tribute to his scientific breakthroughs.
In February 2002, as part of celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's birth, the Medical University of South Carolina at Charleston established the Lindbergh-Carrel Prize, given to major contributors to "development of perfusion and bioreactor technologies for organ preservation and growth". Michael DeBakey and nine other scientists received the prize, a bronze statuette created for the event by the Italian artist C. Zoli and named "Elisabeth" after Elisabeth Morrow, sister of Lindbergh's wife Anne Morrow, who died from heart disease. It was in fact Lindbergh's disappointment that contemporary medical technology could not provide an artificial heart pump which would allow for heart surgery on her that led to Lindbergh's first contact with Carrel.
to being a believer in spiritual cures after experiencing a healing of Marie Bailly that he could not explain. The Catholic journal Le nouvelliste reported that she named him as the prime witness of her cure. Alexis Carrel refused to discount a supernatural explanation and steadfastly reiterated his beliefs, even writing a book describing his experience , though it was not published until four years after his death. This was a detriment to his career and reputation among his fellow doctors, and feeling he had no future in academic medicine in France, he immigrated to Canada with the intention of farming and raising cattle. After a brief period, he accepted an appointment at the University of Chicago and two years later at the Rockefeller Institute for the Study of Medicine.
. Carrel claimed the existence of a "hereditary biological aristocracy" and argued that
"deviant" human types should be suppressed using techniques similar to those
later employed by the Nazis.
"A euthanasia establishment, equipped with a suitable gas, would allow the humanitarian and economic disposal of those who have killed, committed armed robbery, kidnapped children, robbed the poor or seriously betrayed public confidence," Carrel wrote in L'Homme, cet Inconnu. "Would the same system not be appropriate for lunatics who have committed criminal acts?" he suggested.
In the 1936 preface to the German edition of his book, Alexis Carrel added a praise to the eugenics policies of the Third Reich, writing that:
Carrel also wrote in his book that:
president Philippe Pétain
(specifically, French industrial physicians André Gros and Jacques Ménétrier) he went on to advocate for the creation of the Fondation Française pour l’Etude des Problèmes Humains (French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems) which was created by decree
of the Vichy regime in 1941, and where he served as 'regent'.
The foundation was at the origin of the October 11, 1946 law, enacted by the Provisional Government of the French Republic
(GPRF), which institutionalized the field of occupational medicine. It worked on demographics
(Robert Gessain, Paul Vincent, Jean Bourgeois-Pichat), on economics
, (François Perroux
), on nutrition
(Jean Sutter), on habitation (Jean Merlet) and on the first opinion poll
s (Jean Stoetzel). "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."
The Foundation made many positive accomplishments during its time. Yet it was also behind the origin of the December 16, 1942 Act inventing the "prenuptial certificate", which had to precede any marriage and was supposed, after a biological examination, to insure the "good health" of the spouses, in particular in regard to sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and "life hygiene" (sic). The institute also conceived the "scholar book" ("livret scolaire"), which could be used to record students' grades in the French secondary schools, and thus classify and select them according to scholastic performance.
According to Gwen Terrenoire, writing in Eugenics in France (1913-1941) : a review of research findings, "The foundation was a pluridisciplinary 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." Although Carrel himself died before he could be tried for treason, most members of his team did move to the INED, which was led by famous demographist Alfred Sauvy
, who coined the expression "Third World
". Others joined Robert Debré
's "Institut national d'hygiène" (National Hygiene Institute), which later became the INSERM.
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. He is also known for making famous a miraculous healing at Lourdes
Lourdes
Lourdes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France.Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous...
by witnessing the event. Like many intellectuals before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he promoted eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
. He was a regent for the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems during the Nazi occupation of Vichy France
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
which implemented the eugenics policies there; his association with the Foundation led to allegations of collaborating with the Nazis.
Biography
Born in Sainte-Foy-lès-LyonSainte-Foy-lès-Lyon
Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon is a commune in the Rhône department in eastern France.It is a suburb of the city of Lyon, being located to the west of the city. It is thus a component of the metropolitan Urban Community of Lyon....
, Rhône, Carrel was raised in a devout Catholic family and was educated by Jesuits, though he no longer practiced his religion when he entered the university. He nevertheless succeeded in introducing an acerbic ideological strain into French Catholic mentality. He received his medical degree from Université de Lyon, and practiced in France and in the United States at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research
Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a private university offering postgraduate and postdoctoral education. It has a strong concentration in the biological sciences. It is also known for producing numerous Nobel laureates...
. He developed new techniques in vascular
Blood vessel
The blood vessels are the part of the circulatory system that transports blood throughout the body. There are three major types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the heart; the capillaries, which enable the actual exchange of water and chemicals between the blood and...
sutures and was a pioneer in transplantology and thoracic surgery
Thoracic surgery
Thoracic surgery is the field of medicine involved in the surgical treatment of diseases affecting organs inside the thorax . Generally treatment of conditions of the lungs, chest wall, and diaphragm....
. Alexis Carrel was also a member of learned societies in the U.S., Spain, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vatican City, Germany, Italy and Greece and received honorary doctorates from Queen's University of Belfast, Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, California, New York, Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.
In 1902 he witnessed the miraculous cure of Marie Bailly at Lourdes
Lourdes
Lourdes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France.Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous...
, made famous in part because she named Carrel as a witness of her cure. After the fame surrounding the event, Carrel could not obtain a hospital appointment because of the strong and pervasive anticlericalism in the French University at the time. In 1903 he emigrated to Montreal, Canada, but soon relocated to Chicago, Illinois to work for Hull Laboratory. While there he collaborated with American physician Charles Claude Guthrie
Charles Claude Guthrie
Charles Claude Guthrie was an American physiologist. He was born at Gilmore, St. Charles Co., Mo., and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1901 and from the University of Chicago in 1908; taught physiology while engaged in advanced studies, and was professor of physiology and...
in work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs as well as the head
Head transplant
A head transplant is a surgical operation involving the grafting of an organism's head onto the body of another. It should not be confused with another, hypothetical, surgical operation, the brain transplant. Head transplantation involves decapitating the patient...
, and Carrel was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
for these efforts.
In 1906 he joined the newly-formed Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York where he spent the rest of his career. In the 1930's, Carrel and Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...
became close friends not only because of the years they worked together but also because they shared personal, political, and social views. Lindbergh initially sought out Carrel to see if his sister-in-law's heart, damaged by rheumatic fever
Rheumatic fever
Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory disease that occurs following a Streptococcus pyogenes infection, such as strep throat or scarlet fever. Believed to be caused by antibody cross-reactivity that can involve the heart, joints, skin, and brain, the illness typically develops two to three weeks after...
, could be repaired. When Lindburgh saw the crudeness of Carrel's machinery, he offered to build new equipment for the scientist. Eventually they built the first perfusion pump, an invention instrumental to the development of organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Lindbergh considered Carrel his closest friend, and said he would preserve and promote Carrel's ideals after his death.
Due to his close proximity with Jacques Doriot
Jacques Doriot
Jacques Doriot was a French politician prior to and during World War II. He began as a Communist but then turned Fascist.-Early life and politics:...
's fascist Parti Populaire Français
Parti Populaire Français
The Parti Populaire Français was a fascist political party led by Jacques Doriot before and during World War II...
(PPF) during the 1930s and his role in implementing eugenics policies during Vichy France, he was accused after the Liberation of collaborationism, but died before the trial.
Carrel spent his life promoting spiritualism, though he did not embrace the Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
of his youth. In 1939 he met with Trappist monk Alexis Presse on a recommendation. Though Carrel was skeptical about meeting with a priest Presse ended up having a profound influence on the rest of Carrel's life. He summoned Presse to administer the Catholic Sacraments on his death bed in November, 1944.
Vascular suture
Carrel was a young surgeon in 1894 when the French president Sadi CarnotMarie François Sadi Carnot
Marie François Sadi Carnot was a French statesman and the fourth president of the Third French Republic. He served as the President of France from 1887 until his assassination in 1894.-Early life:...
was assassinated with a knife. His large abdominal veins had been severed, and surgeons who treated the president felt that such veins were too large to be successfully reconnected. This left a deep impression on Carrel, and he set about developing new techniques for suturing blood vessels. The technique of "triangulation", which was inspired by sewing lessons he took from an embroideress, is still used today. Julius Comroe wrote: "Between 1901 and 1910, Alexis Carrel, using experimental animals, performed every feat and developed every technique known to vascular surgery today." He had great success in reconnecting arteries and veins, and performing surgical grafts, and this led to his Nobel Prize in 1912.
Wound antisepsis
During World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
(1914–1918), Carrel and the English chemist Henry Drysdale Dakin
Henry Drysdale Dakin
Henry Drysdale Dakin FRS was an English chemist.He was born in London as the youngest of 8 children to a family of steel merchants from Leeds. As a school boy he did water analysis with the Leeds City Analyst. He studied chemistry at the University of Leeds with Julius B...
developed the Carrel-Dakin method of treating wounds based on chlorine (Dakin's solution) which, preceding the development of antibiotics, was a major medical advance in the care of traumatic wounds. For this, Carrel was awarded the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
.
Organ transplants
Carrel co-authored a book with famed pilot 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 heartArtificial heart
An artificial heart is a mechanical device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used in order to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in case transplantation is impossible...
, which became a reality decades later. Some critics of Lindbergh claimed that Carrel overstated Lindbergh's role to gain media attention, but other sources say Lindbergh played an important role in developing the device. Both Lindbergh and Carrel appeared on the cover of Time magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
on June 13, 1938.
Cellular senescence
Carrel was also interested in the phenomenon of senescenceSenescence
Senescence or biological aging is the change in the biology of an organism as it ages after its maturity. Such changes range from those affecting its cells and their function to those affecting the whole organism...
, or aging. He claimed incorrectly that all cells continued to grow indefinitely, and this became a dominant view in the early twentieth century. Carrel started an experiment on January 17, 1912 where he placed tissue cultured from an embryo
Embryo
An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development, from the time of first cell division until birth, hatching, or germination...
nic chicken heart in a stoppered Pyrex
Pyrex
Pyrex is a brand name for glassware, introduced by Corning Incorporated in 1915.Originally, Pyrex was made from borosilicate glass. In the 1940s the composition was changed for some products to tempered soda-lime glass, which is the most common form of glass used in glass bakeware in the US and has...
flask of his own design. He maintained the living culture for over 20 years with regular supplies of nutrient. This was longer than a chicken's normal lifespan. The experiment, which was conducted at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research
Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a private university offering postgraduate and postdoctoral education. It has a strong concentration in the biological sciences. It is also known for producing numerous Nobel laureates...
, attracted considerable popular and scientific attention.
Carrel's experiment was never successfully replicated, and in the 1960s Leonard Hayflick
Leonard Hayflick
Leonard Hayflick , Ph.D., is Professor of Anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, and was Professor of Medical Microbiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is a past president of the Gerontological Society of America and was a founding member of the...
and Paul Moorhead proposed that differentiated cells
Cellular differentiation
In developmental biology, cellular differentiation is the process by which a less specialized cell becomes a more specialized cell type. Differentiation occurs numerous times during the development of a multicellular organism as the organism changes from a simple zygote to a complex system of...
can only undergo a limited number of divisions before dying. This is known as the Hayflick limit
Hayflick limit
The Hayflick limit is the number of times a normal cell population will divide before it stops, presumably because the telomeres reach a critical length....
, and is now a pillar of biology.
It is not certain how Carrel obtained his anomalous results. Leonard Hayflick
Leonard Hayflick
Leonard Hayflick , Ph.D., is Professor of Anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, and was Professor of Medical Microbiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is a past president of the Gerontological Society of America and was a founding member of the...
suggests that the daily feeding of nutrient was continually introducing new living cells to the alleged immortal culture. J. A. Witkowski has argued that, while "immortal" strains of visibly mutated cells have been obtained by other experimenters, a more likely explanation is deliberate introduction of new cells into the culture, possibly without Carrel's knowledge.
Honors
In 1972, the Swedish Post Office honored Carrel with a stamp that was part of its Nobel stamp series. In 1979, the lunar crater CarrelCarrel (crater)
Carrel is a small lunar crater on the Mare Tranquillitatis. It has a somewhat distorted appearance, having a slight protruding bulge in the northwest rim. The interior is somewhat irregular, with ridges and some slumped material...
was named after him as a tribute to his scientific breakthroughs.
In February 2002, as part of celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's birth, the Medical University of South Carolina at Charleston established the Lindbergh-Carrel Prize, given to major contributors to "development of perfusion and bioreactor technologies for organ preservation and growth". Michael DeBakey and nine other scientists received the prize, a bronze statuette created for the event by the Italian artist C. Zoli and named "Elisabeth" after Elisabeth Morrow, sister of Lindbergh's wife Anne Morrow, who died from heart disease. It was in fact Lindbergh's disappointment that contemporary medical technology could not provide an artificial heart pump which would allow for heart surgery on her that led to Lindbergh's first contact with Carrel.
Alexis Carrel and Lourdes
In 1902 Alexis Carrel went from being a sceptic of the visions and miracles reported at LourdesLourdes
Lourdes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France.Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous...
to being a believer in spiritual cures after experiencing a healing of Marie Bailly that he could not explain. The Catholic journal Le nouvelliste reported that she named him as the prime witness of her cure. Alexis Carrel refused to discount a supernatural explanation and steadfastly reiterated his beliefs, even writing a book describing his experience , though it was not published until four years after his death. This was a detriment to his career and reputation among his fellow doctors, and feeling he had no future in academic medicine in France, he immigrated to Canada with the intention of farming and raising cattle. After a brief period, he accepted an appointment at the University of Chicago and two years later at the Rockefeller Institute for the Study of Medicine.
Man, The Unknown (1935)
In 1935, Carrel published a book titled L'Homme, cet inconnu (Man, The Unknown), which became a best-seller. The book discussed "the nature of society in light of discoveries in biology, physics, and medicine". It contained his own social prescriptions, advocating, in part, that mankind could better itself by following the guidance of an elite group of intellectuals, and by implementing a regime of enforced eugenicsEugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
. Carrel claimed the existence of a "hereditary biological aristocracy" and argued that
"deviant" human types should be suppressed using techniques similar to those
later employed by the Nazis.
"A euthanasia establishment, equipped with a suitable gas, would allow the humanitarian and economic disposal of those who have killed, committed armed robbery, kidnapped children, robbed the poor or seriously betrayed public confidence," Carrel wrote in L'Homme, cet Inconnu. "Would the same system not be appropriate for lunatics who have committed criminal acts?" he suggested.
In the 1936 preface to the German edition of his book, Alexis Carrel added a praise to the eugenics policies of the Third Reich, writing that:
(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.
Carrel also wrote in his book that:
(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.
The French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems
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 cabinet of Vichy FranceVichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
president Philippe Pétain
Philippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
(specifically, French industrial physicians André Gros and Jacques Ménétrier) he went on to advocate for the creation of the Fondation Française pour l’Etude des Problèmes Humains (French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems) which was created by decree
Decree
A decree is a rule of law issued by a head of state , according to certain procedures . It has the force of law...
of the Vichy regime in 1941, and where he served as 'regent'.
The foundation was at the origin of the October 11, 1946 law, enacted by the Provisional Government of the French Republic
Provisional Government of the French Republic
The Provisional Government of the French Republic was an interim government which governed France from 1944 to 1946, following the fall of Vichy France and prior to the Fourth French Republic....
(GPRF), which institutionalized the field of occupational medicine. It worked on demographics
Demographics
Demographics are the most recent statistical characteristics of a population. These types of data are used widely in sociology , public policy, and marketing. Commonly examined demographics include gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and even location...
(Robert Gessain, Paul Vincent, Jean Bourgeois-Pichat), on economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, (François Perroux
François Perroux
François Perroux was a French economist. He was named Professor at the Collège de France, after having taught at the University of Lyon and the University of Paris...
), on nutrition
Nutrition
Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthy diet....
(Jean Sutter), on habitation (Jean Merlet) and on the first opinion poll
Opinion poll
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...
s (Jean Stoetzel). "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
Centre national de la recherche scientifique
The National Center of Scientific Research is the largest governmental research organization in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe....
(CNRS) was given a budget of fifty million francs."
The Foundation made many positive accomplishments during its time. Yet it was also behind the origin of the December 16, 1942 Act inventing the "prenuptial certificate", which had to precede any marriage and was supposed, after a biological examination, to insure the "good health" of the spouses, in particular in regard to sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and "life hygiene" (sic). The institute also conceived the "scholar book" ("livret scolaire"), which could be used to record students' grades in the French secondary schools, and thus classify and select them according to scholastic performance.
According to Gwen Terrenoire, writing in Eugenics in France (1913-1941) : a review of research findings, "The foundation was a pluridisciplinary 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
Liberation of Paris
The Liberation of Paris took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on August 25th. It could be regarded by some as the last battle in the Battle for Normandy, though that really ended with the crushing of the Wehrmacht forces between the...
, 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." Although Carrel himself died before he could be tried for treason, most members of his team did move to the INED, which was led by famous demographist Alfred Sauvy
Alfred Sauvy
Alfred Sauvy was a demographer, anthropologist and historian of the French economy. Sauvy coined the term Third World in reference to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War...
, who coined the expression "Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
". Others joined Robert Debré
Robert Debré
Robert Debré was a French physician at Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris.He gave his name to the most important ....
's "Institut national d'hygiène" (National Hygiene Institute), which later became the INSERM.
See also
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineNobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
- LourdesLourdesLourdes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France.Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous...
- Charles LindberghCharles LindberghCharles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...
- EugenicsEugenicsEugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
Sources
- Carrel, Alexis. Man, The Unknown. New York and London: Harper and Brothers. 1935.
- Szasz, ThomasThomas SzaszThomas Stephen Szasz is a psychiatrist and academic. Since 1990 he has been Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social...
. The Theology of Medicine New York: Syracuse University Press, 1977. - Feuerwerker, Elie. Alexis Carrel et l'eugénisme. Le Monde, 1er Juillet 1986.
- Schneider, William. Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France, Cambridge UP 1990.
- Bonnafé, Lucien and Tort, Patrick. L'Homme, cet inconnu? Alexis Carrel, Jean-Marie le Pen et les chambres a gaz Editions Syllepse, 1996. ISBN 2907993143
- David Zane MairowitzDavid Zane MairowitzDavid Zane Mairowitz , is a writer. He studied English Literature and Philosophy at Hunter College, New York, and Drama at the University of California, Berkeley.In 1966 he emigrated to England, where he worked as a freelance writer...
. "Fascism à la mode: in France, the far right presses for national purity", Harper's Magazine; 10/1/1997 - Reggiani, Andrés Horacio. Alexis Carrel, the Unknown: Eugenics and Population Research under Vichy French Historical Studies, Spring 2002; 25: pp. 331 - 356.
- Wallace, Max. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich St. Martin's Press, New York, 2003.
- Berman, Paul. Terror and Liberalism W. W. Norton, 2003.
- Walther, Rudolph. Die seltsamen Lehren des Doktor Carrel, DIE ZEIT 31.07.2003 Nr.32
- Terrenoire, Gwen, CNRS. Eugenics in France (1913-1941) : a review of research findings Joint Programmatic Commission UNESCO-ONG Science and Ethics, March 24, 2003
- Reggiani, Andrés Horacio. God's Eugenicist. Alexis Carrel and the Sociobiology of Decline. Berghahn Books, Oxford 2007.
- Friedman, David M. The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever. HarperCollins, NY 2007.
External links
- Nobel Prize presentation speech to Dr. Carrel
- Nobel Prize biography of Dr. Carrel
- Research Foundation entitled to Alexis Carrel Time Magazine, Oct. 16, 1944
- Death of Alexis Carrel Time Magazine Nov. 13, 1944