Tea at Trianon: The Monstrous Dr. Cutler

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, May 14, 2015

The Monstrous Dr. Cutler

From Aleteia:

Eight-hundred victims of an astonishingly evil experiment run between 1945 and 1956 are suing Johns Hopkins University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Bristol-Myers Squibb for one billion dollars. The federal government sponsored the study but can’t be sued for it, so the victims’ lawyer hopes to get something from the institutions the victims can sue.

These institutions all deny responsibility. The university’s lawyer called the suit “baseless” and said that professors working on government projects are not acting for the university, but for the government.

The man who ran the experiments, Dr. John C. Cutler, was a monster. A monster who died after a long and successful life in government and academia, with scholarships and lectures created in his memory. (He had gone on to work on the notorious Tuskegee experiments before becoming assistant surgeon general and then a professor at the University of Pittsburgh.) (Read more.)