Alexis Carrel, the "Father of Anastomoses"
"Scientists shunned him for his gullibility," noted Dr. Boulay and Dr. Hardy, because of his support of the study of clairvoyance, telepathy, water divination, auras, and the healing power of prayer.
Even more controversial were his support of eugenics, his belief that democracy was doomed to failure because men were not equal, and his advocacy of euthanasia for criminals and the criminally insane—views that ultimately led many to consider him a Nazi sympathizer.
Dr. Carrel returned to France in 1939, shortly before the start of World War II, when his unpopular views and sometimes abrasive personality helped to keep him from getting a stay of mandatory retirement at age 65 from the Rockefeller Foundation, where he had worked for over 30 years.
Dr. Carrel was known to despise Hitler. But his published views—and the fact that he agreed to work for the Vichy government in occupied France to create and head a new institute of man, called the "Foundation Française Pour l’Étude des Problèmes Humains"—made him suspect. The German propaganda machine embraced Dr. Carrel and his work at the institute, helping to contribute to his vilification in the allied nations. In the backlash after France was liberated, Dr. Carrel was accused of collaboration, his institute was dismantled, his health failed, and he died shortly afterward, on November 5, 1944, all the while fearing arrest as "a racist, a Nazi apologist, and a Nazi eugenicist."
It was a fate starkly in contrast to his earlier achievements as a pioneer of vascular surgery and organ transplantation.☐
"The love of gain penetrates everywhere.. . . It operates in that great doctor who is always insisting to his pupils and patients the efficacy of some remedy when, all the while, he is being secretly paid by its manufacturers."
—Alexis Carrel, M.D., in "Reflections on Life" (New York: Hawthorn Books Inc., 1952)
In addition to Dr. Boulay’s and Dr. Hardy’s article, "Alexis Carrel—The French Dervish of Surgery (Current Surg. 2001;58:303-9 [Epub doi:1016/S0149-7944(01)00416-0]), more information about Dr. Carrel can be found in the following sources:
• "Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine, 1901-1921, (Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Co., 1967; available online at https://nobelprize.org/nobelfoundation/publications)
