CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, May 7, 2018

The Prince and the Pauper

On April 23, 2018, the birth of Prince Louis of Cambridge was celebrated across the British Isles. On that same day, the British National Health Service (NHS) -- despite the offer by the Pope of free care for little Alfie Evans in the Vatican Hospital and the offer of instant Italian citizenship -- ordered the removal of life support from the 23-month-old toddler. For the next five days, Alfie’s parents tried to breathe for him; however, Alfie died in their arms, still captive of the NHS -- Britain’s version of socialized medicine.

A NHS panel of "experts" decided that Alfie’s life was no longer worth living and too much of a burden on the British taxpayers. Just why the offers by the Pope and the Italian government were rejected by the NHS remains unknown. What we do know is that government decision-making as to who gets to live and who has to die has a long and sordid history stemming from the Eugenics Movement in early 20th Century America.

In the 1930s, the founder of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) spoke often of his admiration for The American Eugenics Society (AES) and of his admiration for the racist writings of Margaret Sanger, a member of the AES, and the founder of Planned Parenthood.

In 1939, Adolf Hitler signed Aktion T-4, creating a euthanasia program for Germany’s disabled children. Aktion T-4 required doctors and midwives to report all cases of newborns with abnormalities, no matter how minor. All children under three years of age found by a panel of government "experts" to have certain hereditary diseases were to be killed by lethal injection.

Parents were told their children with reported "health" problems would be sent for treatment and returned home. Only death certificates came back, citing pneumonia as the cause of death. When some parents resisted turning over their children to the Nazi-run hospitals, resisters were threatened with the prospect that their "normal" children would be sent for evaluation. Imagine having to sacrifice your most recent child to save your older children.

Some German families were able to hide their "defective" children. Ironically, what medical treatment those children received was often provided covertly by the Jewish doctors Hitler had forbidden to practice medicine. Knowing they were going to be exterminated anyway, the Jewish doctors did what they could with the time they had left.

But some of Hitler’s Gentile doctors were troubled by the Aktion T-4 Program. To allay their scruples, they were allowed to harvest thousands of child brains for scientific study. Forschung uber alles. Research above all. Between 1939 and 1945, over 200,000 "abnormal" children under the age of 17 were murdered under the Aktion T-4 Program.

Fast forward: In November, 2014, Professor Jonathan Gruber, the self-proclaimed architect of ObamaCare, to include ObamaCare’s "health-care rationing panel" to determine who is worthy of treatment or not, said, "Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the passage of ObamaCare."

While we rightly celebrate the birth of Prince Louis of Cambridge, maybe we should reflect as well on the British government-ordered death of little Alfie Evans, the pauper.

©2018. William Hamilton.

Nationally syndicated columnist, William Hamilton, is a laureate of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, the Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame, the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma University Army ROTC Wall of Fame. In 2015, he was named an Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Nebraska. Dr. Hamilton is the author of The Wit and Wisdom of William Hamilton: the Sage of Sheepdog Hill, Pegasus Imprimis Press (2017). "Central View," can also be seen at: www.central-view.com.

You may unsubscribe to "Central View" at any time by sending an e-mail message with the word “unsubscribe” in the subject line

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com