The Strange Case of Alexis Carrel, Eugenicist

A prominent scientist, humanitarian, and spiritual author, Alexis Carrel received the highest accolades from his scientific peers and his native France. But he was also a leading eugenicist. In his prolific interwar writings he advocated the state’s use of sterilization and euthanasia on eugenic grounds. In his work for the Vichy regime he directed programs aimed at the elimination of those considered unfit for existence. Carrel’s eugenic theories and practices reflect the strong eugenic mentality of scientific and political elites on the eve of the Second World War. A LEXIS CARREL (1873-1944) has long been renowned for two contributions. First, he was a preeminent research scientist. His invention of the mechanical heart pump and his pioneering work in organ transplantation earned him the Nobel Prize. Second, he has enjoyed a certain prestige as a religious thinker. Against the positivist medical establishment of his time, Carrel insisted on the veracity of a miracle that he witnessed at Lourdes. His defense of the reality of supernatural intervention in certain healings gave his writings a prominent place in the apologetic literature of the era. Recent controversies in France, however, have brought to light a third dimension of Carrel’s career: his prominence as a theorist and practitioner of eugenics. His widely diffused book Man the Unknown (1935) defends the need to eliminate defectives and criminals from society. He explicitly recommends the use of gas chambers to accomplish this goal. Under the Vichy regime (1940-1944), Carrel received the opportunity to put his eugenic theories into practice. As head of the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems, Carrel was charged by Maréchal Pétain with the study of new methods to purify the French population of its defectives and to encourage a higher birth rate from those deemed healthy.