Physician to Speak at CNU on Nazi Medical Experiments
News Release - October 19, 2007
Media Contact:
Emily L. Lucier
Press Secretary and Media Manager
emily.lucier@cnu.edu
(757) 594-8428
(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) - Theodore R. Reiff, M.D. will be at Christopher Newport University Tuesday evening, October 23, at 7 p.m. to speak on Nazi Medicine and Nazi Medical Experiments in Dr. Anthony Santoro’s history class, The Nazi State and the Holocaust. The lecture, which is open to everyone in the CNU community, will take place in McMurran Hall 102. Seating is limited, and it is necessary to book an advance reservation with the Department of History secretary, Ms. Nina Bates at (757) 594-7567.
Dr. Reiff has devoted many years to the study of war crimes committed by Nazi physicians during the Hitler years. He is the author of “It Can Happen Here,” a scholarly article that describes what he saw as some troubling similarities between a “cost containment” policy proposed by the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration and the “euthanasia” program of National Socialist Germany and “It is Happening Here,” a sequel to the first paper on cost containment policies in health care.
Dr. Reiff has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with honors from Michigan State University and a Doctor of Medicine degree from New York University’s College of Medicine. He has served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service and as a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska School of Medicine. He was on the faculty at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and was the Medical Director of a geriatric center and hospital, and Chief of the Department of Chronic Diseases at an affiliated teaching hospital. From 1973 to 1982 Dr. Reiff was Professor of Medicine at the University of North Dakota, where he became Director of the University wide Institute of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine. Related to his work he initiated and taught a course entitled Lessons of the Holocaust and was appointed Professor in the Department of Religious Studies. While he was in North Dakota, Dr. Reiff also served as Deputy Sheriff in conjunction with his work as Deputy Coroner and used information he obtained for a course he initiated entitled Psycho-Social Aspects of Morbidity and Mortality. In 1982 Dr. Reiff was appointed Professor of Medicine in the Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of the School of Medicine’s Clinical Gerontology Program. He was also Professor of Dentistry in the Tufts School of Dental Medicine. In 1984 Dr. Reiff retired from active practice because of a medical disability. He moved to the Virginia Peninsula in 1986, where he was appointed Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of Geriatric Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School.
Currently Dr. Reiff continues to involve himself in advocacy activities for the disabled and handicapped. He has spoken out for the elderly and, in his testimony and professional publications, he has warned about hazardous governmental economies, institutional practices, and fiscal policies which tend to increase the suffering, morbidity, and mortality of the most vulnerable in society.
Dr. Reiff is the founding President of The National Genocide Education Project, a past President of the Mid-Tidewater Medical Society, a fellow of The American College of Physicians, The New York Academy of Medicine, and The American Geriatric Society.
This is the first in a series of lectures and programs of The National Genocide Education Project.
Christopher Newport University is a four-year public university in Newport News, Virginia. CNU enrolls 4,800 students in programs through its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Luter School of Business and offers great teaching, small classes and an emphasis on leadership, civic engagement and honor. Visit us at www.cnu.edu.