The Case against a Eugenics-Motivated Murder
Jul 3, 2012 8:16:08 GMT -5
sweetwater and Miss dockendorf like this
Post by bookrefuge on Jul 3, 2012 8:16:08 GMT -5
This discussion pretty much began under the “Getaway” thread, but since no one would ever look for it there, I thought eugenics murder deserved its own thread.
From remarks Michael has made, I gather that he is at least somewhat favorable to this explanation for the LKC.
There seem to be two views of a eugenics murder. The dominant one is that Lindbergh was supposed to hold quasi-Nazi views of racial superiority, and could not tolerate the idea of fathering a son who was in some way defective and didn’t measure up to public expectations. Therefore he had abductors murder the child to preserve a personal image of superiority.
The second view seems to be that the child was sickly, and Charles, perhaps with Anne’s consent, thought that having the child murdered would be more “merciful” than letting it live out a life in illness.
These views are based on unproven assumptions that the child had a serious health problem. Kevkon has said we should not “play medical examiner” and he prefers to look at it from the logistics of things like Lindbergh’s connections. But I think the health issue is crucial to examine if the merits of the eugenics theory are to be discussed.
I want to comment that I’ve been a registered nurse for 37 years. While I have been an adult nurse (only working briefly as a pediatric nurse), I have spent years taking care of patients afflicted with birth disorders. While this doesn’t make me an expert, I guess you could say that a medical discussion is within my comfort zone. So I decided to try looking at Cal Jr. through my eyes as a nurse, rather than just from a criminology view.
The birth-disorder patients I have cared for have typically been confined to a wheelchair (unable to walk), and (very rarely) so crippled that they could not even tolerate a wheelchair but had to stay in bed around the clock. Most couldn’t eat and had to be fed through a gastrostomy tube, or occasionally through an intravenous central line. Some had to breathe through a tracheostomy (hole in the neck). A few could talk, but most could not. Many suffered severe mental retardation. It all depends on the condition, of course—a person with, say, spina bifida will present a very different set of symptoms than someone with cerebral palsy.
I should mention that because many conditions worsen over time, the symptoms I tend to witness in the adult or young-adult are often worse than what they had in childhood. Nonetheless, symptoms usually present themselves very early in life, if not immediately. Of course, many individuals with severe birth defects don’t survive to adulthood.
If we are talking about murder for eugenics reasons, I assume we are talking about a serious disorder. If it’s mild, I can’t see killing the child over it. If Cal Jr. was born with a birth defect, or a severe illness, there are certain things I would look for as a nurse.
One of the first would be problems with his mobility. Let’s quote from Hour of Gold.
In April 1931 (age 10 months) Anne wrote to her mother:
“The baby is beautiful and big: pulls himself up in his crib and in his pen and plays with people a lot more, waves goodbye when you wave.”
May 1931 (11 months) she writes to Mrs. Lindbergh:
“He crawls fast now—scrambles out of the room after you, pulls himself up by chairs and tables.”
November 1931 (17 months) (Anne and Charles have returned from the extended trip to the Orient):
“And oh, the baby! He is a boy, a strong independent boy swaggering around on his firm little legs.”
February 1932 (19 months):
“C. Jr. is trying to stand on his head and look at me upside down through his legs!...Wahgoosh and the baby play together wildly, chasing one another around the room.”
What do we see here? A baby who goes from crawling to crawling faster, from pulling himself up to walking, from walking to running. This is normal child development.
Another thing I’d be looking for is problems in his mental state—his alertness and communication.
July 1930 (age 1 month):
“He enjoys being talked to and is curious and attentive!”
November 1930 (5 months):
“lifts his arms for you to pick him up, and laughs when C. takes him ceiling flying.”
November 1931—(17 months) Note that he has started attending Elisabeth’s preschool, even though he is a half-year younger than the usual enrollment age. If he was severely delayed mentally, this shouldn’t have happened.
December 1931:
“He has great fun with his father now. C. says ‘Hi, Buster’ to him whenever he sees him, so the other day when Charles came into the room the baby looked up and said ‘Hi! Hi!’ and the other day when C. left the room the baby said ‘Hi all gone.’”
December 1931 --Quoting biographer Scott Berg (p. 234):
OK—back to Hour of Gold. February 1932:
“C. Jr. talks a great deal more now; he says everything after you.”
So what do we see here? A baby who is curious, responsive and attentive—NOT autistic, staring blankly into space. Who hears words and says them back (he is NOT deaf or mute). Who attends a preschool six months early (he is NOT retarded).
What I see is a kid experiencing normal development. Charlie would NEVER make it as a poster boy for birth defects or childhood diseases. The parents of the birth-afflicted patients I have cared for would have dearly LOVED for their children to develop like Cal Jr.
Now if anyone wants to say “Anne Morrow Lindbergh was lying all the time about the baby,” be my guest. I don’t see how she could lie to close members of her family, who saw Charlie regularly, and would have known if something was wrong. Also, I’d want to see some evidence that Anne was a chronic liar.
As a nurse, what else would I look for?
For one thing, if Charlie had a serious illness, I’d expect there to be nurses regularly in attendance—I mean “nurse” in the medical sense, not in the domestic sense of Betty Gow.
Also, Anne flew with Charles to the Orient in July 1931. They didn’t return until October—and only then because they received word that Senator Morrow had died. I can’t see Anne going on such a long excursion if her child was seriously ill.
Some people have speculated that, because Charlie had a cold at the time of the kidnapping, that he was “sickly.” But I’m sure I don’t need to tell readers of this board that colds are commonplace for toddlers. The baby started sneezing on Saturday evening, and Anne, who was taking care of him, started coming down with a cold of her own Tuesday morning. This is a very typical time lapse for a cold to transfer from one person to another.
If Charlie had some sort of chronic serious respiratory condition, I’d expect him to be short of breath, unable to run, maybe an oxygen tank around the house, and probably in and out of the hospital with bouts of pneumonia.
Now was there SOMETHING wrong with Charlie? Yes. I discussed this in the “Getaway” thread, but it bears repeating and elaboration.
There seems to be a feeling among some LKC investigators that the heat lamp and viosterol (a highly concentrated form of Vitamin D) were mysterious artifacts that unlock the LKC. They were not mysterious at all. They were the treatment of choice for rickets, a childhood disorder that causes softening of the bones. It is attributed primarily to deficiency of Vitamin D. Although rickets is rarely seen in America today, in the 1920s it was occurring in nearly epidemic proportions.
How did people treat rickets in 1932? Primarily through (1) vitamin D supplements, especially viosterol, and (2) sunlight, supplemented by sun lamps.
The book The Curative Value of Light: Sunlight and Sun Lamp in Health and Disease was published is 1932, the year of the kidnapping, and is available online
books.google.com/books/about/The_Curative_Value_of_Light.html?id=N_IidU6xREAC
Here’s what it says on page 68:
Viosterol was such a “preparation.” Let’s look at the viosterol. We know from the diet published for the kidnappers that Charlie was getting 14 drops per day. Michael referred to this as a “megadose” in the other thread. But it wasn’t. Let’s quote the article “Viosterol (Irradiated Ergosterol) : Prophylactic and Therapeutic Dosage” from the Journal of the American Medical Association (1930)
www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19312700903.html;jsessionid=8B7464EEC377D65601C6C53CF3D0F5CA
So we see that the MINIMUM dose of Viosterol was 10 drops. That was for rickets PROPHYLAXIS (PREVENTION) not CURE. At 14 drops, Charlie was only getting a bit more than the minimum dose.
It sounds from this that Charlie had a moderate form of rickets. If someone thinks the heat lamps and viosterol were being used for some condition BESIDES rickets, please post what that condition would be.
Let’s now excerpt the article “Symptoms of Vitamin D Deficiency in Babies” at www.livestrong.com/article/284626-symptoms-of-vitamin-d-deficiency-in-babies/
.
Got that? Rickets causes delayed closing of the fontanelle.
Charlie had this. It is confirmed in a letter to Mrs. Morrow from Charlie’s pediatrician, Dr. Van Ingen. www.lindberghkidnappinghoax.com/vaningen.pdf
It is also confirmed in the autopsy report (Gardner, p. 92) that the child’s skull had an unclosed fontanelle.
Also according to the autopsy report (Gardner, p. 92), the body had an enlarged skull. An enlarged skull is another sign of rickets.
Finally, Dr. Van Ingen said in his pretrial deposition that Cal Jr., had a “moderate rickety condition.” (Gardner, p. 411). Moderate rickets would be consistent with the 14 drops of viosterol he was getting. If it was severe rickets, his bones would probably have been too painful to chase Wahgoosh or attempt handstands.
Michael has called attention to the fact that Van Ingen said “rickety” and did not affirmatively say “rickets.” This might be attributable to the fact that diagnosis can sometimes be a grey area for doctors, since patients do not always present with a complete set of “textbook” symptoms. However, I will give another possible explanation in a moment.
Michael has said Charlie should not have had rickets because he came from a wealthy family, had a good diet and plenty of sunshine. I agree that this seems odd, but A History of Rickets in the United States:
www.ajcn.org/content/20/11/1234.full.pdf
shows that rickets was at epidemic levels in the 1920s, even among “well-nourished” babies. And rickets CAN be congenital.
However, I believe the true answer to the mystery of Charlie’s rickets is found in Hour of Gold. In a letter dated August 20, 1930, Anne wrote: “The baby is gaining much better than he did when I nursed him.” Since Charlie was born June 22, this means he was breast-fed for less than two months. It doesn’t say when Anne stopped nursing him—after 3 weeks? 6 weeks?--but in any event, he was switched to “formula” VERY quick. Although early formulas were hyped by manufacturers as “better than mother’s milk,” history proved the opposite was true.
Wikipedia’s article “Vitamin D” states: “In 1929 a group at NIMR in Hampstead, London, were working on the structure of vitamin D, which was still unknown.” (It wasn’t like today, when you can buy a bottle of Vitamin D at CVS.) Vitamin D was NOT added to baby formula until the 1930s, so in the year 1930 itself, Charlie was presumably on a formula deficient in vitamin D, which scientists were just then learning to isolate. He was too young to eat regular food, so he was stuck with a primitive formula. As indicated by the 1930 AMA article, Viosterol was evidently cutting-edge stuff just coming onto the market.
Incidentally, in the letter Anne explains why she stopped nursing Charlie—she had a breast abscess. As a result, Charlie wasn’t drinking enough breast milk and this explains why he initially had poor weight gain.
This might be another reason why Van Ingen chose to call it “rickety” in his pretrial deposition. Perhaps he was politely hedging, in an attempt to spare the family from having to explain rickets in the courtroom, which could have in turn led to an uncomfortable discussion of the issue with Anne’s breasts.
In summary, we have 5 evidences of rickets in Charlie:
1—on viosterol
2—getting heat lamp treatments
3—delayed closing of the fontanelle
4—Enlarged skill
5—Pediatrician says he had a “moderate rickety condition.”
Conclusion: Based on his symptoms, his treatment, and his pediatrician’s statement, Charlie had a moderate form of rickets.
Now the main eugenicist LKC thesis is that Lindbergh couldn’t stand the embarrassment of the public discovering he’d fathered a physically imperfect son. In that context, would Lindbergh have his son killed over a (then rather common) case of rickets? IMPOSSIBLE. Because as soon as the Lindberghs published the baby’s diet, including the viosterol, they were letting the whole world know their son had rickets. Any physician or pharmacist reading the newspaper would have said: “Viosterol? This kid’s got rickets.”
Do you see the dilemma? On the one hand, Lindbergh is so terrified that the world will learn his son has rickets that he hires abductors to kill Charlie. Then he turns around and TELLS the world his son has rickets. As Michael has often said, “you can’t have it both ways.”
Incidentally, the OTHER eugenicist interpretation is that it was a “mercy killing.” No soap. A kid with moderate rickets? Gimme a break. This kid could run, talk, play, and laugh. He was NOT a candidate for a “mercy killing to relieve him from his suffering.” Cracking his skull, stuffing him in a burlap bag, and throwing him in the roadside woods—that was merciful?
OK, now I know that it has been conjectured that CAL Jr. must have had some OTHER condition besides rickets. So now the argument becomes: “Well, OK, Lindbergh wasn’t embarrassed to admit his son had rickets—but he WAS embarrassed to admit Charlie had a condition WORSE than rickets, so he had his son murdered over THAT.”
Boy, to me, that is really starting to stretch logic. Lindbergh’s willingness to publicly acknowledge the treatment for rickets shows he was NOT hypersensitive about people knowing his son wasn’t physically perfect.
But OK, so what was this mysterious OTHER disease? What was its name? What were its symptoms? A disease with no symptoms will never motivate eugenics murder.
Now on the “Getaway” thread, Michael said “the child had other symptoms not associated with Rickets too.”
Steve pressed the question of what other symptoms Charlie had, and Michael said “His hair.” And it turns out to be a reference to this post by Joe:
However, the condition of nodes in the hair is—again--not mysterious. It is called trichorrhexis nodosa. Don’t be intimidated by that scientific name, it’s just nodes in the hair. And what causes it? Well, it can be congenital, but it’s most often caused by trauma to normal hair, and one of those forms of trauma is “lengthy and repeated ultraviolet exposure.” This would very logically be from Charlie’s exposure to the heat lamp—which Michael said was being overused. For me, that likely ends the mystery of the hair nodes. Once again, it ultimately boils down to rickets. Reference: emedicine.medscape.com/article/1073664-overview
So what else did Charlie have? A couple of overlapping toes. Not even Nazis in Hitler’s Third Reich killed their children over something like that.
Now let’s take some other points that are supposed to support eugenicist murder.
One is that the Lindberghs did not expose CAL Jr. to the public much. This is supposed to mean they were concealing his mysterious disease.
The problem here is that the Lindberghs never exposed any of their OTHER kids publicly either. Was Jon shown off publicly, in contrast to Charlie? No. The Lindberghs were private people. Also, Charlie WAS exposed to the Lindberghs’ personal friends and visitors. If they were trying to hide an illness, why would they let him go to Elisabeth’s Montessori-type preschool, where teachers and other parents would quickly see that something was “not right” with Charlie?
Another “evidence” is that the Lindberghs apparently once took Charlie to Johns Hopkins Hospital. My response is “big deal.” It’s not unusual for parents take their children to see a specialist. Dr. Van Ingen may have recommended that they take him there to see a noted specialist in…. rickets? Sure, that’s speculation, but so is “they took him there because he had some dread disease.” Unless we know the reason for the visit, we can’t deduce a motive for murder.
The final “evidence” given for eugenics murder is what I call “big bad Lindbergh.” Yes, I’ve heard about Lindbergh making his son stay inside an outdoor pen while crying (Berg, 234). The water ducking incident to “test his courage.” Hiding him in a closet, and so forth.
But we need to balance that with OTHER sides to Lindbergh as parent. After their return from the Orient, Anne wrote (November 12, 1931):
On February 7, 1932 she wrote:
“C. Jr. and Sr. have a wonderful time together” and goes on to describe them playing together.
Scott Berg, who is regarded as an authoritative and balanced biographer, writes (p. 235):
“He adored being with his son, whom he addressed with a big 'Hi! Buster' every time he saw him.”
We need to see Lindbergh from both sides, and even “the big bad Lindbergh” side has two aspects to it. One is that Lindbergh was trying to toughen his son. Lindbergh’s own father had taken this approach. For example, he threw Lindy in the water to teach him how to swim. Do I agree with this approach? No. But if Lindy had started to drown, I’m sure his father would have rescued him. I don’t see it as representing “hatred.”
As a child, Lindy himself used to sleep outside in sub-freezing temperatures. This self-toughening served him well during his transatlantic flight, when he had to endure being pelted with sleet in the cockpit.
When Lindbergh made his son stay in the outdoor pen that day, I believe he was trying the same kind of thing. It was a sign of immature parenting on Lindbergh’s part. This was his first child, and he was making mistakes. Cal Jr. was too young for that kind of lesson. But I don’t see it as “murderous intent” on Lindbergh’s part. I’ve never heard of him violently beating or abusing his children.
The pranks are another issue. I agree that a mean side was showing there. But I think it’s important that we don’t just take snapshots of those bad moments, and edit out the good ones (like when he played with his son and taught him the names of all the animals). Let’s view the whole Lindbergh.
On the other thread, Joe made a relevant point: that Lindbergh was inspired to work with Dr. Alexis Carrel on the perfusion pump because of Elisabeth’s heart condition.
It is true that Carrel was a eugenicist and made some revolting remarks in that regard. I should note that eugenics were the “trend” in the 1930s. Germany was by far the worst, but it also took hold in England and the US. Charles Darwin’s son Leonard was president of the Eugenics Education Society, Darwin himself having complained in The Descent of Man that ”excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” In the US about 70,000 “unfit” people were involuntarily sterilized in states with eugenics laws.
But let’s take a balanced look at Alexis Carrel. As a surgeon, he won the Nobel Prize for developing methods of suturing blood vessels and transplanting organs. During World War I, he won France’s Cross of the Legion of Honor for developing a new method of treating infected wounds. That’s helping people live, not die.
I find it interesting that Lindbergh worked with Carrel on the heart perfusion pump. It shows that Lindbergh was not a one-dimensional person (airplanes only). Carrel didn’t work with Lindbergh just to humor a celebrity. They worked hard and effectively together. And while some of Carrel’s eugenics views apparently rubbed off, I don’t think eugenics was the “defining” characteristic of Lindbergh’s life. He was seeking to SAVE his sister-in-law’s life, not DESTROY it. He didn’t write to the state and say: “Since my sister-in-law has a heart condition, please sterilize her as she is unfit.”
Therefore, if Lindbergh’s own son was ill, I believe his determination would have been the same--to RESOLVE THE ILLNESS, not KILL THE SON. If people want to rip him over pranks and lack of social charm, OK. But I don’t see anything in this man’s life that paints him as a murderer.
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From remarks Michael has made, I gather that he is at least somewhat favorable to this explanation for the LKC.
There seem to be two views of a eugenics murder. The dominant one is that Lindbergh was supposed to hold quasi-Nazi views of racial superiority, and could not tolerate the idea of fathering a son who was in some way defective and didn’t measure up to public expectations. Therefore he had abductors murder the child to preserve a personal image of superiority.
The second view seems to be that the child was sickly, and Charles, perhaps with Anne’s consent, thought that having the child murdered would be more “merciful” than letting it live out a life in illness.
These views are based on unproven assumptions that the child had a serious health problem. Kevkon has said we should not “play medical examiner” and he prefers to look at it from the logistics of things like Lindbergh’s connections. But I think the health issue is crucial to examine if the merits of the eugenics theory are to be discussed.
I want to comment that I’ve been a registered nurse for 37 years. While I have been an adult nurse (only working briefly as a pediatric nurse), I have spent years taking care of patients afflicted with birth disorders. While this doesn’t make me an expert, I guess you could say that a medical discussion is within my comfort zone. So I decided to try looking at Cal Jr. through my eyes as a nurse, rather than just from a criminology view.
The birth-disorder patients I have cared for have typically been confined to a wheelchair (unable to walk), and (very rarely) so crippled that they could not even tolerate a wheelchair but had to stay in bed around the clock. Most couldn’t eat and had to be fed through a gastrostomy tube, or occasionally through an intravenous central line. Some had to breathe through a tracheostomy (hole in the neck). A few could talk, but most could not. Many suffered severe mental retardation. It all depends on the condition, of course—a person with, say, spina bifida will present a very different set of symptoms than someone with cerebral palsy.
I should mention that because many conditions worsen over time, the symptoms I tend to witness in the adult or young-adult are often worse than what they had in childhood. Nonetheless, symptoms usually present themselves very early in life, if not immediately. Of course, many individuals with severe birth defects don’t survive to adulthood.
If we are talking about murder for eugenics reasons, I assume we are talking about a serious disorder. If it’s mild, I can’t see killing the child over it. If Cal Jr. was born with a birth defect, or a severe illness, there are certain things I would look for as a nurse.
One of the first would be problems with his mobility. Let’s quote from Hour of Gold.
In April 1931 (age 10 months) Anne wrote to her mother:
“The baby is beautiful and big: pulls himself up in his crib and in his pen and plays with people a lot more, waves goodbye when you wave.”
May 1931 (11 months) she writes to Mrs. Lindbergh:
“He crawls fast now—scrambles out of the room after you, pulls himself up by chairs and tables.”
November 1931 (17 months) (Anne and Charles have returned from the extended trip to the Orient):
“And oh, the baby! He is a boy, a strong independent boy swaggering around on his firm little legs.”
February 1932 (19 months):
“C. Jr. is trying to stand on his head and look at me upside down through his legs!...Wahgoosh and the baby play together wildly, chasing one another around the room.”
What do we see here? A baby who goes from crawling to crawling faster, from pulling himself up to walking, from walking to running. This is normal child development.
Another thing I’d be looking for is problems in his mental state—his alertness and communication.
July 1930 (age 1 month):
“He enjoys being talked to and is curious and attentive!”
November 1930 (5 months):
“lifts his arms for you to pick him up, and laughs when C. takes him ceiling flying.”
November 1931—(17 months) Note that he has started attending Elisabeth’s preschool, even though he is a half-year younger than the usual enrollment age. If he was severely delayed mentally, this shouldn’t have happened.
December 1931:
“He has great fun with his father now. C. says ‘Hi, Buster’ to him whenever he sees him, so the other day when Charles came into the room the baby looked up and said ‘Hi! Hi!’ and the other day when C. left the room the baby said ‘Hi all gone.’”
December 1931 --Quoting biographer Scott Berg (p. 234):
Charlie was especially happy with a present from Anne’s mother, a Noah’s ark filled with pairs of animals. “He and Charles played with it for long time,” Betty Morrow recalled, “making a great procession of animals across the floor.” His father scarcely let a day go by after Christmas without testing him on their names; and by the new year, he could correctly select thirty animals from the ark.
OK—back to Hour of Gold. February 1932:
“C. Jr. talks a great deal more now; he says everything after you.”
So what do we see here? A baby who is curious, responsive and attentive—NOT autistic, staring blankly into space. Who hears words and says them back (he is NOT deaf or mute). Who attends a preschool six months early (he is NOT retarded).
What I see is a kid experiencing normal development. Charlie would NEVER make it as a poster boy for birth defects or childhood diseases. The parents of the birth-afflicted patients I have cared for would have dearly LOVED for their children to develop like Cal Jr.
Now if anyone wants to say “Anne Morrow Lindbergh was lying all the time about the baby,” be my guest. I don’t see how she could lie to close members of her family, who saw Charlie regularly, and would have known if something was wrong. Also, I’d want to see some evidence that Anne was a chronic liar.
As a nurse, what else would I look for?
For one thing, if Charlie had a serious illness, I’d expect there to be nurses regularly in attendance—I mean “nurse” in the medical sense, not in the domestic sense of Betty Gow.
Also, Anne flew with Charles to the Orient in July 1931. They didn’t return until October—and only then because they received word that Senator Morrow had died. I can’t see Anne going on such a long excursion if her child was seriously ill.
Some people have speculated that, because Charlie had a cold at the time of the kidnapping, that he was “sickly.” But I’m sure I don’t need to tell readers of this board that colds are commonplace for toddlers. The baby started sneezing on Saturday evening, and Anne, who was taking care of him, started coming down with a cold of her own Tuesday morning. This is a very typical time lapse for a cold to transfer from one person to another.
If Charlie had some sort of chronic serious respiratory condition, I’d expect him to be short of breath, unable to run, maybe an oxygen tank around the house, and probably in and out of the hospital with bouts of pneumonia.
Now was there SOMETHING wrong with Charlie? Yes. I discussed this in the “Getaway” thread, but it bears repeating and elaboration.
There seems to be a feeling among some LKC investigators that the heat lamp and viosterol (a highly concentrated form of Vitamin D) were mysterious artifacts that unlock the LKC. They were not mysterious at all. They were the treatment of choice for rickets, a childhood disorder that causes softening of the bones. It is attributed primarily to deficiency of Vitamin D. Although rickets is rarely seen in America today, in the 1920s it was occurring in nearly epidemic proportions.
How did people treat rickets in 1932? Primarily through (1) vitamin D supplements, especially viosterol, and (2) sunlight, supplemented by sun lamps.
The book The Curative Value of Light: Sunlight and Sun Lamp in Health and Disease was published is 1932, the year of the kidnapping, and is available online
books.google.com/books/about/The_Curative_Value_of_Light.html?id=N_IidU6xREAC
Here’s what it says on page 68:
It has been clearly shown that exposures to sunlight and sun-lamps have proved to be preventative, as well as curative, of rickets….This vitamin D may also be administered by feeding cod-liver oil, or egg yolks, or by the administration of a preparation sold in the market under various trade names.
Viosterol was such a “preparation.” Let’s look at the viosterol. We know from the diet published for the kidnappers that Charlie was getting 14 drops per day. Michael referred to this as a “megadose” in the other thread. But it wasn’t. Let’s quote the article “Viosterol (Irradiated Ergosterol) : Prophylactic and Therapeutic Dosage” from the Journal of the American Medical Association (1930)
www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19312700903.html;jsessionid=8B7464EEC377D65601C6C53CF3D0F5CA
It is concluded that for the average normal infant from birth to one year of age, under varied environmental and seasonal conditions, in the temperate zone, 10 drops of viosterol (100D) in oil daily, is the minimum dose for prophylaxis. It should be started during the first weeks of life. Therapy with viosterol was studied in 17 cases of rickets, and no rigid standard of treatment can be advised for the degree of rickets must be considered in every case. Mild rickets will frequently heal on from 10 to 15 drops daily whilst in some severe cases 15 and even 20 drops does not prove adequate.
So we see that the MINIMUM dose of Viosterol was 10 drops. That was for rickets PROPHYLAXIS (PREVENTION) not CURE. At 14 drops, Charlie was only getting a bit more than the minimum dose.
It sounds from this that Charlie had a moderate form of rickets. If someone thinks the heat lamps and viosterol were being used for some condition BESIDES rickets, please post what that condition would be.
Let’s now excerpt the article “Symptoms of Vitamin D Deficiency in Babies” at www.livestrong.com/article/284626-symptoms-of-vitamin-d-deficiency-in-babies/
.
A baby is born with six fontanelles, openings between the plates of the skull that are sometimes referred to as soft spots…The anterior fontanelle has closed in 38 percent of babies by 12 months of age and in 96 percent of babies by 24 months of age. In babies with rickets, however, these closures will be delayed and the fontanelles may also appear larger than in normal babies
Got that? Rickets causes delayed closing of the fontanelle.
Charlie had this. It is confirmed in a letter to Mrs. Morrow from Charlie’s pediatrician, Dr. Van Ingen. www.lindberghkidnappinghoax.com/vaningen.pdf
It is also confirmed in the autopsy report (Gardner, p. 92) that the child’s skull had an unclosed fontanelle.
Also according to the autopsy report (Gardner, p. 92), the body had an enlarged skull. An enlarged skull is another sign of rickets.
Finally, Dr. Van Ingen said in his pretrial deposition that Cal Jr., had a “moderate rickety condition.” (Gardner, p. 411). Moderate rickets would be consistent with the 14 drops of viosterol he was getting. If it was severe rickets, his bones would probably have been too painful to chase Wahgoosh or attempt handstands.
Michael has called attention to the fact that Van Ingen said “rickety” and did not affirmatively say “rickets.” This might be attributable to the fact that diagnosis can sometimes be a grey area for doctors, since patients do not always present with a complete set of “textbook” symptoms. However, I will give another possible explanation in a moment.
Michael has said Charlie should not have had rickets because he came from a wealthy family, had a good diet and plenty of sunshine. I agree that this seems odd, but A History of Rickets in the United States:
www.ajcn.org/content/20/11/1234.full.pdf
shows that rickets was at epidemic levels in the 1920s, even among “well-nourished” babies. And rickets CAN be congenital.
However, I believe the true answer to the mystery of Charlie’s rickets is found in Hour of Gold. In a letter dated August 20, 1930, Anne wrote: “The baby is gaining much better than he did when I nursed him.” Since Charlie was born June 22, this means he was breast-fed for less than two months. It doesn’t say when Anne stopped nursing him—after 3 weeks? 6 weeks?--but in any event, he was switched to “formula” VERY quick. Although early formulas were hyped by manufacturers as “better than mother’s milk,” history proved the opposite was true.
Wikipedia’s article “Vitamin D” states: “In 1929 a group at NIMR in Hampstead, London, were working on the structure of vitamin D, which was still unknown.” (It wasn’t like today, when you can buy a bottle of Vitamin D at CVS.) Vitamin D was NOT added to baby formula until the 1930s, so in the year 1930 itself, Charlie was presumably on a formula deficient in vitamin D, which scientists were just then learning to isolate. He was too young to eat regular food, so he was stuck with a primitive formula. As indicated by the 1930 AMA article, Viosterol was evidently cutting-edge stuff just coming onto the market.
Incidentally, in the letter Anne explains why she stopped nursing Charlie—she had a breast abscess. As a result, Charlie wasn’t drinking enough breast milk and this explains why he initially had poor weight gain.
This might be another reason why Van Ingen chose to call it “rickety” in his pretrial deposition. Perhaps he was politely hedging, in an attempt to spare the family from having to explain rickets in the courtroom, which could have in turn led to an uncomfortable discussion of the issue with Anne’s breasts.
In summary, we have 5 evidences of rickets in Charlie:
1—on viosterol
2—getting heat lamp treatments
3—delayed closing of the fontanelle
4—Enlarged skill
5—Pediatrician says he had a “moderate rickety condition.”
Conclusion: Based on his symptoms, his treatment, and his pediatrician’s statement, Charlie had a moderate form of rickets.
Now the main eugenicist LKC thesis is that Lindbergh couldn’t stand the embarrassment of the public discovering he’d fathered a physically imperfect son. In that context, would Lindbergh have his son killed over a (then rather common) case of rickets? IMPOSSIBLE. Because as soon as the Lindberghs published the baby’s diet, including the viosterol, they were letting the whole world know their son had rickets. Any physician or pharmacist reading the newspaper would have said: “Viosterol? This kid’s got rickets.”
Do you see the dilemma? On the one hand, Lindbergh is so terrified that the world will learn his son has rickets that he hires abductors to kill Charlie. Then he turns around and TELLS the world his son has rickets. As Michael has often said, “you can’t have it both ways.”
Incidentally, the OTHER eugenicist interpretation is that it was a “mercy killing.” No soap. A kid with moderate rickets? Gimme a break. This kid could run, talk, play, and laugh. He was NOT a candidate for a “mercy killing to relieve him from his suffering.” Cracking his skull, stuffing him in a burlap bag, and throwing him in the roadside woods—that was merciful?
OK, now I know that it has been conjectured that CAL Jr. must have had some OTHER condition besides rickets. So now the argument becomes: “Well, OK, Lindbergh wasn’t embarrassed to admit his son had rickets—but he WAS embarrassed to admit Charlie had a condition WORSE than rickets, so he had his son murdered over THAT.”
Boy, to me, that is really starting to stretch logic. Lindbergh’s willingness to publicly acknowledge the treatment for rickets shows he was NOT hypersensitive about people knowing his son wasn’t physically perfect.
But OK, so what was this mysterious OTHER disease? What was its name? What were its symptoms? A disease with no symptoms will never motivate eugenics murder.
Now on the “Getaway” thread, Michael said “the child had other symptoms not associated with Rickets too.”
Steve pressed the question of what other symptoms Charlie had, and Michael said “His hair.” And it turns out to be a reference to this post by Joe:
Here's the actual statement by Alan T. Lane, Senior Forensic Scientist (now retired) with the NJPSP.
When I examined it under the microscope, I found nodes along the hair, little bumps along the shaft, and I had never seen this before. I've examined quite a few hair specimens and I'm not sure what caused this. It could have been from some disease or just some abnormality in the hair. I don't know why they were there, but they were present on the specimens that were taken from the house, prior to the kidnapping. The same nodes were present on each strand of hair that I looked at, that was recovered from the scene at the time the baby was found.
When I examined it under the microscope, I found nodes along the hair, little bumps along the shaft, and I had never seen this before. I've examined quite a few hair specimens and I'm not sure what caused this. It could have been from some disease or just some abnormality in the hair. I don't know why they were there, but they were present on the specimens that were taken from the house, prior to the kidnapping. The same nodes were present on each strand of hair that I looked at, that was recovered from the scene at the time the baby was found.
However, the condition of nodes in the hair is—again--not mysterious. It is called trichorrhexis nodosa. Don’t be intimidated by that scientific name, it’s just nodes in the hair. And what causes it? Well, it can be congenital, but it’s most often caused by trauma to normal hair, and one of those forms of trauma is “lengthy and repeated ultraviolet exposure.” This would very logically be from Charlie’s exposure to the heat lamp—which Michael said was being overused. For me, that likely ends the mystery of the hair nodes. Once again, it ultimately boils down to rickets. Reference: emedicine.medscape.com/article/1073664-overview
So what else did Charlie have? A couple of overlapping toes. Not even Nazis in Hitler’s Third Reich killed their children over something like that.
Now let’s take some other points that are supposed to support eugenicist murder.
One is that the Lindberghs did not expose CAL Jr. to the public much. This is supposed to mean they were concealing his mysterious disease.
The problem here is that the Lindberghs never exposed any of their OTHER kids publicly either. Was Jon shown off publicly, in contrast to Charlie? No. The Lindberghs were private people. Also, Charlie WAS exposed to the Lindberghs’ personal friends and visitors. If they were trying to hide an illness, why would they let him go to Elisabeth’s Montessori-type preschool, where teachers and other parents would quickly see that something was “not right” with Charlie?
Another “evidence” is that the Lindberghs apparently once took Charlie to Johns Hopkins Hospital. My response is “big deal.” It’s not unusual for parents take their children to see a specialist. Dr. Van Ingen may have recommended that they take him there to see a noted specialist in…. rickets? Sure, that’s speculation, but so is “they took him there because he had some dread disease.” Unless we know the reason for the visit, we can’t deduce a motive for murder.
The final “evidence” given for eugenics murder is what I call “big bad Lindbergh.” Yes, I’ve heard about Lindbergh making his son stay inside an outdoor pen while crying (Berg, 234). The water ducking incident to “test his courage.” Hiding him in a closet, and so forth.
But we need to balance that with OTHER sides to Lindbergh as parent. After their return from the Orient, Anne wrote (November 12, 1931):
He [Charles] began to take such interest in the baby—playing with him, spoiling him by giving him cornflakes and toast and sugar and jam off his plate in the morning and tossing him up in the air. After he’d done that once or twice the boy came toward him with outstretched arms. “Den!” (“Again!”)
On February 7, 1932 she wrote:
“C. Jr. and Sr. have a wonderful time together” and goes on to describe them playing together.
Scott Berg, who is regarded as an authoritative and balanced biographer, writes (p. 235):
“He adored being with his son, whom he addressed with a big 'Hi! Buster' every time he saw him.”
We need to see Lindbergh from both sides, and even “the big bad Lindbergh” side has two aspects to it. One is that Lindbergh was trying to toughen his son. Lindbergh’s own father had taken this approach. For example, he threw Lindy in the water to teach him how to swim. Do I agree with this approach? No. But if Lindy had started to drown, I’m sure his father would have rescued him. I don’t see it as representing “hatred.”
As a child, Lindy himself used to sleep outside in sub-freezing temperatures. This self-toughening served him well during his transatlantic flight, when he had to endure being pelted with sleet in the cockpit.
When Lindbergh made his son stay in the outdoor pen that day, I believe he was trying the same kind of thing. It was a sign of immature parenting on Lindbergh’s part. This was his first child, and he was making mistakes. Cal Jr. was too young for that kind of lesson. But I don’t see it as “murderous intent” on Lindbergh’s part. I’ve never heard of him violently beating or abusing his children.
The pranks are another issue. I agree that a mean side was showing there. But I think it’s important that we don’t just take snapshots of those bad moments, and edit out the good ones (like when he played with his son and taught him the names of all the animals). Let’s view the whole Lindbergh.
On the other thread, Joe made a relevant point: that Lindbergh was inspired to work with Dr. Alexis Carrel on the perfusion pump because of Elisabeth’s heart condition.
It is true that Carrel was a eugenicist and made some revolting remarks in that regard. I should note that eugenics were the “trend” in the 1930s. Germany was by far the worst, but it also took hold in England and the US. Charles Darwin’s son Leonard was president of the Eugenics Education Society, Darwin himself having complained in The Descent of Man that ”excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” In the US about 70,000 “unfit” people were involuntarily sterilized in states with eugenics laws.
But let’s take a balanced look at Alexis Carrel. As a surgeon, he won the Nobel Prize for developing methods of suturing blood vessels and transplanting organs. During World War I, he won France’s Cross of the Legion of Honor for developing a new method of treating infected wounds. That’s helping people live, not die.
I find it interesting that Lindbergh worked with Carrel on the heart perfusion pump. It shows that Lindbergh was not a one-dimensional person (airplanes only). Carrel didn’t work with Lindbergh just to humor a celebrity. They worked hard and effectively together. And while some of Carrel’s eugenics views apparently rubbed off, I don’t think eugenics was the “defining” characteristic of Lindbergh’s life. He was seeking to SAVE his sister-in-law’s life, not DESTROY it. He didn’t write to the state and say: “Since my sister-in-law has a heart condition, please sterilize her as she is unfit.”
Therefore, if Lindbergh’s own son was ill, I believe his determination would have been the same--to RESOLVE THE ILLNESS, not KILL THE SON. If people want to rip him over pranks and lack of social charm, OK. But I don’t see anything in this man’s life that paints him as a murderer.
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