Geneticists and NBIA-PKAN

Geneticists continue to publish about “Hallervorden-Spatz” or “former Hallervorden-Spatz” syndrome.

The German NBIA patient group advocates for many years that these names should be abandoned (the American patient group even formally changed its name 2003). NBIA is a rare inherited neurological movement disorder characterized by the progressive degeneration of the nervous system; NBIA means “neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation”. Another frequently used disease synonym is pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN).

The clinical syndrome has been described by the neurologist Julius Hallervorden and the neuropathologist Hugo Spatz. Robert Jay Lifton does not h>ave any material about Hallervorden and Spatz in “The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide but Ernst Klee in “Auschwitz, die NS-Medizin und ihre Opfer” and Benno Müller-Hill in “Murderous science” mentions both. Professor Hugo Spatz (1888-1969) was docent in Munich 1923, director of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut Berlin 1937-1945 and director of Max-Planck-Institut für Hirnforschung Gießen 1948-1957. Professor Julius Hallervorden (1882-1965) was department head at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut Berlin 1938-1945 and at MPI for Brain Research from 1948 on.

The former director of Max-Planck association Professor Hubertus Markl mentioned their involvement in Nazi euthanasia in his lecture on Oct 14, 2000 at MDC in Berlin-Buch (own translation): “Recent research showed that brains of hundreds of euthasia victims killed between 1939 and 1944 in Brandenburg-Görden, were mis-used for research purposes. In a single case Julius Hallervorden was present in person, while children were killed in Görden and brains consecutively analysed in his laboratory… As a biologist it remains for me to declare that this is an eternal dishonor for German bioscience.”