Profile of the Dutch committee for war prophylaxis

摘要

An impressive example of physicians' resistance to war and the build-up to war is the Dutch Committee for War Prophylaxis, 4,200 members of the Maatschappij ter Bevordering der Geneeskunst (Association for the Advancement of Medical Care) - its entire membership - joined the Committee. The name alone makes it clear what the Committee wanted: the prevention of war, and the framing of war as a disease. Its members attacked the false vision that war was an inevitable law of nature as old as mankind itself, and a consequence of the Darwinian theory that progress necessitates the survival of the fittest (Roorda 1933).