Hi.   I have heard of experiments performed on healthy infants at the
hands of Nazi doctors.  These inhumane experiments tested the
necessity of parent-child interaction by providing the babies with
every physicological need (food, shelter, changing, etc.) but denying
them as much contact with other beings as possible.   If my memory
serves me, the infants all perished for lack of human interaction.  I
would like any and all documentation on these specific experiments if
in fact they existed at all.  Thank you.

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Request for Question Clarification by scriptor-ga on 08 May 2004 17:40 PDT

Dear summermute,

While I did not find any evidence that a such experiment has been
conducted by scientists in the Third Reich, there is some information
about a remarkably similar experiment, carried out by a German ruler
in considerably earlier times. Would you be interested in  that,
though not very much is known about it?

Regards,
Scriptor

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Clarification of Question by summermute-ga on 20 May 2004 14:00 PDT

Thank you all for expressed interest.  Forget the Nazis.  Any
documentation on any such phenomena would be greatly appreciated and
would fulfill my requirements.  I followed a link to another, similar,
question and found that we have some National experience at depriving
infants of touch.  Those articles and related links would make my day.
 Thank you again.

Dear Summermute, 

Besides the two articles I gave bellow, there are numerous other
articles on emotional deprivation and health problems of infants:

I Won't Grow Up: The Causes of Psychogenic Dwarfism / Karen Munoz
<http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web3/Munoz.html> 

Psychosocial adversity and growth during infancy
<http://www.unu.edu/unupress/food2/UID06E/uid06e0r.htm> 

Studying Stress Physiology in Internationally Adopted Children
<http://fsos.che.umn.edu/mtarp/Icarpapers/gunnar.htm> 

And the bibliography given: 

Ames, E. (1997). The Development of Romanian Oprhanage Children
Adopted to Canada (Final Report to the National Welfare Grants
Program: Human Resources Develoment Canada ). Burnaby, British
Columbia: Simon Fraser University.


Carlson, M., Dragomir, C., Earls, F., & al., e. (1995). Effects of
social deprivation on cortisol regulation in institutionalized
Romanian ifants. Society of Neuroscience Abstracts(21), 524.


Champoux, M., Shannon, C., Gunnar, M., & Suomi, S. J. (1996, ). Minor
disturbances mask the circadian decrease in salivary cortisol in
nursery-reared rhesus infants. Paper presented at the Poster at the
American Society of Primatologist, Madison, WI.


Fernald, L., & Grantham-McGregor, S. M. (1999). Stress response in
children who have experienced childhood growth retardation. American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Frank, D. A., Klass, P. E., Felton, E., & Eisenberg, L. (1996).
Infants and young children in orphanges: One view from Pediatrics and
Child Psychiatry. Pediatric, 97(4), 569-578.

Gunnar, M. (1998). Quality of early care and buffering of
neuroendocrine stress reactions: Potential effects on the developing
brain. Preventive Medicine, 27, 208-211.


Kaler, S. R., & Freeman, B. J. (1994). An analysis of environmental
deprivation: Cognitive and social development in Romanian orphans.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 35, 769-781.


Rutter, M., & Team, E. S. (1998). Developmental catch-up, and deficit,
following adoption after servere global early privation. Journal of
Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 39, 465-476.

Wiener, S. G., Bayart, F., Faull, K. F., & Levine, S. (1990).
Behavioral and psysiological responses to maternal separation in
squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus). Behavioral Neuroscience, 104(1),
108-115.

OTB Vol. 7, No.1 - Commentary
<http://www.med.harvard.edu/publications/On_The_Brain/Volume7/Number1/commentary.html>

I hope this answered your question. Please contact me if you need any
further clarification on this answer.

Search strategy: "emotional deprivation" infants

There is also some literature, not about experiments but simply of
studies done on orphaned or abandoned infants in institutions whose
bodily needs were adequately cared for but who were simply not held,
cuddled, or played with by harried, overworked staffers.  I remember
something about failure to thrive and also about the children's
growing up without the ability to make eye contact or establish
relationships.  And then there is the famous study done with a baby
monkey choosing a huggable rag doll over a stiff wire surrogate mama
that delivered milk.  Faulty memory for details is possible here, but
if that sort of thing (rather than the Nazi angle) is the direction of
your interest, there is stuff like this out there in the field of
psychology.

Apteryx

This type of experimentation pre-dates Nazi Germany by many years. 
You may find some helpful pointers here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=271836

Cheers
Digs

Josef Mengele, the Nazi "Angel of Death," is a likely candidate, but I could
find only one documented incident as described.  He did equally monsterous
experiments on young twins as well.

denco-ga

I recall this was a big problem in Italy after WW2.
A lot of childern were given up for adoption (solder offspring, killed
fathers- women in starvation/poverty etc.)and the government not
having enough $ to supply enough caring staff for the children - a lot
died even though they were fed and clothed properly.

Unfortunately, the conditions in Romania provided a "natural"
experiment on the issue:

Mary (Maya) Carlson, Ph.D, "Developing Self and Emotion in Extreme
Social Deprivation"
<http://www.loc.gov/loc/brain/emotion/Carlson.html> 

Stratheam et al. "Childhood Neglect and Cognitive Development in
Extremely Low BirthWeight Infants: A Prospective Study"
<http://www.micronutrient.org/idpas/pdf/1304ChildhoodNeglect.pdf>

To all-

Experiments which were conducted during the Nazi regime have been
banned for use by the international scientific community. Even though
there may have been scientific discoveries which could benefit
medicine, the medical and scientific communities have banned the use
of such information for more than just humanitarian reasons, but for
moral reasons.