Le Temps: “Historian Vincent Barras on Terre des Hommes: ‘The scandal must be accompanied by critical examination.’”

Image credit: AI generated image by Paperslip.org

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Paperslip Note:

Please note that we are sharing an English translation of the original French article here because it is directly relevant to KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees. One of KSS’ early Partner Western Adoption Agencies was the Swiss Agency Terre des Hommes.

Both Holt and KSS adopted to Switzerland through Terre des Hommes.

While KSS sent children for overseas adoption between 1964-2012, KSS only partnered with Terre des Hommes in Switzerland between around 1968 - 1978 or 1979.

This was, however, also roughly the same time period during which Swiss doctors allegedly performed medical experiments, including heart surgeries, on some foreign children adopted to Switzerland without their consent.

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Please see related:
Trigger Warning: Beobachter Article: “How Terre des Hommes used babies for experiments.”

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Le Temps:
“Historian Vincent Barras on Terre des Hommes: ‘The scandal must be accompanied by critical examination.’”

Original French article published July 7th, 2026 in Le Temps.
See the original French article linked above for photos.
ChatGPT English translation posted to Paperslip on July 7th, 2026.
Some BOLDS ours.

LeTemps: 

Historian Vincent Barras on Terre des hommes: "Outrage must be accompanied by critical inquiry"

“According to historian Vincent Barras, an investigation into the relationship between Terre des hommes and the Swiss medical establishment is essential. He himself attempted to launch such a project in the 2010s, without success.

Vincent Barras in Lausanne, December 10, 2019.

By Céline Zünd
Published July 6, 2026, at 5:18 p.m. / Updated July 7, 2026, at 4:44 a.m.
4-minute read

20-second summary

Were children adopted from abroad used in medical experiments in Switzerland during the 1960s and 1970s?

Recent revelations about babies brought to Switzerland through Terre des hommes, who were placed in quarantine before being handed over to their adoptive families, have raised troubling questions.

Historian Vincent Barras believes further investigation is needed to shed light on the history of adoption in Switzerland.

In an investigation published this spring and recently highlighted by Le Temps, the magazine Beobachter describes practices that have sparked widespread outrage. Children adopted from abroad through the Terre des hommes organization between 1964 and 1979 were reportedly placed in quarantine in hospitals in French-speaking Switzerland upon their arrival in the country, before being entrusted to their adoptive families.

Read also: National outrage after revelations of medical experimentation on adopted Terre des hommes children

What happened during that period of quarantine? Beobachter refers to "medical experiments." It alleges that bodily fluids from infants (including blood and gastric fluid) were collected to test the effectiveness of antibiotics in laboratories. Vincent Barras, a specialist in the history of medical experimentation in Switzerland, urges caution: he believes it is too early to describe these practices as "experimentation."

You have studied medical experimentation on psychiatric patients. According to Beobachter, similar practices may have affected adopted children. Was this previously known?

Beobachter deserves credit for revealing the existence of these quarantines, whose purpose remains unclear. How were they decided upon? By whom? On what basis? Those are the questions that need to be answered.

However, describing what happened as medical experimentation on babies strikes me as premature. What has been described resembles tests that were typical of an era when medicine feared diseases arriving from abroad. We should not conflate different issues.

What was the context in the 1960s and 1970s?

It was the era of the Schwarzenbach initiatives. Foreign workers—primarily Italians at the time—were required to undergo mandatory medical examinations regardless of whether they were healthy, largely because of fears about tuberculosis. It is easy to imagine that anxiety over so-called exotic diseases could also have motivated these quarantines.

The sampling procedures described for these children are not, in themselves, surprising. Using biological samples to inoculate guinea pigs with bacteria was standard scientific practice at the time. What is problematic—and shocking by today's standards—is the absence of consent from the children or their legal representatives. One can reasonably assume that no one sought their permission.

Given what we now know about human rights violations in international adoptions during that era, this is perhaps not surprising...

The history of international adoption remains largely unwritten, as does the history of Terre des hommes itself.

What we can glimpse is a combination of charismatic figures—Edmond Kaiser and Charles Hahn—and very permissive cantonal authorities operating within the legal ambiguity characteristic of the postwar period. This reflects the paternalistic mindset of the era. People believed they were acting in the best interests of children without questioning the neo-colonial assumptions deeply embedded in Western medicine.

Read also: "My generation inherited the silences": the difficult search for information by descendants of adopted children

Another aspect that Beobachter considers scandalous is the large number of heart operations performed in Switzerland by surgeon Charles Hahn through a partnership with Terre des hommes. For years these operations were presented as a "win-win": they advanced Swiss medical expertise while treating children from countries lacking the necessary infrastructure. Is our perspective on these practices changing?

I was a student in the faculty where Charles Hahn taught in 1979, the year when, according to this article, six children died during these heart operations. He never mentioned those deaths to us.

His collaboration with Terre des hommes to operate on children brought from North Africa, however, was well known, and I do not recall it provoking outrage at the time. But we would need to examine the archives to know for certain. Back then, Charles Hahn was primarily regarded as a pioneering cardiac surgeon, particularly in heart valve repair.

How were these children selected? How many deaths were due to the severity of their congenital conditions, and how many resulted from the surgeries themselves? We simply do not know. A historical study could have answered those questions and helped us better understand the motivations of the people involved.

What interests me most is what this episode reveals about the neo-colonial attitudes of Western medicine. That is precisely what we hoped to study when we submitted a research proposal in 2010 on heart operations performed on children brought to Switzerland from abroad.

Read also: The heart of La Maison in Massongex beats again

Why did the Swiss National Science Foundation reject your proposal?

The decisions are not political; they generally reflect the priorities of the moment. In 2010, the topic was considered of secondary importance. The decision might well be different today.

Were you hoping to uncover shocking revelations?

No. Our goal was to better understand Switzerland's medical past. It is an ideal subject for examining Switzerland's place in North-South relations. Western medicine developed within these unequal relationships.

For a long time, Terre des hommes was viewed as a charitable institution that was largely above suspicion and a source of pride for many Swiss citizens. It embodies admirable values. But that is not the whole story.

What makes a practice become unacceptable?

The red lines are constantly shifting.

What strikes us as scandalous today is the "reification" of these children—the fact that they were treated as objects and subjected to complete arbitrariness, with no control over what was done to them.

The National Research Programme (NRP 76) on the history of coercive measures and forced placements demonstrated that, at the time, the state operated under a kind of presumed benevolence. For example, Yenish children were removed from their families because authorities believed it was in the children's best interests.

Our perspective has changed. We also have a much better understanding of the psychological consequences of these separations.

Is it wrong to be outraged?

Outrage and anger are necessary. But they must be accompanied by critical inquiry: who did what, when, and why?

Simply declaring today that Edmond Kaiser was either a villain or a saint teaches us nothing. Understanding the historical context, by contrast, is essential. That is the purpose of history: to illuminate the past so that we do not repeat the same mistakes.”

MEDICINE • HISTORY