EDITORIAL

 

Ethics in Nuremberg Medical Experimentation (Editorial)

During the Second World War, the Nazi regime conducted aggressive military expansion whilst committing what would eventually be recognised as unfathomable crimes against humanity in scientific experiments, many of which were conducted at Nazi concentration camps. Whilst the experiments conducted were referred to as ‘scientific’, – conducted primarily on the Jewish and those considered ‘undesirable’ – they exhibited a total lack of respect for human dignity and the wellbeing of subjects.³ Many of these experiments were set up to observe the effects of hypothermia, prolonged exposure to seawater, different methods of sterilization, and poison on the human body – specifically, a human body viewed as not completely human, and therefore expendable.¹ As a ramification of the thousands of experiments conducted, victims’ usual physical functions were destroyed and many were killed.³

The official purpose of these experiments was to procure data regarding the potential conditions of human survival. Nazi physicians and scientists possessed a meticulous approach, carefully maintaining records and observations throughout. Their support legitimated the principles of eugenics, on which the Nazi Rassenpolitik (“Racial policy”) was built, and provided smokescreen of murders in the concentration camps, in the name of medical necessity.² In this obscene logic of Rassenpolitik, ‘subhumans’ – blacks, gypsies, homosexuals and Jews, were rational targets for extermination and experimentation.¹ The evil was disguised by the pervasive use of systematizing and misleading medical jargon.² Furthermore, rather than examining topics really beneficial to medical breakthroughs, Nazi trials dominantly focused on human thresholds of toleration to external environment factors or biochemical weapon, which actually is for the purpose to serve the military expansion.

These immoral Nazi human trials hidden behind misleading and euphemistic language definitely should be censured. Indeed, the use of their results should also be forbidden. The widely-accepted view is that utilization of these data is not only unethical, but also scientifically imprecise.¹ In his paper published in 2004, Mr. Bogod mentioned that “in making use of these results we are offering a veneer of respectability – however thin – to doctors who have violated in the most extreme way imaginable the essence of their calling.” In fact, the Nazi physicians were neither the first nor the last murderers using the excuses ‘scientific need’.² To avoid further increase in number of resemble evil, we should explicitly define these events and their ‘findings’ – immoral and unacceptable.

Someone argued that if we could use the findings properly, then those victims’ suffering might not entirely in vain. Aiming at this point of view, the second concern about the medical data generated by Nazi physicians – reliability – will be a strong support of counterview. In fact, the experimental results gained were skewed by the physicians to cater political imperatives. In the hypothermia experiments, Rascher, the leading physician, reported that death occurred after about 53-100 minutes immersion in ice-cold water, while the laboratory notes shown that the actual time was much longer, from 80 minutes to 5-6 hours.1 In addition to the political manipulation of experimental data, the design of these experiments were questionable as well. As all the trials were conducted on prisoners in concentration camps – a severely malnourished and disease-ridden population, the results are likely to have bias and not applicable to normal population.
Overall, in comparison to its social harm, the Nazi trials had little or almost no good to the medical development. The most valuable legacy from this history is it works as a reminder to the entire society, for importance of human rights and moral standard, and for the requirement of reconsidering eugenic.3 The Nazi trials directly pushed the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, which was amended many times since then. The latest one was the 64th WMA General Assembly in October 2013. It is still functioning in controls of activities of medical researchers worldwide, to avert recurrence of this tragedy.4 The basal argument of Nazi Rassenpolitik – eugenics, drove lots of controversies about artificial interferences in pregnancy, such as pre-pregnancy diagnosis and in-vitro fertilization. Although these tests are much ‘softer’ comparing to the elimination policy of Nazis. In spite of the obstructions, we can expect that with the previous lessons, people will be more cautious in uses of these techniques.3

References:

¹Bogod, David. 2004. “The Nazi Hypothermia Experiments: Forbidden Data?”. Anaesthesia 59 (12): 1155-1156. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2044.2004.04034.x.

²Colaianni, Alessandra. 2012. “A Long Shadow: Nazi Doctors, Moral Vulnerability And Contemporary Medical Culture”. J Med Ethics 38 (7): 435-438. doi:10.1136/medethics-2011-100372.

³“The Legacy Of Nazi Medicine”. 2004. The New Atlantis. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-legacy-of-nazi-medicine.

⁴“WMA Declaration Of Helsinki – Ethical Principles For Medical Research Involving Human Subjects”. 2016. Wma.Net. http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/.