Ethics of the Nuremberg Code Essay

One event that encouraged Anti-Semitism and increased tensions leading up to Kristallnacht and beyond was the announcement of the Nuremberg Laws in September of 1935. This set of laws created by the Nazi party made sharp distinctions between the rights and privileges of Germans and Jews (Sigward 291). This redefined citizenship in the Third Reich and laid the groundwork for a racial state. For example, the Reich of Citizenship Law stripped Jews of their citizenship, claiming they didn’t have “German blood” (Sigward 291). Those of Jewish descent were denied the right to vote and the ability to obtain a valid passport or visa to leave the country. This law completely dehumanized Jews living in Germany and made them stateless, which caused those of the Aryan race or pure German descent to feel superior. In the Nuremburg Laws, Article 5 of the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law defined a Jew as a descendant of three or more Jewish grandparents or two Jewish parents (Sigward 293). These laws lead to the Jews being persecuted for who they were, rather than the faith they believed during previous years. As a result of these laws being carried out, German nationalism and Anti-Semitism across the Reich increased drastically .

The art of medicine and curing diseases was not always approached in a scientific way. In fact, many advances occurred between 1919 to 1939, after technological advances allowed scientists to apply the scientific method to medical research. At this time, the ethics of using patients as test subjects either for new medicines or as samples for further testing were not considered. An extreme example of this was the Nazi’s using concentration camp inmates – including children – to run painful and invasive experiments. More modern examples are not so easy to identify as unethical, however. While amputating a leg to develop methods to deal with fractures and war wounds is obviously unethical, harvesting cells to develop a vaccine is not so clear cut, as the disadvantage to the patient is hard to identify. Coming from the various Nazi testing and especially the Nuremberg testing and trials, another code of ethics was developed, called the Nuremberg Code.

She describes how Nazi Doctors would conduct horrendous experiments on Jews, such as dissecting living people, without receiving any consent from them. She then explains that the Nuremberg code was later established to prevent such inhumane experiments. Since the code didn’t apply in America, researches like Southam and Mandel continued their experiments without informed consent. However, other doctors still found this to be immoral, and refused to participate in performing these experiments finding that, “Injecting cancer cells into a person without consent was a clear violation of basic human rights and Nuremberg code” (Skloot 132). Skloot compares the practice of American doctors to the inhumane experiments conducted on the Jews in Germany to have the readers see similarity between the immoral methods. Both practices did not receive consent from their patients. She uses research to find factual evidence about practices without consent that were made illegal in another country. By comparing the experiments conducted by American doctors to an extreme event, she leads the reader to develop the opinion that all practices without the consent of the patient are unjust. She includes the opinions of medical professionals to express their concern for these methods to the readers. A doctor from that time would have the greatest insight on the experiments that were being conducted and the practicality of them. The reader then sees it as logical that conducting potentially dangerous experiments without any consent is a violation of human rights.

First, they created the Nuremberg Code to set laws of experimentation. For example, it says ,” But the Nuremberg Code - like other codes that would come after it - wasn't law. It was a list of recommendations.” Another example, it says,” Those who did not know about it often thought of it as “ The Nazi Code, “ something that applied to barbarians and dictators, not to American doctors.” These pieces of textual evidence show how the Nuremberg Code was a list of recommendations that only applied to barbarians and dictators but wasn't law in the U.S.

Ethics, in our society, are the moral principles that govern our behavior, dictating what is right from wrong. The specifics of ethics changes as values in our society change and evolve. This occurs in Rebecca Skloots book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. One major reoccurring theme in the book is the lack of informed consent and autonomy. Fortunately, now there are safeguards which protect human rights in regard to health care and research. The Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, now part of the Department of Health and Human Services, created The Belmont Report, which is one such safeguard establishing principles for all human research (USDHHS, 1979). This paper will discuss the ethical issue of informed consent within The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the disregard to parts of the Belmont Report, as well as compare the role of the nurse in charge of Henrietta’s care versus the standards of care set for modern nurses.

Perret, Françoise. "The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code George J. Annas and Michael A. Grodin, The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code — Human Rights in Human Experimentation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992, 371 Pp. plus Lists, a Diagram and Photographs." International Review of the Red Cross 35.305 (1995): 227-28. Web.

Justice represents two rights; the right to fair treatment and the right to privacy. The right to fair treatment consists of being treated in a nonjudgmental, nonprejudiced manner and with respect. Those that do not complete the experiment cannot be denied treatment that may be established from the information gathered, nor can they be denied treatment if they seek outside treatment. The right to privacy provides limits that “their research is not more intrusive than it needs to be, that

In the case of the Public Health Service (PHS) experimenting on inmates at the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary for prophylaxis in gonorrhea, the study was abandoned at a critical stage in its development where a line would have been crossed, exposing moral and ethical boundaries set about in countries such as the U.S. as far as research on human subjects is concerned. The study was undergone with less regulation as a result of the decision to extend the research beyond borders to study syphilis, use subjects from a Guatemalan National Penitentiary with the mere consent of their supervisors (not from the subjects themselves), along with the differences in human rights policy in this nation, whereby human rights to justice and moral obligation issues were jeopardized. The questions would therefore be: can it be well argued that the actions of the PHS and the OverNow study were morally justifiable under the given circumstances while conducting their research abroad?

The Nuremberg Doctor’s trial of 1946 involves human experimentation performed by the Nazi doctors. These physicians were accused of conducting torturous “experiments” with concentration camp inmates. During these studies, physicians conducted treatments that were not permitted and caused severe injuries to the participants, and in some cases, participants died as a result of this. Prisoners were left to freeze to study more on hypothermia. Later, during December 9th, 1946 to August 20th, 1947 representatives establish a Nuremberg trial to prosecuted these doctors for the atrocities that they committed and 23 out 15 were found guilty. As a result, the Nuremberg code was created to

The Nuremberg Doctors Trial of 1946 is the preeminent case recognizing the importance of medical ethics and human rights specifically about human research subjects. The defendants in the trials include Nazi leadership, physicians, and investigators prosecuted for conducting unethical and inhumane medical experiments on civilians and prisoners of war resulting in extreme pain, suffering, permanent injury and often death. The Nuremberg Code, borne of these trials, establishes ethical guidelines for human experimentation to ensure the rights of subjects in medical research. Herein, this writer will first identify and discuss ethical dilemmas presented in the Nuremberg case followed by three

On 8th August, 1945, shortly after the end of World War II in May of 1945, the Allied governments entered into a joint agreement establishing the International Military Tribunal for the purpose of trying those responsible for the war atrocities. Whereas some 5,000 Nazi’s were charged with war crimes, the Nuremberg trials were designed specifically to prosecute high ranking Nazi officials with whom the authority for the commission of heinous atrocities rested.

In the tumultuous period leading up to World War II, a series of laws were devised in Nazi Germany that subjected the Jewish people to prohibitory and discriminatory forms of treatment. Although the Jewish people only accounted for 503,000 of the 55 million occupants of the country, Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship preached the incorporation of anti-Semitism into law and practice in order to quell the people he considered to be the enemy of the country.

Tens of thousands of people have been tortured, killed, or experimented on for unfair and unjust reasons. Some of the people didn’t sign up for what they thought it was and were manipulated into the situations. Others were forced upon the inhuman cruelties that no person should ever have to endeavor. Without the Nuremberg Code, tons of unethical experiments were being conducted. The Nuremberg Code is a very important document in regulating all scientific research for the better of humans now, and in the future.

The Nuremberg trials after all this time still remain the benchmark for judging international crimes and this historical event has been used for studies, researches to find some insight as what defines an international law. Crimes against humanity saw its birth after World War II. The establishment of the United Nations in 1945 was a giant step in

Nuremberg Code is a set of 10 sophisticate principles regarding ethical clinical research on human being (Grodin, 1994). It is mainly for protection of subjects’ human right (Shuster, 1997), such as compulsory of informed consent and the equal authority of subjects as the physician-researcher to end the experiment.