Informed Consent Research Paper

The central ethical conflict when reading The Clara Cell: a Third Reich Eponym by Winkelman and Noack would be taking tissue from the executed prisoners without warning or prior knowledge of approval to use there sample for an experiment. In the article, it mentions how “Clara crossed an ethical line by experimenting on one of the prisoners prior to execution” (Winkelman and Noack, 2009). It is very important for clients to know their rights as well as the client’s family even when they pass away. Although his findings were significant, there were many ethical violations that Dr. Clara violated. Dr. Clara clearly did not take account the feelings of the prisoner’s families and friends when conducting this study nor of the people who were kept imprisoned by the Nazi Regime, which he ultimately violated many APA code of ethics.

Have you ever taken the time to think about what the people of the holocaust went through? There were Jews, German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and deviant people captured and transported to the concentration camps just because the Nazis did not think the were good enough. These people suffered from extensive torment, and neglect throughout the holocaust and in the concentration camps. There was hardly any food and because of that many died. They were also medically experimented on which killed them because there were many medicines tried on them and some were even injected with the disease itself. This paper will cover, medical experiments done on the captured, traveling to reach the concentration camps, and the treatment of the captured people.

While Elie Wiesel is surely right in his statement, it is not the job of only holocaust survivors, but of all people, to make sure that the horror of the Holocaust are never forgotten. One part of the Holocaust, however, is often overlooked by the general public; The Nazi Medical experiments conducted on the prisoners of the concentration camps. Acknowledging the atrocity of these experiments,

During World War II, the Nazi conducted several experiments on their Jewish prisoners without their consent. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum there were there three types of experiments that where conducted to the prisoners1. The first type of experiment that was conducted was to improve the survival of the Axis military personnel in the frontline1. High-altitude experiments were conducted to see the effects of high altitude on the human body. The prisoners were put in low-pressure chambers to determine at what altitude it was safe for a pilot to eject from an aircraft that had been damage and was going down1. In the second type of experiment, prisoners were used to develop and test treatments for the most common illnesses

Edward Jenner's first test subject was the son of his gardner. Jenner infected him with cowpox from the pus he scrapped from the hand of a female farm worker. This directly contridicts the standard set by the Nuremburg Code along with the WHO Ethicial Guidelines. The Nuremburg Code was a set of moral and ethical standards that scientists

During World War II, a number of German physicians conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent. Unethical medical experimentation carried out during the Third Reich may be divided into three categories. The three categories consisted of experiments aimed at facilitating the survival of Axis military personnel. The second category of experimentation aimed at developing and testing pharmaceuticals and treatment methods for injuries and illnesses which German military and occupation personnel encountered in the field. While the third category of medical experimentation sought to advance the racial and ideological tenets of the Nazi worldview (https://www.ushmm.org).

During the Holocaust, doctors had free reign to do whatever they wanted to any prisoner at any of the concentration camps. The majority of the prisoners were to be sent to the gas chambers and killed, so the doctors justified their torturous experiments by saying the patients were fated to die anyways. “Thus, instead of doing their job, instead of bringing assistance and comfort to the sick people who needed them most, instead of helping the mutilated and the handicapped to live, eat, and hope one more day, one more hour, doctors became their executioners” (Spitz 191). When men and women become doctors they take a vow. In this vow they state to keep the sick from harm and injustice and to never give any patient a deadly drug. The doctors of the Holocaust simply must have come to the conclusion that this vow, that they were required to make, no longer applied to them and the prisoners they were “treating”.

For example, in the years 1918 to 1922, research led by Dr. Leo L. Stanley at California’s San Quentin State Prison caused prisoners to be exposed to many experiments, such as getting transplanted testicles from recently dead prisoners or receiving “transplanted sex organs from rams, goats, and boars” (Krans). However, it seems that prisoner testing became more valuable around the time of War World II (1939-1945) because there were more cases on record. During the war, the Nazi doctors would do fatal experiments on prisoners without their consent (“Research with Prisoners”). For instance, Luftwaffe in 1942 did research on on hypothermia (Frater). One experiment happened when prisoners were put in a “tank of ice water for up to three hours” (Frater). Another one was when prisoners were left “naked in the open for several hours with temperatures below freezing” (Frater). These inmates were frequently told that the experiments were to help the German military

It is widely recognised that conducting violent research against moral is a crime, such as the experiments at the Nazi camp. However, it is a controversy on how to treat the results from these unethical researches. In my point of view, the results are separate from the moral obligations to the researcher, although the suffering and rights should be seriously respected. The results from unethical researches should be accessible to the public due to its value and validity, but should also be published and referenced under restrictions.

Concerns about human and animal use in research began in the late 1800s; throughout this time, there was a series of medical experiments performed by the Nazi German leaders on prisoners during World War II, as well as the Tuskegee syphilis study. Reports of abuse from

Until the end of World War II, researchers established their own ethical standards and safeguards for human participants in their research. However, not all researchers were committed to the ethical treatment of human participants. The major impetus for a shift from individualized ethical guidelines was the uncovering of the brutal experiments performed on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. A variety of sadistic “medical experiments” were conducted on unwilling participants. Some examples include breaking and re-breaking of bones (to see how many times they could be broken before healing failed to occur) and exposure to extremes of high altitude and freezing water (to see how long a person could survive). As a results of these atrocities

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.

These Nazi Germans were on the brink of performing certain medical research on Jews that seemed more as torture than experimental. Such experiments entailed procedures such as, “The icy vat method [where a probe was inserted in their rectums and] the victim was then placed in the vat of cold water to freeze,” (Holocaust). Such experiments would help them discover what? Apparently this was indeed necessary for the Nazis were invading Russia and needed this intel on how to survive in the brittle cold they were venturing into. But we all know what will happen when the human body is exposed to these extreme cold temperatures: death. And even after countless deaths with these heating and freezing experiments the doctors would continue conducting them… straying from their original intentions. After all, how many Jews had to freeze to death until they got the concept? Apparently by genocide, the murder of hostages, reprisal raids, forced labor, "euthanasia," starvation, exposure, medical experiments, and terror bombing, and in the concentration and death camps, the Nazis murdered from 15,003,000 to 31,595,000 people (Rummel). This immense casualty of human lives lost for a few curious doctors wondering “What would happen if they ___” emphasizes the amount of unnecessary experimentation taking place. All of these human beings were poked and prodded like lab rats. And

In the early to middle 1900’s human experimentation was extremely common and often did not require any consent. As this research was being conducted there were many developments in medicine and research, but the way these experiments were performed were not ethically acceptable. During this time scientists had easy access to the terminally ill, hospitalized patients and soldiers which allowed them to do all of this scientific research. According to Horner and Minifie (2011), without consent from patients, many diseases were transmitted, such as gonorrhea, cancer and countless other diseases as well. These experimentations were condoned by some, but not everyone had the same outlooks toward it. A lot of these experiments eventually hit the media,

As a result, big groups of studies were formed by scientists in the concentration camps who conducted painful and immoral experiments with the Jews. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in the article "Nazi Medical Experiments" they affirm that " … a number of German physicians conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent." These scientists were employed to experiment in Jews many different studies and hypothesis to create improvements for their own gain. Studies were then divided in three different