Nazi Medical Experiment Essay

The horrific experiments of Dr. Mengele demonstrate the cruelty of the Nazi’s during the holocaust. Most of the world today knows of Dr. Mengele of having been the doctor of death for being responsible for killing more than 6 million Jews.

In 1933-1945, under Adolf Hitler, the National Socialist German Workers' party detained political control over Germany. Members of this group more commonly known as the Nazi party, wanted to institute Germany as a dominant world power. They began by establishing a dictatorship over all cultural, economic, and political activities of the people (Nazis). This would launch the beginning of the Holocaust, a massive massacre of roughly 11 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war, mentally handicapped, and countless more (The Simon). Most of these deaths occurred in concentration camps that developed all throughout Europe. In particular camps such as Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck, and Sachsenhausen, medical experiments were cold-heartedly performed on selected prisoners without consent and generally, concluded in death, mutilation or permanent disability (Nazi Science). Schools all over America teach a broad history of the Holocaust and the concentration camps to their students at some point in time. However, from experience, I do not recall ever discussing these medical experiments or the Nuremberg Code that resulted from them. The Nuremburg code was created just after the Nuremburg trials following WWII. These trials were held before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg against leading Nazi doctors, whom twenty-three received charges with War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity as evidence exposed the many merciless tortures they had

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.

Holocaust prisoners left, together, in cold dark water for hours at a time. Were their punishments for nothing? Or did their suffering somehow help us today? Between the years of 1939 and 1945, also known as the Holocaust; the Nazi’s took test subjects from groups of people to perform procedures and experiments on. Unfortunately, all of these so-called “important tests” were exceptionally inhumane. A few examples of the procedures performed were leaving prisoners in freezing cold water for three hours straight or only allowing them to drink pure ocean water for two weeks straight. For the most part, what those German doctors did was unnecessary due to the fact that the outcome was highly predictable. But over the course of the intense studies, a few valid and useful tidbits of information did surface. Some of the research findings from Nazi medical testings during the Holocaust continue to benefit today's modern medical development.

This section of Chalmers’ book makes the reader ponder the morality of medical experiments like abortions, stem cell research, and infanticide in the world today and questions whether we have learned from Nazi medical experiments in the past.

Did you know the Nazis have been doing research on diseases? In the book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Skloot explains how the Nazis are associated with using prisoners to do research on diseases.

“I will remember that there is an art to medicine as well as a science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife and the chemist’s drug.” (Louis Lasagna). However, the doctors of the holocaust didn’t care, and used the victims as guinea pigs for the results. The medical experiments performed during the Holocaust had horrific outcomes for those experimented upon.

When looking at the holocaust, it is widely known the devastation and pain that was caused by the Nazis; however when inspecting the holocaust on a deeper level, it is evident that the Jews were exposed to unimaginable treatment and experimentation often overlooked in history discussions. When looking at “Night”, Elie Wiesel was helped by the doctors in the camp when his foot was severely infected; although this is not the experience he had, many Jews were mistreated and even killed by the doctors. Many Nazi doctors that were assigned to Jewish patients were later found to have exposed the patients to horrific medical experiments and unnecessary treatments that commonly led to their death.

There were many ways that the Nazi tortured the Jews during the Holocaust. They harmed them both mentally and physically, but the most horrific kind of torture was the physical abuse. The Nazis tortured, killed, and experimented on the Jews in an inhuman way. The experimentations that were conducted by the doctors were very horrendous and shocking. They had three categories for the experiments: military, biomedical, and racial/ideological. Though all the types of experimentations were terrible, the biomedical category was the most appalling. In the biomedical experimentations, the doctors did some cruel studies on the prisoners that included injecting diseases, inflicting wounds, and killing them to observe body functions. They were

World War Two, a harsh period of time in the 1930s-1940s, filled with controversial arguments, political battles, fights to the death, but most importantly, medical advancements. Did you know that without the research and discoveries made during World War Two, our medical programs would probably be lacking the information we have today? It’s very true, and in my opinion, the war strengthened our medical abilities, and it really put our world to the test. New medicine had been discovered, while old medicine had been improved; horrible medical experiments performed by the Nazis occurred during this time; but most importantly, World War Two has affected our medical programs that we have presently. These

Chemical usage and experimentation has always been an extremely vague subject back during Word War !!. However, I.G. Farben's gas chamber was able to produce deadly Zyklon B Gas that was used in the gasing of Jews in concentration camp of Auschwitz. This brand new technology at the time provided the Nazis with a quick and efficient way to kill off Jews fast, as there

Some of the experiments they used them for included treatments for hypothermia, maximum height that crews from damaged aircraft could parachute to safety, making seawater safe to drink, treatments for contagious diseases, test drug efficacy, sterilization, and Josef Mengele’s experiments on twins (Medical). Although many other SS physicians conducted experiments in the camps, Mengele’s are the most famous. Before he came to the camps, he performed numerous experiments on twins. When he arrived at the camps he was told it was okay to kill them, so he took that opportunity to perform long, painful and dangerous experiments

1.) The Nazi medical experiments included injecting individuals with viruses and gasoline, making them ingest poisons, and submersing them in ice water (Protecting Human Research Participants, 2008).. Although their experiments were inhumane the medical field has benefited from the medical experiments that were conducted. Dr. Josef Mengele was a geneticist that was know as the "Angel of Death" at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He is very well known for his studies on his twin experiments. He also would conduct experiments that he would hope to change the individual's eye color by injecting certain chemicals in their eyes (Bulow, 2015).

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