Scientific Murder:
Human Experimentation in Nazi Germany
The Nazi's were infamous for their cruel and unusual experiments on humans. Although they played a small part of Nazi Germany's attempt at racial hygiene, these experiments desecrated and exterminated thousands of humans (Lifton 269). "The Nazi medical experiments of the 1930's and 1940's are the most famous example of recent disregard for ethical conduct " (Polit & Hungler 127). For the sake of science, thousands lost their lives "I have no words. I thought we were human beings. We were living creatures. How could they do things like that?" (Auschwitz survivor as quoted in Lifton 269). Was it really science, or was it murder?
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Friedlander quotes Henrich Bunke saying, "It provided the opportunity to collaborate with experienced professors, to do scientific work, and to complete my education." as his excuse for joining T4 (127). Autopsies were the greatest opportunity for these young physicians. As a result, human organs were available for research (Friedlander 127).
With the beginning of this program, scientists made the decision to utilize the killing program to benefit research. Two institutes for research took a great part in benefiting from the killings. "The clinic for Psychiatry and Neurology of Heidelberg University, directed by Professor Carl Schneider, and the observation ward and research station at the state hospital in Brandenburg-Gorden, headed by Hans Heinze" (Friedlander 127).
The experiments done on the camp prisoners can be divided into two categories. The first was created to help the war effort and was performed by the medical services of the German military. The Luftwaffe (German Air Force) performed high altitude experiments on camp prisoners to test conditions experienced by pilots. Other examples of military experiments were inducing hypothermia, human toleration of seawater ingestion, and immunization experiments against several diseases (Friedlander 132). Women were used in military experiments to test treatment of combat
The purpose of this lab was to test different substances using various procedures to see what biomolecules were present and ultimately find out what restaurant Anna Lyza had eaten at before she died. For the first control test, we used vegetable oil to test for lipids. So, if the solution does not contain lipids, it does not become translucent when placed onto a paper bag square and held up to a light. So, it is a negative result. However, in the presence of lipids, the solution will become translucent when placed onto a paper bag square and held up to a light. Therefore in this case, the result is positive. On the other hand, we used albumin egg to test for proteins in another control test. If the solution does not contain proteins, it will not experience any color change and so it is a negative result. When there are proteins existing in the solution, it will turn bluish/purplish and for this reason it is a positive result. Furthermore in the third control test, we used dextrose to test for simple carbohydrates such as glucose. If the solution does not contain simple carbohydrates, it will not undergo any color change and will remain a blue color. So, it is a negative result in this circumstance. If there are simple carbohydrates present in the solution, the solution will turn reddish and so the result is positive. For the last control test, we used starch solution to test
Experiments were done on prisoners for many different reasons. They were done to push the Nazis agenda that the Aryan race is the dominant race, and that they should be the only race. This idea is also known as eugenics. Some experiments were done in attempt to find a way to multiply the Aryan race faster by performing experiments on twins. They wanted to make sure that Aryans were the only ones reproducing because they thought they were the dominate race. To enforce this, they did experiments that would insure this idea through sterilization for males and females. They were trying to find new medicines to cure different diseases and conditions for the Aryan race. They wanted to find a way to make the Aryan race stronger and healthier and a way to multiply their race more quickly, because they believed that they were the superior race.
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.
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.
The Holocaust was a terrible event that will never be forgotten. One of the worst events that happened was the experiments done on Jews. The experiments done on Jews during the Holocaust, such as freezing experiments, genetic experiments, and experiments on organs, were inhumane and unjustifiable.
The freezing and hypothermia experiments were tested upon males to test the conditions of the warriors suffered out in the fields. Tons of German soldiers died of freezing temperatures or were paralyzed by cold injuries. They only used healthy men in these experiments, though, because the week men would not be equal to the soldiers.
Frankenstein is a fictional story, however the universal theme of lack of ethics in scientific experimentation can be pulled from this story and applied to modern times. During World War 2, Nazi scientists performed grueling experiments, utterly blinded by what they were doing in a pursuit to learn the secrets of life. Joseph Mengele, infamously known as the “Angel of Death”, engaged in human
To investigate efficient malaria treatments, inmates were infected by mosquitoes and then treated with various drugs. The Nazis also tried to immunize subjects against tuberculosis by injecting live tubercles bacilli into their lungs. This method failed and about 200 subjects ended up dead.
The doctors who examined the incoming prisoners and sorted them also worked in these hospitals performing medical research on the ill. This medical research was mostly placing the Jewish prisoners in ice water baths then monitoring them until they died. This research was mostly used to prevent hypothermia if German Pilots ever ended up being stranded in the ocean. Some of the experiments performed by doctors often had no research purpose at all, such as experiments involving eye color changing using chemical droppers and the surgical sewing of children together to create siamese twins. Auschwitz was the largest death camp with 20,000 Jews being killed a day and 39 subcamps.
The medical torture they orchestrated makes the forced lobotomies and shock therapy seen in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” pale in comparison. One of the main goals of the medical experiments was to research different
They were also done in other concentration camps SS Major Dr. Helmuth Vetter was stationed in several concentration camps. At the order of Bayer Leverkusen, he performed many horrible experiments on the prisoners. The experiments performed, led to many prisoner deaths. At the same time was Dr. Joseph Mengele, they experimented with many medications, not only were they applied to sick prisoners, they were applied to the healthy ones as well.
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
One type of experiment that the Nazis performed on the prisoners of the concentration camps could fall into the classification of twin experiments. These experiments dealt with twins going through examination and observation. Taken for examination, the twins entered the concentration camps for “three days of what must have been psychological examination and three days of laboratory experiments” (“The Holocaust: Nazi Medical Experiments”, 1998). During these three days when the experiments took place, the doctors photographed the twins to compare features between the twins. After the twins went through examination and the process of photographing, “Mengele and his collaborators dispatched them with a single injection of chloroform to the heart,” (Tyson, 2000). Mengele conducted most of the twin experiments at the Auschwitz camp because he found twins very intriguing, so he dedicated his time to their experiments. During and after the injection, “care was taken to ensure the twins died at the same time. The
They performed cruel experiments under the name of scientific inquiry. Hitler’s physician, Karl Brandt, said that the camps were the perfect laboratories for their experiments. The doctors in the camps thought of the people as experiments and worthless. To them, using them for medical purposes was a way to make their life meaningful, and if they died because of this nothing was lost. They put gasoline inside of people and then shocked them with electricity to see if this would kill them, and they took away food from prisoners and watched how long it would take to starve to death. According to Tamara L. Roleff, the author of The Holocaust: Death Camps, “The final objective was the production of pure Germans in numbers sufficient to replace the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, all of whom were condemned to be destroyed, but who for the moment we're living on those territories declared vital to the Third Reich. (Nazi
Without the Nuremberg Code there was many contradictories in the field of science that was cruel to humanity. For example, many experiments done in the Nazi Experimentations were completely unnecessary and resulted in tons of deaths. An article about the sun lamp experiment states, “The victims were placed under sunlamps which were so hot they would burn the skin. One young homosexual victim was repeatedly cooled to unconsciousness then revived with lamps until he was pouring with sweat. He died one evening after several test sessions” (“Medical Experiments”). This experiment wasn’t justified with any reasonable explanation for why it was done. They should of stopped when he went unconscious the first time instead of continuously torturing him by repeating the procedure. Another time the Nazi scientists went to far was with the twin cases. The article later says, “After three weeks of tortuous medical examinations they were taken to the dissection laboratory. Using