The Nazi Doctors Trial In Nuremberg, Germany

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.

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 chapter on Nazi medical experiments in Chalmers’ book is one of the most fascinating chapters because it examines the different types of techniques that the Nazi’s used to sterilize men and women. Chalmers explains that women were particularly subject to medical experiments because the Nazis were obsessed with destroying inferior races and wanted to perfect the art of sterilization so no more undesirable elements would be born (Ibid 123). However, both men and women were subject to Nazi medical experiments like medical injections, X-Rays, and chemicals, which resulted in burnt skin, abnormalities, and death. Among these experimentations many chemical companies, doctors, and University professors supported the experiments being done on

“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.

Conditions of crisis and instability within a country or situation render it impossible for human rights to flourish. In The Nazi Doctors, Lifton explores the psychology of the doctors during the Nazi regime who were able to commit atrocities such as sterilization, human experimentation, and mass murder. Throughout the book, Lifton demonstrates how in order to commit violence, there is no

There were many doctors used during the holocaust including Dr. Josef Mengele, Dr. Carl Clauberg, Dr. Herta Oberheuser, and Dr. Karl Brandit to be some of the main ones that performed horrific experiments. These doctors performed some of the most horrific experiments known to mankind. They did many experiments including freezing/hypothermia, genetics,

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

The Nuremberg code is a set of ethical guidelines for human experimentation. The code was created due to the Nuremberg trials that took place in 1946. An American military hearing opened accusing physicians of committing war crimes on humans. The trails revealed that German physicians led medical experiments on many concentration camp prisoners. This was an issue because the experiments were done without any consent form from the participants. Due to the severity and cruelty of the experiments most of the participants died or were permanently crippled as a result.

“The Nazi Doctors,” by Robert Jay Lifton focuses more on the impact that science and medicine had on developing the Nazi practice of mass murder. Lifton Argues that the most dangerous part of medicalizing death was the belief that the doctors were killing Jews in order to heal the society. Lifton goes on to argue that the reason the race had deteriorated was due to the mixing with the Jews, he describes the jews to be somewhat a cancer of the society. Mentions that scientific racism began the marginalization of jews and once they were put in death and concentration camps doctors saw to a large portion of the killing.

. "The Triumph of Hitler: The Nuremberg Laws." The History Place. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan 2013.

Lifton, Robert Jay. “Dr. Auschwitz: Josef Mengele.” The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic, 1986. 337-83. Print. 7 Apr. 2016.

The Nuremberg Code is a set of ten rules outline how medical research should be done in an ethical way. If the research being done breaks any of these rules it would not be considered ethical. All ten rules basically state that you need permission, the testing done cannot cause physical or mental harm and everyone involved must be medically trained. This Code was created after World War 2 when doctors like Joseph Mengele were conducting experiments on people that were in no way ethical. It doesn’t seem like something that would be needed in the modern world, but in an age where medicine is still be learned, diseases are still being studied, cures for those diseases are still being looked for, you do need a code for doctors to follow. You can

The Nazi regime, according to Agamben, is the first instance in which politics and medicine have ever