Values Conflict Paper - Nuremberg Trials
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
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Ethical Standards
1.02 Self-Determination
The second subsection of the NASW Code of Ethics is 1.02 Self-Determination. This standard highlights the clients’ right to be involved in the decision making process regarding his/her treatment and care, to include refusing treatment. This standard also speaks to the clients’ understanding that these rights may be limited by the social worker “…when, in the social workers’ professional judgment, clients’ actions or potential actions pose a serious, foreseeable, and imminent risk to themselves or others” (NASW website, 2017). Nazi scientists and physicians conducted torturous and human experiments on prisoners of war held in concentration camps throughout Germany. These involuntary experimental subjects were not involved in the decision-making process regarding their treatment and care and were, in fact, “treated” against their will. “Prisoners were forced to drink poisoned water and breathe noxious gases.” (Gambrill, 2004, p. 14). Doctors forcing individuals to participate in clinical trials directly contradicts the ethical standard of self-determination hence the application to the Nuremberg case.
1.03 Informed Consent The third subsection of the NASW Code of Ethics is 1.03
Mengele – The doctor violated this principle simply by harming his subjects. Dr. Mengele performed numerous experiments to include surgical procedures without anesthesia, collection and harvesting of tissue samples, and murdering subjects to facilitate a post-mortem examination (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ND). Dr. Mengele’s experiments demonstrated no beneficence for his subjects.
The central ethical conflicts of the Clara’s case are several infringements committed regarding human rights in human experimentation. According to the American Psychological Association Code of Ethics [APA] (2010) experiments such as Clara would have violated several sections from standard 8: 8.01 (obtaining institutional approval), 8.02 (participants’ informed consent), 8.04 (client/patient, student, and subordinate respect to continue in research), 8.07 (deception in research), and 8.09 (humane care). Section 8.01 indicates that researchers must obtain approval prior
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
Nuremberg Code of 1947 was written after the Second World War, in which German physicians who participated in the Nazi concentration camps were prostituted for unethical human experiment. ("Nuremberg Code", n.d.) The Nuremberg code of 1947 contain ten points about proper consent, how the study should positive impact on population, the need for pre-existing knowledge, the avoidance of any harm or suffering to the participants and concluding the study if injury or risk for death occurs, if the risk exceed benefits the study needs to stop, the freedom to leave the study at any time if the participants are unable of continuing, and lastly, the staff must stop the study if they believe conditions are dangerous. (Post, 2004) Although the Tuskegee study started before the Nuremburg code of ethics were established, the Tuskegee study continue until 1972 in which the researchers ignored the Nuremburg code and continue with their unethical study. The researchers failed to properly inform the participants of the study and to obtain proper consent. Furthermore, the researchers cause harm to the Tuskegee participants by not providing them the proper treatment for their illness and not allow the participants to leave the study when they weren’t able to continue. Thus, unethical behaviors continue even when guidelines were provided to the researchers and the researchers failed to
Back in the times of the Holocaust, after the war took place, some of those who were responsible for the crimes committed, were taken to trial. Those trials took place on 1945 and 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany. The Nuremberg trials conveyed to open consideration the most noticeably bad of the Nazi abominations. “Judgment at Nuremberg” breathes life into those trials. Right up until today, the Nuremberg trials remain as a model for universal criminal tribunals, due in huge measure to the spotlight tossed at them by Mann's emotional translation of the notable occasions. Mann's staggering sympathy strikes at the heart of human, enduring his accomplishment has been to reaffirm humankind and equity in the wake of unspeakable malice; as the world remembers
On the 8th of August 1945, a mere three months after the victory of the Allied forces over Nazi Germany, the four major victorious powers (Great-Britain, the United States of America, the Soviet Union and France) signed the “London Agreement”. This agreement led to the establisment of a International Military Court, which aimed at trying and sentencing German war criminals (1).
“If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.” Anne Frank, a holocaust survivor had once said that. The Nuremberg Trials had many Nazi’s killed during the process. The Jews had been suffering during the Holocaust and then it was the Nazi’s turn. The Nuremberg Trials had either left the Nazi’ alive but in prison or completely dead. The Nuremberg Trials had many impacts on the world and also the future. Firstly, the Nuremberg Trials were held during 1945 to 1946. Secondly, the trials had devastated their reputation. Lastly, there is Nazi’s still alive today but most of them are dead.
In the 1940’s, post World War II, the Nuremberg trials were held. The Nuremberg Trials were for Nazi German officers who had participated in the planning of the atrocities done to the Jewish people during the holocaust. One of the charges was experimentation of Jewish people from concentration camps, similar to how we treat our prisoners in Jails today. Prisoners are a very vulnerable population who have been tested on for a long time, many unethical tests have been done to penitentiaries across the country and many times they are forced to test by employees of the prisons. The ethics of allowing prisoners to participate in medical research is very wrong and should not be admitted to.
Bioethics was enforced following negative events such as conducting research experiments on humans by Nazis.
The Nuremberg Trials were a critical point in the history of international law because it established the fact that humanity has the need of an international shield to shelter and protect. This event was responsible for contributing in the ongoing process of developing rules that are binding between states and nations also known as international laws. The judgment of the trials may be one of the most important events in the history of international law due to the fact that it assisted in establishing laws against war crimes. One of the biggest questions raised was whether causing a war was an international crime that would be punishable or not. Many believed there was no
More than half a century has passed since the end of World War Two and to this day it is still difficult to fully understand the severity of what was by far the most destructive war in human history. More than sixty million people were killed during World War Two and more than half of those were innocent town’s people. Among the dead were over six million Jews, which was two thirds of the total living race in Europe at the time. Beyond these general statistics were thousands of stories of crimes committed against soldiers and civilians. These crimes against humanity included cases of prisoners of war being murdered, sent to concentration camps and abuse as well as harmless civilians being rounded up and
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.
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.
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.
The US government has erected stringent protections for the prison populations to be left out of medical research entirely. However, such routine exclusion may harm the public good as well as the prisoners. Ethical principles for research with human subjects should be applied to avoid unconscionable violations of human rights. Further, performing medical experiments without the consent of the prisoners constitutes crimes against humanity. This