Jews and other devalued and dehumanized groups were regarded as fitting “material” for medical and biological experiments that were forbidden under Germany’s Guidelines for Human Experimentation (1931) (details above). These included handicapped persons and numerous ethnic and groups who were expelled from German society. Foremost among these were Jews, who…
Physicians were not pawns of the Nazi regime; they legitimized mass murder. In contradiction to the myth perpetuated by both the German and American medical establishments; the vast majority of physicians and biological scientists lent their support to Racial Hygiene laws. They provided the “scientific” ideological justification for exterminating carriers…
Buchenwald Trial at Dachau, April 11 –August 14, 1947 Between July 1937 and April 1945, some 250,000 persons of 30 nationalities were imprisoned at various times at Buchenwald; by Feb. 1945, there were 112,000 prisoners at Buchenwald. It is estimated that about 56,000 were killed or died from starvation and…
Judgment at Nuremberg All sixteen Nazi doctors were found guilty; seven were sentenced to death and executed, nine were convicted and sentenced to prison, and seven were acquitted. Karl Gebhardt was found guilty of “crimes against humanity” and war crimes for his experimental atrocities at Ravensbrück and was hanged. His…
The revelations at Nuremberg were extremely discomforting to the American medical establishment: the sheer unprecedented scale of immorality of the Nazi doctors was staggering — and the potential of guilt by association. The fact that the American medical profession had also enthusiastically embraced eugenics; Americans provided financial support for Nazi…
Tom Koch PhD, is among the best known, most prolific writers you’ve probably never heard about. An ethicist, writer, and researcher specializing in the care of the fragile, he holds a multi-disciplinary PhD (medicine, ethics/philosophy, geography) from the University of British Columbia. In Toronto he serves as a medical ethicist…
Part 3 of 4. Though bioethicists self-consciously avoid using the term — because of its inextricable link to Nazi ideology. . . .
Part 2 of 4. The Medical Research Enterprise: a confluence of self-interest groups: government officials, academic researchers. . . .
“The OHRP and SUPPORT — Another View” by a group of 45 physicians, ethicists, and scholars in allied fields who have stepped up to the plate to express their support for OHRP’s determination. . . .
Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2005 pp. 111-124 Screening for Mental Illness: The Merger of Eugenics and the Drug Industry Vera Hassner Sharav, MLS New York, NY The implementation by the President’s New Freedom Commission (NFC) to screen the entire United States population – children…
Commentary by Vera Hassner Sharav February 18, 2002 FYI United States Government Sponsored Genetic Research in Rural China Raises Troubling Ethical Concerns A January 2002 report in China Daily, byXiong Lei, the senior journalist with China Features, Xinhua News Agency(below), raises troubling ethical concerns about U.S. government-sponsoredgenetic research in rural…
Depressed? NYC Screens for People at Risk – NY Times Wed, 13 Apr 2005 A front page article in The New York Times reports that the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, has instructed doctors at City hospitals – who care for one in four New Yorkers…
