Необходимо ли избавиться от эпонимов врачей-нацистов?

Abstract

Hippocrates said: «Whoever succeeds in the sciences and lags behind in morality is more harmful than useful». The activities of doctors are a feat, a great sacrifice. This became especially evident now, during a new coronavirus infection, when doctors, saving the lives of others, died in line of duty. However, in the history of medicine there were also monster doctors who committed terrible acts to people. For example, during the World War II, Japanese doctors in Unit 731 became notorious (their names are known in politics, but they did not enter the history of medicine), as well as a Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, nicknamed Angel of Death. There also were doctors who were both scientists and ruthless killers. Among them are the German doctors who, having made a great contribution to medicine, in wartime became adherents of Nazi ideology and made brutal experiments on people (their names are preserved in medicine as eponyms of diseases discovered by them). The article outlines the historical facts of wartime medical and scientific activity, as well as our opinion on the still open question: should the diseases bear the eponyms of Nazi doctors, whose names have been preserved in history as «scientists» who lost their human appearance?