Medical Crimes Research Articles

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45, and the American Cover-up

ABSTRACT The Nazi medical crimes against humanity are familiar. Much less familiar are the medical crimes inflicted by Japanese army physicians in Manchuria during much of this same period—crimes that match, both in scope and brutality, anything performed by the Nazi physicians in Europe.In Factories of Death, Sheldon Harris, emeritus professor of history at California State University at Northridge, provides the most comprehensive account to date of the Japanese medical experiments, an impressive piece of scholarship that tells how doctors abused human bodies to test biowarfare agents and how US government authorities after the war refused to prosecute, choosing instead to exploit the information gathered for the American biowarfare effort at Fort Detrick.The story begins in 1932, when the Japanese army gave 200 000 yen and a command of 300 men to Ishii Shiro, a young professor of immunology with the rank of major in the medical corps, to

Repressing, Remembering, Working Through: German Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis, and the "Missed Resistance" in the Third Reich

In 1949 Alexander Mitscherlich, a lecturer in psychiatry, and Fred Mielke, a medical student, published Wissenschaft ohne Menschlichkeit for a research commission formed by the West German Physicians Chambers that documented the recent doctors' trial at Nuremberg. The foreword by the members of the working group that sent the commission to Nuremberg observed that of the 90,000 doctors active in wartime Germany, only about 350 had committed medical crimes. This observation was echoed by Mitscherlich and Mielke in the preface, but at the same time they pointed to a larger moral crisis among German doctors as a whole.' This book was largely ignored by the medical profession in Germany one indication of the tensions and disagreements existing among physicians regarding their profession's conduct under Hitler.2 Wissenschaft ohne Menschlichkeit includes a chapter on the sterilization and murder of mental patients but, in following the trials, concentrates on bureaucrats and medical experiments rather than on the role of psychiatrists in the so-called T 4 program. Mitscherlich, who with his wife Margarete would become a leading psychoanalytic critic of the postwar German denial of the Nazi past, was himself entangled in the skeins of history and memory regarding his own profession's immediate past.3 This is evident in the small flier included with Wissenschaft ohne Menschlichkeit advertising Psyche, a journal for depth psychology founded by Mitscherlich, who now returned to public life. The flier claims that Psyche is the only German publication carrying on the tradition of earlier journals that had been forced to cease

FROM HAECKEL TO HACKETHAL: LESSONS FROM NAZI MEDICINE FOR STUDENTS AND PRACTITIONERS OF MEDICINE

In discussing such issues as euthanasia and eugenics there has been no lack of oblique references to Nazi medicine and the Nuremberg Trials. It is as if the impact of Nazi medicine on medical ethics has been most pronounced in its rhetoric, and regrettably also in inapt comparisons Is it possible at all to profitably apply the Nazi analogy to the problems of normal medicine? The thousand threads which linked the medical crimes inside the camps with the conduct of "innocent" doctors, nurses, civil administrators etc. outside, have been subjected to new scrutiny during the past decade. The results of these explorations are highly significant. They run the whole gamut from wishful Ignorance and timorous acquiescence to deliberate cooperation with the Nazi health policy of many officials and citizens. The silence of the outside world allowed the "few" perpetrators of medical crimes to have their way. Normal medicine has many important lessons to learn from this passivity and compliance of doctors and the public. This topic ought to be included in obligatory courses and examinations of medical ethics.

Doctors of Infamy—The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article ArticleNo AccessDoctors of Infamy—The Story of the Nazi Medical CrimesGLENN E. MYERSGLENN E. MYERSSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Apr 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.107.2.151AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail "Doctors of Infamy—The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes." American Journal of Psychiatry, 107(2), p. 151 Access content To read the fulltext, please use one of the options below to sign in or purchase access. Personal login Institutional Login Sign in via OpenAthens Purchase Save for later Item saved, go to cart PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry $35.00 Add to cart PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry Checkout Please login/register if you wish to pair your device and check access availability. Not a subscriber? Subscribe Now / Learn More PsychiatryOnline subscription options offer access to the DSM-5 library, books, journals, CME, and patient resources. This all-in-one virtual library provides psychiatrists and mental health professionals with key resources for diagnosis, treatment, research, and professional development. Need more help? PsychiatryOnline Customer Service may be reached by emailing [email protected] or by calling 800-368-5777 (in the U.S.) or 703-907-7322 (outside the U.S.). FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byPsychiatry, Vol. 59, No. 3 Volume 107Issue 2 August 1950Pages 151-151 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 April 2006 Published in print 1 August 1950

Book Reviews

Book Reviews Get access ALEXANDER MITSCHERLICH and FRED MIELKE. Doctors of Infamy: The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes. Translated by Heinz Norden. With Statements by Three American Autiorities Identified with the Nuremberg Medical Trial: Andrew C. Ivy, M.D., Telford Taylor, Brigadier General U.S. Army, Leo Alexander, M.D.; and a note on Medical Ethics by Albert Deutsch (including the New Hippocratic Oath of die World Medical Association). New York, Henry Schuman, 1949. xxxix + 172 + xiii pp. Illus. $3.00 ERNEST M. GRUENBERG ERNEST M. GRUENBERG New Haven, Conn Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume V, Issue Summer, Summer 1950, Pages 345-b–349, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/V.Summer.345-b Published: 01 July 1950

Debate on the report of prof. A. D. Guseva

Debate on the report of prof. A.D. Guseva - "Medical Errors and Medical Crimes".

Medical errors and medical crimes

The position of a forensic medical expert in cases of bringing physicians to justice is extremely difficult for an expert to assess not only the actions of a physician, but also all the conditions affecting the work of a doctor, and only from the totality of these data can one or the other conclusion be drawn.

Opening address by N.M.A. Chairman Prof. S.M. Schwarz

The reports of Professors A. D. Gusev and T. D. Epstein "Medical errors and crimes, their causes and ways for their elimination", which are on the agenda of the plenary session of the Scientific Medical Association, should be of great interest to a wide range of doctors.