Nazi Experiments Research Articles

Sacrifices on the Altar of Science: The Case of Model Organisms

This research traces and examines specific examples of the application of model organisms during the experimentation of biomedical sciences and psychology. The main purpose of the study is to compare how scientists utilize animal models for experiments with specific cases of humans who were used as test subjects, focusing on methodologies and main motivations. A core question that motivated this work is: Can we use the term ‘‘model organisms’’ to refer to human beings? In other words, can human beings be considered analogue models, specifically model organisms? This study will try to respond to the above question, by drawing upon theoretical frameworks and definitions from the field of philosophy of science, particularly focusing on the concepts of the analogue model, model organisms, and animal model. It will also analyze specific examples of experimental utilization of animal models, such as Hippocratic physicians’ experiments involving goat brains, Galen's experiments on a pig during the Greco-Roman period, and the utilization of guinea pigs in modern scientific research. Finally, the study will examine historical examples where humans were used as test subjects including the Nazi medical experiments during World War II and the Stanford prison experiment conducted by psychology professor Philip G. Zimbardo.

‘Seeking Justice, Not Charity’. Medical Experiment Victims’ Struggle with Purposefully Inadequate Compensation

Abstract Germany’s initial Wiedergutmachung process did little good for survivors of Nazi medical experiments who struggled with uniquely devastating circumstances. Unable to navigate the nascent post-war compensation bureaucracy, many were left with shockingly little financial assistance, or none at all. That was even the case for one of the victims, Haim Nahon, who had the leadership of the primary restitution agency personally fighting on his behalf. Despite the focus of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany on communal relief and rehabilitation and not on individual compensation, Nahon’s plight was taken up by Benjamin Ferencz, Saul Kagan and other senior figures involved in Wiedergutmachung. Yet even their direct involvement in early compensation efforts, documented in this article in granular first-person accounts, could do little to help Nahon’s case. Nahon’s failed attempts to obtain “adequate” post-war compensation from Germany’s Ministry of Finance offer an unsettling case study of how willfully limited interpretations of the initial 1951 restitution fund had a lifelong cost for survivors of Nazi medical experiments.

Ethics and Law.

Ethics and Law.

Is it ethical to use hacked data in scientific research?

Hacked data — data obtained in an unauthorized manner through illicit access to a computer or computer network— are increasingly being used in scientific research. Examples include conflict modelling studies based on WikiLeaks datasets, and studies on sexual behaviour based on data leaked from Ashley Madison, a dating website hacked in 2015. Studies of this kind are prima facie lawful because the researchers who processed the data had no involvement in the hack itself, and the hacked datasets were made publicly available. However, research integrity is not simply reducible to lawfulness. We contend that the ethical acceptability of using datasets of illicit origin cannot simply be presumed, but requires ethical justification. Therefore, the scientific community is urged to address a fundamental ethical question: whether, and under which conditions, conducting research using hacked data can be considered a morally justifiable behaviour. This contribution will discuss and critically evaluate the ethical boundaries of research involving hacked data. This emerging ethical dilemma will be examined by analogy with previous debates on the ethics of research using data of unethical origin, such as research with data from Nazi medical experiments. Furthermore, we discuss the compatibility of research involving hacked data with current research ethics guidelines such as the Belmont Report. We posit that research using hacked data should be deemed ethically problematic. However, exceptions may be acknowledged, depending on how the data are processed and the overall value of the study to society. To this end, we propose six ethical and procedural requirements for conducting research with hacked data in an ethically responsible manner.

When Research Serves Good Purposes

When Research Serves Good Purposes

How Should We Regard Information Gathered in Nazi Experiments?

Immorally acquired information from Nazi experimentation or other sources infects the body of scientific and biomedical knowledge. Responding to this reality ethically means insisting on good teaching about the horrific history of such information's sources and careful deliberation about how it is referenced and described.

Body As an Object of Experimentation and the Emergence of Biomedicine Ethos

The purpose of the article is to study the influence of Nazi experiments on the formation of ideas about the ethos of science in the field of biomedicine. It is shown that the idea of discrediting a value-neutral science was often confronted with the resistance of the scientists themselves, who, in different contexts of condemning Nazi crimes, appealed to the fact that they acted for the good of science, and even of all mankind. The article discusses the strategy of American lawyers adopted at the Nuremberg Trials aimed at demonstrating the perversity of Nazi crimes in the field of biomedicine both ethically and scientifically. In addition, an analysis of individual materials of the Nuremberg process was carried out, which made it possible to give an idea of the scientific and linguistic design of the human body (name correction strategy) as a “correct” scientific object with desired properties. The article considers the influence of the data obtained on Nazi crimes on the formation of the content of the Nuremberg Code and the design of the principle of informed consent in biomedicine. Ethical aspects related to the further use of Nazi scientific data are also considered. In conclusion, the problem of the formation of scientific knowledge in non-violence mode is articulated.

Typhus in Buchenwald: Can the Story Be Told?

Ludwik Fleck is known today primarily as pioneer in the social study of scientific knowledge. However, during World War II he was a prisoner in Buchenwald, where he and other prisoners produced a typhus vaccine for the Nazis, and where he witnessed murderous experiments on human beings. After WW2, Fleck was accused by one of the prisoners who had participated in the vaccine production at Buchenwald of collaborating, either deliberately or due to lack of imagination, with the Nazi experiments. This article critically examines this accusation and its well-documented rebuttal by Fleck. It argues that while sometimes, especially when dealing with emotionally fraught issues, it may be difficult to establish what precisely took place at a given time and site, it is important to restore the original complexity and messiness of past events – in order to open spaces for understanding, reflexivity and compassion.

Consequences of holocaust on physical health of survivors: bibliography review.

Period of elderly age preordains the occurrence of many health issues. People deported during World War II to concentration camps suffered from malnutrition, lack of sleep, physical and mental exhaustion. Recently, the health condition of Holocaust survivors is often complicated as a result of physical punishments and different torture methods as well as mental hardships which they had suffered during deportation. The consequences often have psychosomatic nature thus the survivors are often receivers of health care. The topic of bibliography review is based on the need to objectivize and systematically evaluate subjective health issues of Holocaust survivors in connection with trauma related to the stay in a concentration camp. The aim is to offer a review of effects of the Holocaust on health of different body systems for survivors in concentration camps and Jewish ghettos in the course of World War II. To map the subjective problems of Holocaust survivors, evidence-based medicine (EBM) method has been used with the help of scientific database PubMed, CINAHL Plus with full text, ProQuest and other sources with specific key words and Boole operators. Prognostic type of clinical/review questions has been selected for the bibliography review, which is trying to predict the probability of relation or output of illness/condition and based on diseases or symptoms seriousness to find out expectancy for treatment/improvement of care. 175 studies have been found in basic search with the use of key words both in English and in Czech language. The search has not been time-limited. The advanced search has focused on different body systems and health damage due to Nazi experiments. Fourteen studies have been used to complete the study. The research results have confirmed the significant effect of Holocaust trauma on body condition of the survivors. The reasons of this condition were insufficient nutrition, unsuitable and harmful hygienic, living and working conditions and brutality of the guards. According to the research, these factors have impacted all organ systems, mainly locomotion and cardiovascular ones. The results have shown a more frequent occurrence of osteoporosis, fractures of long bones and corresponding chronical pain of people of Jewish origin who had gone through different forms of torture during World War II. Other present symptoms include gastrointestinal problems, tumors mainly in the area of colorectum and lungs. Moreover, the stay in concentration camps had influence on women's menstrual cycle. The studies of Holocaust effects are an example of the influence of an extreme mental and physical burden on the body condition of the survivors' health. The results of the studies have shown a wide range of the effects also in mental and social areas.

Commentary on Novak's “Is the use of data from Nazi medical experiments justifiable or not?”

The rise in terrorist acts around the world has called for greater attention for health care professionals to predict and report those who may commit such violence in order to prevent them from occurring. This article compares actions taken in Europe and the U.S. around the violation of confidentiality that occurs when providers are mandated to disclose personal health care information should an individual be reasonably suspected of using violence to harm him or herself or others, which is the usual standard used to make such a disclosure. The questions explored are 1) whether it is possible to make an accurate prediction of future use of violence; 2) if so, what are the potential outcomes of such disclosures; and 3) what are the ethical concerns for the health care profession in general as well as the individual professional? To answer these questions, health care professors from Italy and the U.S. compare the legal system requirements with the ability to predict who will commit future violence using scientific research on risk assessment by mental health professionals. Prediction of future violence using clinical interview methods alone has been found to be wrong more often than right prompting the development of structured interviews and “actuarials” using data from researching violent offenders (Shapiro et al., 2018). Comparison with their use in various legal settings in the U.S. and potential to identify a radicalized individual in a terrorist cell under the European Prevent Act is explored. Ethical considerations of whether the science of risk assessment yields sufficiently high enough accuracy to warrant violation of the patient's privacy are explored. Does the violation of human rights especially in those where the predictions are inaccurate create an ethical crisis in health care as some have suggested in the U.S. around psychologists interrogating and treating detained terrorists or the E.U. mandate under “Prevent” to deradicalize those known to be captured by terrorist communities? And finally, the article questions whether mandatory reporting of those at risk of further violence actually stops and prevents terrorist acts from occurring at all.L’accroissement des actes terroristes attire de plus en plus l’attention des professionnels de la santé, afin de prédire, avertir et empêcher d’autres personnes de commettre de tels actes violents. Cet article compare les actions entamées par les gouvernements européens et américains en ce qui concerne la violation de la confidentialité. En effet, les prestataires doivent souvent divulguer de l’information sur la santé d’une personne, s’ils pensent que celle-ci est risque de commettre des actes terroristes. Les questions examinées dans cet article sont les suivantes : 1) est-il possible de prédire avec précision la possibilité qu’un individu commette des actes violentes ? 2) si oui, quelles sont les conséquences à divulguer ces prédictions ? et 3) quels sont les enjeux éthiques pour les professionnels de santé en général et pour un professionnel individuel ? Pour répondre à ces questions, des professeurs de santé en Italie et aux États-Unis comparent les exigences du système juridique et leur capacité de prédire qui commettra des actes violents à l’aide de recherches scientifiques. Les prédictions basées seulement sur des entrevues cliniques sont souvent fausses. Ceci a incité le développement d’entrevues structurées et « actuaires », à l’aide de données issues des recherches sur la délinquance violente (Shapiro et al., 2018). La comparaison de divers contextes juridiques aux États-Unis et l’identification d’un individu radicalisé sont examinées. Cet article analyse les enjeux éthiques touchant la violation de la confidentialité du patient et leur rapport aux recherches scientifiques. La violation des droits de l’homme, en particulier dans les cas où les prévisions sont inexactes, crée-t-elle une crise éthique dans le domaine médical ? Les psychologues américains qui interrogent des terroristes, ainsi que le programme européen « Prevent », qui vise à déradicaliser des individus capturés par des communautés terroristes, ont tous les deux suggéré que cette question pose une véritable crise éthique pour la communauté médicale. Finalement, l’article examine si le reportage obligatoire des personnes à risque empêche réellement des actes terroristes.

Is the use of data from Nazi medical experiments justifiable or not?

During the days of the horrendous Nazi regime in Germany and conquered countries, licensed medical practitioners performed ghastly experiments on unjustly incarcerated, unwilling concentration camp prisoners. These experiments were not only conducted with the explicit approval of the Nazi regime, they were conducted at the regime's explicit command. To apply the term “complicity” to the deeds of these medical practitioners means they were the willing accomplices of an evil, criminal regime. In fact, most of them were not only the accomplices of this regime, they actually proposed the very crimes they committed for the Nazi regime. The way to discover the real purpose for which these practitioners acted as they did is to raise what seems to be an easier question, namely, “Is the use of data from Nazi medical experiments justifiable or not?” The question of the use of the data derived from these experiments is more practically relevant, because one's answer to the question will help decide what is to be done, not simply judge what already has been done. There is nothing we could do now to save the victims of these experiments performed in the past; and there is nothing we could do to stop those who did perform them in the past. But what we now judge morally might well influence or inform the decision whether to actually use or not use this data in the present and the near future. Pendant les jours de l’horrible régime nazi en Allemagne et dans les pays conquis, des médecins autorisés ont fait des expériences épouvantables sur des prisonniers de camps de concentration injustement incarcérés et réticents. Ces expériences n’ont pas seulement été menées avec l’approbation explicite du régime nazi, elles ont été menées sous le commandement explicite du régime. Appliquer le terme « complicité » aux actes de ces médecins signifie qu’ils étaient les complices consentants d’un régime criminel maléfique. En fait, la plupart d’entre eux n’étaient pas seulement les complices de ce régime, ils ont en fait proposé les crimes mêmes qu’ils ont commis pour le régime nazi. La façon de découvrir le but réel pour lequel ces praticiens ont agi comme ils l’ont fait est de soulever ce qui semble être une question plus facile, à savoir : « Est-ce que l’utilisation des données des expériences médicales nazies est justifiable ou non ? » La question de l’utilisation des données dérivées de ces expériences est plus concrètement pertinente, car la réponse à la question aidera à décider ce qui doit être fait, et non pas simplement à juger de ce qui a déjà été fait. Il n’y a rien que nous puissions faire maintenant pour sauver les victimes de ces expériences menées dans le passé ; et il n’y a rien que nous puissions faire pour arrêter ceux qui les ont accomplis dans le passé. Mais ce que nous jugeons moralement pourrait bien influencer ou éclairer la décision d’utiliser ou non ces données dans le présent et dans un proche avenir.

The Medical Manipulation of Reproduction to Implement the Nazi Genocide of Jews

Holocaust literature gives exhaustive attention to direct means of exterminating Jews, by using gas chambers, torture, starvation, disease, and intolerable conditions in ghettos and camps, and by the Einsatzgruppen. In some circles, the term “Holocaust” has become the ultimate description of horror or horrific events. The Nazi medical experiments and practices are an example of these. Nazi medical science played a central and crucial role in creating and implementing practices designed to achieve a “Master Race.” Doctors interfered with the most intimate and previously sacrosanct aspects of life in these medical experiments – reproductive function and behavior – in addition to implementing eugenic sterilizations, euthanasia, and extermination programs. Manipulating reproductive life – as a less direct method of achieving the genocide of Jews – has been less acknowledged. The Nazis prevented those regarded as not meeting idealized Nazi racial standards – and particularly Jewish women – from having sex or bearing children through legal, social, psychological and biological means, as well as by murder. In contrast, they promoted reproductive life to achieve the antithesis of genocide – the mass promotion of life – among those deemed sufficiently “Aryan.” Implementing measures to prevent birth is a core feature of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. As with many other aspects of the Holocaust, science and scientists were inveigled into providing legitimacy for Nazi actions. The medical profession was no exception and was integrally involved in the manipulation of birth to implement the Holocaust.

Lessons from the Holocaust for perinatal care today.

Lessons from the Holocaust for perinatal care today.

Pandora's box closed: The Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine and Nazi medical experiments on human beings during World War II

In the months before and after the final surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945, British aviation medicine specialists were sent to the European continent to learn the progress that German aviation medicine had made since September 1939. For the medical officers at the Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine at Farnborough in Hampshire, the dilemma over whether the medical data from the Nazi aviation medicine experiments at Dachau concentration camp should be exploited presented profound moral and ethical problems. Their deliberations paralleled those of the 1945-46 Nuremberg Trial, which revealed the crimes that were committed under the Nazi regime. At the same time, the British medical establishment debated the morality of publishing the Nazi medical research to serve humanity. This article shows that on the basis of British wartime and post-war research, and determinations that were made by the British Advisory Committee for the Investigation of German Medical War Crimes, by 1948 the RAF IAM had essentially rejected the results of the Nazi aviation medicine experiments on scientific and ethical grounds.

The Limits of Confidentiality: Informed Consent and Psychotherapy.

The Limits of Confidentiality: Informed Consent and Psychotherapy.

Unethical human research in the field of neuroscience: a historical review.

Understanding the historical foundations of ethics in human research are key to illuminating future human research and clinical trials. This paper gives an overview of the most remarkable unethical human research and how past misconducts helped develop ethical guidelines on human experimentation such as The Nuremberg Code 1947 following WWII. Unethical research in the field of neuroscience also proved to be incredibly distressing. Participants were often left with life-long cognitive disabilities. This emphasizes the importance of implicating strict rules and ethical guidelines in neuroscience research that protect participants and respects their dignity. The experiments conducted by German Nazi in the concentration camps during WWII are probably the most inhumane and brutal ever conducted. The Nuremberg Code of 1947, one of the few positive outcomes of the Nazi experiments, is often considered the first document to set out ethical regulations of human research. It consists of numerous necessary criteria, to highlight a few, the subject must give informed consent, there must be a concrete scientific basis for the experiment, and the experiment should yield positive results that cannot be obtained in any other way. In the end, we must remember, the interest of the patient must always prevail over the interest of science or society.

Exploitation of the vulnerable in research: Responses to lessons learnt in history.

The Nuremberg Trials raised insightful issues on how and why doctors who were trained in the Hippocratic tradition were able to commit such egregious and heinous medical crimes. The vulnerable were considered to be subhuman, of decreased intelligence, of no moral status and lacking human dignity. The reputation of the medical profession had been undermined, professionalism questioned and the doctor-patient relationship damaged as a result of the Nazi medical experiments. The World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki has been hailed as one of the most successful efforts in rescuing medical research from the darkness of the scandals and tragedies in health research. The first Research Ethics Committee in South Africa was established in 1966 at the University of the Witwatersrand. From the mid-1970s other institutions followed suit. The promulgation of the National Health Act No. 61 of 2003, in 2004, resulted in strong protectionism for research participants in the country.

Medical Research and Incompetent Adults

<p>The spectre of Nazi medical experimentation during the Second World War undoubtedly hangs over any discussion of medical research and incompetent adults. The concentration camp experiments denied the rights of people who would have been able to give or withhold consent but were, of course, not asked. The fears raised by the nature of these experiments has given rise to a real, understandable and genuine concern that research participants, particularly those who are vulnerable, may be abused through their participation. For example, Professors Kennedy and Grubb take the view that nontherapeutic research on incompetent adults is prohibited and go on to say that “given the history of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s which culminated in the Nuremberg Trials ... it is entirely understandable that some European countries would hold the view that an absolute prohibition was the only defensible [position].” The question that arises is whether prohibition is always the correct approach, or whether some forms of research should be permissible, recognising that strict protections will be necessary. We reflect upon the rigidity of the distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic research in the context of a research project that we undertook.</p>

Lead Debate: Protecting America’s Children

Book Review Health AffairsVol. 32, No. 10: Economic Trends & Quality Trade-Offs Lead Debate: Protecting America’s ChildrenElizabeth Fee AffiliationsNational Institutes of Health Elizabeth Fee ( [email protected] ) is the chief historian at the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland. PUBLISHED:October 2013Free Accesshttps://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0762AboutSectionsView PDFPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsDownload Exhibits TOPICSChildren's healthPublic healthDisabilities The prolific team of Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner has done it again. Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children is a thoroughly researched, passionate, and gripping history of a major public health problem—ameliorated, to be sure, but neither eradicated nor forgotten. The authors’ main research documents came from an unusual source. The New York City Law Department had amassed a huge trove of documents gathered though the discovery process of a lawsuit against the lead industry. The families who filed the suit claimed that their children had been injured by ingesting lead paint. Many of the documents from the Lead Industries Association recorded the minutes from meetings where representatives of lead paint producers discussed the dangers of lead paint poisoning, even as they developed strategies to present their products to the public as perfectly safe. The city wanted to know what these hundreds of thousands of documents could reveal about the history of lead and lead poisoning, so it asked Markowitz and Rosner to review them and find out. This book came out of that research.The book also circles around the recent legal and ethical controversies about lead paint research conducted at the Johns Hopkins University by J. Julian Chisolm and Mark Farfel. There was no doubt about both Chisolm’s and the younger Farfel’s dedication to protecting inner-city children from lead paint poisoning. But some have called into question the organization of one particular experiment.In the 1980s it was not known whether partial lead removal (abatement) from the walls and windows of dilapidated housing could protect children from lead paint poisoning or whether the much more expensive and complete process of lead abatement was necessary. The question was significant because landlords and city governments generally responded with hostility to the notion of spending a lot on lead paint removal. Chisolm and Farfel put single mothers and their children into three categories of housing: one-third in houses with complete lead abatement, one-third in houses with partial lead abatement, and one-third in houses where no abatement had occurred. They then studied lead levels and lead’s effects on the people in each group, obtaining comparative data. Because of its deliberate exposure of some children to lead paint, this research was denounced by some as akin to the Tuskegee study of syphilis or even to Nazi experimentation on humans.Markowitz and Rosner argue throughout this book that society as a whole has been conducting a grand human experiment by subjecting us all to many materials and chemicals whose long-term effects on our bodies are unknown. Children—in particular, poor black children—are sacrificed all the time to known toxins such as lead.Lead Wars also traces the distressing, century-old story of the struggle to limit the damage done by lead. We learn of a litany of discoveries, each revealing that lead was poisonous at lower and lower levels—and that even very low levels caused behavioral problems, learning disabilities, and reduced intelligence quotient in the children affected. The authors chronicle the political and ideological shifts that have encouraged or discouraged environmental regulation, applying pressure on federal agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency.In the book’s final chapters, Markowitz and Rosner address the public health debate about primary prevention and harm reduction: Where prevention of disease or disability appears difficult or impossible, is it reasonable to focus instead on limiting harm? The authors clearly champion complete prevention but also recognize that, for political or economic reasons, it may not be feasible. They point to society’s lack of will and the general failure of the public health profession to make common cause with the poor, the disenfranchised, and social activists. As a result, the authors say, we will all remain “research subjects in a grand experiment without purpose.” They note that moral leaders, from Mahatma Gandhi to Hubert Humphrey, have stated that a society may be measured by how it treats its children. By that standard, our society is still lacking. Lead Wars challenges us to take better care of our children by fighting those industries that appear to regard them—especially poor black and Latino children—as disposable. Loading Comments... Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. DetailsExhibitsReferencesRelated Article Metrics History Published online 1 October 2013 Information Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc. PDF download

Hippocratic oath and conversion of ethico-regulatory aspects onto doctors as a physician, private individual and a clinical investigator.

Hippocratic Oath is a living document for ethical conduct of the physicians around the world. World Medical Association has been amending the oath as per the contemporary times. Although physicians maintain their ethical standards while treating a patient yet many a times social, administrative and ruling powers either use physicians as their tool of oppression or victimize them for conducting duties as per their oath. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study and Human Radiation Experiments in America, Nazi Experiments in Germany and compulsory sterilization program in India were the studies where States used physicians for the advancement of their rationality or belief. Conversely victimization of physicians in Kosovo, Sri Lanka and incarcerating physicians for treating human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome patients in some countries is concerning. The Nuremberg code, the Declaration of Geneva, Belmont Report and Declaration of Helsinki are ethical documents while active involvement of Food and Drug Administration through “common rule” resulted in guidelines like International Conference on Harmonization and Good Clinical Practices. Still unethical studies are found in developing countries. Studies such as experimental anticancer drugs in 24 cancer patients without adequate prior animal testing and informed consent in Kerala, studies at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi resulted in 49 deaths of children and many more suspicious studies are rampant. Reverting back to the fundamentals of the medical profession; teaching medical ethics and enforcement of “medical neutrality” by embarking some grade of “medical immunity” on the basis of the oath is necessary for ethical conduct of physicians.