Human Subjects Research after the Holocaust

An engaging, compelling and disturbing confrontation with evil a book that will be transformative in its call for individual and collective moral responsibility." Michael A. Grodin, M.D., Professor and Director, Project on Medicine and the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University.§ Human Subjects Research after the Holocaust challenges you to confront the misguided medical ethics of the Third Reich personally, and to apply the lessons learned to contemporary human subjects research. While it is comforting to believe that Nazi physicians, nurses and bio scientists were either incompetent, mad or few in number, they were, in fact, the best in the world at the time and the vast majority participated in the government program of applied biology. They were not coerced to behave as they did they generated the eugenic theories that rationally led them to design horrendous medical experiments, gas chambers, euthanasia programs and ultimately, mass murder in the concentration camps. Americans provided financial support for their research, modeled their medical education and research after the Germans and continued to perform unethical human subjects research even after the Nuremberg Doctors Trial. The German Medical Association apologized in 2012 for the behavior of its physicians during the Third Reich. By examining the medical crimes of human subjects researchers during the Third Reich, you will naturally examine your own behavior and that of your colleagues and perhaps ask yourself If the best physicians and bio scientists of the early 20th century could treat human beings as they did, can I be certain that I will never do the same? §