Medical ethics and medical research on human beings in national socialism

Abstract

At first glance, one could assume that Nazi medicine was a form of medicine without ethics, yet closer scrutiny reveals that Nazi ideology did have a system of values, which for the perpetrators provided moral justification for crimes against humanity. In this chapter, I will focus on some aspects of medical ethics and medical research during WWII. I will argue that the striking overvaluation of animal life compared with human life, laid down in the 1933 law for the protection of animals, offers part of the explanation of why and how the medical crimes in the concentration camps took place. The selective application of ethical standards to human research subjects depending on their moral status in the Nazi ideology, resulting in a crude utilitarianism, is another characteristic feature of Nazi medical ethics. To convey these ethics to physicians and medical students, the Nazis introduced special courses both in the medical curriculum and in the postgraduate training of doctors to promote ideological ‘education.’ Central to Nazi medical ethics was the sacrifice of the interests of people deemed inferior or unfit for the benefit of productive Aryan people. Since utilitarian thinking in medicine is not unfamiliar even today, there are still lessons to learn from that dark time.