Dissent Magazine Subscribe to Dissent





print  |  email

From Nuremberg to Guantaěnamo: Medical Ethics Then and Now

On October 25, 1946, three weeks after the handing down of the verdicts of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the United States established Military Tribunal I for the trial of twenty-three Nazi physicians. The charges, delivered by Brigadier General Telford Taylor on December 9, 1946, form a seminal chapter in the history of medical ethics and, specifically, medical ethics in war. The list of noxious experiments condemned as war crimes and crimes against humanity on civilians and prisoners of war is by now more or less familiar—high-altitude experiments; freezing experiments; malaria experiments; sulfanilamide experiments; bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation experiments; sea water experiments; jaundice and spotted fever experiments; sterilization experiments; experiments with poison and with incendiary bombs.

What remains less familiar is the moral mind of doctors or health care workers who ply their medical skill for morally quest...

» Want to continue? Login below:


Subscriber Login



Subscribers get your account.

Subscribe Now

Access to this article is only offered to print subscribers. Subscribe now to read this article—and get immediate access to our archive—for the price of $20.


top  |  print  |  email