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The 23 defendant doctors in the dock at
the Nuremberg "Doctors Trial," 1946-47.
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What
if you knew that the medical competence of the Nazi doctors has been
questioned?
The Hippocratic Oath, penned by the father of medicine and held by medical
professionals as a sacred tenet to this day, states in part: "I will use
treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with
a view to injury and wrongdoing...." The Nazi experimenters not only violated
the oath in the foulest way, causing them to relinquish forever all rights to
be considered doctors, but their expertise has been called into question, even
by their own countrymen in their own day.
"Of course I am a doctor and I want to preserve life. And out of respect for
human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew
is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind."
—Dr. Fritz Klein, Nazi physician, responding to a concentration-camp inmate
who asked, while pointing to smoking chimneys in the distance, "How can you
reconcile that with your [Hippocratic] oath as a doctor?" [1]
"I wouldn't trust the man who produced the data [from the Nazi experiments];
how can you trust a man who would do that?"
—Seymour Siegel, Executive Director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council
[2]
"Their actions were clear, direct violations of both the Hippocratic Oath as
well as the public's belief that doctors always look after their patients'
well-being."
—Lauren Howell, in "Nazi Medical Experiments: Murder or Research?"
[3]
"One characteristic feature of Heissmeyer's experiment is his extraordinary
lack of concern, add this to his gross and total ignorance in the field of
immunology, in particular bacteriology. He did not then, nor does he now,
possess the necessary expertise demanded in a specialist [on] TB diseases ...
He does not own any modern bacteriology textbook. He is also not familiar with
the various work methods of bacteriology ... According to his own admission,
Heissmeyer was not concerned about curing the prisoners who were put at his
disposal. Nor did he believe that his experiments would produce therapeutic
results, and he actually counted on there being detrimental, indeed fatal,
outcomes to the prisoners."
—Dr. Otto Prokop, Germany's forensic authority, on the competence of Dr. Kurt
Heissmeyer. Heissmeyer conducted tuberculosis experiments on 20 Jewish
children from Auschwitz whom he later had hung so they could not bear witness.
[4]
Yes |
No
References
1. Lifton, p. 16.
2. Moe, p. 6.
3. See www.hklaw.com/holocaust/essays/1999/993.htm.
4. Lifton, p. 457n.
Photo: Hedy Epstein, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
The Director's Story |
Timeline of Nazi Abuses
Results of Death-Camp Experiments: Should They Be Used?
Exposing Flawed Science |
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