Birth of the Nuremberg Code
Implication this set of ethical principles has on the recent global human experiment
Given the global experiment that has occurred, the idea of a Nuremberg 2.0 has been discussed. First a brief history lesson on where the Nuremberg Code originated and what we can discern from this set of ethical principles.
Nazi War Crimes Trials End in Hanging
With the end of WWII in May 1945, Hitler and two of his most notorious henchmen, Goebbels and Himmler, committed suicide. Other high ranking Nazis such as, Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Mueller along with Dr. Josef Mengele fled to South America or vanished.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials began on 20 November 1945 and ended 13 April 1949. At the first trial, although only 21 were present, 24 Nazis were indicted. They were charge with conspiracy, crimes against peace (i.e., the planning, initiating, and waging of wars of aggression in violation of international treaties and agreements), war crimes (i.e., violations of the laws of war) and crimes against humanity (i.e., exterminations, deportations, and genocide).
Source: https://www.britannica.com/event/Nurnberg-trials
It took two days to read the indictments into record. Each 24,000 word document was read into record by junior members of the prosecution who took turns speaking for five hours each. This was followed by the defendants entering their plea; all 21 declared themselves ‘not guilty.’
In his opening statement, Justice Jackson said, “The crimes which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
At the end of the trial, three of the defendants were acquitted, four were sentenced to prison (from 10 to 20 years), three were sentenced to life in prison and 12 were sentenced to death by hanging. On October 16, 1946 the sentence of hanging was carried out for ten of the convicted. Martin Bormann was tried and condemned to death in absentia, and Hermann Göring committed suicide before he could be executed.
Given the nature of the crimes, these men got off easy as they could only die once while their victims numbered in the millions.
The Doctors’ Trial
On 9 December 1946, 12 subsequent trials were held by the Americans. Twenty of the 23 defendants were medical doctors and were accused of having been involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. The trial lasted until 20 August 1947.
The defendants were charged with conspiracy, war crimes, crimes against humanity (i.e., exterminations, deportations, and genocide) and membership in a criminal organization, the SS. The charge against the 20 defendants was that they had violated the Hippocratic Oath and behaved in a manner incompatible with their education and profession.
The war crimes were performing medical experiments, without the subjects' consent, on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhumane acts. Also planning and performing the mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, stigmatized as aged, insane, incurably ill, deformed, and so on, by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums during the Euthanasia Program and participating in the mass murder of concentration camp inmates.
In his opening statement Telford Taylor said, "The defendants in this case are charged with murders, tortures, and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science. The victims of these crimes are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A handful only are still alive; a few of the survivors will appear in this courtroom. But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the tortures to which they were subjected. For the most part they are nameless dead. To their murderers, these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals."
The victims of the defendants had been subjected to the effects of high altitude, immersed in freezing water (depicted in photo), exposed to mustard gas, forced to drink seawater, sterilized involuntarily, and purposely wounded by incendiary bombs. Bullets laced with poison were fired into prisoners to see how swiftly the poison would act on a wounded victim. Prisoners were also injected with fatal viruses under the pretext that the doctors were testing the effectiveness of vaccines. There never really was even the pretense of finding an antidote.
Defense lawyers explained that Nazi doctors were ordered by the state to conduct such experiments as the high-altitude, hypothermia, and seawater experiments on inmates at the Dachau concentration camp to determine how best to protect and treat German fliers and soldiers. They contended that these experiments were necessary and that the “good of the state” takes precedence over that of the individual.
Of the 23 defendants, seven were acquitted and seven received death sentences; the remainder received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment.
The Ten Points of the Nuremberg Code
The Nuremberg Code was drafted at the end of the Doctor’s trial in Nuremberg 1947 and has been hailed as the landmark document in medical and research ethics. It has served as a foundation for ethical clinical research since its publication 60 years ago.
The Nuremberg Code (German: Nürnberger Kodex) is a set of ethical research principles for human experimentation created by the court in U.S. v Brandt, one of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials that were held after the second World War.
If you've never read the Nuremberg Code, here it is.
The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment. The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs, or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.
The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.
While the Nuremberg Code has not been officially adopted in its entirety as law by any nation or as ethics by any major medical association, it has changed forever the way both physicians and the public view the proper conduct of medical research on human subjects.
Can you see any parallels here with anything that has occurred over the past few years? How then does this set of principles apply to the recent global experiment that was forced upon the worlds citizens? Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.