Nov 13, 2023 05:58 PM
https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/ethics...st-ethics/
EXCERPTS: The high-profile medical journal The Lancet has published a commission on medicine, Nazism and the Holocaust, with the aim of strengthening modern medical ethics.
[...] “While it is tempting to view the perpetrators as incomprehensible monsters, the evidence put forward by the Commission demonstrates how many health professionals were capable of committing ethical transgressions and even crimes against their patients under certain conditions and pressures.”
[...] According to the commission, physicians joined the Nazi party and affiliated groups in higher proportions than any other profession, and Germany’s medical institutions played prominent roles in the regime.
[...] The report also states that science, medicine and public health “were used to justify and implement persecutory policies and eventually state-sanctioned mass murder and genocide,” during the Nazi regime. Six million Jews were murdered by the regime.
While it is not the only instance of atrocities committed by physicians and the medical establishment, the researchers believe it’s an effective one to teach because of its scope and documentation.
“It is often surprising how limited the knowledge about Nazi medical crimes in the medical community is today, perhaps apart from a vague notion of Josef Mengele’s experiments in Auschwitz,” says commission co-chair Professor Herwig Czech, a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria.
“Our report aims to change this. Although the examples we present are extreme, studying medicine under Nazism highlights the critical role of societal factors and of ethics in medical and scientific advancement.
“Today’s health professionals operate in systems and structures that do not benefit all patients equally. While there is no simple path ahead, knowledge of historical extremes can make us better prepared to work through ever-evolving ethical dilemmas in medicine.” (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: The high-profile medical journal The Lancet has published a commission on medicine, Nazism and the Holocaust, with the aim of strengthening modern medical ethics.
[...] “While it is tempting to view the perpetrators as incomprehensible monsters, the evidence put forward by the Commission demonstrates how many health professionals were capable of committing ethical transgressions and even crimes against their patients under certain conditions and pressures.”
[...] According to the commission, physicians joined the Nazi party and affiliated groups in higher proportions than any other profession, and Germany’s medical institutions played prominent roles in the regime.
[...] The report also states that science, medicine and public health “were used to justify and implement persecutory policies and eventually state-sanctioned mass murder and genocide,” during the Nazi regime. Six million Jews were murdered by the regime.
While it is not the only instance of atrocities committed by physicians and the medical establishment, the researchers believe it’s an effective one to teach because of its scope and documentation.
“It is often surprising how limited the knowledge about Nazi medical crimes in the medical community is today, perhaps apart from a vague notion of Josef Mengele’s experiments in Auschwitz,” says commission co-chair Professor Herwig Czech, a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria.
“Our report aims to change this. Although the examples we present are extreme, studying medicine under Nazism highlights the critical role of societal factors and of ethics in medical and scientific advancement.
“Today’s health professionals operate in systems and structures that do not benefit all patients equally. While there is no simple path ahead, knowledge of historical extremes can make us better prepared to work through ever-evolving ethical dilemmas in medicine.” (MORE - missing details)