While nowadays we accept the exitance and necessity of bioethics we often overlook their origins. Despite being a physics student, I take a lot of interest in history and ethics so when we covered both these topics, I immediately decided I wanted to look further into it. This led me to the question of how the Nuremburg trials – specifically those for the Nazis doctors of concentration camps – led to the development of medical and bioethics.

Throughout WWII many number of atrocities were committed by the Nazis, but some may argue that the greatest were those crimes against humanity that were committed by doctors of the Nazi state. With ideas of eugenics becoming ever more popular and the Nazi want to eliminate those who they deemed didn’t contribute to the state, millions of innocent people were murdered, and thousands were subjected to medical experimentation. Now while this all sounds like a brief historical overview into the Nazi doctors we can use this information to see how out of this the first ideals of medical and bio ethics were created. Following then end of the war, Nazi leaders were tried at the Nuremburg trials, with there being a specific trial for the doctors who experimented on people in concentration camps throughout the war.

These doctors’ trials led to the creation of the Nuremburg code, a set of ethics rules for conducting medical and biological research. Prior to WWII the only previous outline to medical research ethics were the ‘Guidelines for Human Experimentation of 1931’ which the doctors asked to be tried under for their experimentation , but the prosecutors refused and came to the conclusion of trying 16 out of the 23 for crimes against humanity.

It has been said by some that if they had been in the same situation – a leading country in medical development with unlimited human subjects as resources and the propaganda to believe what they were doing is right – they would have done the same. Looking back now we know how awful this experimentation was and can’t even begin to imagine how someone could have concluded that it was okay. But at the time many Nazi doctors believed what they were doing was right and the growing ideals of eugenics pushed them to further what they thought was acceptable and ‘good’ research. There were many scientific advancements made to understanding different neurological diseases but in no way do the ends justify the means. This merely shows how much of a lack of guidelines behind research ethics there were as no patients were ever informed of what was happening and research was always carried out in the name of science without taking into consideration the person.

Following the Nuremburg trials the code was created as a way to highlight all that was wrong with the Nazi State’s  experimentation and lack of thought for life. They were the first outline for medical ethics, and in which highlighted the need for consent from patients and that the primary concern of doing no harm . While the Nuremburg code was somewhat ambiguous, and statements left open to interpretation, it did lead to the creation of the Declaration of Helsinki. This is an ever-changing document to lay out correct medical practice and ethics in research – bioethics. The Declaration of Helsinki is still to this day a widely respected and followed document for Drs across the globe to hold themselves to in their work and practice. So, we can see that from the atrocities of WWII, eugenics and Nazi experimentation came the creation of medical and bioethics that are followed today. This can all be summed from a quote in the Nuremburg code:

‘All contemporary debate on human experimentation is grounded in Nuremberg’

Nuremburg Code 1947