Medical Ethics In Prisoners Of War

Holmesburg prison and the Tuskegee Experiment both had doctors use helpless people to experiment on. In Tuskegee, the doctors told the men that they had bad blood, and that they could get free medical treatments. The men in Tuskegee believed that they needed treatment and took the deal. Similar in Holmesburg prison, the men needed money and the doctors bribed them with money to do the experiments. Allen Hornblum, an author, said in Acres of Skin: Medical Abuse Behind Bars, "Inmates participated not because they were patriotic not because they wanted to advance in science. They were interested in gaining some money." Doctors used money against the prisoners in Holmesburg prison. The scientists found the most important thing the people needed and used that against them in both pieces of research. The doctors used free medical care against men in Tuskegee and used money against the men

Medical experiments were done on many of the prisoners of the concentration camp, but mostly on twins, and dwarfs. The main medical doctor that conducted these experiments was Joseph Mengel who was also known as the "Angle of death." The main types of medical experiments dealt with freezing/hypothermia, genetics, infectious diseases, interrogation, torture, genocide, high altitude, pharmacological, sterilization, surgery, and traumatic injuries.

Experiments were done on prisoners for many different reasons. They were done to push the Nazis agenda that the Aryan race is the dominant race, and that they should be the only race. This idea is also known as eugenics. Some experiments were done in attempt to find a way to multiply the Aryan race faster by performing experiments on twins. They wanted to make sure that Aryans were the only ones reproducing because they thought they were the dominate race. To enforce this, they did experiments that would insure this idea through sterilization for males and females. They were trying to find new medicines to cure different diseases and conditions for the Aryan race. They wanted to find a way to make the Aryan race stronger and healthier and a way to multiply their race more quickly, because they believed that they were the superior race.

The art of medicine and curing diseases was not always approached in a scientific way. In fact, many advances occurred between 1919 to 1939, after technological advances allowed scientists to apply the scientific method to medical research. At this time, the ethics of using patients as test subjects either for new medicines or as samples for further testing were not considered. An extreme example of this was the Nazi’s using concentration camp inmates – including children – to run painful and invasive experiments. More modern examples are not so easy to identify as unethical, however. While amputating a leg to develop methods to deal with fractures and war wounds is obviously unethical, harvesting cells to develop a vaccine is not so clear cut, as the disadvantage to the patient is hard to identify. Coming from the various Nazi testing and especially the Nuremberg testing and trials, another code of ethics was developed, called the Nuremberg Code.

Research ranged from bubble baths to mild altering drugs being tested for the Army. Throughout the article, Greta De Jong emphasizes how brutal the prisons were, almost forcing research upon their inmates; sometimes labeled to the extent of torture. She also talks about how recently there have been attempts to scientists to revive medical research programs in U.S. jails, but with ensured ethical treatment.

The last very excruciatingly painful experiment was the interrogation and torture experiments. These experiments were supposed to test people’s limits, endurance, and existence. They simulated extremely high altitudes with and without oxygen. Theses experiments were executed in Dachau concentration camp. There were four experiments conducted slow falling with and without oxygen, and falling with and without oxygen.

In the early 1900’s the field of medicine began to expand at a rapid pace and ever increasingly rigorous experimental methodologies were developed. These new methods created a greater demand for human experimentation (Deria, 2006). Many medical advancements occurred as a result of World War II and the medical research community continued an upward trend. The United States government also became involved and created the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide funds for experimentation (Deria, 2006). One of the funded studies became infamously known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

The ignoble experiments of the nazi regime included exposure to freezing/ hypothermia, tests on the genetics of an individual, exposure to infectious diseases, undergoing of interrogation and torture, most effective and inexpensive methods of killing/ mass genocide, exposure to conditions resembling high altitude, pharmacological tests, sterilization of an individual, the undergoing of different surgeries, and inflicting traumatic injuries on the patent undergoing the experiment. The experiments done by nazis on prisoners were in an effort to find ways to cure burns, hypothermia, infections, and ways to mass exterminate the jews in the most cost efficient way possible.

During the Holocaust, the Nazis carried out many unethical medical experiments on patients without regard for their survival. Prisoners were forced to be subjects in various studies against their will. The Nazis’ victims went through indescribable pain as they were forced through high-altitude, freezing, tuberculosis, sea water, sulfanilamide, poison, and transplant experiments. Through these tragic Holocaust experiments, scientists and doctors discovered treatments used today for high-altitude sickness, hypothermia, contagious diseases, dehydration, poisoning, and war wounds.

There were many doctors used during the holocaust including Dr. Josef Mengele, Dr. Carl Clauberg, Dr. Herta Oberheuser, and Dr. Karl Brandit to be some of the main ones that performed horrific experiments. These doctors performed some of the most horrific experiments known to mankind. They did many experiments including freezing/hypothermia, genetics,

In 1991, The United States established a policy to protect human beings from unfair, and unwanted subjects in experiments. This process was done by establishing an Informed Consent which is a legal document. Informed consent which is a legal document that is compose and overseen by the United States judicial system. This law was a necessity due, to the way humans were being tested on in the late 20’s. Unfortunately, in the past the United States took part in a lot of experiments on human beings as test subjects. Furthermore, the overall attributes of studies conducted during the 1920’s thru the 1950’s were considered unethical acts against human beings. Furthermore, the people that were involved had no knowledge that they were subjects in a life-threatening experiment. This type of treatment towards any human being is unethical medical practices. Experimenting on anyone without his or her knowledge is now considered unconstitutional in the United States of American. Anyone can volunteer however, there are guidelines which the volunteer may be either accepted or rejected for Clinal Trails

During the Holocaust, the scientists did the experiments because they wanted to see how long the jews could last depending on the experiment. Examples of environmental experiments included hypothermia experiments, where people were exposed to extreme cold, and the sun lamp experiment, in which jews were put under a sunlamp. The results were documented as to how long they could last. The scientists also did genetic experiments. These were

There have been many experiments in the past that have acquired useful research furthering the advancement of society all over the world that allow humans to understand more about what was previously unknown. However, there have been many tests done in unethical ways that are conducted with sinister tests that view the lives operated on as just data in an experiment. Examples of this are; the Tuskegee untreated syphilis experiment where the US government infected African Americans with syphilis and did not treat them with medicines to see if that would be a better resolve, the irradiation of African American cancer patients during the Cold War conducted by the pentagon to see effects of radiation on humans without their consent which led to multiple deaths from radiation poisoning, and the “doctor’s Trial” which was occurring in Nuremberg, during the same time as the Guatemala syphilis experiment, where 23 German physicians participated in Nazi programs to euthanize and/or medically experiment on concentration camp

Thousands of Jews were put through these unethical tests and had no power to overcome them. Some of the most grueling experiments carried out included: “Freezing and Hypothermia, Genetics, Infectious Disease, Interrogation and Torture, Sterilization, Surgery, and finally Traumatic Injuries” (Nazi Experiments). The Nazi physicians all had there own preferences on which unethical experiments they preferred to conduct on the prisoners. The most common methods of unethical experiments included freezing and hypothermia.

The Nuremberg Doctors Trial of 1946 is the preeminent case recognizing the importance of medical ethics and human rights specifically about human research subjects. The defendants in the trials include Nazi leadership, physicians, and investigators prosecuted for conducting unethical and inhumane medical experiments on civilians and prisoners of war resulting in extreme pain, suffering, permanent injury and often death. The Nuremberg Code, borne of these trials, establishes ethical guidelines for human experimentation to ensure the rights of subjects in medical research. Herein, this writer will first identify and discuss ethical dilemmas presented in the Nuremberg case followed by three