The Temptation against Humanity

Ghost Lee

Why?

• What is the motivation that makes people devoid humanity, commit atrocities?

• What kind of enticement changes the hunger of knowledge into the surrogates of demon?

• If the value of these atrocities could be the stepping stone to praise and respect of all human kinds, lead to a historical fame, WOULD YOU DO IT?

Definition?

• Eponym：

• an item which provides a name-source for a particular place, tribe era, discovery, or other item to be named

• an item which acts as a name-recipient

Examples?

• Pernkopf Atlas of Human Anatomy

• Eduard Pernkopf (1888-1955)

• ‘Pernkopf organized for the bodies of over a thousand people executed by the Gestapo to serve as models for the atlas drawings’

• Reiter’s disease, Reiter’s spirochete, Reiter’s test

• Hans Conrad Julius Reiter (1881-1969)

• ‘During World War II, Reiter, a physician leader of the Nazi party, authorised medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners’

• Wegener’s granulomatosis

• Friedrich Wegener (1907-1990)

• ‘While no firm proof exists, it is suspected that in his capacity as pathologist in the Lodz ghetto, Wegener may have been involved in atrocities at that site related to research’

Others?

And these are not all…

• However, these behaviours not only happens when the dictator rampaged, when the war was committed, THEY ARE STILL HAPPENING…

Solutions?

• Deprive the name of medical terms of these human right abusers, prevent them from being recognised by all human kind?

• Consider the neutrality of subjective datas acquired through unethical methods, prevent them from utilisation or publication?

Name alternation?

• ‘Removal of such names attached to medical syndromes is not trivial, and should also be considered by the international Helsinki Committee as appropriate action under circumstances of unethical medical practice and thus rooted in proper medical nomenclature.’

Data neutrality?

• According to the restrictions nowadays, it’d be impossible for scientists to conduct experiments on living human, lead to the unbreakable threshold of current obstacles

• Hypothermia (Pozos’ Chilling Dilemma), Phosgene (EPA Research on Air Pollution),etc.

• If the experiments are conducted against humanity, are the results reliable or usable?

• Simply ‘Data’ or ‘Auschwitz bar of soap’?

• During WWII, Nazi doctors and scientists performed a series of medical and other experiments on concentration-camp inmates.

• They undertook these studies without consent of the patients, who were often left maimed or dead at the end of the ordeal.

• These experiments include: high altitude, freezing, sterilization, twins, poison, TB, seawater, etc.

The Ethics of Using Medical Data from Nazi Experiments

• Many feel that findings from those studies should never be published or used.

• However, what if these data might be potentially save the lives today?

• WOULD YOU TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM?

Cons?• Medical competence of the Nazi doctors has been

questioned

• Hippocratic Oath ‘…I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing…’

• Many in the medical and scientific communities consider the Nazi experiments bad science

• Malnourished experimentees, biased aspirations, un-replicated experiments, tainted experiments

• Set a dangerous precedent, sanctioning unethical human experiments and possibly encouraging similarly deplorable acts

• For other experiments against humanity but Nazi experiments, if researchers cite and use results from the latter, might that not give tacit encouragement to further unethical studies using human beings?

• Using the data would make us the Nazi experimenters’ moral accessories

• Making use of the data wrenched so brutally from helpless victims make us the victims’ “retrospective torturers” and them our “retrospective guinea pigs”

• Many survivors of the Nazi experiments feel strongly that the data should never be used

• Some survivors of Dr. Josef Mengele’s twins experiments “ No! No! No! I (we) suffered, and it is no ‘medical data’ or ’information’ whatsoever!!!”

• A huge number of victims of the experiments suffered

• Obviously, the hundreds of thousands of who died at the hands of Nazi death-camp doctors cannot tell their story of unfathomable fear, unbearable pain, and senseless death.

Pros?• Not publishing and/or using the date could

strengthen the arguments of those who say the Holocaust never happened

• Most scholars, whether or not they advocate using the Nazi data, hold that the fact that the experiments happened should never forgotten, lest such atrocities recur.

• Such data could not be obtained today

• Hypothermia expert Dr. Robert Pozos never let a participant’s temperature drop more than 3.6°F (below 95°F), but Nazi experimenters let their victims’ interior body temperatures drop to 79.7°F

• Many deem information morally neutral

• The results of Nazi experiments can only be judged scientifically, not morally; data are neither good nor bad, they are just data.

• The data under morally usage might help save lives or benefit people today

• Scientists and physicians have gained valuable insights from other horrific events in history. should we consider the Nazi data any differently?

• Many survivors of the medical experiments feel the data should be used

• Some survivors of Dr. Josef Mengele’s twins experiments “If these experiments will be of any help to humanity, then I am in favour of them being used as needed”

• Not using the data lend a belated dignity to the victims, so that their lives were not lost for nothing

• Lucien A. Ballin “The suffering is done - let someone benefit from all the pain”

• What would you choose?

Reference• Wikipedia: List of medical eponyms with Nazi associations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medical_eponyms_with_Nazi_associations

• Eponyms and the Nazi Era: Time to Remember and Time for Change http://www.ima.org.il/FilesUpload/IMAJ/0/45/22885.pdf

• Nazi Medical Experimentation: The Ethics of Using Medical Data from Nazi Experiments https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/naziexp.html

• Results of Death-Camp Experiments: Should They Be Used? http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/experiintro2.html