Human Subject Experimentation The Nazis Lessons for Contemporary Research The Role of the Physician in Society Martin Donohoe

“When a doctor [goes] wrong, he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.” - Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson, Arthur Conan Doyle

Nazi Medicine Guiding philosophy = Hegelian (rational utility) Social Darwinism - parallels in American and British Eugenics Movement –medical journals relatively silent Ethics reduces morality to efficiency, economics, and aesthetics

Nazi Medicine An arm of state policy Focus on racial purity –from eugenic sterilization (370,000) –to involuntary euthanasia (70,000) –to large-scale genocide (over 6 million)

Nazi Medicine Individual worth stated in economic terms; propaganda re obligations to the state –“I Accuse” –“Mathematics in the Service of Political Education”

Nazi Medicine Doctoring the nation more important than doctoring individuals - Nazism as “applied biology” (Rudolph Hess) Focus on preventive medicine and public health: anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol campaigns, environmental toxins, organic farming- to improve Aryan stock Nazi soldiers given anabolic steroids to increase aggresiveness

Nazi Physicians 52,000 physicians National Socialist Party Members Jews ostracized; replaced by young Aryans –today 0.2% of German physicians are Jews, c/w 17% pre-Nazis –5% of non-Aryans committed suicide; 25% murdered

Nazi Physicians Economic hard times, physicians salaries rise, academic perks Blutkitt (“blood cement”) Rare resistance –Catholics –Marxists –Dutch

Nazi “Physician-Researchers” (Torturers) Dr. Sigmund Rascher - coagulation/amputation studies; hypothermia experiments Dr. Karl Gebhart: heteroplastic transplantation experiments –c.f. Stalin’s attempts to create interspecies (half- men/half-apes) “super-warriors” Drs. Karl Clausberg and Viktor Brack: X- irradiation/sterilization

Nazi “Physician-Researchers” Drs. Joachim Mrugowsky, Erwin Ding- Schuler, and Waldemar Hoven: IV phenol and gasoline executions Dr. Joseph Mengele: Septicemia/twin vivisection studies Dr. Hans Eppinger - “father of modern hepatology”

“Indirect Participants” Prof. J Hallevorden: “Look here now, boys, if you are going to kill all these people at least take the brains out so that the material could be utilized … the more (brains) the better….I accepted these brains of course. Where they came from and how they came to me was really none of my business.”

Doctors and Resistance German invasion of Poland (1939) Drs Eugene Lazowski and Stanislaw Matulewicz created a fake typhus epidemic, using a harmless bacterium to innoculate non-Jews, knowing that infected Jews would be summarily executed Germans fooled, quarantined area, many Jews escaped death

Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial 23 German physicians tried 16 found guilty –7 hanged (incl. Gebhardt, Brack, Hoven, and Mrugowsky) Rascher died before trial; Mengele fled for Argentina (remains verified 1985); Hallevorden committed suicide before trial

Nuremberg Code Voluntary consent is absolutely essential Avoidance of unnecessary physical and mental suffering Option to quit/responsibility to terminate Other safeguards

Declaration of Geneva “I will not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient” “I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity.” “It is unethical for physicians to employ scientific knowledge to imperil health or destroy life.”

Post-WW II Over 700 Nazi rocket scientists and their families brought to the U.S. (including Werner von Braun) to help build nuclear missile program –Operation Paperclip Japanese scientists brought to Fort Detrick, MD, to help establish U.S. biological/chemical weapons program

Post-WW II Human Subject Experimentation Tuskegee Syphilis Study Willowbrook Hepatitis Experiments Henry Beecher U.S. govt.-sponsored radiation expts.

Post-WW II Human Subject Experimentation Ongoing sterilization programs –WI, NJ, CA, IN, OR, others –Alabama’s Governor Graves vetoed law in 1930s law citing “hazard to personal rights –Oregon governor Kitzhaber apologized in 2002 for the over 2500 state-forced sterilizations that occurred between 1917 and 1983

Post-WW II Human Subject Experimentation Elementary school race experiment (good or bad?) Milgram’s obedience studies Soviet psychiatry US military/pharmaceutical vaccine and medication trials in the developing world

Research on Prisoners 1905: cholera experiments on “volunteers” 1915: Joseph Goldberger – pellagra studies –Parole in exchange for participation WW II: gonorrhea, gas gangrene, dengue fever, malaria

Research on Prisoners >90% of pharmaceutical industry research in early 1970s Rapidly curtailed by state/federal laws and new university regulations 2006: IOM approves with safeguards

Contemporary Issues and Ethical Dilemmas 90% of research dollars spent on diseases affecting 10% of the world’s population Research on special populations (cultural minorities, prisoners, developing world, etc.) Role of institutional and for-profit IRBs Use of placebo controls

Contemporary Issues and Ethical Dilemmas Uninsured become research subjects to receive needed care Informed consent for treatment – physician/patient negotiation vs. unilateral decision-making when treatment options limited 2003: NAS advisory panel considering ban on industry experiments testing safety of pesticides/other potentially toxic chemicals in humans

What to do with data acquired via unethical means? Eduard Pernkopf’s Atlas; Dachau Hypothermia Experiments; Phosgene gas experiments; biological weapons data (offensive vs. defensive) Japan’s Unit 731 and biological warfare experiments

What to do with data acquired via unethical means? Move to rename “Hallevordan-Spatz syndrome”: “pantothenate kinase- associated degeneration” or “neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation” Breast cancer cure scenario

Ethical Perspectives on Scientific Research and War Denial of moral responsibility for consequences Recognition of moral responsibility but competing obligations Recognition of moral responsibility and refusal to participate Responsibility to inform or lead public opinion

Scientists and War Research Archimedes, da Vinci, Galileo, Haber, Fieser Farraday Nobel, Einstein, Szilard

Doctors as Terrorists George Habas – founder of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine –Behind aircraft hijackings of Black September Mohammed al-Hindi – founder of Islamic Jihad Ayman Al-Zawahiri - #2 in Al Qaeda

Doctors as Terrorists Ikuo Hayashi – chief of circulatory medicine at a leading Japanese hospital –Pleaded guilty to planting sarin gas on Tokyo subway Radovan Karadzic (psychiatrist)

Primo Levi “A country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful.” (US – largest maldistribution of wealth of any industrialized country)

The role of the doctor in society Public health versus individual health Roles, responsibilities, and obligations –patients –society –institutions –families –government –world

The role of the doctor in society Theodore Billroth: –“If the whole of Social Medicine needs to be part of the curriculum of the medical student, it must not take more than two hours per semester … during the last two semesters; otherwise, it will surely be detrimental to his other studies”

The role of the doctor in society Rudolph Virchow: –“Doctors are natural attorneys for the poor … If medicine is to really accomplish its great task, it must intervene in political and social life…”

The role of the doctor in society World Health Organization: –“The role of the physician … in the preservation and promotion of peace is the most significant factor for the attainment of health for all.”

Ethical Issues Relating to Mixed Agency of Military Physicians Triage and return to combat Confidentiality Communication Loyalties/Command Experimentation “The Sea and Poison”

Ethical Issues Relating to Mixed Agency of Civilian Physicians Physician participation in torture and executions Pharmaceutical company provision of agents used in lethal injection executions

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