The meaning of the Holocaust for bioethics

The Meaning of the Holocaust for Bioethics Despite the central role played by the events leading to and during the Holocaust in bioethical discourse, bioethicists have paid surprisingly little attention to examining the nature of the crimes committed in the name of medicine and science, the moral rationales used to defend these crimes, or to the specifics of history that do and do not find parallels in current public policies and moral disputes. The Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota convened a conference on May 17-19, 1989, to examine some of these issues. The conference focused on five major themes: What role did mainstream medicine and science play in the creation of the Nazi state; What did German scientists and physicians think about and do in the name of eugenics and euthanasia; What moral rationales were used to justify the involvement of medicine and science with genocide, euthanasia, and racism; Should scientists and physicians make any use of information obtained from barbarous experiments conducted on innocent persons in concentration camps; and What is the appropriate use of metaphors and analogies to the Nazi era in contemporary debates in bioethics? Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics, Robert Proctor, a historian at the New School for Social Research in New York, and Benno Muller-Hill, a geneticist at the University of Cologne, all argued that the racist underpinnings of Nazi ideology were firmly rooted in the racial hygiene theories prominent in German biology during the 1920s and 30s--long before Hitler came to power. Proctor argued, moreover, that Nazism was not a philosophy espoused on the fringes of German medicine and science. Rather, it was an ideology with roots deep in the mainstream of German biology, medicine, and public health, and German physicians enrolled in the Nazi party at a rate three times higher than any other profession. Jay Katz, professor of law at Yale University, reviewed the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi scientists in the name of scientific research. Katz maintained that the ability to undertake murderous science was grounded in five norms: Obedience to authority; a commitment to racial superiority; a concern for the security and well-being of the state in time of war; a belief in the importance of scientific progress; and an ethos of professionalism that held that patients' interests were best served by trusting their doctors. Katz indicated that these latter two norms still linger in the contemporary scientific and medical research enterprise and threaten to erode respect for persons as subjects or patients in the interest of advancing knowledge. Caplan reviewed the moral rationales advanced by Nazi physicians at the Nuremburg trials. He noted that the German physicians who administered the euthanasia program, supervised mass genocide, and conducted brutal experiments on Jews and other groups in concentration camps grounded their actions on utilitarian principles. The state was justified in demanding the sacrifice of the minority to advance the interests of the majority--only those "doomed to die" were selected for research involving lethal experiments. …