VIJIT AGRAWAL B.Pharm, Pharm.DJSSCP, Mysore

INTRODUCTION

•  The trial was officially titled United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al., but is more commonly referred to as the "Doctors' Trial"; it began on December 9, 1946.

• The Doctors Trial lasted 140 days.

• The "doctors' trial" was the first of the war crimes trials; one of its outcomes was the famous.

• Nuremberg Code, a set of ethical guidelines for human experimentation.

• The first tenet of the code is very clear: "The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential."

• Today, the Nuremberg Code is the most important influence on U.S. law governing human medical research.

OBJECTIVES

OBJECTIVES OF DOCTOR’S TRIAL

The trial was conducted for • Freezing, • Malaria, • LOST Gas, • Sulfonilamide, • Bone, Muscle and Nerve Regeneration• Bone Transplantation, • Sea-Water, • Epidemic Jaundice, • Sterilization. and • Typhus Experiments.

COURT DISCUSSION

• On August 19, 1947, the judges delivered their verdict in the "Doctors' Trial" against Karl Brandt and several others. They also delivered their opinion on medical experimentation on human beings.

• Several of the accused had argued that their experiments differed little from pre-war ones.

• But there was no law that differentiated between legal and illegal experiments.

JUDGEMENTDAY

• After hearing 85 witnesses and examining 1,471 documents that were presented, judgment was pronounced on August 19, 1947 with sentencing following on the next day.

• Of the 23 defendants, 7 were sentenced the death by hanging (carried out at Landsberg Prison), 9 were given prison terms, and 7 were found not guilty, were involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder.

• Joseph Mengele “Angel of death” , one of the leading Nazi doctors, had evaded capture.

INDICTMENTS

• COUNT ONE THE COMMON DESIGN OR CONSPIRACY

• COUNT TWO WAR CRIMES• COUNT THREE CRIMES AGAINST

HUMANITY• COUNT FOUR MEMBERSHIP IN

CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION SS

DEFENDANTS GOT DEATH

• Death• Charged for 1,2,3,4

• Death• Charged for 1,2,3,4

Karl Brandt

Viktor Brack

• Death• Charged for 1,2,3,4

• Death• Charged for 1,2,3,4

Rudolf Brandt

Karl Gebhardt

• Death• Charged for 1,2,3,4

• Death• Charged for 1,2,3,4

Waldemar Hoven

Joachim Mrugowsky

• Death• Charged for 1,2,3,4

Wolfram Sievers

DEFENDANTS GOT IMPRISONMENT

• Hermann Becker-Freyseng

• Wilhelm Beiglböck

• Fritz Fischer

• Karl Genzken

• Siegfried Handloser

• Herta Oberheuser

• Helmut Poppendick

• Oskar Schröder

• Gerhard Rose

DFENDANTS GOT ACQUIT

• Adolf Pokorny

• Hans Wolfgang Romberg

• Paul Rostock

• Kurt Blome

• Siegfried Ruff

• Konrad Schäfer

• Georg August Weltz

PRINCIPLESNUREMBERG CODE 1947

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.

3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.

4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.

5. No experiment should be conducted where there is a prior reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.

6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.

8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.

9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

OTHER ATROCIUS TRIALS

• In the Book Medical Apartheid documents many cases.

1. In 1994, the Medical of South Carolina in Charleston was accused of enrolling poor black women into narcotic-treatment research without their knowledge.

2. The next year in Los Angeles, an experimental measles vaccine was tested on children, mostly black and Hispanic, without their parents' consent.

3. In 1994 and 1995, New York City law enforcement officials helped researchers coerce black parents into enrolling their boys into a study that sought to establish a genetic propensity for violence, again without their consent.

SUMMARY