Doctors from hell
Doctors from hell.
Vivien Spitz
Sentient Publications, Boulder, Colorado, USA. 2005.
Recensito su: JCI, gennaio 2006, volume 116, n°1
Trascrivo qualche passaggio interessante…mi rendo conto che il tema trattato sia un po’ macabro ma fa parte della nostra storia europea…
“This shocking first-hand account of the
monstrous behaviors of Nazi physicians
by Vivien Spitz should be required reading
for all medical, dental, nursing, and public
health students and faculty. Time is better
spent reading this book than filling out
HIPAA forms and other well-intentioned
but even less effective tools designed to
protect patients’ interests.
Spitz was a 22-year-old court reporter
during the doctors’ trials at Nuremberg following
World War II. In Doctors from hell: the
horrific account of Nazi experiments on humans,
she recounts in vivid, objective detail the
horrific human experiments conducted
by 20 so-called physicians and medical
assistants in Germany under the direction
of the Nazis.
When you read this account, do not skip
past the critically important forward by
Fredrick R. Adams. It is Adams who helps
put this horror into a modern and deeply
disturbing context for us. Adams carefully
documents how Nazi doctors shaped
much of their human experimentation
program after similar studies conducted
earlier in the United States.
“Germans lagged behind their American
colleagues in implementing the eugenic
endorsements of doctors.” Adams writes
that as of 1995, Mississippi’s eugenic sterilization
law allowing for compulsory sterilization
of “the socially inadequate” was
still in force. Indeed, Germany’s sterilization
law, passed in 1933, came 26 years
after the state of Indiana’s.
What lessons have been learned from
the medical experimentation horrors of
the Nazis?
What chance do patients have, even
the most well informed, when an arrogant
and egotistically driven physician
tells them that they are going to die unless
they submit themselves to an unproven
treatment? Are the patients told the truth
— that we don’t have a lot of options, and
this is an unproven therapy that will likely
to do more harm than good, but we need to
experiment on you?
As the shocking tale concludes and
becomes numbing, the reader must ask
what lessons there are for us today.
Have we lost sight of the
moral and ethical compass that was also
absent among the German doctors during
World War II? I
Vivien Spitz
Sentient Publications, Boulder, Colorado, USA. 2005.
Recensito su: JCI, gennaio 2006, volume 116, n°1
Trascrivo qualche passaggio interessante…mi rendo conto che il tema trattato sia un po’ macabro ma fa parte della nostra storia europea…
“This shocking first-hand account of the
monstrous behaviors of Nazi physicians
by Vivien Spitz should be required reading
for all medical, dental, nursing, and public
health students and faculty. Time is better
spent reading this book than filling out
HIPAA forms and other well-intentioned
but even less effective tools designed to
protect patients’ interests.
Spitz was a 22-year-old court reporter
during the doctors’ trials at Nuremberg following
World War II. In Doctors from hell: the
horrific account of Nazi experiments on humans,
she recounts in vivid, objective detail the
horrific human experiments conducted
by 20 so-called physicians and medical
assistants in Germany under the direction
of the Nazis.
When you read this account, do not skip
past the critically important forward by
Fredrick R. Adams. It is Adams who helps
put this horror into a modern and deeply
disturbing context for us. Adams carefully
documents how Nazi doctors shaped
much of their human experimentation
program after similar studies conducted
earlier in the United States.
“Germans lagged behind their American
colleagues in implementing the eugenic
endorsements of doctors.” Adams writes
that as of 1995, Mississippi’s eugenic sterilization
law allowing for compulsory sterilization
of “the socially inadequate” was
still in force. Indeed, Germany’s sterilization
law, passed in 1933, came 26 years
after the state of Indiana’s.
What lessons have been learned from
the medical experimentation horrors of
the Nazis?
What chance do patients have, even
the most well informed, when an arrogant
and egotistically driven physician
tells them that they are going to die unless
they submit themselves to an unproven
treatment? Are the patients told the truth
— that we don’t have a lot of options, and
this is an unproven therapy that will likely
to do more harm than good, but we need to
experiment on you?
As the shocking tale concludes and
becomes numbing, the reader must ask
what lessons there are for us today.
Have we lost sight of the
moral and ethical compass that was also
absent among the German doctors during
World War II? I
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