Full Version: Nazi Medical Experiments...
It was a toss-up between posting in History or Principles and Personal Philosophy; but obviously you can tell which choice prevailed.
Nazi Experiments
Questions for Debate:
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
Nazi Experiments
Questions for Debate:
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
QUOTE(VDemosthenes @ Aug 20 2005, 09:08 PM)
It was a toss-up between posting in History or Principles and Personal Philosophy; but obviously you can tell which choice prevailed.
Nazi Experiments
Questions for Debate:
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
Nazi Experiments
Questions for Debate:
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
What medical data was collected would be my first question. The perverse protein experiments of the Nazis did not accomplish anything as far as I can tell. If there is some kind of advance for medical science to be had from these sick experiments then I have yet to see it.
Before we get too much on our high horse about how atrocious the medical experiments of other nations have been, perhaps it would be useful to know that our own beloved U.S. of A. has documented involvement in shady experimentation as well:
The Tuskegee Experiment
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
When you consider that the alternative means that the deaths and sufferings were otherwise for nothing, it seems important to use data which might be of some help to living patients. That is, if there was something useful.
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
It can be rationalized, but justified? I don't know. If there is some way to keep the names of the sadistic "doctors" out of the information so as to deny them any credit for any benefits, I would say do that.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
Who knows? Not me.
But let's put it another way: What about the medical data garnered from the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--all of the information that was denied to the U.S. news media at the time about the mysterious radiation sickness that Japanese civilians and U.S. servicemen alike were suffering at ground zero--should we have benefitted from that data?
The Tuskegee Experiment
QUOTE(An Apology 65 Years Late)
Beginning in 1932, the federal government sponsored a study to examine the impact of syphilis involving black men. The experiment went on until 1972 without the test subjects' knowledge, but no President had apologized to the volunteers and their families until President Clinton did so today. Following a background report on the experiment, Charlayne Hunter-Gault looks at what the legacy of Tuskegee. [audio available]
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
When you consider that the alternative means that the deaths and sufferings were otherwise for nothing, it seems important to use data which might be of some help to living patients. That is, if there was something useful.
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
It can be rationalized, but justified? I don't know. If there is some way to keep the names of the sadistic "doctors" out of the information so as to deny them any credit for any benefits, I would say do that.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
Who knows? Not me.
But let's put it another way: What about the medical data garnered from the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--all of the information that was denied to the U.S. news media at the time about the mysterious radiation sickness that Japanese civilians and U.S. servicemen alike were suffering at ground zero--should we have benefitted from that data?
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
I don't know. It depends on the individual interpretation of the ethics I suppose.
In my case I'd say, use the data lest these poor people were murdered so horribly for nothing. Let their deaths be of some benefit for others and grant their suffering some meaning.
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
Its never over and done with. For as long as we remember these people and what was done to them, and we honour their memory by guarding against any repeat of their murders.
Any information gathered is of a neutral character. Information has no meaning except the meaning we give it.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
I have no idea.
I don't know. It depends on the individual interpretation of the ethics I suppose.
In my case I'd say, use the data lest these poor people were murdered so horribly for nothing. Let their deaths be of some benefit for others and grant their suffering some meaning.
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
Its never over and done with. For as long as we remember these people and what was done to them, and we honour their memory by guarding against any repeat of their murders.
Any information gathered is of a neutral character. Information has no meaning except the meaning we give it.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
I have no idea.
Phaedrus
Many of the experiments were quite simple and barbaric and aimed to find out how much exposure to a particular set of conditions the human body could take before the subject dies. For example, how much heat can the human body stand before the subject faints, then how much before the subject dies. Similarly with subjecting the subject to freezing conditions, differing pressure conditions etc.
These tests in themselves provided a great deal of data that helped in the US space program (for example), but have more generally aided science in providing a general base-line of knowing how much of a particular condition the human body can withstand.
The tests were not (as popularised in fiction) entirely aimless, but instead aimed to provide good scientific data for the Reich to use, particularly in the field of military technology.
Data which we continue to use to this day.
Many of the experiments were quite simple and barbaric and aimed to find out how much exposure to a particular set of conditions the human body could take before the subject dies. For example, how much heat can the human body stand before the subject faints, then how much before the subject dies. Similarly with subjecting the subject to freezing conditions, differing pressure conditions etc.
These tests in themselves provided a great deal of data that helped in the US space program (for example), but have more generally aided science in providing a general base-line of knowing how much of a particular condition the human body can withstand.
The tests were not (as popularised in fiction) entirely aimless, but instead aimed to provide good scientific data for the Reich to use, particularly in the field of military technology.
Data which we continue to use to this day.
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
I am uncertain on this point. Data is data and its source seems irrelevant to its application. It really depends, I think, on how we imagine the victims might feel about its use -- which is anybody's guess.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
I very much doubt that the data has any current utility. Its value lay in determining under what conditions people would die. Such data would be useful in only two cases:
1. Pushing people to the very edge of death in pursuit of some goal. We don't do that anymore.
2. Knowing how much time we have to respond to an accident in which people are exposed to such conditions. The only application here is the length of time a person can survive in water of various temperatures. However, we have this data from other sources.
The Nazi experiments were primitive and often silly. I recall that, in one experiment attempting to evaluate how best to treat an airman who had been recovered from cold seawater, they tried various combinations of naked women snuggling up to the shivering male victim. Sort of the inversion of the recommendation to take a cold shower. A hot bath is better therapy in this case.
I am uncertain on this point. Data is data and its source seems irrelevant to its application. It really depends, I think, on how we imagine the victims might feel about its use -- which is anybody's guess.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
I very much doubt that the data has any current utility. Its value lay in determining under what conditions people would die. Such data would be useful in only two cases:
1. Pushing people to the very edge of death in pursuit of some goal. We don't do that anymore.
2. Knowing how much time we have to respond to an accident in which people are exposed to such conditions. The only application here is the length of time a person can survive in water of various temperatures. However, we have this data from other sources.
The Nazi experiments were primitive and often silly. I recall that, in one experiment attempting to evaluate how best to treat an airman who had been recovered from cold seawater, they tried various combinations of naked women snuggling up to the shivering male victim. Sort of the inversion of the recommendation to take a cold shower. A hot bath is better therapy in this case.
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world? I doubt there is much practical use but if there is something we can learn I don't see why not. After WWII the USA took Nazi military technology and scientists, which were beneficial to the space program and our armed forces. I don't see that big of a difference.
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data? I think there is. I actually think there is something good that can be done by using the results. Hearing about these experiments reminds people how terrible and inhumane the Nazi regime was. The greatest thing we can gain from knowing of these experiments is the resolve to never allow them to repeat themselves.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two? I think there is a limit to what you can learn by boiling people. Maybe it has some application but it doesn't create new medicines or anything. In general, Nazi science was flawed because science was a political and propaganda tool designed to prove fundamentally incorrect racial theory gobbledygook.
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data? I think there is. I actually think there is something good that can be done by using the results. Hearing about these experiments reminds people how terrible and inhumane the Nazi regime was. The greatest thing we can gain from knowing of these experiments is the resolve to never allow them to repeat themselves.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two? I think there is a limit to what you can learn by boiling people. Maybe it has some application but it doesn't create new medicines or anything. In general, Nazi science was flawed because science was a political and propaganda tool designed to prove fundamentally incorrect racial theory gobbledygook.
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
About as ethical as you taking a shower today with a bar of Auschwitz soap. So, if we've used any such "data," then let me simply say that we showered with a bar of Auschwitz soap.
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
You might as well use a bar of Auschwitz soap next time you shower, so that some good might come from evil. Oh, and by the way, if that is the proposed rationale, then let lawyer me say that we might as well use evidence obtained in violation of the US Constitution, etc., in a court of law, since we are indeed on our quest for the truth, so who cares in what manner the evidence was obtained, so long as we consider it reliable and such thus aids in our determination of the truth. Which brings us to where we need to be. These rules, or if you prefer, principles, of ethics and/or law...why do we have them? To protect those who would be made soap? Or to protect me from making them soap? When you understand which is the primary function of the law, then you will have your answer.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
I don't know and I don't care, remembering as always, those sure and certain words...for what shall it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?
Hint, that informs us as to the primary function of the law. Let me put it this way, and I'm only addressing my fellow Christians here. You want to save a life? Good, but our God raises the dead. And if we use this "data", where does it stop? If I know that you are a suitable donor for a heart transplant for my daughter, do I murder you? I mean, if the posited operating principle is good from evil, then I suppose that the good doctors would go ahead and use the heart of the man I just murdered to save my daughter. So where does it stop once we open the door? Are we going to tell just one lie? And then a second? And then a third? And then since we've already done it once, it becomes just that much easier next time 'round, so we wake up one day only to discover that we are no longer telling a lie, but have become liars [i.e., what we first thought was an excusable aberration, you know, good from evil, has become our defining characteristic]. And back to the good book again, we don't have "you shall not murder" because God wants to save your life, I mean, after all, God raises the dead, so in that regard there's no murder than I can accomplish that that One cannot fix [as it were]. But since the operating principle is that the state of my soul is up to me, and not God, we have those other sure and certain words...you have heard that it was said to the ancients, you shall not commit adultery, but I tell you that whoever lusts after a woman has committed adultery in his heart...
Another hint, when you read about some saying that my Lord expanded the law of adultery to include lust, please know that such persons simply don't know why we have either the Ten Words or our own law, since my Lord wasn't expanding the law, but simply trying to make abundantly plain to all concerned the purpose of the Ten Words.
Lastly, if any want to honor the memory of those who perished, then I would simply suggest that rather than make use of any so-called "data", that you instead tell your children, and your children's children, about that Jewish woman who asked that Nazi guard for a knife with which she might circumcise her newborn son, so that he might die a Jew.
Sorry, one more, Hiroshima? Sorry, but there is zero moral equivalence between Auschwitz, etc., and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, which is to say that the Jews didn't bomb Pearl Harbor, didn't conduct the Bata'an death march, didn't conduct a vivisection in the jungles of Guadalcanal, didn't rape Nanking, didn't reduce Korean women to sexual slaves, didn't crash dive airplanes into our ships, and didn't refuse to surrender when all was lost and we were otherwise promising them prompt and utter destruction. Which is to say, that when you add up all those Chinese lives saved, all of the Korean, Filipina, and other women who were saved from just that many more rapes, the lives of all those in Japanese POW camps, and the lives of those who would have otherwise died with a continuation of that war, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not atrocity, but acts of mercy that otherwise provided the people of Japan with the psychological out that allowed them to surrender without the loss of too much face.
About as ethical as you taking a shower today with a bar of Auschwitz soap. So, if we've used any such "data," then let me simply say that we showered with a bar of Auschwitz soap.
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
You might as well use a bar of Auschwitz soap next time you shower, so that some good might come from evil. Oh, and by the way, if that is the proposed rationale, then let lawyer me say that we might as well use evidence obtained in violation of the US Constitution, etc., in a court of law, since we are indeed on our quest for the truth, so who cares in what manner the evidence was obtained, so long as we consider it reliable and such thus aids in our determination of the truth. Which brings us to where we need to be. These rules, or if you prefer, principles, of ethics and/or law...why do we have them? To protect those who would be made soap? Or to protect me from making them soap? When you understand which is the primary function of the law, then you will have your answer.
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two?
I don't know and I don't care, remembering as always, those sure and certain words...for what shall it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?
Hint, that informs us as to the primary function of the law. Let me put it this way, and I'm only addressing my fellow Christians here. You want to save a life? Good, but our God raises the dead. And if we use this "data", where does it stop? If I know that you are a suitable donor for a heart transplant for my daughter, do I murder you? I mean, if the posited operating principle is good from evil, then I suppose that the good doctors would go ahead and use the heart of the man I just murdered to save my daughter. So where does it stop once we open the door? Are we going to tell just one lie? And then a second? And then a third? And then since we've already done it once, it becomes just that much easier next time 'round, so we wake up one day only to discover that we are no longer telling a lie, but have become liars [i.e., what we first thought was an excusable aberration, you know, good from evil, has become our defining characteristic]. And back to the good book again, we don't have "you shall not murder" because God wants to save your life, I mean, after all, God raises the dead, so in that regard there's no murder than I can accomplish that that One cannot fix [as it were]. But since the operating principle is that the state of my soul is up to me, and not God, we have those other sure and certain words...you have heard that it was said to the ancients, you shall not commit adultery, but I tell you that whoever lusts after a woman has committed adultery in his heart...
Another hint, when you read about some saying that my Lord expanded the law of adultery to include lust, please know that such persons simply don't know why we have either the Ten Words or our own law, since my Lord wasn't expanding the law, but simply trying to make abundantly plain to all concerned the purpose of the Ten Words.
Lastly, if any want to honor the memory of those who perished, then I would simply suggest that rather than make use of any so-called "data", that you instead tell your children, and your children's children, about that Jewish woman who asked that Nazi guard for a knife with which she might circumcise her newborn son, so that he might die a Jew.
Sorry, one more, Hiroshima? Sorry, but there is zero moral equivalence between Auschwitz, etc., and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, which is to say that the Jews didn't bomb Pearl Harbor, didn't conduct the Bata'an death march, didn't conduct a vivisection in the jungles of Guadalcanal, didn't rape Nanking, didn't reduce Korean women to sexual slaves, didn't crash dive airplanes into our ships, and didn't refuse to surrender when all was lost and we were otherwise promising them prompt and utter destruction. Which is to say, that when you add up all those Chinese lives saved, all of the Korean, Filipina, and other women who were saved from just that many more rapes, the lives of all those in Japanese POW camps, and the lives of those who would have otherwise died with a continuation of that war, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not atrocity, but acts of mercy that otherwise provided the people of Japan with the psychological out that allowed them to surrender without the loss of too much face.
QUOTE(KivrotHaTaavah)
Sorry, one more, Hiroshima? Sorry, but there is zero moral equivalence between Auschwitz, etc., and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, which is to say that the Jews didn't bomb Pearl Harbor, didn't conduct the Bata'an death march, didn't conduct a vivisection in the jungles of Guadalcanal, didn't rape Nanking, didn't reduce Korean women to sexual slaves, didn't crash dive airplanes into our ships, and didn't refuse to surrender when all was lost and we were otherwise promising them prompt and utter destruction.
Killing innocent civilians, whether Japanese or Jewish, is still killing innocent civilians. And my Christian/Jewish God said, "Thou shalt not kill" or if you will, "You shall do no murder".
Tell me, what 3-year-old Japanese child deserved to be nuked because his daddy did bad things? That child would be about as deserving of death as any Jewish child burned in the oven at Auschwitz!
There IS a parallel here. You don't do evil to combat evil. At least it hasn't been suggested in MY Bible. But this is off-topic.
I don't believe any more than you do that Nazi "scientists" or "doctors" should receive any credit for anything they discovered that might be of any benefit to today's doctors or scientists. And that is the subject of this topic, I believe.
QUOTE(Paladin Elspeth @ Aug 25 2005, 06:44 PM)
I don't believe any more than you do that Nazi "scientists" or "doctors" should receive any credit for anything they discovered that might be of any benefit to today's doctors or scientists. And that is the subject of this topic, I believe.
Well credit would be going to far, but it is the manner in which the data was obtained. Evil was inflicted upon innocent Jewish citizens to the point of murder, for what? For supposed science. I cannot condone the actions, but to not use the data provided by the acts of horror and cruelty would be an insult to their sacrifice. My word choice does not imply a voluntary sacrifice, for it was anything but, but the victims of the experiments (most) are gone. It is important to not make their deaths go unremembered and in vain. If there is anything buried in the pages upon countless pages of documented data and papers it is the right of the world as a whole to decide whether or not to try to bring about a good from the knowledge obtained through evil.
But to what extent can we do this? The damage is done, the Holocaust is over. No longer are people needlessly suffering at the hands of systematic slaughter of Nazi experiments. The important thing to remember is that the past has been written, but what the future can hold with information from the experiment's data is uncharted and the possibilities are impossible to imagine. The details learned through the atrocities of the human body and the inner workings of the circulatory system, for example, would have taken decades to have learned through proper channels. To simply deny the existence of the knowledge would be another crime to humanity in my opinion.
QUOTE(VDemosthenes @ Aug 20 2005, 09:08 PM)
1.) Is it ethical to put medical data collected during the time by Nazi doctors to practical use in today's world?
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two? [/b]
2.) Can using the results from the experiments be justified? Is using the line of thinking 'well it's over and done with, might as well bring good from evil' an acceptable usage of the experimental data?
3.) How much more advanced would medical technology be if the full data had survived past the final days of World War Two? [/b]
1. Well...the hypothermia treatment described (warming using water) is advised by the Boy Scouts of America to use for hypothermia. Also, BSA also says "skin-to-skin contact" to warm up parts of a body. This doesn't have to be two people, it can be putting your fingers in your armpits or making fists. I don't think there is and ethics concern though. If the Nazis found out how to cure AIDS I don't think people would feel ethically bad to use that cure.
2. I think this is the same question. Yes, it is cruel, what are you asking for though? Do you want us to wait for a natural example of hypothermia to try and figure out what is a good way to warm someone? And when that person dies after they don't get the care we already know? And when we find out that the warming routine that we find is the best is the Nazi's best solution? Is it still not moral if we and the Nazi's found it?
3. In the question, you say "technology". I'm going to assume you mean knowledge. I have no idea what we would have. You are asking for a guess. We probably don't know all of the experiments, and we might've found cures for AIDS or cancer (almost definetely not), or nothing.
Talking about crazy scientists, here's the CIA's Sidney Gottlieb.
Rather scary knowing that there was governmental approval to giving random people L.S.D.
Now we are speaking in a field close to my area of speciality.
There are two issues with regards to the results from Nazi medical experiments. One is ‘are they practically useful’, the second is ‘is it morally justifiable to use this data’?
As I will demonstrate, the second issue, while still an interesting debate, is essentially irrelevant because of the answer to the first issue.
The data collected by the Nazis in the course of their medical experimentation on prisoners in concentration camps is completely useless. It has not, nor can it serve any practical purpose, there is no data or results in the voluminous information the nazis compiled which would be of any use to anybody.
The first problem is that 80% of the ‘experiments’ done were not done in order to investigate, they were done in order to support existing racialist theories. The nazis were looking for proof to their theories that racial difference could define superior or inferior characteristics and personalities. Thus the Nazis resuscitated dead and discredited disciplines such as phrenology (measuring the patterns of bumps on the skull) in an attempt to justify their racial theories with scientific data.
Thus the experiments were utterly pointless and served no medical value. Worse, when apparent data collected seemed to defy Nazi racial theory, the experiment was discarded or the results were doctored. Despite the fact that Russian men seemed to survive cold water immersion experiments LONGER than other prisoners (a circumstance largely due to the fact that Russian experimentees were usually POWs, in good physical shape and used to the rigours of soldiery, while those of other races were civilians, often weakened by hunger or disease before arrival at the camps.) this result was discarded and never reported in the final drafts of experimental results.
Just the nature of the experiment, that the ‘doctors’ (if you can call them that) would ignore such issues as physical fitness, state of nutrition and health, and assume all results would be purely ‘racial’ in nature, shows the incredible ineptitude and lack of knowledge of these men.
Many of the ‘doctors’ had no medical training, or were trained as battlefield medics, thus had experience in basic trauma medicine, but little or no understanding of biology and physiology. Their tests were absurd, and the results were doctored to meet the ideological needs of the questioners.
Thus, we face a thre-layered problem. Firstly, the tests themselves were absurd, driven by ideological and racialist motives rather than medical. Secondly, the people performing the experiments often had no capacity to understand or even properly analyse the results they were obtaining. Thirdly, even if , somehow, by accident, results were obtained which might have value to medical research, we know the results were often doctored, and so there is no way of knowing if the results were even the real results.
It gets worse. The tests were done without controls, in unsanitary conditions. They were done more often than not based on the personal whims and curiosity of several ranking ideologues. Dr. Mengele, probably the most famous of the Nazi doctors, he was also one of the few ranking ones who actually had a medical degree, awarded from the University of Frankfurt in 1938. He however was fascinated by the ideological concepts of social Darwinism as applied to biology. This imposition of social construct (and false social construct to be precise) to medicine a completely absurd concept, akin to assuming that Communism could be ideologically ‘applied’ to medical science, and rewriting medical textbooks to show that the human body was ‘more communist’ based on ideological reasoning rather than observation or scientific method, or in fact any actual evidence at all.
Mengele was a sadist, and that directed his experiments more than anything else. After sadism came ideology, and frankly I doubt medicine was ever even on his mind. He set about experimenting on twins and the deformed without any actual goal or thesis, just poking and prodding and x-raying and cutting, all without anaesthetic, just for curiosity sake, and for the sake of causing pain.
Even the most absurd of the experiments were tainted. In experimenting on new ways of torturing people for information, doctors would give inmates a ‘secret’ they were supposed to keep, and then torture them for the secret. Insane and pointless, to be sure, but in cases where ‘racially inferior’ people kept secrets longer than others, those results were ignored or changed.
In summation, there is no practical value to be obtained from any of the experiments performed by the Nazis. They were not investigating anything worth investigating, rather they were attempting to prove their own racialist theories. Their experiments were done in horrendous conditions, with idiotic goals when there were even goals at all, by untrained an incompetent torturers who took no control measures and did noit follow even the most basic concepts of scientific method. As if that were not enough, they also frequently falsified their results.
As to the second issue, its pretty much irrelevant.
EDIT to add...
Oh, and by the way, two quick other issues:
-The Nazis, though they were highly advanced in fields of certain military technologies, such as metallurgy and rocketry, were far behind the western allies in most civilian disciplines, including medicine. German medical science was far behind that of the allies even before the Nazis, and once diciplines sich as biology and genettics were taken over by ideologues, they regressed rather than advancing under the third Reich. A good example if the fact that the Nazis did not have penicillin or antibiotics of any kind, and were still using sulpha drugs to treat infection.
-Most of the results of these experiments, (i hesitate to even call them experiments, as they were not experimental. Tortures would be a better term) were intact after the war, not much had been lost. The third question, about if we had access to the full data, if flawed, as we did have access to the vast majority, and it was all utterly worthless.
There are two issues with regards to the results from Nazi medical experiments. One is ‘are they practically useful’, the second is ‘is it morally justifiable to use this data’?
As I will demonstrate, the second issue, while still an interesting debate, is essentially irrelevant because of the answer to the first issue.
The data collected by the Nazis in the course of their medical experimentation on prisoners in concentration camps is completely useless. It has not, nor can it serve any practical purpose, there is no data or results in the voluminous information the nazis compiled which would be of any use to anybody.
The first problem is that 80% of the ‘experiments’ done were not done in order to investigate, they were done in order to support existing racialist theories. The nazis were looking for proof to their theories that racial difference could define superior or inferior characteristics and personalities. Thus the Nazis resuscitated dead and discredited disciplines such as phrenology (measuring the patterns of bumps on the skull) in an attempt to justify their racial theories with scientific data.
Thus the experiments were utterly pointless and served no medical value. Worse, when apparent data collected seemed to defy Nazi racial theory, the experiment was discarded or the results were doctored. Despite the fact that Russian men seemed to survive cold water immersion experiments LONGER than other prisoners (a circumstance largely due to the fact that Russian experimentees were usually POWs, in good physical shape and used to the rigours of soldiery, while those of other races were civilians, often weakened by hunger or disease before arrival at the camps.) this result was discarded and never reported in the final drafts of experimental results.
Just the nature of the experiment, that the ‘doctors’ (if you can call them that) would ignore such issues as physical fitness, state of nutrition and health, and assume all results would be purely ‘racial’ in nature, shows the incredible ineptitude and lack of knowledge of these men.
Many of the ‘doctors’ had no medical training, or were trained as battlefield medics, thus had experience in basic trauma medicine, but little or no understanding of biology and physiology. Their tests were absurd, and the results were doctored to meet the ideological needs of the questioners.
Thus, we face a thre-layered problem. Firstly, the tests themselves were absurd, driven by ideological and racialist motives rather than medical. Secondly, the people performing the experiments often had no capacity to understand or even properly analyse the results they were obtaining. Thirdly, even if , somehow, by accident, results were obtained which might have value to medical research, we know the results were often doctored, and so there is no way of knowing if the results were even the real results.
It gets worse. The tests were done without controls, in unsanitary conditions. They were done more often than not based on the personal whims and curiosity of several ranking ideologues. Dr. Mengele, probably the most famous of the Nazi doctors, he was also one of the few ranking ones who actually had a medical degree, awarded from the University of Frankfurt in 1938. He however was fascinated by the ideological concepts of social Darwinism as applied to biology. This imposition of social construct (and false social construct to be precise) to medicine a completely absurd concept, akin to assuming that Communism could be ideologically ‘applied’ to medical science, and rewriting medical textbooks to show that the human body was ‘more communist’ based on ideological reasoning rather than observation or scientific method, or in fact any actual evidence at all.
Mengele was a sadist, and that directed his experiments more than anything else. After sadism came ideology, and frankly I doubt medicine was ever even on his mind. He set about experimenting on twins and the deformed without any actual goal or thesis, just poking and prodding and x-raying and cutting, all without anaesthetic, just for curiosity sake, and for the sake of causing pain.
Even the most absurd of the experiments were tainted. In experimenting on new ways of torturing people for information, doctors would give inmates a ‘secret’ they were supposed to keep, and then torture them for the secret. Insane and pointless, to be sure, but in cases where ‘racially inferior’ people kept secrets longer than others, those results were ignored or changed.
In summation, there is no practical value to be obtained from any of the experiments performed by the Nazis. They were not investigating anything worth investigating, rather they were attempting to prove their own racialist theories. Their experiments were done in horrendous conditions, with idiotic goals when there were even goals at all, by untrained an incompetent torturers who took no control measures and did noit follow even the most basic concepts of scientific method. As if that were not enough, they also frequently falsified their results.
As to the second issue, its pretty much irrelevant.
EDIT to add...
Oh, and by the way, two quick other issues:
-The Nazis, though they were highly advanced in fields of certain military technologies, such as metallurgy and rocketry, were far behind the western allies in most civilian disciplines, including medicine. German medical science was far behind that of the allies even before the Nazis, and once diciplines sich as biology and genettics were taken over by ideologues, they regressed rather than advancing under the third Reich. A good example if the fact that the Nazis did not have penicillin or antibiotics of any kind, and were still using sulpha drugs to treat infection.
-Most of the results of these experiments, (i hesitate to even call them experiments, as they were not experimental. Tortures would be a better term) were intact after the war, not much had been lost. The third question, about if we had access to the full data, if flawed, as we did have access to the vast majority, and it was all utterly worthless.
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