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Dubious Premises—Evil Conclusions: Moral Reasoning at the Nuremberg Trials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2000

EDMUND D. PELLEGRINO  and
DAVID C. THOMASMA
EDMUND D. PELLEGRINO
Affiliation:
Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D., is the John Carroll Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics, Center for Clinical Bioethics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.
DAVID C. THOMASMA
Affiliation:
David C. Thomasma, Ph.D., is the Fr. Michael I. English Professor of Medical Ethics and Director of the Medical Humanities Program at Loyola University Chicago Medical Center, Maywood, Illinois
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Abstract

Fifty years ago, 23 Nazi physicians were defendants before a military tribunal in Nuremberg, charged with crimes against humanity. During that trial, the world learned of their personal roles in human experimentation with political and military prisoners, mass eugenic sterilizations, state-ordered euthanasia of the “unfit,” and the program of genocide we now know as the Holocaust. These physicians, and their colleagues who did not stand trial, were universally condemned in the free world as ethical pariahs. The term “Nazi doctor” became the paradigm for total defection from the most rudimentary elements of medical morality. The caduceus literally became the instrument of the swastika.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 2000 , pp. 261 - 274
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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