The art of medicine: Apologising for Nazi medicine: A constructive starting point

摘要

In May, 2012, the German Medical Association (Bundesarztekammer) apologised for medical atrocities under National Socialism. Although long overdue, the apology is necessary and commendable, not least because survivors of medical atrocities and persecution are still living. German medicine between 1933 and 1945 saw a colossal breach of the ethics of patient care: doctors initiated and implemented an estimated 350 000 coerced sterilisations, the killing of some 260000 people with mental illness or disabilities, and an estimated 25000 human experiments that led to the deaths of more than 2000 research subjects. Doctors selected individuals for slave fabour or death at Auschwitz, and took part in the development and use of methods to kill people, such as by poison gas, fatal injections, starvation diets, and electrocution. Tens of thousands of bodies of the executed were delivered to German medical institutes for teaching and research, and in some departments bodies of Nazi victims were still used for these purposes until at least 1990, and in some cases for longer.